A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on whether to confirm former Ohio Solicitor General Benjamin Flowers to a vacancy on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals notably mentioned Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Republican and Democrat members brought up the justice’s viewpoint on commenting on the 2020 election.

In one of the more dramatic exchanges, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Flowers who won the 2020 election.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on the outcomes of any election, except to say, legally speaking, Joe Biden was certified,” Flowers replied, echoing the response Jackson gave when she was a federal judge.

When Blumenthal kept pressing him for an answer, Flowers called Jackson’s argument persuasive and said it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to answer.

Blumenthal, clearly irritated at the exchange, replied, “Frankly, I know Justice Jackson. You’re no Justice Jackson.”

During opening statements, Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, accused his Democrat colleagues of committing “political theater” with their questions about certifying the 2020 election.

Grassley stressed that when Jackson was asked if she ever commented on the 2016 or 2020 election results, the justice replied that “it would be inappropriate … to publicly weigh into any subject of political debate.”

“Justice Jackson, like every nominee to come before this committee, didn’t think it was appropriate for a judicial nominee to weigh into a political debate concerning the results of the 2020 election,” Grassley said, adding that his Democrat colleagues were not “outraged” at her response.

“Her answer then, like the answers of the judicial nominees recently, was entirely prudent and unremarkable,” he also added.

Flowers referenced Grassley’s opening statement in his own responses throughout the hearing.

The exchange grabbed the attention of many Ohio conservatives, including state Reps. Brian Stewart and Adam Mathews, Turning Point USA’s Gabe Guidarini, and Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer, who all chimed in on X.

The Daily Signal’s Senior National Security and Legal Analyst Mehek Cooke said Democrats face a deepening identity crisis and are failing to respond to voter concerns, warning it could cost them in the upcoming midterm elections.

Appearing Thursday on Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus,” Cooke argued that Democrats have yet to meaningfully reckon with their 2024 election losses, dismissing internal post-election reviews as inadequate.

“They are a day late and millions of voters now too short as we are looking at the midterms,” Cooke said of a post-election autopsy report released on Thursday by Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin. “This was not an autopsy—it was a confession on the Democrat side that they lost touch with millions of working-class, young men … and they still haven’t learned anything.”

Cooke criticized Democrats for being “border blind” amid surging illegal immigration and for overcomplicating core issues affecting voters.

“They are blaming themselves and then their TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] is overcomplicating the fact that voters today matter the most,” she said. “That’s how you deliver—by addressing the economy and ensuring working-class Americans are heard.”

Cooke predicted electoral consequences, arguing that Democrats “don’t know who they are” and are grappling with “the biggest identity crisis they are facing.”

The segment also turned to controversy surrounding a Texas congressional candidate, Maureen Galindo, who won the Democrat primary in March before drawing backlash over anti-Zionist remarks. Cooke condemned the comments as dangerous and reflective of a broader trend.

“Antisemitism does not belong in America, but guess what? Democrats have allowed it to find a safe haven,” Cooke said. “This was the No. 1 candidate in her primary—which means Democrat voters knew exactly what they were choosing.”

Cooke warned against dismissing such rhetoric as isolated, arguing instead that it reflects a growing radicalism.

“We don’t need another American Holocaust,” she said, calling the candidate’s comments an attempt to “isolate Americans on our religious and political ideology.”

Cooke urged Republicans to forcefully confront what she described as rising anti-Jewish sentiment.

“This is the moment for the Republican Party,” she said. “We need to call out the hate, stand up, man up, and tell Americans what is really happening.”

She concluded that political leaders must stop fueling division and address the concerns of everyday Americans before it’s too late.

As he seeks a comeback, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, spoke with CNN about what another term of his would look like, sparking chatter about his stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During the interview, CNN’s Manu Raju asked about the leftward shift of his party. “Since you left Washington, there are some issues in which your party has grown increasingly to the left on, [including] abolishing ICE,” Raju pointed out, asking if Brown supported that.

“I don’t. I’m not paying enough attention to know what votes are coming up,” Brown said.

He offered a similar response when Raju asked again if he supports abolishing ICE. “I’m not close enough to make those decisions at this point. I think for sure we need rules around ICE,” Brown responded.

When “Inside Politics” aired on Sunday, Raju framed it as an issue on which “Brown is showing caution.”

In a statement to the Daily Signal, Brown campaign spokesperson Lauren Chou made it clear where the candidate stands.

“Sherrod Brown does not support abolishing ICE. Sherrod’s focus is on keeping Ohio’s communities safe by getting violent criminals and human traffickers off the streets and ensuring those are the individuals ICE focuses on,” she said.

Brown has expressed opposition to abolishing ICE more clearly in the past. “No, you shouldn’t abolish ICE. You should reform ICE and make it work better than it is,” Brown said in 2018.

Republicans used the moment to target Brown with a clip from that part of the interview. RNC Research noted Brown served in office for decades, calling the former senator a “Total fraud.”

Sen. Jon Husted, who is running against Brown, also capitalized on the CNN interview through his campaign staff.

“Not close enough to make those decisions? No one was closer to the chaos coming out of Washington than Sen. Sherrod Brown,” Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce told the Daily Signal.

“He spent more than 30 years in Washington failing hardworking Ohio families. Now he’s portraying himself as an outsider in the hopes that voters will forget his liberal agenda. It didn’t work in 2024, and it won’t work now.”

The Ohio Republican Party also responded to the CNN clip, urging Ohioans to keep Brown out of politics. “He’ll say anything to get elected. We fired him once, we’ll do it again in November,” claimed one social media post by the organization. “A bigger phony politician does not exist in America,” claimed another from Ohio GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou.

At the national level, the National Republican Senatorial Committee called the moment “weak.” The Republican National Committee’s Midwest regional communications director, Hunter Lovell, also posted the clip, writing, “Shady Sherrod Brown spent 32 years in Washington accomplishing next to nothing.”

As a way to boost Husted, Lovell pointed out that “Ohio voters already rejected Brown’s failed record once,” adding that Husted “is prepared to retire this empty-suit politician for good this November.”

The race between Brown and Husted is rated a “Toss-Up” for the 2026 midterms. Husted was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine to replace now-Vice President JD Vance, triggering a special election. The winner will be up for reelection in 2028.

The U.S. Court of the Southern District of Mississippi has signed off on a motion to drop a lawsuit alleging two Mississippi billionaires defrauded a pandemic-era program. The judge’s dismissal on Thursday came after plaintiffs entered a voluntary dismissal with prejudice on May 15.

As reported by Mississippi Today, Judge Kristi H. Johnson signed off on the plaintiff’s motion to withdraw the lawsuit with prejudice after the federal government declined to litigate the case itself.

After the California attorneys moved to withdraw the lawsuit, federal officials said the dismissal aligned with the government’s broader priorities. Baxter Kruger, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, said acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche consented to the dismissal, citing a determination that ending the case was “commensurate with the public interest” and that it did not justify continued use of government resources.

Kruger—who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2025—also asked the court to keep all sealed documents in the case under seal, a request that Johnson granted.

“Today, I’m pleased to announce that the California trial lawyers who recklessly sued Tommy and Jim Duff with respect to the PPP program have voluntarily dismissed their frivolous and unfounded case. This is a complete and total victory for the Duff brothers,” Matthew Miller, the attorney representing the defendant, told the Daily Signal after the court formally dismissed the case.

“The voluntary dismissal comes just days after the Duffs asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of merit,” Miller continued. “From the beginning of this baseless case, we have stated that the facts show that the Duffs, under the guidance of competent accounting and legal professionals, always followed the law in obtaining PPP loans during the COVID-19 pandemic to help protect their employees.”

Relator LLC, the plaintiff, is a group formed by California attorneys Anoush Hakimi and Peter Shahriari, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In a notice of voluntary dismissal, attorney Kristen Nelson—who represents the pair—cited the federal government’s decision not to litigate the case. The filing also stated that the lawsuit’s factual claims did not factor into the decision to dismiss.

“The dismissal is not the result of any settlement or payment, and no party has paid or agreed to pay any consideration in connection with the dismissal,” Nelson wrote. “No claims have been adjudicated on the merits, and Relator has elected to dismiss its claims without further amendment.”

The case was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin later transferred it to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi after Miller argued in court that the case lacked ties to California.

In his statement to the Daily Signal, Miller also rebutted the allegations of any wrongdoing from the companies when they applied for the loans.

“This lawsuit was a purely meritless attempt by trial lawyers to extract an unwarranted settlement,” the attorney wrote. “The Duffs remained focused throughout COVID on supporting their 16,000 employees, many of whom were kept employed, even when many Duff businesses were forced to cut back.”

Miller also told the Daily Signal that he will “continue to evaluate all legal remedies against the plaintiffs against the plaintiff, Relator LLC, and its California lawyers, due to the incredibly frivolous nature and outrageous false allegations set forth in the lawsuit.”

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 20, 2024, accused Thomas and James Duff and several of their companies—including Duff Capital Investors, Southern Tire Mart, Pine Belt Motors, and Pine Belt CDJR—of improperly obtaining Paycheck Protection Program loans. The complaint alleged the companies should not have applied for the loans because they underreported employee counts and had sufficient resources through their broader conglomerate.

In a previous statement to Mississippi Today, Miller added that the loans were “lawfully obtained, fully disclosed and reviewed by banks, the SBA and federal attorneys,” and described the case as “parasitic, web-scraped lawsuit that courts have repeatedly rejected.”

“The allegations were also independently reviewed by the Department of Justice which, after this review, declined to intervene in this lawsuit,” Miller continued.

Relator LLC, which filed the Qui Tam complaint, claimed Southern Tire Mart had roughly 1,300 employees and $600 million in annual revenue, while Duff Capital Investors allegedly employs more than 10,000 people. As stated by Mississippi Today, the lawsuit claimed the companies reported having 496 employees to qualify for PPP loans, which were limited to businesses with 500 or fewer employees.

The lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals—known as relators—to bring qui tam actions on behalf of the federal government to recover funds obtained through alleged fraud. The plaintiffs behind the lawsuit in this case, Hakimi and Shahriar, represented Relator LLC.

A qui tam lawsuit is a lawsuit filed by an individual or entity that works on behalf of the federal government, alleging the misuse or defrauding of federal loans.

According to the complaint, the Duff companies secured three PPP loans totaling approximately $6.5 million.

The now-dismissed lawsuit claimed that “two billionaire brothers, reported to be the wealthiest two individuals in Mississippi, used a handful of their many companies … to misappropriate millions of dollars from the US Federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program.”

As seen in the court filings obtained by Mississippi Today, attorneys for the Duff brothers denied the allegations in court filings, arguing the loans were obtained lawfully and used to keep “hard-working people employed and paid.”

Additionally, as seen in the court filings and in the attorney’s statement to the Daily Signal, the defendants believe Relator LLC leaned on inflammatory rhetoric instead of factual evidence. The defendants claimed that the complaint improperly treated franchisees as affiliated entities, even though federal law expressly allowed franchisees to qualify for PPP loans.

According to the filings, Duff-affiliated franchisees identified themselves as such in their loan applications. Some entities cited in the complaint, including Pine Belt Chevrolet and Pine Belt CDJR, operate as franchised dealerships for major automobile manufacturers.

“The result of section 636(a)(36)(D)(iv)(II) was that an entity with a franchise identifier code could get a PPP loan even if a parent company had thousands of employees spread across subsidiaries,” the defendants say in the filing. “Beneficiaries of this new rule commonly included car-dealership franchisees by auto manufacturers and franchisees of restaurant or hotel chains.”

Furthermore, Miller also moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the plaintiff failed to meet requirements under federal law mandating that whistleblowers possess independent knowledge of alleged violations prior to public disclosure.

The Department of Justice notes the law was strengthened by Congress in 1986 to encourage such actions, allowing private citizens to act as “private attorneys general” in pursuing fraud claims.

Relator LLC has filed similar cases in the past. In one such case, a federal court in California ordered Los Angeles businessman Yosef Y. Manela to pay more than $800,000 after finding he violated the False Claims Act in connection with PPP loans

The Daily Signal contacted Grafton Bragg, one of Relator’s attorneys, the Department of Justice, and U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson, but did not receive a comment.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., on Thursday reintroduced legislation that would prohibit U.S.-based money services businesses from using central bank digital currencies issued by the Communist Party of China, including the digital yuan.

If enacted, the Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act would prohibit money services businesses from engaging in any transaction that involves a central bank digital currency issued by China.

The bill would apply to entities such as Venmo, Zelle, currency dealers, and the U.S. Postal Service, making it unlawful for them to process such transactions.

“No money services business may engage in any transaction, directly or indirectly, that involves a central bank digital currency issued by the People’s Republic of China,” the bill shared with the Daily Signal states.

In a statement to the Daily Signal, Scott argued that allowing U.S. businesses to transact in a Chinese digital currency could expose Americans to surveillance risks and weaken U.S. economic competitiveness. He has long opposed the development and adoption of central bank digital currencies, particularly those linked to foreign adversaries.

“The dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the CCP wants to undermine our leadership with a digital currency they can track and manipulate,” Scott told the Daily Signal. “The digital yuan is just another tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on its people and all those who use it. Americans deserve privacy when it comes to their financial transactions.”

According to the senator, China’s digital currency allows its government to monitor financial activity and potentially restrict access to funds. His legislation seeks to block its use in the United States, citing concerns about privacy, national security, and economic stability.

The bill would make transactions involving Chinese government-issued digital currency unlawful and, according to Scott’s office, is intended to protect American consumers, businesses, and the broader economy.

Scott previously introduced the legislation in 2023, along with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, upon the announcement of the Chinese digital yuan.

“The digital yuan is just another tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on its people and all those who use it. It is an obvious power grab and an attempt to increase communist-state-control over people’s personal finances,” Scott said at the time. “Secretary Xi [Jinping] and his thugs have no business playing big brother to American citizens and how they spend their money.”

“That is why I am fighting to prevent this problem from ever becoming someone’s reality. We must stand up against the CCP’s obvious spy tactics and pass the Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act today,” Scott added.

Seattle’s socialist-in-chief is no longer laughing about chasing away businesses and wealthy residents. But the attitude adjustment may be too little, too late.

Just a few weeks ago, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson infamously giggled when asked if she was concerned about wealthy residents fleeing Seattle because of her policies.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if—the ones that leave, like, bye,” Wilson said to applause at Seattle University.

As I wrote at the time, this flippant attitude toward a potential wealth exodus was remarkably foolish.

Businesses and the “rich” were already leaving Seattle, but hitting the accelerator on leftist policies is causing a full-blown economic meltdown. The result will be a loss of hundreds of millions—likely even billions—of dollars in future tax revenue.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a political program based on taxing the rich doesn’t even begin to work if there are few rich to tax. But here we are. Reality is setting in.

Now for the consequences.

In November, Wilson stepped into a labor dispute between Starbucks and its employees, saying that she was “proud” to join the picket line.

“I am not buying Starbucks and you should not either,” she said of Seattle’s signature brand.

That didn’t go well with Starbucks management, which has announced plans to effectively leave the state of Washington.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz even took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to blast city and state leaders for making a bad situation worse.

Schultz wrote in early May that Seattle faces “serious” problems, including “chronic homelessness, disorder in core business districts, persistent budget deficits, declining public-school outcomes, and a slowing technology hiring cycle.” He lamented that Washington and Seattle have failed to meet those challenges.

“Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner,” he wrote. “Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. She has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave.”

While I don’t find Schultz to be all that sympathetic—he’s been seemingly happy to back idiotic causes in the past to appeal to woke leftists—his sudden turn against the Democrat powers that be suggests that Seattle is in real trouble.

Now, the mayor seems to regret her anti-Starbucks line.

In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, she admitted comments calling for a Starbucks boycott were “not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good.”

That would be an understatement.

Other Seattle leaders have expressed dismay at how things are going too.

Seattle City Councilmember Rob Saka, a Democrat who once fully supported Wilson, said to The New York Times that he’s “gravely concerned” about Starbucks pulling the plug and moving to Nashville. “This is real,” he said.

Jon Scholes, the president of the Downtown Seattle Association, who was on Wilson’s transition team, said to KOMO News that “tone and tenor and words matter if you’re leading a city.” He warned that Seattle’s business climate was “at a bit of a tipping point, and we should take nothing for granted.”

His association recently released a report that highlighted the issues facing the city.

“Downtown lost an estimated 13,000 jobs in 2025, the steepest decline since the pandemic outside of 2021,” the report said, according to KOMO News. “Office vacancy rates remain stubbornly high at more than 30% overall, with Seattle’s central business district exceeding 32%. Some of downtown’s most valuable office towers have lost more than half their assessed value since 2021.”

This makes Wilson’s comments about saying “bye” to businesses even more egregious. Seattle was already facing a crisis, and she just made it a lot worse.

As radio host Buck Sexton wrote on X, the socialist tough talk may have tickled the fancy of purple-haired activists, but they aren’t the ones paying the bills.

Whatever pivot Wilson makes, and I imagine it will be a rhetorical one at best, is not likely to get her out of the hole that she and fellow Democrats have dug in the city.

Seattle has become a poster child of Left Coast zaniness, a hotbed of crime and disorder, an example of the human cost of allowing mass open-air drug use, and a warning about how a beautiful city can be mismanaged to oblivion.

Wilson should have been doing everything in her power to assure businesses and residents that she would create a more suitable climate for them to thrive in. She didn’t, and I don’t blame businesses for throwing up their hands and moving along.

President Donald Trump on Thursday delayed signing an executive order regulating artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, citing the AI race with China.

“I think it gets in the way of … we’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “We have a very substantial lead on AI, it’s causing, it’s causing tremendous good, and it’s also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs.”

“Again, we have more people working right now than we’ve ever had,” he added. “I really thought that could have been a blocker.”

Trump said he did not like “certain aspects” of the order.

Sources said the order had two sections, one on cybersecurity and another covering AI frontier models.

The order would have given the Office of the National Cyber Director 60 days to develop a framework on cybersecurity. The director, Sean Cairncross, would have been ordered to design a voluntary framework with AI developers to engage with the government over the release of covered models, sources told the Daily Signal.

The postponed signing follows weeks of conversation about how the White House should handle the rising cybersecurity threats posed by frontier AI models, such as Anthropic’s Mythos. There are many differences of opinion within the administration about the proper level of cybersecurity protections.

Some officials wanted labs to submit AI models for review pre-deployment as a condition for government contracts, while others wanted to require mandatory vetting for all new models, sources told the Daily Signal.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he wanted every AI lab to go through a safety review process before releasing a new model, similar to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of new drugs. 

Thursday’s order also would have made vetting of frontier AI models voluntary, according to sources. Based on the president’s statements in the Oval Office, it appears the White House will take an ever-lighter touch approach to cybersecurity guardrails at a later date.

The long-stalled Department of Homeland Security immigration funding bill unexpectedly stalled again Thursday afternoon. Senate Majority Leader John Thune delayed the vote until after the long weekend and the even longer recess, missing President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline.

On Tuesday, Thune told the press that senators were going to vote this week on the Secure America Act, “a piece of legislation that will fund [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [Customs and Border Protection] not only for this year, but for the entirety of the Trump administration.”

Immigration and border protection have gone without fiscal year 2026 funding since Democrats voted to shut down the Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 15. However, both still receive necessary operational funding from the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” passed last July.

The Senate was expected to take up the immigration reconciliation bill Thursday afternoon, extending the House’s vote to fly out Friday. Thune reportedly decided to cancel votes Thursday afternoon after the party failed to come to an agreement.

Trump’s demands likely contributed to in-party fighting, including the newly announced Department of Justice Anti-Weaponization Fund. The DOJ described the fund as a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” which skeptical lawmakers are already questioning will assist Jan. 6 rioters.

“We have a lot of members who are concerned, obviously, about the timing, but also about the substance [of the weaponization fund],” Thune told Punchbowl News after the decision to cancel the vote.

“The timing obviously is something we had no control over. So … they need to help with this issue, because we have a lot of members who are concerned,” Thune continued.

The other point of frustration for members was Trump’s demand to add funding for the security of the East Wing ballroom project, which became a point of contention for many members of the GOP.

Both chambers will revert to their previous voting schedules. The Senate is already on its way home, and the House will wrap up votes later Thursday evening. Both chambers will begin their weeklong recess on Friday and are not expected to return to the Capitol until June 1.

President Donald Trump said every American family will experience a “big saving” in their grocery bills after he rolled back two Biden-era regulations on refrigerants.

With the rollback, Trump said he made more refrigerants available for supermarkets and other businesses, which he says will save $900 million.

The Daily Signal asked the president on Thursday how much the average American family will save on groceries every week due to his announcement.

“There’s going to be a big saving … ” he said. “In fact, numbers are coming out this afternoon sometime.”

“But the average family will save a lot of money,” he added.

Trump said grocery stores would have closed down because they couldn’t afford to comply with the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency rule. The 2023 Technology Transitions Rule would have phased out certain hydrofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators and other appliances.

“You will have stores closing down in areas where they’re not going to have a store anymore,” Trump said. “And you really are being forced to spend money, much more money on much more expensive equipment. That really doesn’t work.”

“This friend of mine is a very savvy guy and, you know, big league stuff,” he said. “And he put some in because he wanted to see and he said the stuff doesn’t work. It doesn’t cool the food properly. That’s why they call the thing that we’re talking about a refrigerant for a reason. It’s a refrigerant.”

Trump said the change would give the American people “lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, lower cost of air conditioning, and no detriment at all to our country,” saying that there were no environmental costs to the rollback.

The announcement comes amid elevated prices of groceries, gas, oil, and electricity following the military operation in Iran. The consumer price index for urban consumers increased 0.6% in April for all items, including increases for the indexes of five of the six major grocery store food groups. The index for energy rose 3.8% in April.

Greg Foran, CEO of Kroger, said grocery store chains are working to make sure savings from the rollback are passed down to consumers.

“We’re actually right in the middle of doing that at the moment,” he said. “So, we’re concerned about the cost of living. It makes a big difference when you get your pricing right, and we certainly are interested in ensuring that all our customers right across the country are paying the right price.”

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, made a bid on Wednesday to serve on the Justice Department panel that will oversee more than $1.7 billion in payments to individuals who claim to be victimized by the “weaponization” of the federal government.

“I’m running,” Howell wrote on X. “A better tomorrow will be based on restorative justice TODAY.”

“President [Donald] Trump’s leadership and selflessness have provided victims a historic opportunity with the Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Howell continued. “My colleagues and I at the Oversight Project … are ready to serve.”

In a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that Howell posted Wednesday on X, the attorney formally declared his candidacy for one of five seats on the commission that manages the department’s newly established “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Blanche, who is responsible for appointing members to the panel, announced the fund on Monday.

In his letter, Howell pointed to his experience advocating on behalf of individuals he says were targeted by federal law enforcement.

“I have testified before the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and have appeared on national television and radio to lay out the cases of ordinary Americans targeted by federal law enforcement for their political views, their faith, and their exercise of constitutionally protected rights,” Howell wrote. He added that he has “written, sued, defended, and advocated every single day to this end.”

Howell said in his letter that, if appointed, he would organize a national gathering in Washington for those he described as victims of “weaponization,” including those who were forced to pay legal fees or served prison time, such as those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol protest.

If selected, Howell would help oversee payments to claimants through the fund, which the Justice Department has said will operate through 2028.

Howell is considered by many to be an ally of Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, and previously advocated for pardons or commutations for more than 1,500 individuals charged in connection with the riot at the Capitol.

In addition to leading the Oversight Project—which aims to expose corruption in government and other institutions—Howell serves as a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. The group is also involved in ongoing litigation seeking the release of materials, including audio recordings from former President Joe Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur.

As a visiting fellow, Howell has been a staunch supporter of Trump, and especially his campaign promise regarding mass deportation.

“The Trump Administration is substantially off pace to ‘carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,’” Howell previously wrote. “To achieve the President’s mandate, all parts of the Trump Administration need to substantially scale up enforcement activities.”

A new poll shows a Zohran Mamdani-endorsed House candidate swamping a Democrat incumbent endorsed by congressional leadership, reflecting an anti-incumbent spirit in the party driven by an increasingly anti-billionaire and anti-Israeli government base.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who ran in the Democrat primary for mayor in 2025, leads incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by a whopping 57% to 23% margin among likely primary voters in New York’s 10th Congressional District, per Emerson College Polling. 

Lander’s lead is well beyond the survey’s 4.6% margin of error. The poll of 450 voters was conducted from May 16-17. The primary will be on June 23.

Twenty percent of Democrats are undecided.

The comptroller, who supported Mamdani’s campaign after losing in the Democrat primary, is also endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has endorsed Goldman alongside House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

Lander has pledged to vote against aid to Israel and has targeted Goldman for his pro-Israel positions and for ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Lander and Goldman are both Jewish.

Goldman has accepted the organization’s endorsement and recently told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “I do think there is an undercurrent of antisemitism in the degree to which AIPAC seems to be vilified.”

“I have personally pushed AIPAC very much to recognize that it is an organization that supports first and foremost the State of Israel and the US-Israel relationship, but that does not mean that they should be unwavering in their support for the Israeli government,” he told the publication. “And that it is important for them to draw that distinction and be critical of the Israeli government when it is appropriate.” 

Goldman has been in Congress since 2023. As an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune, he is one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

The data also shows a sizable generation gap in the primary.

“While all age groups break for Lander, his most significant support comes from voters under 40, who break for Lander over Goldman, 73% to 15%,” Spencer Kimball, Emerson’s executive director, writes in the release. “Voters over 70 are more split; 38% support Lander, while 31% support Goldman.”

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

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Every March and November, Americans dread the notification in their inbox or on the news to “Remember to change your clocks!” Most of us rely on the adage “Fall back in fall—spring forward in spring” to sort out the confusion of which way the clock is moving. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who gets excited about the biannual shift.

However, many Americans do love the later hours of sunlight daylight saving time affords. With equal fervor, others, particularly older people, dislike the thought of getting up in the dark that accompanies it.

It is this lack of consensus, as well as significant pushback from health experts, that has stalled the Sunshine Protection Act (HR 139) in the House Energy and Commerce Committee since the beginning of 2025. The broader effort to pass similar versions of the bill has been ongoing since 2018. 

Now, it looks as if the sun will rise again on an amendment to make DST permanent for all states, and without much notice.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce late Tuesday night announced a markup meeting for Thursday, May 21, at 10 a.m. On the agenda was a proposal to fold the language of the Sunshine Protection Act into the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act (HR 7389).

This latest attempt would mandate permanent daylight saving time in all states that don’t self-exempt before its effective date, and it would prevent self-exemption after its effective date.

The debate is not whether to stop changing the clocks every March and November. Most people, including members of Congress and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, despise the biannual switch. It’s which “version” of time to keep.

The issue doesn’t fall along traditional party lines. It’s not a Right or Left issue. It’s more of a “north vs. south” battle.

Both aforementioned politicians who want to “lock the clock” on daylight saving time are from states below the Mason-Dixon line, as are many of the supporters of the act. States such as Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama feel the warmth of the sun for more time every day in the winter months.

Although the disparity is flipped in the summer because of the Earth’s tilt, Northern states would really bear the brunt of permanent daylight savings time in winter, with the sun not rising in winter until 9 a.m. in some locations. That’s brutal for school-aged kids and anyone who does not have the luxury of sleeping in until the sun rises, and many Northern state legislatures, including Massachusetts, New York, and Alaska, oppose the change.  

This is not merely a geographic issue—it is a fundamental tradeoff between public health and commercial interests.

Congress expanded daylight saving time in two phases: first in 1986, when it moved the start from late April to early April, and again in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which shifted the schedule beginning in 2007 to run from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November.

These decisions were not based on human health, grassroots demand, or even policy to save energy, as some claim. They were made as concessions to the candy and golf industries.

Both major extensions of daylight-saving time were driven by targeted lobbying. In the mid‑1980s, a coalition of commercial interests—retail and Chamber of Commerce groups, outdoor recreation industries, and tourism businesses—pushed Congress to extend DST beginning earlier in April to make more money during the evening hours.

The 2005 expansion was heavily backed by the golf industry as well as retail and outdoor recreation groups. The National Confectioner’s Association also supported pushing the DST calendar past Halloween because its members stood to benefit from an extra hour of trick-or-treating—and candy consumption.

Politicians like Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., claim that it is “better for our physical and mental health” to have more sunshine in the later hours. This is consistently proven false by medical experts. In fact, the data points to the exact opposite.

Misalignment of clocks from the sun’s natural position in the sky has been estimated to decrease sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes every night throughout the duration of the DST observation, per a 2019 study. Such misalignment has been found to decrease productivity and earnings up to 4.5%, per a 2015 study. Even worse, this misalignment has also been observed to increase fatal vehicular accidents significantly, by 21.8%, resulting in an average loss of $1.8 billion annually, per a 2022 study.

According to a position statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, permanent standard time should replace daylight savings time due to “evidence [that] supports the distinct benefits of standard time for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight savings time.”

Despite the testimony of experts, many in Congress have unabashedly claimed it is great for communities’ bottom line with “more business” to “boost the economy.” However, one study shows that worker productivity decreases during the transition to daylight saving time.  Plus, the MAHA movement has made clear that sacrificing Americans’ health to boost consumption (particularly candy!) and line industry pockets is not a tradeoff politicians should make.

Jay Pea, founder of Save Standard Time, a nonprofit organization based in Arizona (one of only two states that do not recognize daylight saving time), says standard time is aligned with long-held wisdom.

“When I was a child, my great-grandfather, a farmer, taught me to tell time from the sun’s position in the sky,” Pea says. “Standard time approximates solar time, but daylight savings time works against our circadian rhythms and natural health.”

The push to standardize what is not standard—or healthy—is a mistake, particularly for certain geographic areas that will suffer the most. Public policy should reflect the natural order—not manipulate it for profit.

As of Jan. 1, 2026, the Department of Government Efficiency reports $215 billion in savings, or roughly $1,335 per taxpayer.

Established in the early months of the second Trump administration and initially led by Elon Musk, DOGE set out to eliminate waste, fraud, and inefficiency in federal spending. Early results suggest those efforts are not only trimming federal excess but also sparking a broader push for fiscal discipline at the state and local levels.

The American social contract relies upon a citizenry able to trust their government to properly steward taxpayer dollars. Waste, fraud, and abuse in programs at all levels of government undermine this trust and cost trillions of dollars over time. According to the Government Accountability Office, federal agencies reported $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025, with 73% concentrated in only five programs—including Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP.

DOGE notoriously facilitated restructuring at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funneled federal money into malicious and inefficient pet projects with little oversight. According to a Challenger report, “DOGE Impact” was the leading reason behind 293,753 planned layoffs by November 2025, many of which were unproductive public sector jobs. Another 21,000 layoffs can be attributed to downstream DOGE effects, reflecting the loss of federal funding to private and nonprofit entities.

DOGE’s federal momentum has also prompted analogous efficiency initiatives at the state level. For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s DOGE task force conducted comprehensive reviews of local governments, state universities, and agencies, resulting in the return of $878 million in unspent federal assistance to the U.S. Treasury.

The task force’s January 2026 report documented examples of wasteful, partisan spending priorities, including Orange County’s $322,000 discrimination in government contracting disparity study, Miami-Dade County’s $2 million Office of New Americans (which provides support for illegal aliens), and Orlando’s $1.8 million budget allocation for gender-neutral bathrooms in fire stations.

Such examples of blatant fiscal irresponsibility highlight the tension between bloated budgets and fiscal discipline in municipal governance, even in conservative states.

Oklahoma’s DOGE-OK initiative, established by Gov. Kevin Stitt, produced savings of $31,652 from contract negotiations, $888,900 in terminated consulting contracts, and $2.17 million in medical marijuana job cuts. The team also leveraged process intelligence tools to identify $8.48 billion in statutory exempt purchases, $190 million in flagged purchase card transactions, and $3 billion in off-contract spending.

In Indiana, an extreme—possibly fraudulent—level of Medicaid billing for Autism Services was uncovered upon the release of federal Medicaid data. With the open sourcing of federal records, DOGE efforts are even more feasible. For example, Michigan’s House DOGE Caucus sought to halt fraudulent payments to an estimated 12,000 Medicaid millionaires, estimating $1.8 billion that could be prevented through efficiency efforts.

A renewed focus on fiscal transparency in federal and state benefits programs exploded, leading to a rise in citizen-led anti-fraud investigators like Nick Shirley. His inspection of Somali daycares in Minnesota exposed nearly $110 million in potential fraud in addition to the broader Feeding Our Future case, estimating $250 million in fraudulent receipts. Shirley continues highlighting waste and abuse across the country, recently exposing $170 million in potential fraud within California’s hospice and daycare programs.

To address this rampant fiscal irresponsibility, the Trump administration launched a nationwide fraud task force headed by Vice President JD Vance with the objective of ending fraud and the pilfering of taxpayer dollars. Vance recently put all 50 states on notice regarding Medicaid integrity and specifically deferred $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding to California over suspicions of fraud.

DOGE efforts are needed now more than ever. Reducing government spending by eliminating fraud and abuse may tame long-term inflationary pressures and lower debt burdens that result from wasteful federal disbursements. As the Trump administration continues to pursue fiscal responsibility at the federal level, bipartisan state commitment to oversight, efficiency, and fraud prevention is vital.

These DOGE initiatives represent a meaningful shift toward greater scrutiny of government spending that could restore institutional credibility and deliver lasting value for taxpayers.

The Daily Signal’s Senior Political and Legal Analyst Mehek Cooke said on Newsmax Wednesday that congressional scrutiny of the Southern Poverty Law Center over fraud concerns is long overdue, arguing that Americans deserve answers about whether the organization engaged in political targeting and how it used donor funds.

A federal grand jury in April charged the organization with 11 counts of wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The Justice Department alleged that the center deceived donors by paying the leaders of extremist groups it vowed to fight. The SPLC pleaded not guilty to all 11 counts and said the payments were part of its informant program that helped prevent attacks and dismantle the groups.

Cooke said it was not surprising the alleged fraud was overlooked and pointed to statements from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan suggesting the Biden administration had knowledge of the problem. “We all know why this happened. The Biden administration was complicit,” Cooke said. “The fact that you had Jim Jordan telling Americans today that the Biden administration actually shielded when we knew that there was massive fraud, that Americans and groups were being targeted, and that this money was being funneled to white supremacists and neo-Nazis—is everything you need to know.”

She argued the controversy demands a full federal investigation. “The DOJ should be all over this in their lawsuit and make sure that we get accountability, our money back, and those individuals are jailed indefinitely. That is as despicable as it gets,” Cooke added.

During the segment, Cooke also pushed back on criticism from Democrats that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department was trying to sow hate. She pointed to financial records and donation patterns as evidence warranting further scrutiny.

“Bank records don’t lie. The donors and the donations don’t lie,” Cooke said.

Cooke also rejected claims that raising questions about the SPLC’s activities is rooted in racial animus, instead framing the issue as one of oversight and misuse of funds. “We’re not racists. We’re embracing everybody in America. We just don’t want fraud on our watch, and we don’t want to be labeled as racists,” she said.

Many see the University of Florida as a bastion against wokeness and DEI, but that might soon change; Stuart Bell, formerly president at the University of Alabama, was recently named sole presidential finalist for the University of Florida.

Bell brought DEI policies to Alabama upon his arrival in 2015 and radicalized Alabama’s flagship university within five years. Later, when Alabama banned DEI policies, Bell merely renamed the DEI office while keeping all of the personnel and renaming the functions.

But Bell’s greatest legacy at Alabama is his administrative staff. Personnel is policy, and Bell elevated a cadre of woke administrators to lead nearly every aspect of university life.

Bell’s hires began with G. Christine Taylor.

Taylor became vice provost, and she was charged with first implementing and then expanding Alabama’s DEI plan starting in 2017. Taylor’s belief system was molded by critical race theory, having completed a 1997 dissertation on the intersection of race and gender in media leadership. She examined the supposed barriers that black women face entering the broadcast industry, highlighting what she called issues of tokenism and discrimination.

Upon graduation, Taylor immediately joined the DEI industry at Ohio University, then became the vice provost for diversity and inclusion at Purdue before she left to do independent consultant work in the diversity industry. When Bell hired Taylor, he made her the first vice president and vice provost for diversity, equity and inclusion at Alabama.

After Alabama passed its laws to ban DEI, he rebranded the department and gave her the new title of vice president and associate provost for opportunities, connections, and success, and she later became the associate provost for academic affairs.

As the marketing agencies on Madison Avenue would say, “Different look. Same great taste.”

From these perches, she shapes faculty hiring and student recruitment and attempts to shape the campus environment through establishing LGBT Centers and the Intercultural Center.

But Taylor did not sit in a silo. Bell hired a cadre of woke administrators to oversee Alabama’s graduate school, undergraduate education, and faculty affairs. Woke administrators shape every aspect of student experience at the university.

Bell made Susan Carvahlo dean of the graduate school in 2016. Her scholarly work is on the intersection of gender and Spanish literature. Her main scholarly contribution is a book examining how women’s fiction in Latin America challenges “the spatial barriers erected by capitalist hegemony” and patriarchy. Her peer-reviewed work includes themes of women’s agency in post-colonial societies and patriarchal oppression.

Bell made Tiffany Sippial dean of the honors college in April 2023. She became associate provost for undergraduate education as well in 2025, soon after Bell left. Sippial’s academic work emphasizes feminist and race-conscious interpretations of Cuban history. Her two main books focus on sexual regulation and prostitution, gendered power, race, and women’s bodies as central to revolutionary politics.

Chapman Greer was hired as the associate provost of general education in 2023. Prior to that, she served as Faculty Senate president, where in 2021 she addressed UA faculty regarding their concerns about the state’s pending legislation to ban DEI. Her response to the faculty: “many different people are working on maintaining academic freedom and making sure that the integrity of what we teach does not get touched if at all possible.”

Months before his resignation from Alabama, Bell made David Deutsch provost for faculty affairs. Generally, such a position has great influence over faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, and academic culture. Deutsch has spent his career pushing queer ideology in the academy.

As a professor of English, Deutsch’s scholarly work is almost entirely dedicated to queer studies. His major books include “Queer Angels in Post-1945 American Literature and Culture: Bad Beatitudes,” “Ecstatic Ordinarinesses: Everyday Joys in 21st Century Queer American Painting,” and “Understanding Jim Grimsley”—all of which celebrate queer identity, same-sex desire, and “queering” of artistic culture. He has written articles romanticizing queer urban spaces (such as New York City subways and New Orleans), effeminate masculinity, and queer spirituality.

Bell must still pass muster with the University of Florida’s Board of Trustees, as well as the State University System’s Board of Governors. Both boards would be wise to study the key personnel that Bell embedded into his leadership team at the University of Alabama.

The University of Florida has its provost and no fewer than four dean positions that are currently occupied by interims. Based on his past embrace of DEI, it’s easy to see how Bell could fill open billets with DEI radicals the same way he did in his last job.

In a step forward for President Donald Trump’s push to give an edge to the American artificial intelligence industry over foreign rivals, a major federal agency approved the new “ExportAI Initiative” on Wednesday.

The Export-Import Bank—a federal credit agency that seeks to support American exporters via financing tools—has launched the initiative, which was approved by the bank’s board of directors in a vote Wednesday morning.

The initiative aims to help American exporters and AI companies dominate the global market by updating the banks’ financing tools, according to documents seen by the Daily Signal.

In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting The Export of the American AI Technology Stack,” which seeks to “decrease international dependence on AI technologies developed by our adversaries” by updating financing tools.

The ExportAI Initiative seeks to fulfill that executive order with “insurance and loan guarantees for the medium-term” as well as “direct loans and loan guarantees for the long-term” to support AI exports, per documents seen by the Daily Signal.

The initiative would also expand financing eligibility for American exporters. 

Additionally, the bank is seeking to cut down on paperwork by requiring “streamlined exporter statements” rather than “detailed certification processes.”

Exporters are required to disclose information about their goods in order to comply with regulations and qualify for loans from the bank.

The push comes as Trump is expected to sign an executive order setting up a government vetting process for AI models.

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The Supreme Court determined that a U.S.-based company—Havana Docks—can recover damages from four major cruise lines that used its docks previously confiscated by the Cuban government.

Havana Docks, a U.S. company, built docks in Havana’s port before the Cuban Revolution. The Castro regime revoked the company’s legal right to the docks, and the company later sued cruise lines that used the docks, claiming they were liable for trafficking in confiscated property. The cruise lines argued that the company’s legal right to the docks would have expired by then, regardless of confiscation.

In an 8-1 ruling issued on Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas found that Havana Docks “did not have to prove that the cruise lines interfered with a property interest that would have existed in the counterfactual scenario in which the Cuban government did not confiscate it.”

“The cruise lines’ use of the docks is sufficient to establish that they used ‘property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government,’” Thomas wrote.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented.

In 2019, the docks company sued four cruise companies that used the confiscated docks from 2016 through 2019. The companies were Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line, and MSC Cruises.

The companies argued they followed the U.S. government’s lead on reopening travel to Cuba as part of the Obama administration’s overtures to the island nation.

Thursday’s ruling reverses an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that determined the company could not recover damages. Before that, a lower court found the cruise companies liable for $440 million.

The question before the court was whether a plaintiff must establish a present-day property interest if the assets in question were not monetized.

Fire season is ramping up across California, with the Sandy Fire in Ventura County and the Bain and Verona fires in Riverside County raising new concerns about wildfire preparedness and prevention.

In Sacramento, the Daily Signal spoke with state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil about whether California is doing enough to prepare for another dangerous wildfire season.

“I know we’re not doing enough. … We know that fire risk is all year long, there’s no more wildfire season. It doesn’t matter whether you live in rural areas or urban areas, you’re at risk,” said Alvarado-Gil, whose district includes some of the most fire-prone communities in the state. 

Despite her warnings, Alvarado-Gil’s wildfire mitigation legislation failed to make it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, something the senator blames on Democrats in Sacramento. 

“We’ve been ruled by a single-party state here in California for quite some time, so we know where to place the blame. … The Democratic supermajority consistently makes decisions on policy priorities and funding priorities that do not put wildfire management, or even risk reduction, at the top of that,” she said.

The senator is calling for prescribed burns, a technique that fire agencies can use to clear dead brush and reduce the buildup of flammable vegetation. Critics argue the burns can harm native plants and wildlife.

However, Alvarado-Gil says the burns are necessary and that avoiding them prioritizes animals over human life. 

“Our forests are meant to endure prescribed burns, and what happens is it rejuvenates the flora and the fauna,” she said. “So, we’ve gone too far to the left in terms of prohibiting prescribed burns that we know work. Right now, the policies are more in favor of different animal species than human species.”

In 2024, Alvarado-Gil left the Democratic Party and registered as a Republican. She said the Democrats’ policies are causing residents to flee the state. 

“I’ve been able to see on both sides what is working and what is failing California,” she said. “For decades, the Democratic supermajority has been failing California. If you look at the cost of gas, insurance, home prices, you name it … the increase of unaffordability in California has driven people out of our state and has closed businesses.”

Alvarado-Gil continued, “This is about overregulation, unfunded state mandates, and frankly, Californians who are just sick and tired of the same old programs squeezing our pockets with programs that don’t benefit us.”

After Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez claimed that “despite the [U.S.] embargo, sanctions and threats of the use of force, Cuba continues on a path of sovereignty toward its socialist development,” several Republican lawmakers dismissed his remarks as disconnected from reality.

“Ha, ha, ha,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., said sarcastically in response. “Ha, ha, ha.”

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told the Daily Signal that Rodríguez should “keep going—that’s not going to go well.”

Salazar and Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., argued that Cuba’s foreign minister lacks real authority in shaping the country’s policy, pointing instead to the influence of GAESA, a military-run economic conglomerate.

“The foreign minister of Cuba is not part of the ruling establishment of Cuba,” Giménez said, referring to GAESA. He described Rodríguez as a “figurehead.”

“A foreign minister can say whatever, the president can say whatever—it doesn’t matter,” Giménez added. “It only matters, really, what Raúl Castro and GAESA are saying.”

Both lawmakers emphasized what they described as a contradiction in Cuba’s leadership, noting that GAESA reportedly controls billions in assets while ordinary Cubans struggle economically. They accused the institution of prioritizing investments in hotels and other profit-generating industries.

“They are thieves, disguised as revolutionaries,” Giménez said, adding that Cuba’s leaders “don’t even believe in communism.”

“Everybody suffers, and them and their children and relatives go off in a jet-set world, date Hollywood stars, while the people of Cuba are suffering,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the foreign minister says—he really has nothing to say, because he doesn’t govern Cuba.”

Salazar also contrasted Cuba’s leadership with that of Iran, arguing that the Castro regime lacks comparable resources.

“The difference between the Castros and the ayatollahs is that the Castros do not have resources,” she said.

She further contended that Cuba no longer enjoys the same level of support from allies such as Russia and Venezuela, and pointed to Mexico’s past involvement with Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., in providing oil to the island.

“President [Donald] Trump sent a very clear message that [Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum] could not be helping these thieves any longer. We very much appreciate the fact that she stopped,” Salazar added.

Cuban Military Action?

Salazar argued that the Cuban military’s financial reserves could pose a potential concern for the United States, questioning how those funds might be used.

“Let’s find out what they are going to do with that money,” she told the Daily Signal. “If they are going to indeed attack, or if they are going to create a military problem for the United States.”

“We know exactly how we are going to respond, but that is up to the secretary,” Salazar added, without elaborating. Giménez nodded in agreement.

Salazar also spoke about accountability for Cuba’s leadership, saying that many of her constituents want to see consequences for members of the Castro family.

She said her constituents “would love” to see former leader Raúl Castro and his relatives face justice, adding, “I’m sure that my constituents would be OK with that.”

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice unveiled criminal charges, including murder, against Castro and five others.

Matthew Mehan, author of “The American Book of Fables,” joins Bradley Devlin on a new episode of “Signal Sitdown“ to discuss the “moral imagination” of the Founders and the need during America 250 for the nation to have a “shared memory.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Bradley Devlin: Why did you write this book?

Matthew Mehan: So, I am a weird—I’m an odd duck in that I have both a lot of political training—political, philosophical, history, and civics training—but I also have literary training, and the two of those things kind of bounce back and forth, and so, you start to think about what is the role of a man of letters in a republic.

And it turns out that it’s a very sort of under-practiced art to give the right kinds of images that bring the right sort of ideas, habits, customs, principles, ways of being, and memory. That’s a major task that today’s poets don’t really do. And if they do it, they’re usually doing something wrong, or in error, or deliberately subversive, which we can talk about later, I guess.

But that just basically—I kind of wanted to come to the defense. Blood rushes to a wound, and this is something that needed doing, and so, I did it. That’s the simple answer. And then A250, the semiquincentennial—go big or go home for America’s 250th.

I wanted to basically, you know, drop a major heirloom, a kind of celebratory monster coffee-table epic, on the American family.

Devlin: Why fables? What’s important about a fable?

Mehan: So, one of the things I did to prep for this is I actually did study fables. I went to conferences like a good little nerd and read—you know, read up on—they have conferences—

Devlin: On fables?

Mehan: Very rarely. And sometimes you have to organize them yourself. But yes, I did. And then also I wrote for The Heritage Foundation, actually. I did a white paper on the founding imagination. What does the founding generation—what was in their imagination?

And it turns out what’s in your imagination is very much the ingredients for whatever stew of a decision—i.e., your prudence. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna found a new nation? Are you going to have a revolution? What are you gonna do?

And it turns out that what is in your imagination is a lot of what is the constituent parts of those acts.

So, if you have a poor imagination, you have an empty pantry, you will not cook a good dish, as Seneca says.

So, it turns out the Founders and the founding generation—they had these incredible Caxton’s fables, Avianus’ fables, “L’Estrange.” These were on the shelves. They would greedily buy copies of them. They read them and studied them. Why? Fables are not just—we think of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” right?

Simple, straightforward—”The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It’s basically, if you lie, people don’t believe you, and then you get eaten by the wolf. Great, right? That’s a very good fable. But that is, in a certain sense, the exception to the rule.

It’s known because it’s the most simple today, and we tend to be morally a little too simple.

Most fables have a moral that’s basic, but then inside it, you feel that there is a lot more to think about—about how to be a good person and how to identify a bad person and how to react to evil so that you don’t become evil.

There’s actually the moral technology of fable. It’s a very witty, wise genre that is meant for a free people.

And so, that’s why I really focused on fable. And why, even though there’s nursery rhymes and there’s short stories and there’s primary sources, there’s a lot going on here. The central core is this beat of American fables—retold, adapted, and told wholly new.

Devlin: What’s the difference between mythology and fable? How does fable play into mythology and the relationship between those two things?

Mehan: Fable starts with the ridiculous—talking animals. It doesn’t give you any kind of easy ramp to slowly agree that, yes, the trees should talk. And it’s a kind of just instant absurdity, and that gives you a sort of distance from it to think about it as a fun kind of a game, a moral play.

Whereas myth is weaving history, the cosmos, angels and devils, gods and goddesses, naiads and dryads.

You’re making a full cosmic claim for your country, your nation, your republic inside of a wider providence of Jupiter or of God himself. You know—like it’s a much sort of bolder statement.

And myths can be true and myths can be false, right? They can be misleading and need purification. I mean, I think that’s Homer’s job—there are all these wacky myths in Greece at the time, and he’s like, “OK, I’m gonna—all the crazy ones, I’m gonna have this guy who’s crazy save them, and then we’re gonna put him in his place and tell a new one,” right?

So, he was trying to purify the myths of Greece to make the godhead of Olympus more reasonable. Now, as a Christian, we might go, “Yeah, that’s also bad,” but it was certainly philosophically better.

So, myth, to my mind, when you get to that level of complexity, it presents real dangers. But it’s fundamentally—every city, every founding, every country needs one, and so it better be really good and really true.

Devlin: America 250—you could have written a political book.

Why not a political book? Why not a philosophical treatise? Why not another deep dive into the history of the declaration?

Mehan: For a number of reasons. One very practical. First, not everyone is very patriotic. And if you actually want the entire country to be formed with a common memory of the principles and goodness of Judeo-Christian, Western, Greco-Roman—you can pick your hyphenated way of talking about what we have as a culture and as a people, right?

You need to find a way to attract them that isn’t only for those who are already kind of inclined in your direction, which is why there’s all these beautiful discourses on nature and the national parks and the ecology. Because even people who aren’t very patriotic still love the national park system.

They like backpacking. They like the buffalo. They want to protect nature.

So, in one sense, we have to always be struggling for a national book, right? For a national dialogue, a national memory—or we’re gonna tear apart, right? That’s gonna happen.

And this is part of what I’m trying to do: give the country a shared memory again.

And then, through that, they come to know some of the things that we sort of—more patriotic, more kind of conservative, whatever term you want—that care about these things: the morals of fables, right, the moralists, which I’m all about.

One thing I learned is the Founding Fathers were so—and the founding generation—their moral imagination was so much more intense than ours.

Everything was moralized. But it was actually joyful. It wasn’t this sort of frowning misery of, like, lectures. It was this hilarious wit and wisdom that was downright funny. But they could judge very carefully …

…

The American founding is different. It’s all written down. Like, we have the letters. We know what the—Numa, the king of Rome, wasn’t, like, magically talking with a nymph, and we don’t really know what happened there, right?

Like, these are letters between Abigail Adams and John Adams, and then between Jefferson and Washington and Adams. Like, we know what happened in a funny way, and we’re also from the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the droit écrit, the written law.

So, we actually like to write things down. We like things to be clear, which presents a challenge for myth, because we’re not going to accept some fake godhead.

I think we love “The Song of Hiawatha,” and I have a kind of nod to it. But we rejected a lot of what Longfellow was doing with this strange sort of foreign gods, new mythology for America—Hiawatha on the mountain with these … No, we’re Christian, right? We’re Western. We’re sort of rational.

And so, humanity winds up having a lot of primary sources in history, and the mythos winds up being a kind of true mythos of the moral wit and wisdom of the people. And the mystery of the myth actually is the numinous reason of the American people.

Like, we are a mysterious thing, right? And it’s amazing that we produced what we produced, yes, through our representatives.

But I try to get past—yes, the Founding Fathers. I focus on them. I raise them up as heroes and show some of their strengths and even some of their weaknesses, such that we can even learn from their mistakes. But also, I try to get past that to the American people and the settlement of the country, which is why the book doesn’t just do the founding and the Revolution.

It does that, interspersed with an account of the settlement and all these other sort of very moving lesser biographies and stories of the settling of the country.