Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas pushed back against criticism from Utah Sen. Mike Lee and conservative activist Scott Presler after they questioned his efforts to advance voter ID legislation known as the SAVE America Act.

Presler, a vocal supporter of the bill, has recently hosted multiple online livestreams with Reps. Randy Fine, R-Fla.; Burgess Owens, R-Utah; and Brandon Gill, R-Texas, emphasizing the need to pressure the Senate to pass the legislation.

“Just had a conversation with Senator John Cornyn at the airport,” Presler wrote on X. “I was very gracious & asked him to pass the SAVE America Act.”

Cornyn responded by calling Presler a “grifter.”

According to Urban Dictionary, grifter means “somebody who can influence anybody, anywhere, at anytime, into doing whatever they choose to have them do, that will result in the grifter’s personal gain. Usually monetary, but really anything that benefits him or her somehow.”

The Texas senator later engaged in a back-and-forth on X with Lee after the Utah Republican urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune to bring the bill to the floor.

“Mike, I am a co-sponsor and have repeatedly voted for this but you don’t have the votes,” Cornyn wrote. “@LeaderJohnThune can’t change that. It is math. Try focusing on Democrats instead of Republicans. Republican on Republican attacks are hurting our chances to win the majority in November.”

Lee pushed back, questioning Cornyn’s characterization of his comments as an attack on fellow Republicans.

“On what planet is this an attack on Republicans?” Lee wrote. “We have majority support for the bill. In this rare circumstance, we should put it on the floor and keep debating it until it passes. That’s not an attack on Republicans. That’s a plan of attack against voter fraud.”

Lee added that internal party disagreements should not be interpreted as disloyalty.

“If one can’t advocate for a legislative strategy without being accused of ‘attacking Republicans,’ we’re in for a rough ride as a party,” he said.

In a separate post, Lee referenced Cornyn directly, writing that “once my friend John Cornyn realizes that you’re saying this in his name—whoever you are—I don’t think he’ll be happy with you.”

During a Thursday appearance on CNN, Daily Signal CEO Rob Bluey weighed in on the dispute, arguing that Cornyn’s position reflects reluctance to challenge Senate procedural rules.

“John Cornyn is a sponsor of the SAVE America Act, but he doesn’t have the backbone to stand on the Senate floor and make the Democrats debate until they get to the point where it can pass with a single majority vote,” Bluey said.

A government watchdog group is threatening Minnesota with a lawsuit over its practice of allowing registered voters to “vouch” for potential voters who cannot provide proof of residency.

Minnesota allows voters to register on Election Day and forgo proof of residency if another registered voter will affirm their eligibility to vote at a polling place. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight potential voters.

The group America First Legal is threatening the state with a lawsuit, alleging the practice violates the National Voter Registration Act. America First Legal is representing Republican U.S. House candidate Paul Wikstrom, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.

A challenge under the federal law could be difficult, as a spokeswoman for Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon was quick to point out the state is exempt from the federal statute.

“The National Voter Registration Act does not apply to Minnesota’s vouching laws. Minnesota has been exempt from the NVRA since the time the NVRA was passed,” Cassondra Knudson, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, told the Daily Signal.

The National Voter Registration Act, also known as the “Motor Voter Act,” allows people to register to vote when getting their driver’s licenses. The law also requires states and localities to take measures to ensure voter registration lists are accurate and up to date.

Minnesota is one of six states exempt from the law, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The others are North Dakota, which does not require voters to register, and four other states that allow Election Day voter registration: Idaho, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

However, Minnesota stands out because the state’s law allows a registered voter to “vouch” for up to eight potential voters, America First Legal says. Furthermore, employees of residential facilities such as group homes, elder homes, or rehabilitation clinics may vouch for an unlimited number of registrants.

The state frequently does not verify vouched registrations until after these voters cast their ballots—by which time it’s too late, according to a letter from Minneapolis lawyer Erick G. Kaardal and America First Legal attorney James K. Rogers to Simon.

“Minnesota does not use provisional ballots for vouched registrations,” the letter states. “Once individuals register through vouching and vote, their ballot is immediately counted and commingled with other ballots, making it impossible to segregate or remove that ballot if the registration is later determined to be invalid. County election officials verify vouched registrations after the election through postal verification cards and database checks, but by that time, the ballot has already been counted.

“Vouched registrations have substantially higher rates of undeliverable postal verification cards than registrations completed using documentary proof of residence, suggesting that a significant number of vouched individuals may not reside at the addresses provided. Similarly, voters registered through vouching are later placed in challenged status on voter rolls at significantly higher rates than voters who registered with documentary proof, indicating an elevated risk of registration irregularities.”

The Minnesota “vouching” law has been in place in some form for about 50 years, said Knudson, the spokeswoman for the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office.

“Use of the process is rare. In the 2024 general election, less than 0.6% of votes cast used this process,” Knudson said. “About 71% of those voters were already registered to vote but needed to update their name or address in their voter record.”

She added that vouching is commonly used in senior living facilities or when an eligible voter has moved to a new address.

“Every voter who registers or updates their registration on Election Day, including those who are vouched for, is recorded by local election officials and verified in our state database after each election,” Knudson added. “If a discrepancy is found during this process, it is referred to local law enforcement for investigation and possible prosecution.”

While the Ohio Legislature has made strides this week in key areas before summer recess, it was unable to come to an agreement on the hot-button issue of data centers.

Lawmakers have been debating the level of regulation and tax breaks for data centers, while a joint committee is also studying the effects of data centers. As News 5 Cleveland reported, one specific debate focuses on whether or not data centers should receive a 50% tax exemption.

These tax exemptions have been significantly in the news since Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on June 2 announced a pause on the exemptions, a move welcomed by committee members.

However, some don’t think it goes far enough.

That same day, state Rep. Tristan Rader, a Democrat, introduced his bill, which would permanently do away with tax exemptions for data centers.

A press release from Rader’s office claimed Ohio lost out on $1.6 billion for 2025 due to the tax exemption, a figure 11 times higher than predicted. The state Democrat framing the issue as being about affordability.

“In a state where people have to constantly stretch their dollar further, do more with less, and even completely go without certain services, it is shameful that the state government would choose to give away over a billion dollars to big tech companies,” Rader said. “This is why I am introducing the repeal of the sales tax loophole in the House to make sure we are putting people first, not trillion-dollar tech companies.”

Although Rader called DeWine’s temporary suspension “a step in the right direction,” he added that “it is not nearly enough.”

“Governor DeWine never should have reinstated this exemption in the first place after it was eliminated in last year’s budget. Ohioans are tired of a tax system that shifts the burden onto working families while the wealthiest continue to receive special treatment. Our schools, roads, libraries, and public services depend on everyone paying their fair share, and this exemption should be permanently repealed,” he continued.

Summer recess means it could be some time before the issue is fully addressed. Ohio NPR’s Sarah Donaldson spoke to state Sen. Brian Chavez, a Republican, who said that the Senate will not be coming back.

During a summit on Tuesday in Cleveland, DeWine addressed concerns about data centers paying their own bills, quoted by Signal Ohio as saying local governments should “be aggressive” in trying to get a deal and should not “just take what they give you.”

Advocates have pointed to the economic opportunity of data centers, as well as how much they have to do with countless data interactions in our daily lives.

Those opposed to the expansion of data centers have been showing up in large numbers to offer testimony. One concern highlighted is the higher utility costs associated with the presence of data centers. There’s even a ballot initiative campaign calling for a ban.

Currently, Ohio is sixth in the nation on data centers, behind states like Virginia and Texas, though it could lose that status.

For that reason, DeWine warned against closing Ohio off to data centers. “But we can’t throw them completely out and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t—we want to close the walls of the state of Ohio and we don’t want any data centers to come in’ any more than we can do that to any other business,” DeWine said. “It’s just where the future is. This is now, and we have to be, we have to be part of it.”

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with wire fraud and bank fraud. According to the DOJ, the SPLC paid millions of dollars to individuals associated with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, only to raise money off of supposedly pervasive hate in America. Daily Signal Senior Editor Tyler O’Neil, author of a book on the SPLC titled “Making Hate Pay,” joined the “Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss.

This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.

Bradley Devlin: The Southern Poverty Law Center has been in the news lately. Just a little. There has been an indictment that has been handed down by the Department of Justice after it put its argument in front of a grand jury against the SPLC.  

You’ve been covering this, of course. You’ve been covering the organization for a long time, but you’ve been covering this specific indictment since it came out in April.  

What is in this indictment? What are the allegations?  

Tyler O’Neil: Yeah, I mean, this has very shocking allegations. And, you know, they’re shocking in one sense in that you have this organization that’s associated with the civil rights movement that has allegedly been paying members of the Ku Klux Klan, been reimbursing people for materials used in cross burnings, paying for KKK hoods.  

I mean, this is the sort of thing you can’t make up. This is like a Babylon Bee headline. I mean, we even saw in the superseding indictment this last week that an SPLC employee was literally in bed with a neo-Nazi informant. So, that’s how far off the reservation this group has gone.  

But all these claims are essentially to say the SPLC is engaged, allegedly engaged, in wire fraud. It claims to be fighting racism and white supremacist groups. But the money that it uses to raise from donors to supposedly fight those groups, it actually funnels back into those activities, and this is, according to the indictment, a way of propping up hate so as to keep the donors, the donor money flowing.  

Bradley Devlin: So, how much money has the SPLC spent on these types of informants in the last few years?  

Tyler O’Neil: So, the indictment goes from 2010 to 2023 and says it’s $4.1 million. Now, that’s a small chunk of change looking at the SPLC’s overall assets, upwards of $800 million, and their endowment of something like $740 million.  

But it still represents a pretty sizable investment of money in what the DOJ suggests is this scam to prop up the very hate the SPLC claims it exists to oppose.  

Bradley Devlin: Right. I’m sure it’s a money multiplier situation, where you spend a million dollars on some kind of KKK—  

Oh, yeah … activism as the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that ostensibly fights for racial justice and then you’re able to make $100 million off of whatever insane incident is precipitated by that funding.  

So, of course, there’s been a lot of pressure on the Trump administration, particularly since the death of Charlie Kirk, to go after some of these left-wing organizations that use its dollars to propagate chaos, whether that’s Antifa or, as we’re finding out, potentially the Southern Poverty Law Center too, right?  

This is what’s in the indictment. These allegations are they are propping up this type of activity on the extreme right rather than the extreme left. But as a left-wing group, like there’s been a lot of pressure on the Trump administration to go after these wing groups. Why do you think the SPLC came under the fire of the Trump Justice Department?  

Tyler O’Neil: Yeah, I mean, let me count the reasons.  

Bradley Devlin: Yeah.  

Tyler O’Neil: One of—the biggest reason—so, the SPLC claims, they have this big filing where they’re saying, “This is vindictive prosecution. The Trump administration doesn’t like what we say, and therefore they’re going after us in court.”  

Now, you know, there is a superficial plausibility to that, partially because we saw in the Biden administration this repeated use of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  

I think we all remember the anti-Catholic memo where the Richmond FBI [office, working with other FBI offices, comes up with this memo saying that radical traditional Catholics are a threat to America. And their main source for this is the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the SPLC is very useful for the Left because it gained its reputation by suing Klan groups into bankruptcy.  

Now it puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a hate map with Klan chapters, suggesting, it claims that this map reveals the infrastructure upholding white supremacy.  

That infrastructure just so happens to include groups like Turning Point USA, and the Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family, and Alliance Defending Freedom.  

These are very mainstream conservative and Christian organizations that are put on the map essentially for the sin of disagreeing with the SPLC. But in the Biden DOJ, what we saw was the SPLC brought in to train prosecutors on the anti-LGBTQ+ movement to work with Kristen Clarke, who is the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Biden DOJ.  

And so, thankfully, under President Trump, we have a new sane Department of Justice that comes out and says, “Look, we’re not working with the SPLC anymore.” You had FBI Director Kash Patel make a very important statement after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that the FBI will not rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center under his watch.  

And so, that is used as evidence by the SPLC to say that this is a vindictive prosecution.  

But if I’m looking at this situation, and I know what I know about the SPLC, and I think most Americans can understand this is an organization that vilifies conservatives and Christians and goes to various sectors of polite society and says, “You need to de-bank, you need to blacklist, you need to de-platform any of these organizations.”  

And the SPLC is the center of demonizing conservatives and Christians in our civil discourse right now. And so the FBI distancing itself from the SPLC is a important step in the right direction to restoring trust with the FBI.  

So, there’s a very weird sort of Orwellian nature to this, where the SPLC is taking that positive step of removing bias, a horrible bias from the FBI, and saying, “This proves bias against us,” when they’re facing criminal charges.  

Bradley Devlin: So, what you’re kind of laying out here, the reason that the DOJ went after the SPLC for this type of activity, right, is they saw the goods, they had a strong enough argument to get a grand jury to indict, etc., etc.  

But the SPLC, in a way, is a victim of its own success, that it was so ingrained and so prominent amongst the Left and amongst left-wing organizations, amongst left-wing governments when the Left is in control of government, that it made itself kind of an obvious and easy target for the Trump administration looking to act against these left-wing purveyors of discontent and chaos.  

Tyler O’Neil: Yeah. I’d say obvious. I’m not entirely sure I’d say easy. 

Bradley Devlin: No, I mean, they have deep pockets.  

Tyler O’Neil: Yeah. Not only do they have deep pockets, they have very smart lawyers. I’ve been going through the filings from the SPLC, and they’re very smart in stringing together a strong argument in fighting back against what the DOJ says.  

Bradley Devlin: So the vindictive prosecution thing, you think is a little far-fetched, but—

Tyler O’Neil: Yes …  

Bradley Devlin: —there is an argument here for the SPLC to defend itself. And unpack that for us a little bit. I know I interrupted you here. But what are the strengths and weaknesses of this case being brought against the SPLC?  

What are the SPLC lawyers drawing attention to beyond just this is vindictive, when they actually get down to the brass tacks the meat and potatoes of the lawsuit?  

Tyler O’Neil: So, that’s the interesting thing. They don’t really get down to the brass tacks and the meat and potatoes of the specific claims.  

What they do, their overall narrative is, “We didn’t fund the Klan. We didn’t fund them. We were funding informants who were trying to take down the Klan.”  

And of course, that argument also has a superficial plausibility. The SPLC got attacked. Their offices were firebombed in the early 1980s, and that’s one of the things that led them to create this informant program.  

There are also cases where SPLC claims information from the program led to criminal indictments against members of extremist groups. This organization called Atomwaffen Division is one that they constantly bring up because there they got one of the members convicted under previous DOJ for actually planning a violent attack.  

But the substance of the indictment, the real purpose here why the DOJ is going after them, is not those uses of the informant program that arguably made sense.  

It’s the other ones. It’s where the SPLC seems to have put more money behind an informant in a way that also propped up the hate so that they could fundraise off of it.  

So, you have multiple situations where an SPLC informant is, you know, this is unbeknownst to donors, unbeknownst to the audience, that this person is an informant. The SPLC has an extremist file drawing attention to this person in the white nationalist movement and saying, “Look, this person is evil.”  

Meanwhile, that person is on the SPLC payroll. That, you know, sets off alarm bells to me. And there are other situations where the SPLC is accused, in the indictment, of giving money, paying for a cross burning. I mean, reimbursing people. This is how it works.  

Bradley Devlin: The receipts submitted. Wood, nails. Kerosene. Yeah.  

Tyler O’Neil: Kerosene.  

Bradley Devlin: One lighter.  

Tyler O’Neil: Exactly. And the SPLC apparently paid that bill. And you know, when looking at this indictment and saying— 

Bradley Devlin: —the expense file is construction. Yeah, it’s the construction. And then in the kerosene section, it’s destruction.  

Tyler O’Neil: Yeah. There you go. So yeah, it—I mean, they’re like an arsonist or like a fireman who moonlights as an arsonist. Yeah. Or like an exterminator who plants rats in his neighbor’s house to justify his own services. That’s what the indictment is claiming. And to that specific claim, the SPLC has, to my knowledge, never really given a response.  

They’ve pleaded not guilty, and they’ll get their day in court, and I’m very curious to see, when they actually have to get down to brass tacks, how they defend those things 

On June 8, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum-seeker named Hadi Alodid allegedly stabbed 44-year-old local Stephen Ogilvie repeatedly with a kitchen knife in the eyes, face, neck, and back. Ogilvie lost his left eye. Bystanders had to pull the attacker off him. 

Alodid had entered through Dublin in 2023, claimed asylum, and received leave to remain until 2028. He now faces attempted murder charges.

Why does this pattern keep repeating? Video of the frenzied assault spread instantly. The next night, Belfast erupted. Masked protesters torched vehicles and a bus, set homes ablaze, and clashed with police. Dozens were arrested. 

Officials rushed to condemn “far-right thugs.” But what exactly provoked ordinary people to such fury on their own streets?

Asylum policies have placed thousands of newcomers into communities without robust vetting or local consent. In this case, it resulted in an attempt to kill an Irishman in his own neighborhood. Similar violence has triggered unrest in Dublin suburbs and elsewhere across Ireland.

When these inevitable tragedies occur, why do authorities focus more on the resulting riots than on the policies that invited the chaos?

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reacted to congressional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border operations by calling it arming “Trump’s private police” to “terrorize immigrants” based on “skin color and accent.” He labeled it “un-American.”

Many individuals subject to immigration enforcement are foreigners who speak with accents—that is precisely the point. They are not random Americans being profiled by appearance; they are individuals who entered the country illegally, overstayed visas, or had asylum claims rejected. 

Why does Newsom frame basic enforcement of existing law as racial or ethnic persecution rather than a necessary distinction based on legal status? As Ireland burns from migrant violence, why does Newsom double down on sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal enforcement? 

California continues shielding thousands of criminal aliens with active ICE detainers, including those convicted of homicide, assault, and sexual offenses. Repeat offenders are released back into communities. High-profile killings follow. Yet the state’s resistance only hardens.

Why this persistent choice? 

In late May, Newsom signed Senate Bill 73 as an emergency measure. It restricts law enforcement access to ballots and polling sites without warrants and penalizes certain questioning of election processes. 

California operates one of the most permissive voting systems in America. Universal mail-in ballots are sent automatically to all registered voters, ballots get accepted days after Election Day, and there’s no voter ID requirement for most voting. 

Critics point to ballots mailed to outdated addresses, weak signature verification, and limited audits as creating obvious opportunities for fraud. 

Why, then, does skepticism about elections trigger swift state power under SB 73, while concerns about released criminal aliens draw accusations of intolerance?

Who exactly is being protected here? 

Newsom’s California prioritizes shielding unlawfully present or failed-asylum individuals over the safety of citizens and legal residents. 

Working-class neighborhoods absorb the costs. We get overwhelmed emergency rooms, strained schools, fentanyl deaths linked to open borders, and families shattered by preventable crimes—such as the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, where the shooter, a repeat illegal immigrant deported five times, was released under sanctuary policies despite an ICE detainer.

Legal immigrants who followed every rule watch the system they respected being undermined. Does this make sense?

Enforcing immigration law is not cruelty. It is the basic requirement of any nation that wants to remain generous and orderly. Why pretend otherwise? America’s successful immigration history rested on controlled numbers, careful vetting, assimilation, and respect for the law. 

Sanctuary noncooperation and rhetorical attacks on enforcement erode those foundations. Rewarding evasion while eroding trust isn’t compassion.

Ireland’s riots, sparked directly by the near-fatal stabbing of Ogilvie, expose the human price of expansive asylum policies without limits. Public patience eventually snaps when violence becomes routine and grievances are dismissed as bigotry. 

California polls show similar majorities demanding secure borders and enforcement against criminal aliens. So why does state leadership continue choosing resistance over realism? Can leaders indefinitely side with lawlessness while brushing aside citizens’ concerns? 

Newsom’s framing of ICE funding, combined with his sanctuary defense and election oversight, reveals a clear priority: protect certain violators and narratives, but police the skeptics. Is this sustainable? 

Ordered, legal immigration has enriched societies that maintain sovereignty and the rule of law. Chaotic non-enforcement delivers precisely what Belfast is now experiencing: division, destruction, and distrust.

As Ireland confronts the violent consequences of its policies, California’s embrace of sanctuary logic risks the same fractures here at home.

Why do so many elites appear unable or unwilling to acknowledge the obvious? 

Citizens in Ireland and America deserve governments that place their safety and the equal application of laws first—not ideology over lived reality. 

How many more Belfasts will it take before these leaders are forced to confront the root cause—their radical open-border and sanctuary policies that harbor lawbreakers and import risks—rather than condemning the logical and predictable fury from citizens who are paying the price for those very policies?

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

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. 

The Democratic Party has a lot of problems that have been widely discussed.  

One of the most notorious is, since the 2009 to 2017 presidencies of Barack Obama, and especially under Joe Biden, they have completely lost the so-called white working class.  

People have estimated that in 2024, Kamala Harris only gained about 30% of that demographic. They had put so much emphasis on each particular community.  

Every time a Democratic politician would address a crowd, he’d say, I’m for the LGBTQ+ something community, or, I’m for the Hispanic community. I’m for the Asian community.  

And with the onset of DEI in the post-George Floyd, the white working class felt that they were unwanted or not liked or actually despised. We heard again and again—white privilege, white supremacy, and there was a whole vocabulary of disparagement.

It started with Barack Obama when he wrote off his loss to Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania because people he basically called clingers, mindless automatons who cling to their Bibles and guns, didn’t understand the sophistication of Barack Obama.  

Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and said she wanted to shut down the coal industry as if all of those white middle-class and working-class coal miners didn’t matter.  

Joe Biden said they should learn coding, get rid of them, ban mining. 

Hillary, remember, called them deplorables and irredeemables. Joe Biden expanded that vocabulary with chumps, dregs, and most infamously, garbage.  

And of course, when any time a Democrat or liberal’s communications were leaked or found their way to the public, they were always anti-white working class.  

The CNN reporter who said he went to a Trump rally and had more teeth than everybody in the crowd, or Peter Strzok, the infamous FBI rogue agent, who said to his paramour, Lisa Page, texted her that he went to Walmart and he could smell them. 

So, they had a problem with them, and they can’t win without that rubric. It might be as—if you count women and men—it could be as much as, of the voting age, 30% to 50% of the electorate. 

So, now they think they’ve gotten smart, and they have a new approach. And the new approach is the old approach. They’re going to back off publicly from DEI in all of these primaries, publicly a little bit from open borders.  

But you know what will happen? Kamala Harris was for banning deportation. She was going to ban fracking, but she didn’t say that when she was running.  

Many of the candidates in the last election cycle—the governor of Virginia, the governor of New Jersey—had run as moderates, and then they showed their real selves once they were elected.  

But now the emphasis is on, we’ve got to find white working-class, authentically genuine people. And it’s very hard for them because they are not genuine people themselves, the Democratic Socialist Islamist New Party. 

So now all of a sudden, Pete Buttigieg is wearing a Caterpillar hat, grown a beard, Levi’s, as if he is going to represent the white working class. He’s the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, off-putting Democratic candidate who has zero chance to appeal to the white working class.  

They thought that maybe they could have the evangelical angle, and so they dug up James Talarico, and he is a Christian evangelical minister of sorts.  

And they thought, well, this will get a red state. He’s out of red state Texas. We’ll run him for Senate. He might be the next presidential or vice presidential candidate. Who knows? And of course, they didn’t check his background because the Democratic Party of today, as I said earlier, has a long record of despising traditional values and middle-class America. 

And lo and behold, James Talarico has disparaged, in social media and in speeches, the white working class. He’s called Texans illiberal, gun-toting. He said that Jesus was nonbinary. He said there were six or seven genders. He said all of these things. And he comes across as a Pete Buttigieg at a pulpit. 

They tried it again in Maine. They think they can knock off Susan Collins. Remember what their agenda is. They want to win the House, even if by one vote, because unlike the Republicans, they have mass solidarity.  

And as soon as they get the House in January of 2027, they will impeach Donald Trump. But they can’t do anything to Donald Trump unless they get 60 votes to convict him.  

And so, they really, in their delusional mindset, think they can do that, and one of the people they’ve targeted is moderate Susan Collins.  

There couldn’t be a more anti-MAGA Republican official. She’s as moderate as you can be in the Republican Party. She’s in a moderate purple state, and she’s a winning personality.  

Even Donald Trump, who gets very exasperated when she votes against him on key pieces of legislation, has a working relationship, and why not? She’s about as conservative as you can get in Maine, and she is a loyal Republican. 

So, they ran an ex-oyster farmer. That’s what we were told. But there are no really oyster farmers in Maine. That term is not even used in Maine. It’s really a nepo-baby, a man who grew up very affluent and went to one of the most, I don’t know, prestigious but extremely expensive prep schools in the nation at Hotchkiss until he was kicked out.  

He admirably served his country in Iraq when he had four tours. But in those tours, he was a disruptive figure. He put a Totenkopf Nazi symbol as a tattoo on his chest.  

He disparaged women on social media. He went on disreputable, predator-like social media communications posts. He rough-handled women. 

And when he was asked about all of this, Graham Platner said that he assured the Democrats on three areas that they could relax and he would be a viable candidate and beat Susan Collins.  

No. 1, he said he had no idea that 18 years ago when he put that Totenkopf tattoo on that it had any connection with the 3rd Panzer Division or SS Einsatzgruppen that ran the death camps.  

Two, he said he was never physical—he was kind of a bore with his many girlfriends—but he never physically assaulted them or manhandled them.  

And three, there would be no more revelations. 

Within hours, some of his girlfriends came forward, even though they were manipulated by The New York Times, who didn’t tell their full narratives, but they told enough that that was all a lie, that they knew that he bragged about his Totenkopf. He used the German word for death’s head, which is only used since World War II in the context of the SS.  

No. 2, he did manhandle. He grabbed a woman, pushed her in a room, locked her in all night, and he was very abusive.  

And No. 3, after he had assured people there would be no new revelation, there were these revelations, as aired in The New York Times. 

Graham Platner is no more middle class than Donald Trump is.  

The difference is Donald Trump is authentic. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he wears his blue suit, his red tie, his orange makeup, his comb-over, his black Florsheim shoes, whether it’s 110 degrees or whether it’s 40 degrees, whether he’s in Tulare, California, or whether he’s watching mixed martial arts matches, or whether he’s talking with [Vladimir] Putin or [Jinjing] Xi.  

He is what he is. He doesn’t fake himself and act as if he’s a working-class man who had to get a veteran loan to buy his home when he actually was given a loan by his rich father. 

Everything about Graham Platner is artificial, but it displays this desire to appeal to a class that they despise.  

And I’ll just finish with good old Joe Biden from Scranton. Remember him? In the 2020 primary, Elizabeth Warren was radical, so was Bernie Sanders, so was Cory Booker, so was Pete Buttigieg. They were all going to lose against Donald Trump. They panicked.  

They got them all out by various backdoor mechanisms, the politicos, and then they refashioned Joe Biden into, “He’s good old Joe Biden. You remember him from the 1970s, the working guy from Scranton.” 

That was kind of hard to do because he was out in the public saying that he would ban fracking. He would stop the wall. He was going to open the border. He was 100% behind DEI.  

In fact, he was a waxen effigy that play acted as if he was middle class so that the Obama cadre could come back into power and push through, through the agency of Joe Biden, the most radical progressive agenda we’ve seen since the New Deal. 

Add it all up, there is no way in the world that this elite party of Antifa, BLM, bicoastal elites, billionaires, fake socialists, wealthy people like [Zohran] Mamdani or Hasan Piker can appeal to the working class, especially the white working class.  

So, expect more fake middle-class people like Graham Platner, James Talarico, and more Joe Bidens. And guess what? They’re all going to crash and burn just as these have because they’re not authentic. 

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

The Justice Department defended its authority to ensure “fair” elections in California after it launched multiple election fraud investigations coupled with litigation over voter registration.

California has long been known for liberal practices such as ballot harvesting, with a universal mail-in voting system that allows ballots to arrive a week after Election Day, and no voter ID requirements.

“The Department of Justice has statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls and monitoring returns when candidates for federal office are on the ballot,” Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the Daily Signal.

“The department’s investigations into voter fraud in California are in line with this authority and will continue despite the state’s unwillingness to comply and reassure voters that their elections are, in fact, free, fair, and transparent,” Baldassarre continued. “Protecting election integrity is a top priority for the Trump administration.”

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, posted on X just days after the recent contentious primary elections that his office launched fraud investigations and would “follow the evidence.”

“Without commenting on any specific investigation, my office has multiple election fraud investigations underway in coordination with @FBILosAngeles,” Essayli posted June 5 on X. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”

California, which takes a long time to count ballots in most years, garnered significant attention this year over the Los Angeles mayor’s race. On election night, it appeared Republican Spencer Pratt would be among the top two finishers to advance to the November general election before he was overtaken days later, with two Democrats—incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman—advancing.

“California may not be cheating because cheating is legal in the state,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Daily Signal. “Mass harvesting of votes, and stuffing mailboxes full of votes are all legal in California.”

Well before the California primary season, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division sought access to the state’s voter registration information to ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

In January, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California ruled the state did not have to provide the data to the Justice Department. The federal government appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel heard arguments in May.

In late May, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to create legal barriers to prevent the federal government from accessing voter rolls, voter lists, or certified voting technology without a specific court order.

“California will not allow our elections to be commandeered by political intimidation, abuse of power, or chaotic interference from extremists chasing conspiracy theories,” Newsom said in a public statement. “This law protects voters, election workers, and the integrity of the democratic process from election-deniers who want to undermine democracy.”

California has automatic voter registration for residents completing driver license, identification card, or change of address transactions. It allows universal mail-in voting where ballots are automatically mailed to every registered voter. Other states require voters to request a ballot for mail-in voting.

A ballot postmarked by Election Day may arrive for counting up to seven days after Election Day. Further, the state has a 22-day grace period after Election Day for people to “cure” defective mail ballots.

Further, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a watchdog group that reviews voter registration data nationally, found more than 23,000 deceased registrants on the voter rolls as of 2018. It also found 7,244 registered voters with non-residential addresses.

“The California legislature enacted laws to protect their power,” Don Palmer, a former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal. “It is damning that officials mail ballots out to addresses and they don’t even know if the voter is there.”

Although the primary contests for the California governor and Los Angeles mayor drew national attention, federal candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives are also on the ballot this year in California. The Justice Department would have oversight of federal elections.

The Daily Signal contacted the offices of both California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who oversees legal matters for the state, and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s chief election official. Neither responded.

Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the Los Angeles area, posted in a separate message on X, “We also have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls. There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved, and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies.”

“On top of that, California allows third parties to collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf (a practice known as ballot harvesting) with few restrictions,” he continued in the post. “This makes it difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot.”

A company owned by Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is suing his rival in the Republican gubernatorial primary runoff election—but voters will render their own verdict this Tuesday.

Last week, Jones Petroleum Co. sued healthcare CEO and gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson for $100 million in damages, claiming one of his campaign ads hurt the company’s reputation by wrongly tying it to gambling, corruption, and bribery.

In a complaint filed in Fulton County Superior Court, Jones’ company stated that it faces harm as long as the ad-related material remains accessible to the public. It further claims its franchise agreements are at risk if others think Jones Petroleum is engaged in illegal or unethical behavior.

At issue is a pro-Jackson campaign ad from March 17 titled “BurtJonesforGA fixed the game, bet big on corruption, and hit the jackpot.” The ad and a related website, the lawsuit alleges, used the Jones Petroleum branding and tied it to “a criminal scheme involving gambling,” Atlanta’s 11 Alive reported.

Jones’ company is the main shareholder of another company known as Convenience Stores Inc., which is permitted to run “coin-operated amusement machines” throughout the state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The lawsuit alleges that Jackson’s ad and corresponding website falsely depict the company as running an illegal casino.

When asked for comment, Kayla Lott, a spokesperson for Jones, told the Daily Signal, “Is anyone surprised a guy that pretends to be endorsed by President Trump and Gov. Kemp would have a bad relationship with the truth?”

President Donald Trump endorsed Jones for Georgia governor last August. However, both Republican candidates are fighting to win the MAGA base.

The two men have a legal history.

In early March, Jackson, a billionaire, sued Jones and his campaign for defamation. Jackson claimed the lieutenant governor wrongly smeared him by suggesting he became wealthy by aiding Planned Parenthood’s recruiting efforts and “helping doctors perform transgender surgeries on minors,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Voters will decide which candidate they prefer on June 16, the date of the primary runoff. The winner will face-off against Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democrat candidate, in the Nov. 3 general election.

The Jackson campaign did not return the Daily Signal’s request for comment in time for publication.

When America’s media elites deign to allow the hoi polloi a brief glimpse behind the sacred curtain, they come off just as clueless and out of touch as we thought they were.

That’s my take on the recent brouhaha over firings at CBS News, which were triggered by staff rebellions over the management of its new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.

Weiss, who exited The New York Times years ago because she wouldn’t bow to the incessant demands of woke fellow employees, went independent, created her own media company, then triumphantly returned to the legacy media fully redeemed—and vindicated in her criticism that they’ve become an echo chamber.

She’s taken steps to make CBS a little more balanced in how it covers the news.

This was too much for many, who’ve accused the moderately liberal Weiss of not having the right credentials and of, laughably, being in the tank for President Donald Trump.

One of those critics crashing out was the recently fired longtime “60 Minutes” veteran Scott Pelley, who blasted Weiss for trying to dispel the perception that her network had a left-wing bias.

Interestingly enough, he went to The New York Times to tell his story.

Pelley ridiculously compared the firings of rebellious employees to a “spouse being murdered.”

When the interviewer posed the question that Weiss apparently asked “60 Minutes” employees about why the country thinks they are biased, Pelley appeared shocked and affronted that anyone could dare ask that question.

“Why do you think so? Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about?” he exclaimed incredulously. “Because we certainly didn’t believe that.”

It’s the modern equivalent of “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”

Let’s just say that Pelley exists in a bit of a bubble.

It wasn’t just Pelley making claims that Weiss is essentially Attila the Hun, pillaging the oh-so-hallowed cathedral of network news.

The still-employed “60 Minutes” journalist Lesley Stahl, who is 84, said that the firings on the show were “by far the worst experience I’ve been involved in, or even witnessed.”

That didn’t prevent her from signing a new two-year deal with the show, however.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., called Pelley’s firing a “warning for our democracy” and wrote that “attacking journalists is an assault on the truth that sustains our democracy.”

I didn’t realize that guaranteed employment for journalists was buried somewhere in the emanations and penumbras of the First Amendment.

In the wake of this hyperbolic panic-fest, the rest of the left-leaning media has been eager to jump in and declare that the changes being made at CBS News basically amount to the end of free speech in America and the transformation of “60 Minutes” into Trump TV or something.

One headline loudly proclaimed, “CBS Legend Eviscerates New ‘Trump-Approved’ ‘60 Minutes.’”

Can you guess which “CBS legend” is being referred to here?

It’s Dan Rather.

“For anyone who watches the next season of 60 Minutes this fall, understand this: It is not the 60 Minutes we have all come to trust and respect. It will be a diminished, Trump-approved version,” he said in a hyperbolic Substack essay.

This was my exact reaction to Rather’s blather.

For the younger crowd, this is the same Dan Rather, formerly of CBS News, who used unauthenticated documents just before the 2004 election to falsely accuse former President George W. Bush of behaving badly while in the National Guard.

This is the guy giving us a lecture about media integrity and partisanship?

And “Rathergate” certainly hasn’t been the only “60 Minutes” controversy over the years.

Brian Flood at Fox News had a nice, quick rundown of “60 Minutes” controversies over the years. It’s worth a read. The list ranges from it dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that turned out to be true, to accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis of engaging in pay-to-play—an accusation with so little merit that even many Florida Democrats came out to defend him.

While mistakes can happen, a clear pattern unmistakably emerges. All the “oopsies” go one way. The scandals almost entirely involve something that hurts the Right or Republicans in some way and benefits Democrats and the Left.

And that presents the problem they apparently can’t see.

The era of centralized, institutionalized media with a near monopoly on information is over.

What they absolutely can’t stand is the idea that they may have to allow conservatives a chance to be fairly heard on their platforms and include not just “conservative” dissenters who just want to bash Trump and the Republican Party to make left-wing viewers feel good.

That small crack opening in the elite media’s extremely cloistered, carefully controlled environment is being treated as an existential threat. In some way, it is. It means that even if they still dominate the airwaves with their views, they can’t fully control the narrative force-fed to the American people.

And that’s what’s got them in a tizzy.

Somehow these journalists have been missing a phenomenon that’s been brewing for some time.

Their bubble already burst long ago, and they just don’t see it. Network news has disintegrated in influence, in part due to technological changes, but just as much due to their perceived but often unacknowledged bias.

Weiss isn’t destroying “60 Minutes,” she’s saving it from itself.

And that’s the most ironic aspect of these staff rebellions.

If legacy media shows really want to recapture even half the influence they once had, they have to find a way to appeal to a broader audience. They need to at least create the perception of providing an objective platform for the divergent views of this country.

But they want to recapture the broad-based appeal they once had while operating in a biased and increasingly partisan way. That just doesn’t work anymore. Nobody buys that the perpetual domination of legacy media is essential for “democracy.”

They’ll rebel, whine for a bit, then be largely ignored.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced multiple sanctions against the Cuban communist regime, this time targeting the regime’s cash cow.

“Today, I am sanctioning Cuba’s state-owned energy company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET), under President [Donald] Trump’s EO 14404,” Rubio wrote on X. “Cuba’s Communist elites have weaponized energy as a tool of social control and kleptocratic profit.”

“For decades, the regime has stolen and hoarded available fuel—using it for the Castros’ private jet, the security services forces used to repress the Cuban people, to keep empty tourist hotels lit up, and to bus people in for fake protests and political stunts—all while the Cuban people have suffered blackouts and waited weeks to fill their cars,” he added.

Cuba’s communist regime has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States since 2021. The regime has also been accused by numerous human rights organizations of severe violations, including forced starvation of its people, severe political imprisonment and executions, and censoring the information provided to its people.

The petroleum company sanctioned by the secretary serves as a leading contributor of wealth for the regime’s military arm, known as GAESA.

GAESA currently has over $10 billion in reserves, Cuban American lawmaker Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., told the Daily Signal at a press conference earlier this month.

Rubio added that the sanctions are not the last action Trump’s administration will take against the Cuban regime.

“President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater economic and political freedom and opportunity. Until then, we will continue to target the Communist regime’s ability to leverage its energy trade,” the secretary said.

In May, the Department of Justice also announced criminal charges against Cuba’s former communist dictator, Raul Castro, and his family members, for the downing of a humanitarian rescue flight that took place over Cuba in the 1990s.

The Ohio Legislature passed a bill that would require photo ID to be submitted starting in 2027 for absentee voters’ mail-in ballots.

That’s in addition to what’s coming this November, when voters get the opportunity to enshrine Ohio’s current voter ID law into the state constitution.

If Gov. Mike DeWine signs House Bill 472 into law, absentee voters will have to show ID beginning with the November 2027 election.

A spokesperson for DeWine’s office told the Daily Signal on Thursday that staff “are currently reviewing the numerous bills passed yesterday by the General Assembly.”

HB 472 passed the General Assembly earlier this year with one vote in opposition. It was originally introduced by state Reps. Christine Cockley, a Democrat, and Jodi Salvo, a Republican, as a bill to waive fees for birth certificate copies for homeless people and permit the storage of documents.

Cockley claimed that “Senate Republicans hijacked” the bill she sponsored and asked for her name to be taken off.

As the bill’s preamble now reads, HB 472 aims “to require photo identification to cast absent voter’s ballots, with certain exceptions, [and] to allow electors to apply for those ballots through a secure online portal.”

The bill requires that those voters submit photo ID when they request an absentee ballot or submit it in person. It also directs the secretary of state to “establish and maintain” an online portal where voters can request an absentee ballot starting on Sept. 3, 2027, for the November general election.

If an elector meets certain exceptions for photo ID, he or she must provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and their ID number. Free copies of photo ID must be provided by the secretary of state, boards of elections, the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, and public libraries.

A lack of photo ID requirements for mail-in ballots had been a concern among some Republicans.

Signal Ohio reported that HB 472 was meant to attract Republican members wary of SJR 10, the resolution to put voter ID in the state constitution, which passed last week.

The bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday came down largely along party lines, in a 23-10 vote, with all Democrats and one lone Republican voting against the bill.

Republican nominee for governor Vivek Ramaswamy, who last month called for a ballot initiative, released a statement on Wednesday night about the passage of both SJR 10 and HB 472.

“Congratulations to the Ohio House and Senate for giving Ohio voters the opportunity to enshrine voter ID requirements into the state constitution this November and for providing additional statutory protections to ensure voter ID is required for mail-in voting,” Ramaswamy said.

“Photo ID requirements to vote are commonsense measures, and I’m confident that Ohio voters will support the constitutional amendment by a wide margin in November.”

Polling from Heritage Action and Honest Elections Project Action shows that a majority of Ohioans support voter ID. The Honest Elections Project Action polling indicates that Ohio voters support photo ID for absentee mail-in ballots as well.

“The passage of SJR 10 is a major victory for election integrity and for the voters of the Buckeye State,” Heritage Action State Advocacy Manager Paul Lagemann also told the Daily Signal.

“Ohioans overwhelmingly support commonsense voter ID laws, which make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. By enshrining photo identification requirements in the state constitution, lawmakers are responding directly to voter calls for secure and trustworthy elections. SJR 10 will help to safeguard Ohio’s elections for generations of Ohioans to come.”

SJR 10 passed the General Assembly along party lines, 61-27. Signal Ohio noted it will likely be formally known as Issue 3 on the ballot.

The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump just took a pivotal step toward removing government-endorsed discrimination from America’s legal system and undermining the institutional apparatus of critical race theory.

Critical race theory teaches that America is systemically racist and that even racially neutral policies are truly racist if they result in better outcomes for members of one race than for members of another. That’s the exact same logic as the legal theory known as “disparate impact.”

Cornell Law School defines disparate impact as a policy or rule “that seems neutral but has a negative impact on a specific protected class of persons.”

Government should strive to adopt policies that allow all Americans to flourish, regardless of race, but Democrat administrations have applied disparate impact theory to encourage “reverse” discrimination.

For instance, the Justice Department and the Department of Education under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden issued guidance warning that if a school disciplines students of one race more than students of another race, that is evidence of racial discrimination, even if the school’s policy is race-neutral. It doesn’t matter if particular students cause more trouble than other students—what matters is the racial breakdown of who gets punished.

In one particularly revealing case, a woman sued the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming disparate impact from the department’s requirement that people take the driver’s license exam in English. She said the English-only requirement had a disparate impact on people who don’t speak English, even though the road signs in Alabama are in English. While lower courts found in her favor, the Supreme Court struck down her claim in Alexander v. Sandoval (2001).

Just as critical race theory teaches that American society is inherently racist against blacks and for whites, so the leftist reading of disparate impact theory finds fault with colorblind policies for their unintended consequences.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy released a memo Tuesday that restores sanity, however.

The DOJ Disparate Impact Memo

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency tasked with preventing racial discrimination in employment, requested legal advice on disparate impact theory, and the DOJ responded with a far better approach to the law.

EEOC’s current disparate impact guidelines “are unconstitutional because they contemplate liability based on disparate effects alone, without regard to an employer’s likely intent, and pressure employers to engage in race-based decisionmaking,” wrote T. Elliot Gaiser, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

Gaiser explained that if employers can demonstrate that the challenged policy “rationally serves a valid business practice,” that will constitute a valid response to a discrimination claim.

“Workplace requirements and selection procedures—such as background checks, aptitude tests, and SAT scores—are presumptively job-related,” he added. “Only irrational or arbitrary practices with no plausible job-relatedness can create disparate-impact liability.”

Finally, employees suing for disparate impact “must establish both that the challenged employment practice specifically caused the alleged disparate impact and provide evidence that an equally effective alternative practice causes less disparate impact.”

These guidelines represent a return to common sense. No longer can potential employees of certain races sue for discrimination if a firm refuses to hire them for failing aptitude tests. This undermines the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement that has pressured companies to hire and promote racial minorities, arguably at the expense of more qualified candidates.

Trump’s War on DEI

This important memo represents one more step in the Trump administration’s efforts to reject the DEI movement and restore sanity.

Trump signed an executive order “restoring equality of opportunity and meritocracy” in April 2025, rejecting disparate impact liability.

The EEOC moved to close most disparate impact cases by Sept. 30, according to an internal memo.

The Office of Legal Counsel memo is not a court filing, but it does represent the legal stance of the Justice Department on the issue.

Election Integrity and Disparate Impact

The memo also comes after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, where the court found that legislatures violate the law when they draw congressional redistricting maps on the basis of race. Justice Samuel Alito rejected a disparate impact argument in favor of racial redistricting.

This may bode ill for leftist arguments against voter ID requirements. In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down Texas’ voter ID law, finding that the law had a disparate impact on minorities.

Democrats have baselessly condemned the mere requirement of a legal ID to vote as an imposition of “Jim Crow 2.0,” claiming that it is more difficult for racial minorities to obtain a photo ID. According to the approach of the new DOJ guidance, a commonsense requirement that a person prove he is who he says he is in order to vote would not be presumptively unconstitutional due to some ridiculous claim of discrimination.

This guidance represents one more step toward restoring sanity after Democrat-led administrations imposed critical race theory via misreadings of the law.

Before he became a general in the American Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States, George Washington was a young Virginian colonist who could not enlist in the British army because he was not a qualified English gentleman. 

Angel Studios’ film “Young Washington,” set to release in theaters July 3, captures how Washington worked his way from being a tenant farmer to a colonel in the Virginia militia.

“When many people are trying to rewrite history, this is taking a real look at who George Washington was as a man, as a person, as an inspired leader who clearly was protected by God,” Sebastian Hoffman, Angel Studios’ director of business development and partnerships, said. “And it’s the beginning of the great tale of the founding of America.”

The film shows how Washington was ambitious and hard-working even as a boy, depicting the rigorous self-study he undertook with the guidance of his adult half-brother Lawrence Washington after their father’s death. 

“From our perspective, youth are setting themselves up by choosing the wrong heroes,” said Dennis Leavitt, CEO of the historical park and film sponsor Liberty Village. “They’re choosing superheroes who have these crazy powers like shooting spider webs out of their hands. Those folks aren’t real, but the story of George Washington is a true and accurate story. Those are the kind of heroes that we think our young people ought to have to pattern their lives after and just set as a standard of the things that they can do.” 

“Young Washington” portrays Washington’s determination to advance beyond the station into which he was born and to serve the king. After Washington was refused a commission as a British soldier on account of his lowly upbringing, he embarked on an expedition to survey unmapped land west of Virginia. 

Washington’s thorough knowledge of the land in modern-day Pennsylvania later led the governor of Virginia to send Washington to deliver a message to the French and defend the British claim on the land. It was this mission that would start the French and Indian War, which expanded British control in the New World.

Keith Krach, CEO of the Freedom 250 initiative, said he partnered with Angel Studios because Washington is an exemplary American who should be upheld as a model.

“We thought it’d be a blockbuster, and telling the story of Washington is inspiration, particularly to our young people, because what he exemplified was the American dream, that an ordinary person could do extraordinary things,” Krach said. 

Despite a brutal failure in his first military expedition against the French, Washington returned to the battlefield and successfully proved his strength as a leader. What started with Washington being denied his request for a commission in the British military resulted in honor to his name and his country because of his persistence.

Amid current political contentiousness, pointing out heroes such as Washington will help unite young Americans over undeniably admirable citizens, according to Leavitt. 

“They’ve got to have an igniting in their souls about what’s happening in America, and how we can improve upon the kinds of things that are happening right now.”

“Young Washington” will release in theaters nationwide July 3. Tickets are available for purchase online.

Elon Musk may be one of the greatest entrepreneurs in modern American history, but when SpaceX finally launches its long-anticipated IPO, investors would be wise to look beyond the hype and the typical financial and risk analysis to assess the potentially significant political risk attached to the company.

Retail investors will undoubtedly rush toward a SpaceX IPO. The company revolutionized commercial space launch, dominates satellite deployment, and has significantly expanded global internet access through its Starlink satellite network.

Investors see innovation, dominance, and virtually limitless growth potential—not to mention the fact that Musk has a great track record of creating wealth.

But SpaceX is not a traditional company; it is an extension of Musk, who carries a considerable amount of political baggage.

It operates on the fault lines of politics, regulation, national security, environmental activism, and government co-dependency. That creates a level of political vulnerability many investors may be dangerously underestimating.

The reality is simple: A future Democrat administration hostile to Musk could weaponize the federal bureaucracy against SpaceX in ways that materially impact the company’s operations and, thus, shareholder value.

Over the past several years, Democrats and progressive activists have increasingly viewed Musk as a political enemy. His alignment with President Donald Trump, leadership at the Department of Government Efficiency, criticism of DEI policies, and willingness to challenge the political Left have made him one of the most polarizing figures in America.

SpaceX depends heavily on government approvals. Every major launch requires Federal Aviation Administration licensing, environmental review, and safety clearances. A hostile administration would not need to block SpaceX outright to inflict damage. It could simply slow approvals, expand review processes, increase environmental scrutiny, or impose additional procedural hurdles that delay launches and raise costs.

And when it comes to Starship and SpaceX’s Texas operations, the environmental angle is especially important.

The company already faces environmental impact reviews and scrutiny tied to wildlife and coastal protections. A future administration aligned with climate activists could expand protected zones, tighten environmental standards, impose new operational restrictions, or limit launch frequency altogether.

For a company built on rapid launch cadence, regulatory slowdowns are not minor inconveniences but major business threats.

Government contract exposure creates another major risk.

SpaceX relies heavily on NASA and Department of Defense contracts. While supporters of Musk argue the government needs SpaceX because of its superior technology and lower costs, Washington has repeatedly shown that politics often overrides efficiency.

A future administration could redirect contracts toward politically favored competitors such as Blue Origin or United Launch Alliance under the guise of “competition” or “procurement diversification.” Procurement rules could change. Funding cycles could slow. Oversight could intensify.

Starlink also introduces significant regulatory exposure.

The satellite internet network depends heavily on Federal Communications Commission spectrum allocation and international approvals. A future administration could restrict spectrum access, favor competing providers, impose pricing mandates, or create new service obligations that impact profitability.

At the same time, SpaceX’s dominance itself may eventually become a political target.

The company controls enormous launch market share, leads reusable rocket technology, and dominates satellite deployment capabilities. Under a progressive administration eager to crack down on large private companies, antitrust scrutiny would become likely.

Future regulators could investigate pricing practices, restrict bundling between launch services and Starlink deployment, or impose competitive carve-outs designed to strengthen weaker rivals.

Finally, there is the national security dimension.

SpaceX has become deeply embedded within America’s defense infrastructure through military launches, secure communications, and strategic satellite capabilities. As the company’s importance grows, so too will government pressure to exert greater oversight and control.

None of this means SpaceX is not an extraordinary company. It is.

But investors who ignore the political reality surrounding Musk and the increasingly weaponized nature of the American government do so at their own peril.

For a company as politically exposed as SpaceX, political risk shouldn’t be ignored.

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

A former staffer for Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been charged by the Justice Department with conspiring to threaten University of Michigan leaders to pressure them to sever ties with Israel.

The former staffer, Mariam Muhammed Odeh, 24, was a student at the University of Michigan and a resident of Dearborn, Michigan. El-Sayed says the staffer was not employed full-time.

In a 63-page indictment by the department, federal prosecutors accused Odeh and seven other indicted individuals of using encrypted chats and social media to research, target, and attack victims amid a campaign of threats that emerged amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

The defendants, whom the government said are associated with the university, are accused of targeting numerous university officials from October 2023 through April 2025, including the president, who was Santa Jeremy Ono at the time. Other targeted university officials listed include the chief investment officer, the provost, and members of the board of regents.

Despite El-Sayed’s claim that Odeh only worked part-time in his campaign, Pretrial Services Officer Brian Harmon told the judge that Odeh reported “full-time employment for approximately four months,” from February to April, “for a local Senate candidate.”

The indictment listed Odeh as the president of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, or SAFE. As reported by The Times of Israel, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality was accused of violating the university’s standards of conduct for recognized student organizations following a protest last spring outside a regent’s home and also at a demonstration without school permission on its Ann Arbor campus.

Odeh made an initial appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit before U.S. Magistrate Judge Anthony Patti, according to a court audio recording. Her arraignment is set for July 1, court records show.

The charges came after top University of Michigan officials and their homes had been targeted by demonstrations and vandalism in recent years, and as protesters demanded that the university halt its endowment investments in military contractors and Israeli companies because of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Many student groups were instrumental in the pro-Palestinian protests that erupted on college campuses, especially at top universities like the University of Michigan.

After the encampment first emerged, the homes and private property of several university regents and administrators were vandalized, The College Fix reported.

In June 2024, the front of Jewish Regent Jordan Acker’s law office was spray-painted with the phrases “free Palestine” and “divest or f— off,” as stated by The College Fix.

In October 2024, Ono, who was the university president at the time, had his home vandalized with the words “intifada,” “coward,” and “divest.”

In March 2025, Provost Laurie McCauley was targeted when protesters broke a window at her home and spray-painted “free Palestine,” “divest,” and “no honor in genocide,” according to WXYZ, the ABC affiliate in Detroit.

While Fox News started June at its familiar perch atop the cable news ratings—and No. 2 behind ESPN overall on cable—the news channel also managed to knock off two of the television networks in primetime.

Fox News ended the week of June 1 with 2.7 million weekday primetime viewers and 245,000 viewers in the crucial 25-54 demo, surpassing NBC (2.6 million viewers) and CBS (2.1 million viewers), according to Nielsen Media Research Big Data + Panel.

“The Five” earned the top spot of all cable news shows despite airing in the once-barren 5 p.m. time slot. The program captured 3.3 million viewers and 318,000 in the 25-54 demo.

Fox News also continues to own the networks in late-night programming, with comedic talkfest “Gutfeld!” smacking around its remaining competitors, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Even with former CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert out of the picture, Kimmel and Fallon could not overtake Greg Gutfeld.

“Gutfeld!” garnered 2.7 million primetime viewers and 274,000 in the 25-54 demo—more than double that of “The Tonight Show.” Kimmel does appear to have drawn some of Colbert’s “The Late Show’s” audience, which is not good news for its replacement, “Comics Unleashed.”

Ratings for the Byron Allen-hosted program are no laughing matter. “Comics Unleashed” drew only 764,000 viewers and 114,000 in the 25-54 demo—down 15% from its opening week.

Your Top Five Cable News Shows for May

How strong is Fox News’ ratings domination? In the month of May, Fox News owned the top 14 spots in cable news, except one slot occupied by MS NOW’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow placed seventh.

The top five shows for the month of May were:

1. “The Five”
2. “Jesse Watters Primetime”
3. “Gutfeld!”
4. “Hannity”
5. “Special Report with Bret Baier”

Another example of Fox News’ strength is found deeper in the May numbers: Three of MS NOW’s daytime shows—“Katy Tur Reports,” “Ana Cabrera Reports,” and “Chris Jansing Reports”—were beaten by “Fox & Friends First,” which airs from 4-6 a.m. EDT, during the week ending May 24.

The CBS News Blues

“ABC World News Tonight” maintained its sizable lead over “NBC Nightly News” in the network news race, while “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” lagged far to the rear. The once-mighty news fixture endured its ninth consecutive week with under 4 million viewers (3.7 million).

The CBS News operation is also still dealing with fallout from the firing of longtime CBS News and “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley. Pelley was fired after 37 years with the network after complaining in a staff meeting about how new boss Bari Weiss had “murdered” the program “60 Minutes.”

Pelley would later tell The New York Times that getting fired felt “like your spouse was murdered.”

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler: OK, let’s go to Scott Pelley. Here’s the headline from the Daily Mail. “Teary-eyed Scott Pelley goes scorched earth on Bari Weiss as he calls for her removal and describes CBS firings like his family being murdered.”  

He says at one point he started to tear up when talking about his former colleague, executive producer Tanya Simon, being fired an,d said it felt like “your spouse being murdered.” 

Victor Davis Hanson: They always do that. I mean, anybody who’s in the arena and espouses political views, “I was almost murdered, Jack. I was swatted. I didn’t get close to being murdered. I’ve had people show up at my ho—”  

True, I was not close to being murdered. I’ve had people come up to me and want to engage in a very heated conversation that could have very, very easily— 

But I wasn’t in danger.  

I’ve been at Reagan airport where an Antifa-like person ran out and hit me in the back of the head. Was I endangered? I don’t think so.  

It’s always these psychodramas. I mean, Scott Pelley is not endangered. And then it was even—you can’t believe—why can’t you believe that? 

Because what he said is completely unbelievable. He said that he goes into a meeting with the new producer, then he insults him, and instead of having a question and answer, he dominates the conversation of the CBS “60 Minutes” team and says to the person that, “You are unqualified. You are unqualified.” 

And the person was trying to explain that CBS is losing money and has been losing money a long time and losing market share, and even “60 Minutes,” that’s still somewhat popular, loses money. 

They all lose money. They’re all overpaid if you consider market value.  

And then he started attacking Bari Weiss. “She’s completely unqualified. She wants to destroy us,” and he just attacks. And then he says, after doing all that, “I had no idea they were going to fire me. Oh my gosh.”

Does he really—either there’s one of three explanations. 

He went in there to deliberately insult his new employer and CBS’ ultimate employer with the idea that he would be a wounded fawn and get fired, and then maybe go to MSNBC, kind of a Dan Rather figure, wounded fawn.  

Or he’s stupid and he thinks you can insult your employer. 

Or he thought he could insult his employer, and he’s even stupider and could convince him that Scott Pelley knew exactly what he should be doing and he could tutor him. 

I’ve had a lot of employers and I don’t ever recall—I had some really tough people in graduate school that didn’t like me because I didn’t—I don’t know why, but I think they thought I was a bumpkin.  

But, you know, I can remember going in to a person who had my future in his hands and him telling me, “You’re racing through these exams like they’re hurdles.” 

I said, “They are hurdles.”  

And he said, “Is your goal to be the quickest ever to finish the PhD program in classics?”  

I said, “Yes.”  

“No matter what you learn?” 

I said, “If I can’t pass the exams, then I didn’t learn them, but I passed them all. I passed my Greek and Latin exam. I passed my Greek literature, Latin literature, Greek history, Roman history. 

“I’ve done my 12 seminars. I passed my Greek and Latin composition exams. I passed my three Ph.D. exams.”  

And he said, “Yes, but you’re not a rounded intellectual. You can read French and German, but you don’t speak them. A good intellectual can.”  

I said, “I didn’t see that in the handbook. Reading knowledge required. I don’t think I’m going to go to Germany and give a—”  

“You never know. You never know. You might be invited to go to Paris. How would you present your paper?” I said, “I’d read it in English.”  

And the point I’m making is that I was defiant, but then he said, “Here’s what you’re going to do for your thesis. 

“You’re going to take your thesis and we’re not going to discuss it. You’re going to give me—how many chapters is it?”  

I said, “It’s about 80,000 words.”  

“You’re going to give me eight chapters and you’re going to put it in my box and I’m going to correct it and I’m going to hand it back in two weeks and you’re going to make every change. 

“And we’re not going to discuss it, we’re not going to talk again. And then we will go out on your oral exams and I will take you out to dinner and we will have a pleasant discussion and then you’re through.  

“And you will reach your goal of getting a Ph.D. in a little over four years and you’ll be very happy and we can send you on your way back to your farm.” 

I said, “OK.”  

But the point is I never— 

Fowler: Wow, what an attitude.  

Hanson: Well, the worst thing about it, I’m not mentioning names, is I was flat broke and I was doing landscaping for the professors to make money.

I had an old Ranchero and a guy who was very poor from Cleveland, wonderful guy, Jeff Sellers, and I, we would go tear up cement patios, all the stuff the gardeners wouldn’t do, take trash out, dig ditches. 

We did all of that and we made $1.25 an hour, which was a lot of money then, on our weekends. And they were really angry. The professors that were hiring us for cheap labor were mad that we weren’t studying that day for our exams on weekends.

So, anyway, the guy who was telling me was the tightest person in the world. He would say to me, “There are some mandarin orange trees on campus. They’re decorative, but they had fruit, and I want you to go after work and pick them all and bring them by my house.” 

Or he said, “You have that pickup of yours, don’t you?”  

I said, “It’s a Ranchero. It can only haul so much.”  

He goes, “There’s an office building on campus and they have solid oak bookcases and they’re going to completely refit it, and they told me I could have them. So, I want you to go over there.” 

And I said, “I can’t drive through the quad.” And he said, “Oh, there’s a way. Get your friend to lift the cross arm up. Go in there. Here’s the key. I want both those bookcases.” 

So, I put these two things at 8 at night tied down to my Ranchero, and a campus policeman says, “You are in a restricted area in the quad. You’re moving things out of a classroom. What am I supposed to think?” 

And I had my Stanford ID and I explained it, and he said, “That is such a preposterous story that it has to be true.”  

And he let me go, and I did the route.  

Fowler: Did he know the chief?  

Hanson: Yes, he did know him. By reputation. 

I don’t know if he knew him, but I gave him the professor’s name and rank and title, and he said, “This is so preposterous he’d ask you to do this, but it has to be true.”  

And then he said something like, “If I were you, I’d get a new director.” 

But anyway, my point in this is unlike Scott Pelley, I didn’t insult him. I said, “Yes, I will do that. Yes, I will do that. I promise it will be there the first of the week.”  

And you know what the comments were? I’m not kidding you. The comments were, “On time. Adequate. See me sometime,” but no comments. 

And the only reason it was a book—there was a very famous Italian scholar who just happened to be a visiting professor when I was farming. And he called me up a year later and he said, “I’m Emilio Gabba from the University of Pisa, and I was nosing around the dissertations and I read this dissertation you wrote. I love it. Can we publish it in Italy?” 

And I thought, what?  

And I was on a tractor when my wife came and told me she’d talked to him, and I got up, came back, and called him back in Italy. And that’s the only reason it was published. 

Fowler: I’m so happy to learn that you’re beholden to an Italian, Victor. That just warms the cockles of my heart.  

Hanson: He was a great historian, too. He was a very famous historian. He was very kind to me. 

Fowler: Yeah. 

Hanson: And you know what? The point is, when I had these altercations or disagreements, because I was always on the receiving end with my director, I never talked back to him in a rude manner.  

And I always tried to—I would come home once in a while, I was 22, 23, come back and work on the farm on weekends or Christmas, and my mother would always—I’d say, “I’m having kind of a problem.” 

She said, “You treat him with respect. It’s not fair, but you treat him with respect.” I always did. I never mouthed off to him. 

And she always would say, “Look for the good thing.” I said, “Well, he’s a beautiful writer, Mom. I read his articles. They’re beautifully composed. He’s very smart.” And she said, “Surely you can learn something from him.” And I tried to. 

And you know, when he passed away, there was not a very large contingent at his funeral. But they asked former students, and I wrote a very nice thing about him because I did learn a lot from him. But our personalities were too different. 

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

The State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia is meeting Saturday morning in Fredericksburg to consider whether to oppose or remain neutral on three highly controversial proposed Democrat amendments to the Virginia Constitution.

The amendments cover abortion, same-sex marriage and gender identity, and voting rights for those convicted of felonies.

The abortion amendment would expand the already existing right to abortion in Virginia and allow nonmedical personnel to perform them. It would also allow minors to seek abortions without parental knowledge or approval.

Same-sex marriage is already legal across the nation because of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, but the Democrat amendment in Virginia would place same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution. This would ensure that if Obergefell were ever overturned—as was Roe v. Wade—same-sex marriage would still be the law in Virginia.

Additionally, the proposed amendment would insert gender ideology into the constitution. This would mean boys in girls sports, boys in girls locker rooms, and mutilating surgery for gender-confused kids.

The third amendment would allow those convicted of felony crimes to vote. A mainstay of American jurisprudence has been the removal of this right from those who commit serious or violent crimes. The Democrats, it seems, speculate that their numbers increase when convicted criminals are added to the voter rolls.

These Democrat amendments have flummoxed some Republican leaders. A month ago, the issue arose in the Fairfax GOP when former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares intervened in the local Fairfax meeting and urged members to vote neutral. It was reported that this was the wish of the new chairman of the state party, Jeff Ryer, though this is now disputed.

The Fairfax GOP voted nearly unanimously to oppose the amendments.

The next battlefield on these issues in the Virginia GOP was a recent meeting of the State Central Committee, where a motion was made to oppose the amendments. However, the motion was sidetracked by a motion to put the issue into a secret meeting of the state party’s resolutions committee that would not report until August—too late for the GOP to have much of an effect on voting against the amendments. It was clear in that meeting that a bare majority of the Central Committee wants to publicly oppose the amendments.

A small group of GOP activists in Fairfax County has been campaigning with state party leaders and with members of the State Central Committee.

The issue pits those in the party who want a so-called big tent—those who argue that the GOP must become more liberal on foundational issues like abortion and marriage—against those social conservatives and Christians who insist the party must stand on principle on core issues.

This Saturday morning, the State Central Committee will meet in Fredericksburg, and it is reported that the Democrat amendments will be discussed and could be voted on. An informal poll in recent days shows 20 members on the record opposing the amendments. Eleven are on record that they will vote for neutrality. There are roughly 79 members of the State Central Committee.

Hats off to the sneaky Democrats for putting some lily-livered Republicans in a tough spot. A neutral vote by the Central Committee will spell huge trouble for the Republican Party of Virginia.

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

Progressive politicians in Canada and the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab have condemned the United States for denying entry to Omar Artan, a Somali-born FIFA World Cup 2026 referee with alleged ties to the terrorist group.

“Denying entry to Omar Artan, who has earned his place on the world stage through hard work and perseverance, is not right,” Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said in a statement. “Toronto believes in fairness, inclusion, and giving talent the opportunity to shine. He would be welcome to referee here in our city. I will be writing to FIFA to let them know he is welcome to referee here.”

Similarly, British Columbia Premier David Eby wrote on X that “Mr. Artan would be welcomed and celebrated in British Columbia for what he’s overcome and where he is today. Let’s have him referee in Vancouver.”

While the Department of Homeland Security has not stated the extent of Artan’s ties to the terrorist group, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Newsweek that “during processing, the traveler underwent additional inspection, a routine part of CBP’s inspection process when officers need to verify information or determine admissibility,” and after “inspection,” Artan was “determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns and was denied entry.”

Rob Bluey, executive editor of the Daily Signal, supports DHS’ caution, posting on X, “I’d rather have strong vetting than the alternative.”

Al-Shabaab has been responsible for attacks on U.S. service members abroad, such as the 2020 terrorist attack on Manda Bay Airfield, which killed two, and the 2013 four-day takeover of a mall in Kenya that took the lives of 67 civilians.

Most recently, the group executed major bombings in Somalia, which claimed dozens of lives, and conducted mass shootings against beachgoers.

“The case of Omar Artan serves as the latest and most damning proof that American policy extends beyond security concerns to encompass broad ethnic discrimination,” the Islamic terrorist group wrote in a statement Wednesday.

The group appeared to have used this as an opportunity to recruit new members to carry out its mission of regaining power and establishing “divine” Sharia law governance in East Africa and abroad.

“We issue an urgent call to action to the Somali people, specifically the youth. Let us join hands and build a Somalia that is defined by honor, absolute independence from all forms of foreign occupation, and divine governance by Islamic Sharia.“

The World Cup gets underway this afternoon with Mexico squaring off against South Africa.

The cost of living has risen to unsustainable levels for millions of working Americans. Delivering immediate relief by lowering these costs and restoring affordability is essential. The first step is using budget reconciliation in the coming weeks to enact targeted spending reforms and structural changes that put money back in the pockets of families.

Few Americans realize that a little-known Federal Reserve Bank practice has already cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars—and Congress has the power to stop it.

For its first 95 years of existence, the Fed paid no interest to banks for balances held in reserve. Financial institutions were mandated by the reserve requirement ratio to hold a certain percentage of their deposits in reserve at the central bank to ensure liquidity and to control monetary supply. Banks could also park “excess” reserves at the Fed voluntarily beyond the minimum requirement.

In 2006, Congress authorized the Fed to pay interest on reserves, effective 2011. The global financial crisis accelerated its implementation to 2008. The policy was intended to influence short-term interest rates by encouraging banks to hold reserves rather than lend them overnight. In 2020, the Fed eliminated the required reserve ratio entirely, embracing an “ample reserves” floor system.

Since September 2022, elevated interest payments on reserves have forced the Fed into operating losses. These shortfalls are recorded as a “deferred asset” on the Fed’s balance sheet, currently totaling roughly $240 billion. The Fed must first repay this amount from its future profitable operations before resuming any remittances back to the U.S. Treasury.

As of early June 2026, banks hold just over $3 trillion in reserves at the Fed, approximately 12% of the $25.5 trillion in total commercial bank assets. Annual IOR payments have exploded since the central bank raised rates to combat inflation—$177 billion in fiscal year 2023, $186 billion in fiscal year 2024, and $148 billion in fiscal year 2025—representing the single largest Fed expense in recent years.

Cumulative interest payments since 2008 total $728 billion, with approximately 60% accruing under the Biden administration. The IOR framework is not monetary policy; it is a quiet transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street and foreign capitals.

The Foundation for Government Accountability projects that continued interest payments will cost taxpayers $1 trillion in foregone revenue to the Treasury over the next decade. Other independent analyses from the Andersen Institute similarly project cumulative IOR expenses approaching $1.3 trillion.

These payments disproportionately benefit the largest banks, which hold the bulk of the reserves. According to an oversight report from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., foreign or foreign-owned banks have received roughly 39% of payments since 2013—totaling $235 billion.

Under Chairman Jerome Powell’s mismanagement and persistent losses, the Fed has left taxpayers on the hook for lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury. This directly increases federal deficits and debt, as the government must borrow to replace the foregone revenue. What was once a reliable source of tens of billions annually in Treasury income has vanished.

The Federal Reserve’s IOR program functions as a hidden subsidy to banks, especially large domestic and foreign institutions. Eliminating interest on reserve balances would restore the central bank to profitability and redirect billions back to the U.S. Treasury for the benefit of American taxpayers.

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced the Fiscal Accountability for Interest on Reserves (FAIR) Act (S. 2499) in July 2025 to repeal the Fed’s authority to make these payments. A companion bill in the House, led by Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, would achieve the same goal.

The Federal Reserve Bank has been on welfare, courtesy of American taxpayers, for far too long. While families across America stretch their weekly paychecks to afford groceries, gas, and rent, the Fed has quietly funneled hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars straight into the coffers of the biggest banks—including foreign ones.

Congress must stop this hidden tax on Main Street and eliminate interest on reserves through budget reconciliation. Only then can the Federal Reserve return to profitability, remittances to the Treasury resume, federal deficits shrink, and the perverse incentives that discourage lending be removed.