Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed America’s commitment to making all the materials for the “Golden Dome” missile-defense shield domestically.

“We’re going to defend America with great American companies,” Hegseth told The Daily Signal on Thursday. “We’re committed patriotically to the defense of the homeland.”

The U.S. plans to build a “Golden Dome” to guard against missile attacks, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.

The United States has provided significant funding for Israel’s missile-defense system, known as the “Iron Dome,” and Trump says the technology that now exists is further advanced from what the U.S. used to help Israel build its system.

Hegseth said America has “some of the best technology, software companies, defense architecture companies in the world.”

“They’re going to be involved in ‘Golden Dome,’” he said, “and we’re going to work through that.”

Hegseth spoke to reporters on the tarmac after his trip to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

According to the defense chief, the “Golden Dome” is a generational investment “to ensure we keep our people safe.”

The post Hegseth Vows to Involve ‘Best’ US Companies in Missile-Defense ‘Golden Dome’ Construction appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A leftist terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., leaves two dead.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio hits the House of Representatives.

More on the assault charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., and the Biden cover-up scandal.

The House of Representatives passes Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill by the narrowest of margins.

Army Lt. Col. Jim Whaley of Mission Roll Call joins us to talk about what President Donald Trump is doing for the troops.

Subscribe to “The Tony Kinnett Cast” and never miss an episode.

“The Tony Kinnett Cast” is a product of The Daily Signal, produced by Nick Alvarado, Daniel Elmore, Allison Lemons, and Lou Scataglia.

The post WATCH: The Rallying Cry Crippling the Democrats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

New polling shows Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins within “striking distance” of incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff in a hypothetical matchup for one of the Senate seats representing the Peach State.

The Cygnal poll, conducted from May 15 to May 17 among 800 likely voters, found Ossoff leading Collins 45.7% to 43.3%—well within the survey’s 3.41 percentage point margin of error.

The poll is more good news for Collins, 47, a second-term lawmaker who also garnered the most support in recent testing by the Trafalgar Group among four potential Republican candidates in a Senate primary in Georgia. 

The remarkably strong polling comes despite the fact that Collins has not even formally entered the 2026 race. Ossoff, a liberal Democrat in his first term, is seen as vulnerable in a state that boasts both a Republican-majority state General Assembly and a popular Republican governor. Gov. Brian Kemp announced May 5 that he would not seek the Senate seat.

“Mike was able to get two bills signed into law under two presidents, under two parties, in two years,” a source familiar with the race told The Daily Signal, adding, “He’s a workhorse. You can’t stop him, and the state of Georgia has recognized that, too.”

As a freshman congressman, Collins sponsored the TRANQ Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2023. The legislation directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to support research on xylazine, which is a nonopioid tranquilizer drug, and other synthetic opioids. When xylazine is mixed with fentanyl, it has grisly effects, including creating wounds that refuse to heal, which has earned it the street moniker of the “zombie drug.”

The move came as drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have skyrocketed over the past two decades. The bill’s passage made Collins the first freshman member of the 118th Congress to have legislation signed into law. 

Collins was also the sponsor of the Laken Riley Act. That bill, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in January, requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal aliens “who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.” The legislation was named after Laken Riley, an Augusta University nursing student who was killed by an illegal alien while she was out jogging on Feb. 22, 2024.

Collins graduated in 1990 from Georgia State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business. He subsequently ran a trucking company employing more than 100 people and became chairman of one of Georgia’s largest credit unions.

Public service runs in Collins’ family. His father was Republican Rep. Mac Collins, who represented Georgia’s 3rd and then 8th Congressional Districts from 1993 to 2005.

The post GOP Rep. Collins Within Striking Distance of Democrat Sen. Ossoff in Georgia, Poll Finds appeared first on 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. Recently, Kash Patel, who’s been under fire by the Left in a variety of ways, the new FBI director, he announced that he is shutting down the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., where there’s about 1,500 employees, as I understand it.

There was a lot of outrage. But remember that this was not his original decision. It was the decision during the Biden administration of then-FBI Director Christopher Wray that this 50-year-old building was unsuitable. It was decrepit.

But what was more interesting, in addition to thinking he was going to shut down the building, we don’t know where he wants to relocate the headquarters.

I would prefer—I think some of you—if he put it in Kansas City or somewhere away from the proverbial deep state in Washington. He also said he didn’t understand, of the 35,000 employees, why a third were in Washington. Washington, as dangerous as it can be, does not account for a third of all crimes.

So, he’s trying to disperse or recalibrate the FBI. And are we going to lament the closure of that office and what it represents symbolically? I don’t think so.

Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, was the head of the Special Counsel’s Office. Remember that? And he had the dream team—the all-stars, a hunter/killer team—with the Left. He was almost giddy about that they were gonna get President Donald Trump on Russian collusion. Forty million dollars, 20 months later, they didn’t find anything.

We found all sorts of improprieties within that investigation. Andrew Weissmann and others cleaned their cellphones so that no one could see their text messages. We had Peter Strzok and Lisa Page dismissed from the investigation because of their notorious and now infamous tweets.

We had Robert Mueller go before the House Intelligence Committee and claim that he didn’t know what the Steele dossier was nor what Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was. That was impossible. Those were the two catalysts that prompted his own appointment.

His successor was James Comey. He’s in the news right now for that weird tweet where he said he was walking on the beach and he saw “8647”—get rid of Trump; or maybe, you know, kill Trump; or whatever “86” can mean, it can mean a lot of stuff—and he didn’t understand it. But he’s also got a novel coming out right now about a supposed right-wing celebrity who threatens people and then something happens to the people he threatened. Was this a stunt for his book? I don’t know, but it’s in line with his character.

He went before the same House Intelligence Committee on 245 occasions. He pled either “I don’t know” or “I can’t recall” or “I don’t have that information” or “I shouldn’t give you that information.” Two hundred and forty-five times.

He was the one that set up Michael Flynn and bragged about how naive Michael Flynn was not to have an attorney when he sent agents in to ambush him on the Logan Act. My gosh, nobody ever invokes that.

He was the person who lied to Donald Trump and said, “We don’t have an investigation of you, Mr. President.” And then he went out and recorded that conversation. He did have an investigation. And then he had a third party leak it to The New York Times.

He was the one who hired Christopher Steele. He was an FBI contractor. They used the Steele dossier, which was fraudulent, to get FISA court warrants to, I think, unproperly and unlawfully spy on people like Carter Page. That same office gave us Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who doctored a FISA email to spy on Carter Page.

That same office then gave us the successor to James Comey, interim Director Andrew McCabe. He lied four times, the inspector general said, to federal authorities and three of them were under oath, which was a basis for his firing.

He was followed by Christopher Wray. Why was he spying on parents at school board meetings? Why was he spying on what they called “radical-traditional Catholics”? Why did they go after abortion protesters, but not in the same way people who were protesting pro-life?

And why did they do the Mar-a-Lago raid? Why did they go in there with props and special files and scattered the files on the ground, where they were not there when they came, and then take pictures of them and add a little “classified”? Why did they take away 13,000 documents? And out of the 13,000 documents, they only found 102 that were classified, 0.007%. I could go on with Christopher Wray. This is what he gave us.

He had the chief counsel, James A. Baker, of the FBI working with Twitter and Facebook to suppress news of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The laptop was authenticated by Christopher Wray’s FBI. They kept it silent while 51 supposed intelligence authorities said that it was Russian disinformation. Why didn’t the FBI say, “No, it’s not. We’ve authenticated it for over a year”? Why? Why? Why?

Add it all up—Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Clinesmith, Christopher Wray, Strzok, Page—and I think it’s been a very good but overdue thing to close down that Washington office and close a sad chapter in the history of a once-great agency.

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

The post Kash Patel Shuts Down the Deep State’s Nerve Center appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In one of the most incredible scenes in American diplomatic history, President Donald Trump halted his meeting with the South African president Wednesday to show him a video montage of threats made to white citizens of his country.

“Boer” refers to an Afrikaner, a descendant of mostly Dutch immigrants in South Africa.

This meeting took place a week after Trump welcomed around 60 white South African refugee farmers to the United States, a move that received blowback from the Left and the media who until a moment ago insisted that all refugees are welcome.

I wonder what was different this time?

Funny enough, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is the one who requested a meeting with Trump to get him to stop bringing in Afrikaner refugees and to keep U.S. aid flowing after the administration suspended it in March.

Perhaps Ramaphosa expected Trump to kiss his feet like other presidents have done.

He thought wrong.

Now, normally I’d say that it’s unwise to humiliate the leaders of any nation during a public meeting, even those of a generally noxious government. But in this instance, what Trump did was entirely deserved and sent the right message.

If you take a gander at the laundry list of legacy media headlines, they claim no genocide is taking place and eagerly insinuate that Trump is racist for highlighting the Afrikaner issue. They’re more bothered by Trump “ambushing” Ramaphosa in the Oval Office than by Ramaphosa’s ignoring the slaughter of his citizens in their homes. Some praised Ramaphosa for “staying calm” through videos of his countrymen singing to massive crowds, “kill the Boer, kill the white farmer.”

What a statesman.

Trump is right to pull U.S. aid from South Africa. And if we are going to bring any refugees at all to the United States, the Afrikaner farmers have an excellent claim.

For too long, South Africa’s leaders have been unquestioningly feted and treated with deference by Western leaders.

The Left has built up this unquestioned narrative that after Nelson Mandela liberated South Africa from apartheid and racism the country has moved along toward its wonderful post-racial future, the only impediment being white racism.

That’s not at all what happened. Yes, apartheid was ended. Racism wasn’t. It’s now being viciously directed toward the country’s white minority, especially the farmers. South Africa is being decolonized. But the result hasn’t been equality, growth, prosperity, and happiness. It’s been retribution, crime, decay, dysfunction, and misery.

I’d say South Africa’s government is paving a road to hell through good intentions, but their intentions are malignant, and the roads aren’t getting paved either.

The arc of history bends toward justice under a just system, where citizens are treated equally under the law, where God-given rights are protected, and where the government commits itself to safeguarding all its citizens, not just ones of a particular class or racial group.

South Africa didn’t take that path. They chose social justice and the road to oblivion. They chose racial retribution and DEI-maxing. The country is run by a socialist, Marxist-aligned, black nationalist-adjacent party that’s long tried to juggle South Africa’s growth with outright theft from its productive sectors. The parasite is finally killing the host.

Palladium Magazine published an article in March highlighting how South Africa has become a “racketeer party state,” where the allegedly “moderate” ruling party, African National Congress, essentially operates a gangster-style government.

“From endemic sexual crime to farm murders, rolling blackouts, and expropriation, the rest is just the details,” Lawrence Thomas wrote. “What has come to be termed ‘South Africanization’ is not the failed development of a Third-World nation such as Afghanistan or Somalia, but the structural de-development of a once fully modern state that had its own nuclear weapons program.”

Thomas wrote that “the party operates on a kind of folk Leninism: it invokes the grandiose language of twentieth-century party discipline to steer what amounts to a racketeering operation with a malleable progressive ideology attached that justifies the racket.”

The “kill the Boer” rallies are only part of the problem. South Africa passed a law that allows the property of white farmers to be taken by the government. One New York Times writer absurdly tried to compare this to the Trump administration’s use of eminent domain on the Southern border.

Eminent domain is a justified—if sometimes abused—use of government power to build infrastructure that comes with compensation. South Africa’s law comes with no compensation. It’s simple, state-backed robbery and retribution.

To make matters worse as far as U.S. policy is concerned, this all occurred while South Africa aligned itself with Russia, China, Iran, and Hamas. They take our money and work with our enemies.

Of course, the Biden administration did nothing to fix the situation. Orde F. Kittrie, an official at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote last March in The Hill that while the African National Congress was looting its own country, the U.S. was “insulating the party” from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

“The U.S. is the largest provider of development assistance to South Africa, $660 million per year,” Kittrie wrote. “The U.S. has also committed more than $1 billion to help South Africa’s profoundly corrupt and reform-resistant energy sector transition to renewable energy.”

Again, the Trump administration rightly brought this to an end. We shouldn’t be funding green scams at home or abroad.

That South Africa’s president was humiliated by the White House was the least of his problems. If Ramaphosa would like to avoid such embarrassments in the future he should work to end corruption in his government, protect the rights of all his citizens, and stop linking arms with terrorist groups.

Then maybe he can come crawling back to the U.S. and ask for help.

Until that time, he and his entire government can slink away and watch as more future Elon Musks flee to places that allow them to create their own greener pastures without threat of violence and expropriation.

The post Trump Was Right to Shame South African President appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Five inmates who escaped a New Orleans jail Friday remained at large Thursday, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has repeatedly suggested that Hungarian American billionaire George Soros is at least partly to blame.

Ten inmates escaped, five have been captured, and five remain at large, Louisiana State Police confirmed to The Daily Signal Thursday afternoon. A multistate manhunt is ongoing after the inmates escaped after midnight Friday from Orleans Parish Prison, the city jail for New Orleans. A technician at the jail faces charges for allegedly assisting the escape.

Landry, a Republican, pointed the finger at Soros, who supported the campaigns of local law enforcement, in one case indirectly. (The Open Society Foundations, which Soros founded and which often speaks for him, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.)

“This is what happens when George Soros funds New Orleans elections,” Landry said of the jailbreak on X.

He expanded on his remarks in a Tuesday NewsNation television interview.

Landry said the jail falls under Sheriff Susan Hutson’s jurisdiction, and he blamed Hutson and District Attorney Justin Williams for allowing the jail to become overcrowded. He said Hutson and Williams delay sentencing inmates, holding them longer in the jail before they can be transferred to state prison.

“George Soros came over the last decade or so and spent a ton of money in the city of New Orleans, electing these progressive people,” Landry said. “It’s like he came [as] Santa Claus, and inside his sack, he put out a DA [district attorney], a sheriff, and I think about six judges, and we have been having problems in that city ever since.”

Soros personally contributed $220,000 to the Louisiana Justice & Public Safety PAC, which supported Williams’ campaign in 2020, according to public records. PAC for Justice, which supported Hutson’s 2021 campaign, received $150,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to public records. The Open Society Policy Center gave Sixteen Thirty Fund $23.8 million in 2021, according to IRS records.

While donors besides Soros contribute to Open Society and donors besides Open Society contribute to Sixteen Thirty Fund, Soros does influence Sixteen Thirty Fund’s philanthropy. Neither the Open Society Foundations nor Sixteen Thirty Fund responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Soros’ Prosecutors

Soros has spent money propping up local district attorneys across the country who champion a form of criminal justice reform that critics say goes soft on criminals and allows crime to fester.

“Unfortunately, George Soros and other liberal billionaires have focused on electing to office prosecutors who are committed to not prosecuting entire categories of crimes and not seeking appropriate punishments for those who are convicted of committing even violent crimes,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. He co-authored the book “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.”

“This push to implement a radical ideological agenda has come at the expense of doing the basic blocking-and-tackling needed to keep communities safe, and, unfortunately, this appears to be yet another manifestation of that phenomenon,” Smith added.

Soros’s Open Society Foundations, now run by his son, Alex Soros, has bankrolled a broad swath of left-leaning organizations. It and Sixteen Thirty Fund form part of what I describe as the Left’s dark money network in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Neither Williams nor Hutson responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The Jailbreak and the Manhunt

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, is investigating the jailbreak, while the Louisiana State Police head up the effort to recapture the inmates.

State Police Lt. Jared Sandifer confirmed to The Daily Signal that the police arrested 32-year-old Cortnie Harris and 38-year-old Corvanntay Baptiste, who are the girlfriends of two escapees, according to Fox News Digital. Sandifer confirmed that Leo Tate (Harris’ boyfriend, according to Fox) remains at large while police captured Corey Boyd (Baptiste’s boyfriend, according to Fox) Tuesday.

Murrill’s office arrested 33-year-old Sterling Williams, a technician at the jail, on Tuesday, charging him with abetting the escape.

Inmates tampered with a cell door and sneaked out through a hole in the wall behind a metal toilet while Williams had stepped away for food after midnight.

One of the inmates asked Williams to turn the water off in the cell from which the inmates later escaped. Rather than reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off, “allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape,” according to Murrill’s office.

Williams, the district attorney, called the escape “a complete failure of the most basic responsibilities entrusted to a sheriff or jail administrator,” CNN reported.

Hutson has suspended her reelection campaign in the jailbreak’s aftermath.

Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office Maj. Silas Phipps Jr. said the department was “underfunded, understaffed, underpaid.”

Murrill said, “Someone clearly dropped the ball, and there’s no excuse for this.”

When the inmates escaped, they left a message on the wall above the hole reading, “To Easy LoL.”

The inmates were in the jail on a variety of charges, including murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, and domestic abuse battery.

The post New Orleans Jailbreak Is ‘What Happens When George Soros Funds’ Elections, Jeff Landry Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The latest tornadoes devastating towns in Missouri and Kentucky should motivate Congress to immediately codify President Donald Trump’s actions overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency and putting states in charge of their own emergency planning. The longer Congress waits to act, the longer Americans suffer.

States have increasingly relied on the federal government for financial aid in the aftermath of disasters since President Jimmy Carter created FEMA in 1979 via executive order. There has been an increase in declared FEMA disasters and mismanagement of funds and resources. From 1953 to 1978, there was an average of 26 declared disasters per year. From 1979 through 2024, there was an average of 95 disasters declared per year—an increase of 265%.

States have become too comfortable relying on federal money to pay for disaster relief.

To begin reforming FEMA, Trump signed an executive order making states and local jurisdictions the primary driver in disaster preparedness, not the federal government. Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released its discretionary budget request for Fiscal Year 2026, following through on Trump’s goal to decentralize disaster relief “while encouraging States and communities to build resilience and use their unique local knowledge and ample resources in disaster response.” Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has also echoed Trump’s mission to transform FEMA.  

These efforts by the Trump administration are criticized by the Left for being “too much, too soon.” However, the Left is aggressively working to slow roll all the president’s reforms, no matter the issue, so their complaint regarding FEMA reform should be disregarded and Congress should proceed expeditiously to put states back in charge of preparing for emergencies.

States, local residents, and private sector groups are usually better and faster with disaster relief than the federal government. Kentucky and Missouri residents are currently relying on neighbors and state officials as they wait for FEMA’s help days after tornadoes swept through their towns. St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer reported that everyone except the federal government has already stepped in to help in the aftermath of the tornadoes. The lack of response from FEMA could further indicate that the Trump administration is pushing states to be the primary responder to emergencies.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s devastation of western North Carolina, locals were the ones to jump into action and help each other out. Vice President JD Vance even called out the political bureaucrats for their incompetence.

A 2024 DHS Office of Inspector General report found that FEMA failed to close “out disaster declarations in a timely manner,” resulting in $8.3 billion in unliquidated obligated funds from opened disaster declarations from 2012 and earlier. Bureaucratic behavior only wastes time and money.

When Hurricane Ian hit Florida in 2022 and destroyed the Pine Island Bridge, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis took immediate action and had the bridge repaired in three days. DeSantis didn’t wait for FEMA to fix his state’s infrastructure, and Floridians were rewarded with speedy repairs and getting back to business.

These issues can be fixed, but it is now up to Congress to do something about it.

Congress should significantly reduce FEMA’s budget and amend the Stafford Act to clearly define and limit FEMA’s role in assisting states, which would help prevent FEMA from depleting its resources by stepping in where the state could have handled disaster relief.

The minimum threshold for the president to declare a disaster to release public assistance funds to the states is $1 million, a limit last updated in 1999. This low threshold allows for most damages caused by natural disasters to be paid for by the federal government, stretching resources thin. Adjusting the per capita indicator with inflation to determine the threshold, which FEMA has the authority to do under the Stafford Act, would prioritize natural disasters that have truly devastated communities like in North Carolina.

Since FEMA has failed to adjust the threshold to match inflation and there has been an increase in the number of declared disasters, FEMA is now over $22.5 billion in debt.

States and local jurisdictions have an obligation to govern for the good of their citizens, and taking responsibility for disaster preparedness would put the onus where it should be. Relying on one agency within the federal government to respond to most natural disasters across the country isn’t prudent.

Depending on FEMA will only leave disaster victims across the country to suffer longer without relief and pass a state and local responsibility to the federal taxpayer. It is past time for Congress to act.

The post This is Congress’ Chance to Codify Trump’s FEMA Reforms appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With June’s NATO Summit likely to call for substantial increases in member defense spending, increased scrutiny awaits those NATO members that still haven’t reached even the 2% spending minimum—a minimum that’s been required for well over a decade. 

One of the more notorious NATO free riders is Belgium, which has skated by while spending only 1.3% of gross domestic product—the measure of economic growth that reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country—on defense. That already astonishingly low number includes the 0.16% of GDP allocated to Ukraine for aid—meaning Belgium’s actual spending on armed forces equals less than 1.2% of GDP.

Belgium ranks last out of all NATO treaty members for equipment expenditure and fourth from last in total defense spending.

Yet Belgium is a relatively populous and wealthy country, home to 12 million people with a $54,700 GDP per capita. These two statistics alone make reaching NATO’s 2% defense spending requirement not just a possibility, but an imperative that should have been met years ago.

In 2024, Belgium spent 7.9 billion euros on defense—less than both Denmark and Norway, both of which are half Belgium’s size. Contrast this with the 21.46 billion euros spent by the Netherlands in 2024, and a picture of Belgium’s inadequate spending starts to form.

Belgium’s days of free riding must end. The Trump administration has made it clear that Europe must take primary responsibility for conventional deterrence in Europe.

Both Belgium’s Minister of Defense Theo Franken and Prime Minister Bart De Wever have stated that Belgium is on track to reach 2% spending targets by 2029.

But this timeline is hardly sufficient given that the 2% defense spending minimum has been in place for more than a decade. It’s high time Belgium moves toward meeting these already-too-low defense spending requirements.

In an effort to allocate funds for the prosperity of their defense fund, Belgium has sought to extract proceeds from a federal investment company, SFPIM. These proceeds are set to come from government holdings and generated dividends.

In theory, this is a viable option. But because the new structure does not create a long-term means of sustaining a higher defense budget, Belgium must establish a new avenue they can use to increase to 2% spending sooner than the projected 2029.

But there are some bright spots within this somewhat dreary defense picture. Within its current 1.3% spending, Belgium has begun to build up its air capabilities with the purchase of 24 F-35 fighter jets as well as small transport aircrafts, armed drones, and a helicopter fleet. This both pushes Belgium toward its expected goal and modernizes its military to be more interoperable with more militarily capable NATO allies.

Belgium has also purchased a third frigate and intends to be able to deploy at least one frigate at any given time.

Further, Belgium and France are expanding their CaMo partnership contract, sealing a strategic cooperation agreement that will allow Belgian land forces to completely reequip its motorized brigade’s combat fleet.

The agreement also supplies the Belgian army with 382 Griffon multi-role armored vehicles and 60 Jaguar reconnaissance and combat vehicles, planned to commission between 2025 and 2030.

The contract aims to achieve interoperability between Belgium and France so that any Belgian army unit may be seamlessly integrated into a French operation.

Partnerships like CaMo can provide Belgium with the necessary equipment for defense while simultaneously allowing the nation to redirect that money toward the general defense budget. If Belgium expands CaMo and reorganizes funds from SFPIM, 2% doesn’t seem all that distant.

Ultimately, 2% NATO defense spending is the bare minimum. President Donald Trump insists that NATO allies should commit to spending at least 5% GDP on defense, while others have been calling for a 3.5% minimum.

Neither of these seem too much to ask, especially given how long Belgium has spent free riding off the treaty’s benefits.

Given the increasingly dangerous global environment, Belgium’s decades of free riding, and the probability of an increase in defense spending minimums, it’s time for Belgium to step up its pace and hit the 2% minimum well before 2029.

The post Belgium’s Defense Deficit: Why 2% Can’t Wait Until 2029 appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Republicans delivered on their promise to defund Big Abortion on Thursday by passing the budget reconciliation bill that has consumed Washington’s attention for the past three months.

In the bill, the House GOP removed Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country. The effort had been supported by dozens of pro-life legislators from around the country.

The move is a monumental win for pro-lifers because Planned Parenthood receives more than one-third of its overall funding from the U.S. government through grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. That translates to about $2 million per day, which taxpayers are on the hook for. Furthermore, taxpayer funding for the organization has been on an upward trajectory for about the past dozen years, having increased by 50% since 2013. 

But the House reconciliation bill halts that trend by ending the flow of Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood, except in abortion cases for rape or incest. Planned Parenthood is also a major provider of hormones for so-called transgender transitions in the country, which means defunding it is also combating the organization’s efforts in that regard as well. 

“One of the largest providers of hormones for gender-transition procedures can no longer receive federal funding [from Medicaid],” Connor Semelsberger, a government relations director at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.  

That gets Planned Parenthood “out of our pockets, not just, you know, for the sliver of money that would be spent on abortions, but for everything they’re doing, because they’re not a ‘good government’ partner,” Katie Glenn Daniel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told The Daily Signal.

“Planned Parenthood alone performs 400,000 abortions every year, and if you look at their own press releases, they talk about how reliant they are on our taxpayer dollars, so it’s more than time for them to get off the government dole,” Daniel said.

Semelsberger emphasized that the language defunding Planned Parenthood was for the maximum time that the House could do so under reconciliation, which is 10 years. 

Planned Parenthood for its part has publicly opposed the bill, with its president, Alexis McGill Johnson, saying in part that the bill was “about punishing Planned Parenthood health centers for providing abortion care.”

A recent study found that Planned Parenthood facilities are outnumbered by community health centers at a 15-to-1 ratio across the country, meaning that many Americans can choose many other options for their health care. 

“There is no excuse for forcing taxpayers to prop up a scandal-ridden industry that prioritizes abortions, gender transitions, and partisan political activism, instead of prenatal care, cancer screening, and other legitimate health services that are in continual decline,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said on Thursday. 

The action in the House shows the persistence and effectiveness of pro-life advocates even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a pro-family organization, praised the Republicans in a statement. 

“This morning, President Trump and [House Speaker Mike] Johnson delivered for the American family! The One Big, Beautiful Bill that passed the House will end taxpayer funding for gender-transition surgeries, defund Planned Parenthood, and increase the Child Tax Credit—all are monumental wins for our great nation,” Schilling said, adding:

“Now it is time for the Senate to get this bill across the finish line, so we can Make Families Great Again.” 

The post House Republicans’ Bill Delivers ‘Big, Beautiful’ Win for Pro-Life appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House Oversight Committee is seeking answers from top Biden administration officials—including the 46th president’s doctor—about Joe Biden’s apparent mental decline while in office and his staff’s use of an “autopen” to put his signature on official documents. 

The investigation on Capitol Hill deepens days after leaked audio of the then-president’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur and Biden’s announcement of an advanced prostate cancer diagnosis. 

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., sent a letter Wednesday to five former Biden administration officials, calling them to appear before the committee for transcribed interviews. 

“The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal,” Comer said in a statement. 

Comer sent letters to Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s White House physician; Neera Tanden, Biden’s former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; Anthony Bernal, former assistant to the president and senior advisor to first lady Jill Biden; Annie Tomasini, former assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff; Ashley Williams, former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations. 

The letters also come on the heels of Tuesday’s release of a damning book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.

Comer said Americans “deserve to know when this decline began, how far it progressed, and who was making critical decisions on his [Biden’s] behalf.” 

“Key executive actions signed by autopen, such as sweeping pardons for the Biden crime family, must be examined considering President Biden’s diminished capacity,” Comer said. 

The former president and first lady and several Biden aides have continuously insisted that the 46th president was entirely alert during his four-year term. Biden has noted in interviews that his administration achieved historic change.

The Oversight Project, a now-independent watchdog group originally created by The Heritage Foundation and not affiliated with the House Oversight Committee, first analyzed the autopen signatures.

“Today, we are calling on President Biden’s physician and former White House advisors to participate in transcribed interviews so we can begin to uncover the truth,” Comer said. 

Comer noted that in 2024, his committee sought transcribed interviews from three of the White House aides, but the Biden White House obstructed the probe.

“In the last Congress, the Biden White House blocked these individuals from providing testimony to the Oversight Committee as part of the effort to cover up Biden’s declining health,” Comer said. “Any continued obstruction will be met with swift and decisive action. The American people demand transparency and accountability now.” 

The post Biden Mental Decline Probe: House Oversight Demands 5 Former White House Staffers Reveal What They Knew appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The past couple of weeks has seen a lot of drama within the Make America Healthy Again movement. Much of the commotion surrounds President Donald Trump’s new Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Casey Means along with her brother, Calley, a special adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A few members of the wider MAHA coalition have cited concerns over their involvement in biotech companies, while others condemn their lack of emphasis on vaccines. Predictably, the far-left media is having a field day, running stories better suited to the E! network than serious media outlets.

Amidst all the distractions, however, major MAHA wins are flying under the radar.

FDA Wins

Not only did the FDA mandate that three of the most controversial food dyes be removed from processed food, but the agency will also be conducting a post market review of all added food chemicals. In a recent press release, the FDA announced measures to “increase transparency and ensure the safety of chemicals in food.” According to the press release, the FDA will roll out a modernized, evidence-based prioritization scheme for reviewing existing chemicals, initiate a final, systematic post-market review process, and expedite its review of chemicals currently under review.

Barely any legacy media outlet covered these stories, much less applauded them. In a contentious hearing before the House last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to toot his own horn to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who was blasting Kennedy for his consolidation efforts at HHS. “Congressman DeLauro, you say that you’ve worked for 20 years on getting food dye out. Give me credit! I got it out in a hundred days!”

He repeated his now popular charge, “There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There’s just kids and we should all be concerned with them.”

In response to the changes at the FDA, many companies are fast-tracking efforts to comply with new standards. Recently, Tyson Foods announced it will be eliminating petroleum-based dyes by the end of the month.

In addition, last week Kennedy ordered the FDA to conduct a complete review of the popular abortion pill, mifepristone. According to insurance data, one in ten women experienced a serious adverse event within 45 days of taking the pill, including sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging. According to the report, “the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5 percent” in clinical trials reported on the drug label.

Vaccine Recommendation Changes

The FDA plans to introduce a new review system for future vaccines that would require placebo testing, a huge victory for MAHA supporters.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary signaled his support for the move. “We want to see vaccines that are available for high-risk individuals,” Makary said. “And at the same time, we want some good science. We want some good clinical data.”

The agency is focusing on the good data it already has. Years of failed COVID policy preceded years of underreported mRNA side effects and needless injections. Finally, health officials are doing something about it. On May 20, Makary, along with Dr. Vinay Prasad, announced that federal agencies will no longer recommend COVID shots for children and teenagers.

Furthermore, officials have limited recommendations for ongoing shots to high risk and older individuals. It’s a small step, but it represents a historic reversal of the CDC vaccine schedule for kids, which, with only one exception, always grows and never shrinks.  

For many years, Trump touted his first-term health campaign, Operation Warp Speed, as a huge success. As a result, many speculated that the president would stymie efforts by Kennedy and others to re-assess the COVID vaccines. But every relevant public statement by the president supports Kennedy’s efforts, even if it means rethinking past policies in light of new evidence.

Earlier this year, Kennedy also suggested HHS would review the entire childhood vaccine schedule, though, at the moment, this remains a promissory note.

End of Gain-of-Function Research

Another MAHA success came on May 5, when Trump signed an executive order to ban federally funded gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens in foreign “countries of concern.”  Kennedy called the move “a milestone and historic development.”

Though the executive order was quite narrow, it’s clear that leading health officials recognize the problems with this research wherever it is conducted. “There’s no laboratory that does this right, there’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks,” the HHS secretary commented during the signing.

National Institute of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya stated, “The conduct of this research does not protect us against pandemics as some people might say. Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population as well as the world as we saw during the COVID pandemic.”

“Gain-of-function is an area of science where scientists really play God,” Kennedy told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.” “They’re taking pathogenic viruses and they’re making them more transmissible, they’re making them more virulent, and they’re making them more deadly.”

Some in the MAHA movement have complained that these policies are too modest—and that may be true. But each represents a reversal of policies that, until recently, elite influencers treated as settled. Among fans of MAHA, the more charitable interpretation is that Kennedy, Makary, and Bhattacharya are wisely choosing an incremental approach. It’s easy to forget that they have held their positions for only a few months.

Like much of President Trump’s agenda, it’s been hard to keep pace with these major health policy reforms. However, if the MAHA coalition can stay focused and disciplined, we have every reason for hope that the Trump-Kennedy vision of making American healthier will succeed.

The post Drama Shadows Recent MAHA Wins appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In a tied decision, the Supreme Court Thursday allowed an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that disqualified a Catholic charter school from receiving state funding to stand.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the ruling, resulting in the 4-4 decision.

The court did not issue an opinion, only stating, “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board and its members, seeking to invalidate its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school, supported by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, aims to operate as a Catholic virtual charter school.

The contract had recognized religious rights for St. Isidore that deviated from the expectation that charter schools remain nonsectarian under Oklahoma law. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the contract violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court had taken up the case to examine two questions: whether the education decisions of a privately owned and operated school constitute state action because the school has a contract with the state, and whether the First Amendment’s free exercise cause prohibits—or the establishment clause requires—a state to exclude religious schools from its charter school program.

The Trump administration had previously filed a brief supporting the school, arguing that excluding it from the program would violate its free exercise rights.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

The post BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules Against Catholic Charter School appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry voted for the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, but he’s not very happy about it. The bill passed by 215-214 margin, with one “present” vote.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal, he discussed what happened behind closed doors in last-minute negotiations between congressional leadership, White House staff and holdouts from the fiscally conservative House Freedom Caucus.

“My biggest reservations, quite honestly, generally still remain,” he told The Daily Signal shortly after voting for the budget reconciliation bill. “All the savings happen in the 10-year window, but of course, as always in Washington D.C., at the end of the ten-year window.”

Specifically, Perry wishes the bill had more aggressively reformed Medicaid and Biden-era green energy tax credits to cut spending and calm already uneasy bond markets.

If signed into law, the budget reconciliation bill would fulfill many of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, such as extending his 2017 tax cuts and funding border security. 

But less than 24 hours before voting on the bill, Perry and fellow fiscal hawks from the House Freedom Caucus said they had received an offer the night before from the White House to include more aggressive cost-saving provisions in the bill. 

(From left) Freedom Caucus Reps. Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas discussing the White House’s “offer” Wednesday. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

This was denied by a White House representative, who said that they were presented with policy options, but “no deal.”

Perry rejects this narrative.

“Regardless of what staff at the White House says, we were given an offer, not options,” said Perry. “We were given an offer, and we took it. And then to save face for themselves, they backtracked on it.”

Asked to respond to Perry’s claims of an offer, White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told The Daily Signal, “President Trump is the ultimate deal maker. We are proud of The One Big Beautiful Bill’s passage today in the House and he looks forward to this momentum continuing in the Senate.”

Perry would not go into the details of the offer, but he told The Daily Signal that it was appealing to fiscal conservatives.

“At this point I think it’s kind of moot, but just suffice to say that it was relevant enough. I will say, I will—no, I better not,” he said, when asked for information. 

“It was just relevant enough to get the vast majority of the people that had significant concerns from our viewpoint to ‘yes,’ but it never materialized once we agreed to it.”

Shortly after announcing this offer, Perry and his fellow Freedom Caucus members went to the White House to meet with Trump and Republican House Leadership. 

Asked if any parts of the previous offer were put back on the table after their visit to the White House, Perry said, “No, not one of them.”

After the Freedom Caucus members and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., came back from the White House, the Speaker announced that they had come to a working agreement.

“You will see how all of this is resolved,” he said. “I think we can resolve their concerns, and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas, as well as here in Congress. So there may be executive orders relating to some of these issues in the near future.”

Perry is skeptical of these claims.

“Outside of reconciliation at this point, I don’t see that as very viable,” he told The Daily Signal. The budget reconciliation process is exempt from the Senate’s typical 60-vote requirement for ending debate.

But a few hours after Johnson got back from the White House, he released a “manager’s amendment”—the final draft of the bill that came out of the House Rules Committee. 

This draft contained key concessions to Freedom Caucus members, such as earlier implementation of Medicaid work requirements, and some new limits on green energy tax credits.

Perry says that this amendment was “a combination of the speaker [knowing] where we were, but also out of the conversation at the White House.” 

Despite calling his “yes” on reconciliation, a “tough vote,” Perry is proud of how he and his caucus shaped the entire process.

“We pushed as hard as we could. We improved the bill and process immensely,” he said.

“You recognize and realize the Republican conference went [on retreat] to Doral in Florida and came back with a recommendation of $30 billion in spending cuts? And now we’re at what—1.6 or 1.7 [trillion]… and those are directly due to the efforts of the Freedom Caucus.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. Perry said that the Senate may alter the reconciliation bill (Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Despite his continued reservations about the bill, Perry says that the Senate could still change it in a way that he’d prefer.

“We are hoping to make some changes in the Senate. Now, they could go the other way too, so we have obvious reservations about that.”

It’s almost conventional wisdom in Washington that the Senate does not make bills more fiscally conservative. But Perry says they might have a chance to buck that trend.

“That has been the history,” said Perry. “Now we hear that we have a much more conservative Senate now, and some say arguably more conservative than the House.”

This article has been updated to include comment from The White House.

The post Skeptic of ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Tells All on Last Minute Negotiations appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Republicans secured a provision in the “big, beautiful bill” prohibiting taxpayer funding for all gender transition procedures.

The House Rules Committee’s Wednesday night markup strengthened a provision from the Energy and Commerce Committee preventing Medicaid, CHIP, and Affordable Care Act funding of gender transitions only for minors.

The Rules committee markup struck “for minors” and “under 18” from the bill’s text.

The provision originated from Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s, “Do No Harm In Medicaid Act.”

The provision amends Section 1903(i) of the Social Security Act, halting federal payment for what the amendment calls medically unnecessary transition procedures.

A Cygnal poll conducted in April 2025 found that 66% of Americans oppose taxpayer funding for gender transitions.

A senior legislative official told The Daily Signal the original provision would save $1.4 billion, though the Congressional Budget Office scored the savings at half that.

The House of Representatives passed the budget reconciliation bill by a 215-214 margin early Thursday morning.

It will now go the Senate.

Speaker Mike Johnson said after the vote that he has asked Senate Republicans “to modify this as little as possible, because it will make it easier for us to get it over the line ultimately and finished and get it to the president’s desk by July 4.”

The post House Strengthens Budget Provision Blocking Medicaid Coverage for Sex Changes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Thanks to the Trump administration’s Department of Education, the nation’s largest Christian college has been freed from a massive $37.7 million fine.

In 2023, the Biden administration accused Grand Canyon University of misleading doctoral students about program costs, swiftly imposing the hefty fine. Then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona openly criticized GCU, stating he was “cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students.”

At the time, GCU President Brian Mueller described the accusation as nothing short of “ridiculous.” He had also shared with The Washington Stand that his college had sought to rise above the circumstances by being a good example through Scriptural obedience and service. He also noted that “all the issues we have are with a very small number of people in Washington, D.C.”

However, the situation raised suspicions of targeted persecution, especially as Liberty University, America’s second-largest Christian university, faced a similar $37 million fine around the same time. Mueller highlighted this in a speech, questioning, “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country … are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?”

After nearly two years of legal battles, the Trump administration’s Department of Education announced on Friday that it had rescinded the $37.7 million fine against GCU, clearing the university of any wrongdoing. The university’s press release stated there were “no findings against GCU, or any of its employees, officers, agents, or contractors, and no fine is imposed.” The move has been hailed as both an academic and political victory. The decision also reflects the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting religious institutions from discriminatory enforcement.

Education Department spokesperson Ellen Keast underscored the administration’s stance, stating, “Unlike the previous administration, we will not persecute and prosecute colleges and universities based on their religious affiliation. The Trump administration will continue to ensure every institution of higher education is held accountable based on facts—but department enforcement will be for the purpose of serving students, not political bias.”

The Trump administration’s statement reflected a broader commitment to fairness and impartiality in regulatory oversight, particularly for faith-based institutions that felt unfairly targeted under prior policies. And ultimately, the decision was met with widespread praise from advocates of Christian higher education. David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, considers it a victory for GCU and the broader landscape of Christian colleges and universities.

He told the Washington Stand, “The news today involving Grand Canyon University is encouraging for those who care about Christian higher education.” As Closson explained, “GCU is the nation’s largest Christian college, and it appears they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration. GCU has maintained from the beginning that they did not mislead their doctoral students in terms of course requirements and cost. The granting of their appeal vindicates the contention the university has been making from the beginning.”

Closson also commended GCU’s leadership for its principled response throughout the ordeal. “GCU leadership, including President Mueller, have demonstrated a disposition marked by fruit of the spirit throughout the entire process,” he said. Closson concluded that Christians nationwide should be grateful for the vindication of one of the premier institutions of Christian higher education, which continues to play a vital role in shaping students’ faith and intellect.

Originally published by The Washington Stand

The post Trump Admin Frees Nation’s Largest Christian College From Biden’s $37.7M Fine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A gunman opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night, taking the lives of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a soon-to-be-engaged couple who worked at the Israeli embassy.  

“The couple that was gunned down tonight in the name of ‘free Palestine,’ was a young couple about to be engaged,” according to Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.  

Lischinsky had just purchased a ring and planned to propose to Milgrim in Jerusalem next week. “They were a beautiful couple,” Leiter said. 

The suspect, identified as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez, entered the museum following the shooting and shouted, “Free, free Palestine” as authorities arrested him.  

The couple was shot at “close range while attending a Jewish event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC,” Tal Naim Cohen, spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington said in a statement.  

President Donald Trump reacted to the news early Thursday morning, writing on Truth Social: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”

The young couple was “in the prime of their lives,” the embassy wrote in a post on X.  

“The entire embassy staff is heartbroken and devastated by their murder. No words can express the depth of our grief and horror at this devastating loss. Our hearts are with their families, and the embassy will be by their side during this terrible time.”  

The post Israel Embassy Couple, Soon to be Engaged, Gunned Down at Jewish Museum in DC appeared first on The Daily Signal.

You can always tell when a leftist media outlet doesn’t like a story angle. They’ll cry “no evidence,” and you want to ask them if they actually spent any time searching for evidence. It’s their way of suggesting the story is too disreputable to pursue, like Hunter Biden’s laptop.

On the “PBS News Hour” on May 19, the term was “unfounded.” Republicans are “pouncing” on the news that former President Joe Biden has an aggressive case of prostate cancer. PBS anchor Amna Nawaz lamented: “Donald Trump Jr. has posted online, claiming that the diagnosis here was part of a wider cover-up around Mr. Biden’s health. He’s also repeating unfounded claims that Biden clearly had dementia.”

Here’s what the president’s son tweeted: “The Dem-Media is trying to cover up the cover-up over Biden’s failing health—Which was obvious to anyone with a functioning brain—Because they know it implicates all of them.”

It’s not “unfounded” to claim that the media cooperated in shaming and suppressing Biden’s cognitive decline.

The online headline for Nawaz’s lament focused on the end of the Monday night pundit segment, which focused on President Donald Trump: “Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the battle over Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.'” It looks like they couldn’t “ruin” the homepage with Biden skepticism in the headline.

The U-word was repeated. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith added: “President Trump himself has now also made unfounded claims about how President Biden must have known that he had cancer long before this was made public.”

Nawaz and Keith made no time for Democrat Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s comments on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the advanced stage of Biden’s cancer strongly suggests that he had cancer throughout his presidency. Are MSNBC and the Democrat doctor guilty of “unfounded claims”? Why can’t they spend 24 hours looking into this story before making knee-jerk denunciations?

NPR’s homepage offered a similar headline: “Trump suggests without evidence that Biden delayed sharing his cancer diagnosis.” The story began: “President Trump suggested without evidence on Monday that former President Joe Biden had delayed sharing his prostate cancer diagnosis.”

PBS and NPR would never air stories suggesting “Joe Biden/Kamala Harris suggested without evidence that Donald Trump is a fascist.” Or in the current moment, they didn’t report “Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made the unfounded charge that ICE agents are ‘Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.'”

Instead, when Harris agreed on Charlamagne Tha God’s radio show last October that Trump is a fascist, PBS brought on Trump-despising professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat for a story headlined “Trump ramps up his dangerous political rhetoric in final weeks of campaign.”

It’s apparently not “dangerous” to compare Trump to fascist dictators after two assassination attempts.

In that story, PBS reporter Laura Barron-Lopez even platformed Harris attacking Trump for a lack of transparency! Harris said: “He refuses to release his medical records. I have done it. Every other presidential—every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a ’60 Minutes’ interview, like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century.”

After press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre agreed two weeks later that Biden saw Trump as a fascist, PBS brought on Ben-Ghiat again for a segment headlined “How Trump’s rhetoric compares to historic fascist language.” In the liberal bubble of “public broadcasting,” this smear is never “unfounded.” Over and over with Trump, it sounds like the “PBS Pounce Hour.”

The notion that Trump-supporting taxpayers have to turn over their hard-earned money for these transparently partisan “public media” outlets never stops being an outrage.

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

The post PBS, NPR, and the ‘Unfounded’ Charge of the Bidens Hiding Cancer appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill that, if signed into law, would secure a number of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, such as extending his first-term 2017 tax cuts and funding border security.

The bill passed by 215-214 margin, with one “present” vote.

It will now go the Senate. Johnson said after the vote that he has asked Senate Republicans “to modify this as little as possible, because it will make it easier for us to get it over the line ultimately and finished and get it to the president’s desk by July 4.”

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie, Ky., and Warren Davidson, Ohio, joined all Democrats in voting against the bill. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

 Davidson announced his “no” vote early Wednesday morning, writing on X, “Deficits do matter and this bill grows them now. The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in. Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan.” 

Massie echoed this sentiment, writing, “If we were serious, we’d be cutting spending now, instead of promising to cut spending years from now.”

Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., did not vote.

After the bill passed, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., stated, “we really had 217 votes this morning. Andrew Garbarino did not make it in time. He fell asleep in the back. No kidding, I know. I’m going to just strangle him.”

He added, “And then, David Schweikert was going to vote and slipped his card in right at the last minute… It was really 217. Would y’all put a footnote somewhere in history on that thing? They’re both going to go on record saying that’s how they would have voted if they got the card in on time.”

Going into Wednesday, the whip count was not in leadership’s favor, as Rep. Harris said that there was “no way it passes today” due to a lack of concessions on conservative demands such as more aggressive Medicaid reforms and the phasing out of former President Joe Biden’s green energy subsidies.

However, after talks involving House leadership and the White House with House Freedom Caucus holdouts, the Republican conference came together in solidarity to pass the bill.

The “one big, beautiful bill,” as Trump calls it, is a massive 10-year fiscal framework that is exempt from being filibustered and requiring a 60-vote Senate supermajority to pass.

The White House laid on the pressure in the final days before the vote, with Trump visiting the Capitol on Tuesday for a meeting with the entire House Republican conference, where he prodded them to wrap up negotiations.

The executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put out a statement Wednesday that warned against opposing the bill.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this would be the ultimate betrayal,” the statement read.

The bill that came to the floor Wednesday night extends Trump’s first-term 2017 tax cuts, increases defense spending and allocates billions towards deportation of illegal immigrants and border security efforts. 

However, it also contains some controversial provisions that caused intense debate in the House. 

For one, the bill meets a target of $880 billion in savings in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s section, which encompasses Medicare and Medicaid funding. 

Those spending cuts, which made some moderate, swing state members, such as Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., nervous, were carried out by instituting a number of reforms, such as instituting “community engagement” requirements for Medicaid.

However, many fiscal hawks felt that the reforms did not go far enough, as they were not set to go into effect until 2029—after the next presidential election. 

Another issue in the reconciliation process was the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions. A SALT deduction allows residents in high-tax states to deduct their state and local taxes on their federal tax returns.

Pro-SALT Republicans, such as Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., made clear they wouldn’t vote yes for any bill that didn’t include a major increase in that cap. Late in the process, they rejected an offer from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., to raise the cap on deductions from $10,000 to $30,000.

Johnson later upped the offer to $40,000. Contributing to the confusion was the fact that those intense disagreements were not resolved publicly until shortly before the bill came to the floor.

After a meeting of House GOP leadership, Trump and Freedom Caucus members at the White House Wednesday afternoon, Speaker Johnson came back to the Capitol exuding confidence they had found a compromise.

“You will see how all of this is resolved,” he said. “I think we can resolve their concerns, and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas, as well as here in Congress. So there may be executive orders relating to some of these issues in the near future.”

A few hours later, the House Rules Committee released a “manager’s amendment” containing key concessions, such as raising the SALT cap to $40,000 and implementing Medicaid community engagement requirements in December 2026—a month after the next midterm elections.

The bill also contained concessions related to ending Biden-era green energy tax credits, such as sunsetting credits for “facilities placed in service after December 31, 2028.”

The post House Passes ‘Big, Beautiful’ Budget Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Two Senate Republicans will introduce legislation to promote a holistic approach to healing infertility.

Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and James Lankford, R-Okla., will introduce the Reproductive Empowerment and Support Through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act on Thursday to address underlying causes of infertility like endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome.

“So many couples of today’s childbearing-aged generations face an uphill battle with fertility struggles that are complex and unique to every woman and man,” Hyde-Smith said. “The holistic fertility policy promoted through the RESTORE Act aims to treat the root causes of infertility, many of which stem from chronic conditions and environmental factors that are the focus of President Trump’s MAHA movement.”

The bill would “promote research and data collection on reproductive health conditions” and “provide training opportunities for medical professionals to learn how to diagnose and treat” those conditions, according to the legislative text obtained by The Daily Signal.

The bill was first introduced in the 118th Congress and has been updated to include more substantive solutions to both male and female infertility.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., and Riley Moore, R-W.Va., are introducing a House companion measure.

The U.S. birth rate has been on a downward slide since the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. In 2024, the total fertility rate went up slightly, though, but still by less than 1%. The total projected number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime is now 1.63, which is slightly above the 2023 projection, but still well below the population replacement rate of 2.1.

If passed, the bill would promote educational tools for women seeking information about reproductive health conditions and restorative reproductive medicine.

It would also provide training opportunities for medical professionals to learn how to diagnose and treat reproductive health conditions.

The bill directs the secretary of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health to conduct data collection and implement ongoing reports to assess the access women and men have to restorative reproductive medicine and infertility care through proper testing, diagnosis, and treatment of reproductive conditions.

It uses existing funding opportunities in Title X and the Office of Population Affairs to provide medical training for medical students and professionals to treat couples struggling with reproductive health conditions and infertility.

Additions to the bill from its original version include provisions advancing lifestyle medicine prescriptions as a method for treating male infertility and directing HHS, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid, and all relevant panels to update the diagnostic and procedural codes related to infertility treatments that implement the practice of restorative reproductive medicine. 

“If we are going to truly support women and men who are ready to embrace parenthood, then we should promote substantive fertility solutions that ensure access to restorative reproductive medicine—fully healing couples and empowering them with autonomy over how they start and build their families,” Hyde-Smith said.

The bill contains strong religious and conscience protections and has been endorsed by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists Action, Americans United for Life, the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Family Policy Alliance, Heritage Action for America, March for Life Action, Students for Life Action, and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Doctors who practice restorative reproductive medicine say it has comparable outcomes to in vitro fertilization for a fraction of the costs and without side effects.

“We really believe that restorative reproductive medicine should be first line treatment for most couples that are experiencing infertility,” restorative reproductive medicine specialist Dr. Monica Minjeur told The Daily Signal. “We are trying to address those underlying causes and conditions, and what we find is that we have similar outcomes [to IVF].”

Restorative reproductive medicine has about the premature-birth rate of IVF, Minjeur said.

“We’re correcting the underlying health conditions of not only the woman, but sometimes the male partner as well,” she said. “Helping to improve better outcomes for mom, for dad, for baby along the way, then sets them up for better health long term, and if they want to go on to conceive again in the future, we’ve already addressed those underlying conditions.”

The post EXCLUSIVE: Senators to Introduce Bill Promoting Holistic Fertility Methods appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In February 2024, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., received a devastating phone call from a sheriff in his home district while attending a Trump rally in South Carolina. The sheriff informed Collins that Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student enrolled at Augusta University’s College of Nursing, had been murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Feb. 24.

The gruesome murder set off almost a year of policy debates and political calculus that culminated in President Donald Trump signing the Laken Riley Act into law. Collins, the leading House Republican on that piece of legislation, joined “The Signal Sitdown” to give a behind-the-scenes look at how Republicans got this major legislative accomplishment across the finish line.

When Collins received that call in February 2024, he had a feeling the perpetrator was a criminal illegal alien. “I said, ‘Oh God, don’t tell me what you’re gonna tell me next,’” Collins recalled. In response, the sheriff told Collins, “Well, I can’t confirm it, but I can assure you.”

The illegal alien murderer, 26-year-old José Antonio Ibarra of Venezuela, was arrested the day after the heinous crime. Riley’s murder could have easily been prevented if America had anything close to a sane immigration system.

Ibarra, who was found guilty of all charges in November 2024, was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after illegally entering the United States in September 2022, but he was released on parole while awaiting further immigration proceedings. A year later, Ibarra was arrested in New York City and charged with acting in a manner to injure a child under 17 but was released back onto the streets. A month later, Ibarra and his brother were arrested in Athens, Georgia, for shoplifting at a local Walmart. He was released while awaiting court proceedings, proceedings for which he failed to appear. 

Soon after learning about Riley’s murder, Collins said he “made a phone call to the family and told them that we were gonna be on top of this.”

The product was the Laken Riley Act, which Collins introduced in the last Congress on March 1, 2024. The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants arrested for a number of crimes, such as theft, rather than letting criminal illegal immigrants out on the street and hoping they do not strike again.

The bill passed out of the Republican-controlled House with some Democrat support, but “when it got to the Senate, it just fell into that big black hole over there,” Collins said.

“I told the family, uh, we talked after it went over there and I was told there’s no way it’s coming up,” Collins recalled. “And I told them it had gotten personal. I told them that I couldn’t let it go.”

“No matter what, we were gonna get this passed if it’s the last thing that I ever do,” Collins said.

The strategy was straightforward: Say her name. “We were sitting around [thinking] how do we do this? We make sure that we keep this in the public, we make sure that we keep this in the media. We make sure that Laken Riley’s name becomes the face of this problem,” Collins told The Daily Signal. “We do that, we’ll be able to get some legislation that’ll impact and make a change.”

Democrats only changed their tune on legislation like the Laken Riley Act after thoroughly getting embarrassed in the November election. Collins went door to door on Capitol Hill to try to whip the votes in both the House and Senate to get the Laken Riley Act on Trump’s desk.

Some Democrats, however, threatened to undermine the effectiveness of the bill while still taking credit for it, Collins said—even elected officials from his own state. “[Sen. Jon Ossoff] told me he was gonna dismantle the whole bill, make it his bill.” 

“That ought to tell you where people stood right then,” he recalled. “It wasn’t about the policy, it was about the politics. Because he’s up for reelection and he knows he’s in trouble.”

Collins and Republicans managed to keep the bill intact and apply enough pressure so that Democrats caved. The House voted in favor, 264-to-159, and the Senate, 64-to-35.

Collins was with Riley’s family when Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law on Jan. 29, 2025. Collins recalled Riley’s mother asked to speak at the signing event, turning to him and saying, “Mike, I get pretty emotional,” Collins recalled.

“I said, yeah, me too,” Collins replied, “but when I do, I just take in a deep breath, and when I do that, I can continue talking.”

During her speech, “it was getting emotional,” Collins said. “She paused, and I could see out of the corner of my eye, President Trump … put his hand on her shoulder.”

”You think about how that young lady fought for her life,” Collins said, “she fought to her last breath, and that’s the least that we could do for her.”

The post Inside the Fight to Pass the Laken Riley Act appeared first on The Daily Signal.