Former President Barack Obama posted on X in response to the attempted shooting of President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The post began with a familiar formula:

“Although we don’t yet have all the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting…”

And yet—almost instantly—the moral framing is already in place.

It’s a bit like a disciplined defense in football—the Left defends every blade of grass.

Nothing is conceded. No ground is given—not even in the first moments, when facts are still emerging. Every inch of interpretation is contested immediately.

This is the toolkit of an elite communicator—skills that helped get him to the top—deployed with the confidence that perception can be shaped at scale. He is using these tools to condition Americans.

Built into the former president’s comments is deflection. He is attempting to sever any link between rhetoric and consequences—because if that link takes hold, it constrains what can be said next.

The potential cause-and-effect is so politically costly that it’s easier to obscure it than to reckon with it.

Scions of the Left like the former president guide perception. They set boundaries. They create permission structures for how events are interpreted.

In modern political communication, uncertainty about facts rarely slows down the narrative. If anything, it accelerates it. A lack of clarity creates space, and that space gets filled quickly, often before the public has time to process what actually happened.

That is clearly a strategic move.

Language like Obama’s doesn’t confront emerging conclusions head-on. It redirects them. It encourages hesitation at the precise moment people are forming judgments, subtly shifting the focus from what’s visible to what might still be unknown.

“Don’t jump to conclusions.” “Motives are unclear.” “Let’s see more facts.”

It sounds measured.

But the practical effect is to interrupt momentum—to slow the natural formation of judgment and replace it with uncertainty that can be shaped over time.

And that delay matters. Because once initial reactions are softened, interpretation becomes more fluid—and easier to guide.

This isn’t aimed at people who are already certain. It’s aimed at those who feel tension but aren’t sure how to resolve it. The language offers an escape hatch: a way to stay in that uncertainty without committing one way or the other.

And it doesn’t just influence supporters—it complicates the response from critics.

It forces critics to defend what moments earlier felt obvious—while opening them up to being dismissed as premature or politically motivated.

The field tightens around the interpretation of events. Reality becomes contested terrain.

This broader communication model—narrative first, facts later—is at the core of what’s explored in “You Don’t Know Barack: Exposing Obama.” The myth, the image, the carefully managed story of this man is compared to the underlying record.

First as a candidate and then as president, Obama refined this model of communication, and its influence didn’t end with his presidency.

There’s another layer here that matters just as much: Obama understands his influence.

He knows that when he speaks, millions of people take cues from him. For many, his words still carry real weight.

That brings responsibility. Because when someone with that level of authority emphasizes uncertainty, he isn’t just describing a lack of information. He’s shaping how that lack of information is interpreted. He’s setting the tone for how others respond.

At this point, that pattern is well established. The outcomes are predictable. The effects are known.

We were told his presidency would unify the country.

Instead, the years that followed saw deepening cultural and political fractures that continue to define American life. Whether by design or by effect, the gap between rhetoric and reality widened.

Even his legacy projects reflect that divide. The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has been praised in elite circles but criticized locally as out of touch, with real concerns about displacement.

Image over impact and narrative over substance. That pattern holds.

And it brings us back to moments like this.

Language at this level isn’t passive. It shapes perception. It defines what people feel permitted to believe—or question.

You don’t get to indulge this kind of framing, normalize it, and elevate those who deploy it and then act surprised when the downstream effects are confusion and distrust.

When clarity is repeatedly softened into ambiguity, people stop trusting their own judgment.

And when truth itself feels negotiable, the consequences are inevitable.

Those paying attention can see it clearly: this is the craft of a master operator—calculated, disciplined, and rooted in a cynical approach that has long disguised division as something else.

Not caution.

Not restraint.

But design.

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

Most justices seemed unconvinced Monday that law enforcement’s use of Google data to track a bank robber violates the Constitution.

The case stemmed from the prosecution of Okello Chatrie, who conditionally pleaded guilty in 2022 to robbing a Midlothian, Virginia, credit union. He reserved his right to make the case for suppressing evidence if it was illegally obtained.

His lawyer, Adam Unikowsky, argued to the high court Monday that a court-approved geofence warrant used to identify and apprehend him violated the Fourth Amendment. The warrants were to compel third-party companies such as Google to search customer locations from multiple devices in a finite area during a finite time, in this case, being the time of the robbery.

Chatrie was reportedly sentenced to 12 years for taking $195,000 from the bank. Law enforcement argued it exhausted other leads in its investigation before resorting to a geofence warrant.

Chief Justice John Roberts asked Unikowsky on Monday, “If you don’t want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off. You don’t have to have that feature on your phone. So what’s the issue?”

Unikowsky replied it was not implied consent.

“I just don’t agree that one should have to flip off one’s location history, as well as other cloud services, to avoid government surveillance,” he said.

Roberts responded, “If you don’t want someone to peer in your window, you can close your window or the shades.”

Justice Samuel Alito said, “I’m struggling to understand why we are hearing this case.” He noted that the debate is about a Google feature that no longer exists.

“We are all free to write law review articles on this fascinating subject, but that seems to be what you’re asking for,” Alito said.

The attorney responded, “All we’d ask for in this case is, if the court finds a Fourth Amendment violation, to reverse and send it back for the Fourth Circuit to consider the good faith issue in view of this court’s guidance.”

The plaintiff did seem to get some sympathy from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on the liberal wing of the court. She noted that Google documents, Google calendars, and other information can be obtained by law enforcement.

“If this is consent, that means the government can seek those documents for any reason, not just the commission for crime,” Sotomayor said.

“So that means the government, a police officer, randomly decides, I don’t like that person. Let me just go look at their life to see if I can find the crime. That would be okay,” Sotomayor continued.

Unikowsky replied, “Correct.”

Arguing for the Trump administration, Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin said ruling with the plaintiffs would constitute an “unprecedented transformation of the Fourth Amendment into an impregnable fortress.”

“In doing so, he would make that fortress so impregnable that not even a judge’s warrant, for even a moment of the public location of someone who, again, affirmatively opted to allow Google to have those records and to access them, would be available to law enforcement,” Feigin added. “That’s a debilitating and counterintuitive reading of the Fourth Amendment that would impede the investigation of kidnappings, robberies, shootings, and other crimes.”

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

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

We have had the third attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, where shots were exchanged within two years, recently at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., last Saturday evening. No president in U.S. history has been the object, the target, of three assassination attempts in which shots were fired by either law enforcement or the shooter himself.

And yet Trump—this is the third time.

So, we’ve had Cole Tomas Allen. We had Ryan Routh, remember, in Palm Beach, and we had Thomas Crooks on the roof in Butler. We also had a young man—Jonathan Oddi—and he was the person who tried to break into Mar‑a‑Lago and kill Trump, and he was killed himself by law enforcement.

Trump was not at Mar‑a‑Lago, but what is building this up? What’s the reason for all this? I’ll give you some examples. One is Hasan Piker. He’s sort of the Nick Fuentes of the Left. He’s an influencer, a podcaster, a commentator, and he’s captivated the base of the Left with his extreme anti‑Israel, antisemitic, pro‑Hamas, pro‑ISIS Islamist rhetoric. And he has said most recently, in an interview with The New Yorker and a New York Times reporter, that it was fine to steal from the Louvre, steal from stores, according to his Marxist doctrine that people must take what they need, given what he feels is the oppression of capitalism.

He also, remember, very controversially in this interview excused—or praised—he didn’t want to quite say that he would have killed Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. But he said it was a “social murder.” In other words, according to Marxist dialogue, that’s a term that people use to say that when somebody is deemed arbitrarily the enemy of the people, you can kill them with exemption.

But here’s what I’m getting at. In an earlier interview, he said, “Everybody knows someone has to do it.” And Taylor Lorenz, who had interviewed him on, I guess, more than one occasion, pointed out that he was talking at that time about killing Trump. So, he’d lowered the bar. In addition to people like Hasan Piker, there’s a number of celebrities, movie stars, political figures, and they’ve lowered the bar of what’s acceptable.

And by that I mean they have, in various waves, talked about either killing Trump or beating him up. And they all have preferred methodologies. Nancy Pelosi or Gavin Newsom or Robert De Niro—their preference was hitting him in the mouth. You remember that. Pelosi said, “I’d like to hit him, and then I would go to jail.” Newsom said he wanted to hit him in the mouth. Robert De Niro has said it so many times I can’t even recall them all.

For Kathy Griffin, remember, her preferred method was decapitation. For Shakespeare in the Park, remember that Shakespearean troupe that substituted a person who looked like Trump for Julius Caesar, where he was stabbed numerous times.

We had a famous chef who suggested he would like to poison Trump. We had Snoop Dogg, who said that he would shoot Trump, and I think he reenacted that. We’ve had people who have suggested—I think—we had a rock group that portrayed Trump as being eaten by vultures.

I could go on, but my point is that people on the Left in popular culture have, for now almost a decade, reified the idea—the abstract idea—of killing Trump with real examples, and that lowers the bar. And that means people like Cole Tomas Allen come out of the woodwork, or Oddi, or Routh, or Crooks. They come out because they feel that they’re going to be in the pantheon of leftist heroes if they kill Trump.

It’s not just these people, though. There’s also, remember, major figures—not just people in Hollywood or politicians—but major institutions that have talked about Trump as a fascist. Kamala Harris has said that Donald Trump—on two occasions—was a fascist.

Tim Walz just flew all the way to anti‑American Barcelona, Spain, in a time of war and wrote off the effort of our military, and Donald Trump is fascism. That was the sixth time—six times—he’s called Trump a fascist. Do you remember The New Republic cover during the campaign, where they had a picture of Donald Trump Photoshopped as if he were Adolf Hitler?

Joy Reid—who’s now gone from the network, she’s lost her job—almost religiously said that Donald Trump was a Hitlerian figure. Rachel Maddow said, “I have to study Hitler more to understand Trump.”

Well, my point is this. If all these celebrities are talking about killing him, burning him, cutting him in pieces, blowing him up—remember Madonna and Moby, “Let’s blow him up”—if they all do that ad nauseam again and again over a decade, and then you have this new heartthrob, the Nick Fuentes of the left, Hasan Piker, and he’s really legitimizing murder by contextualizing Luigi Mangione and making him into a hero, then everybody knows what you have to do.

So, he is lowering the bar. And then you have these major news reporters and politicians talking about Trump. And when I say “major,” I mean the Democratic ticket was headed by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and what they have in common is that they referred to Donald Trump as a fascist.

My point is this: If you believe he’s a fascist like Hitler—and you many times refer to him as Hitler, as many have done—Hitler caused a war that killed 70 million people. He incinerated 6 million Jews and another half-million Roma, homosexuals, and political prisoners. So, he is an evil man.

So, if a person is a little bit unhinged, or he is on social media, or he is suffering from arrested development and living at home, like many of these people were, they get it into their head that if I shoot Donald Trump, I’m going to be in the pantheon of leftist heroes for the rest of eternity. And maybe they’re right, because remember, you go into social media sometimes and these people will celebrate the attempt but regret the inability to kill Trump.

Now, let me just finish by saying, over this two‑year period, there have been three attempts. He’s got two more years in office. The Secret Service was lax under [Joe] Biden. They did a wonderful job inside the Hilton Hotel, but there were problems—why Allen was able to go in, check in with weaponry, and apparently walk around with weapons in his possession, and no one found him or checked him, or there was no security check at the entrance of the hotel.

So, my point is, in the next two years, we should expect—unfortunately, tragically—more of these assassination attempts unless we get people in the Democratic Party to speak out and say, “Stop it.”

We’ve had Steve Scalise and the baseball shooting. Bernie Sanders did that. We had Charlie Kirk, who was shot. Another leftist shot him. People on the Left—many of them—celebrated him. Hakeem Jeffries came out after this talk and said, “What? We’ve got to lower the temperature.”

Congratulations, House Minority Leader Jeffries. I just wish that when you opposed the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” you didn’t pose with a baseball bat, or that female members of the congressional Democratic delegation didn’t make a video about fighting and kickboxing and punching an imaginary Trump, as we were supposed to understand.

Or maybe, Representative Jeffries, just maybe, you should tell major luminaries on the Democratic side of politics—Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Tim Walz, Jasmine Crockett, Kamala Harris—please stop calling Trump a fascist, Hitler. Then we would believe you. But otherwise, we simply don’t.

And you’ve lowered the bar for every nut in America to take a shot at a president.

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

In 2019, the Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona spent over $20 million to tear down and completely rebuild a school named Pima Elementary. This year, it voted to close the school.

Pima Elementary, designed for up to 840 students, reopened at less than 60% of that capacity, and it continued to decline. This fall, just seven years later, the school building won’t contain a single student.

Far from a one-off tale of district mismanagement, the closing of a brand new $20 million school building illustrates how easy special interest groups find it to manipulate school districts.

A nationwide baby bust had begun eight years before the bond election, meaning that there were already fewer students to go around. Likewise, the high price of housing in Scottsdale became a significant deterrent to young families locating there.

The district annually pays for an outside firm to provide a report on demographic and enrollment trends, so none of this should have caught members by surprise. Eight years into a baby bust that began in 2008, and despite standing at only 55% of physical capacity, Scottsdale Unified pushed for and received a $229 million bond for buildings in 2016.

Critics of school choice always attempt to scapegoat family options, but district open enrollment remains the largest form of choice, and Scottsdale Unified is a net beneficiary of the give-and-take between districts.

Approximately 26% of Scottsdale Unified students come from outside of their attendance boundaries, and without students transferring in from other districts, far more Scottsdale schools would long ago have closed.

Arizona Department of Education enrollment reports show that if open enrollment, charter schools, and the state’s education savings account program were all eliminated, the net impact on Scottsdale Unified enrollment would be only a few hundred students. In the process of eliminating choice programs, thousands of students would leave their preferred schools, including many in Scottsdale Unified itself.

In other words, the district both gains and loses students through choice, and choice is not the primary driver of enrollment loss.

The district had substantial underutilized space when it decided to ask voters for over a quarter of a billion dollars in building funds in 2016. Why then did a school district with declining enrollment and abundant underutilized space go $229 million in debt on new buildings?

The answer has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with education outcomes.

Building district schools is a profitable activity, with some studies showing districts spending about one-third more per square foot than public charter schools.

School district elections have low visibility and low rates of voter turnout. Low visibility, low turnout, and high profits are a recipe for corruption.

The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and KJZZ reported in 2017 on financial relationships school districts in the Phoenix area had with a small group of architects, construction companies, and subcontractors. They found that architects, construction firms, and subcontractors accounted for nearly all the financial contributions made to Maricopa County (which contains the greater Phoenix metropolitan area) school districts’ bond and override campaigns from 2013-2016, including the Scottsdale Unified election.

Such pay-to- play crony capitalism would be more than dubious even in a fast-growing district, but it has also been happening in districts with shrinking enrollments like Scottsdale Unified.

In the years following the bond election, authorities charged Scottsdale’s superintendent with 18 felonies, including procurement fraud and misuse of public monies. The superintendent and other top administrators resigned, but the dubious construction, like that at Pima Elementary, proceeded. Multiple schools were torn down and rebuilt, and Pima may only be the first of these schools to close, rather than the last.

Scottsdale Unified is far from the only district to build new space despite declining enrollment. A recent study published by the Common Sense Institute of Arizona found that Arizona school districts statewide have a staggering 78 million square feet of underutilized or vacant school space, which could accommodate as many as 630 thousand additional students. For context, school districts statewide educate approximately 800 thousand students statewide.

National exams of student academic achievement show approximately the same success for Arizona school districts in teaching mathematics and reading as they have had in physical plant management. Spending per pupil is up, and achievement is down.

Arizona charter schools outscore all statewide averages on both eighth-grade reading and math despite getting less taxpayer spending per pupil, while the scores of Arizona school districts rank near the bottom.

The unfortunate reality to confront is that school districts are not so much broken as they are working perfectly for the interests of their major shareholders. These include not just builders but also unionized employees.

In the latest pressure campaign on Republican leadership, a group of Washington conservatives is asking President Donald Trump to use his constitutional authority to force Congress into session indefinitely until it fully funds the Department of Homeland Security.

On Saturday, shortly after an attempt on Trump’s life at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Jeff Clark, vice president of the Oversight Project, called on the president to force the Senate into session “until they fund ALL of DHS — without exception!”

Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president, is under DHS’ purview.

The department has been shut down without congressional appropriations since Feb. 14, as Democrats refused to fund immigration enforcement without policy concessions.

Article II of the Constitution grants the president the authority to convene a session of Congress “on extraordinary Occasions.”

No president has invoked this power since 1948, when then-President Harry Truman, a Democrat, called both houses of Congress back into session after they had already adjourned for the year.

The Senate has passed an appropriations bill to fund all of the department except for immigration enforcement. 

Last week, the chamber agreed to a framework for a party-line budget bill, which would inject funding into Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection.

The Senate’s piecemeal approach toward funding the agency has been met with a cold reception among some House conservatives, who have yet to advance the upper chamber’s plan.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, supported Clark’s call for action. “I am tired of the half-assed garbage on DHS,” he wrote in a post on X.

“I agree with and support this plan,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. “President Trump should follow this recommendation.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., disagreed with Clark in a social media post on Sunday, but recommended a more drastic measure—eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for ending debate on bills.

“Don’t need a special session, just need 7 Senate Democrats to vote for the DHS funding bill that the House has already passed,” wrote Johnson. “If Democrats refuse, Republicans should nuke the filibuster to pass it on our own.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., concurred with Johnson.

“Once again, someone tried to kill President Trump, and this time the perpetrator could have killed the Vice President and most of the cabinet. I agree with Senator Johnson. We need DHS and secret service funded immediately. No more delays, no more excuses,” Scott wrote on X in reply.

Editor’s Note: The Supreme Court of Virginia is now weighing the recently passed redistricting referendum that was designed by the Democrat-led state government to swipe four of the five U.S. congressional seats held by Republicans in the purple state. If allowed to stand, congressional representation could go from a 6–5 split to 10–1. The Daily Signal’s Virginia correspondent Joe Thomas sat down with the Commonwealth’s former attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, to discuss the legal future of the referendum.

This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.

Joe Thomas: He is the former acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, state senator, and now just dad and granddad and the head of the Election Transparency Initiative. Can’t imagine what we would have. He’s getting, you know, he’s all over the place.

He was on Newsmax, he’s on CNN, even NBC has found Ken Cuccinelli’s phone number this morning. So, Ken, good morning, thank you so much for taking some time out with us. How are you doing, first and foremost?

Ken Cuccinelli: But I hadn’t been on with Joe Thomas yet, so this is the topper.

Thomas: Well, you know, I’m going to cede control to your and my dear friend Christopher Horner, the bestselling author of “Red Hot Lies.” And, you know, just recovering from his Earth Day celebrations yesterday, he texted me and said, “Please ask Ken to recount the history of how the Virginia courts treated these kind of cases before Tuesday. That should help answer a lot of the confusion that I’m reading.” Now, if he’s reading stuff online, he’s getting all sorts of things about that.

Cuccinelli: Chris Horner is a very smart character.

Thomas: Yes, he is.

Cuccinelli: And when the Virginia Supreme Court sort of froze the cases in February, or case at that time, people thought they were ducking. In fact, there is precedent from well over 100 years ago in Virginia that the vote on a referendum is part of the legislative process. It’s like the governor signing a bill.

And while I’m sitting here waiting to sue in the assault weapons ban, I can’t do it until there’s final action taken on the bill by the governor in this case. And the vote by the people in the referendum is analogous to the governor signing a bill. So, the court can’t act until the legislative process is complete. 

Well, that was completed on Tuesday. And now it’s legal game on. And had it been defeated, of course, there’d be nothing for the court to do.

Now there are three cases that are really going to be decided by the Supreme Court of Virginia, not the U.S. Supreme Court, folks. Hear me clearly. Supreme Court of Virginia, SCOVA, not SCOTUS.

Thomas: So, the Judge [Jack] Hurley in Tazewell County issued an injunction yesterday to keep the Board of Elections from certifying the election results. And I pointed out that this is one of those that’ll glaze your eyes over. But it’s important because that would have given the Supreme Court of Virginia an opportunity to say, “Well, we can’t overturn the official results of an election. So, we’re just going to kick the can back down because they’ve already certified it.” To me, that’s how I read the tea leaves on that ruling yesterday.

Am I wrong?

Cuccinelli: Well, he certainly seems to be pushing things along. And he did enjoin the certification of the election. We will see what the Supreme Court does in that regard. 

You know, they may leave it in place. They may leave his injunction in place. But they’re moving on an expedited basis for the case they have in front of them.

Joe, there’s four constitutional challenges, all state constitutional challenges. Three of them relate to the referendum. And one relates to just how badly gerrymandered the map is.

That’s easy for people to understand. We have a compactness and contiguity requirement in our Constitution. But the court won’t get to the map until it resolves the three process challenges.

And they’re all such brazen violations of the state constitution. I don’t ever think they’re going to get to the map. So, we’ll see how this plays out.

I believe briefs are due today in the Supreme Court. And I understand they’re having oral argument on Monday. I haven’t seen an announcement on their website, but I understand that is the schedule for the first two constitutional challenges.

They both relate to the first passage back on Halloween. So, first passage happened in what the Democrats allege was a special session. Well, that special session was called in May of 2024 to deal with the budget.

If you want to add a new topic, you have to have a vote of the Legislature, and it needs to be a two-thirds vote. Well, that didn’t happen. So, that’s constitutional violation No. 1.

They also violated their own joint resolution, the rules the Legislature sets up for its own session. And that’s No. 1. That’s in front of the Supreme Court already.

No. 2 is that—like many states—Virginia requires a proposed amendment to be passed twice by the General Assembly before it goes to the people on either side of an intervening state election.

Thomas: This is my favorite part of this.

Cuccinelli: Yeah, it’s my favorite part too, actually.

So, what they want to count as the intervening election is the 2025 election. You’ll recall they passed this on Halloween last year and voting started Sept. 19. Over a million people had already voted in the election.

And the delicious part of this really from a cathartic standpoint is that it’s the Democrats, these same Democrats, who gave us this 45-day election. There’s no reason ever anywhere for a 45-day election. And yet now they’re going to get hoisted on their own little petard because they couldn’t move fast enough and get their proposed amendment passed prior to this election.

Thomas: Well, to be fair, I mean, they had to wait until Eric Holder’s check cleared there. But, you know, this is the interesting part of this. And I want to investigate this.

Ken Cuccinelli is on with me from the Election Transparency Initiative. Ken, the part that I find most delicious in this is now their argument is that no, Election Day is only the day we tabulate the votes. All the other votes are just procedural days.

You weren’t really voting when you thought you were voting because we didn’t count it until election day. Do you think that has any legs to stand on, even in front of the most liberal justice? 

Cuccinelli: No, I think this could be 7-0. 

Thomas: Wow.

Cuccinelli: I think they could lose this 7-0. Because it’s so brazen and blatant that even any judge from the Left who might be tempted to be politically helpful couldn’t stomach this for the very reason you cite. Look, there have been arguments sort of like this made at the federal level for 30 years, not quite 30 years, and they have always and everywhere been rejected.

The similar arguments what the Democrats are making here. Now, that doesn’t, none of those are binding on Virginia. This is a Virginia constitutional question.

But there’s no definition. It’s just plain English. So, regular folks, you don’t need to be a lawyer, can just read this provision, decide what it means.

And that’s largely how the Supreme Court’s going to decide it. They’ll apply rules of interpretation, of course, but those aren’t going to help the Democrats here.

Thomas: I think that’s what makes the Democrats so mad is that it’s pretty obvious to everybody. That’s why they had to spend $70 million to eke out a one percentage point victory at the ballot box. 

Cuccinelli: Yeah, it took them a 3- or 4-to-1 spending advantage, 10-to-1 at the beginning, to eke out a two-to-three-point overturning of a 2-to-1 constitutional amendment vote by the people of Virginia, a bipartisan redistricting commission that I was involved in that also, had tried to get it for 15 years. And if you look at our map, setting aside who you want to win and lose, our maps match the political play out of voting as a general matter in Virginia, perhaps closer than any other state in the country right now.

We literally are going to go from the best to the worst. 

Thomas: Right, yeah. Somebody had, I don’t know if it was Politico or somebody had listed us as the best maps congressionally.

Now, I’m going to ask you to put your political hat on before we have to let you go. Which is worse for Virginia Republicans, that the maps are allowed to stand and you go at it, because I did the math, if you use the 2021 election as a template, Republicans actually pick up a seat in this scenario, or …

Cuccinelli: You mean Republicans end up 6-5?

Thomas: Yeah, if you use Glenn Youngkin’s election as a template, not Abigail Spanberger’s. That being said, there are a lot of people who are gnashing teeth over a Supreme Court ruling that’s just going to be turned into campaign fodder that the Democrats are going to use as kindling to burn, you know, down Republican candidates in November anyway, even in the old districts.

Just as somebody who’s won a few elections in your life, which do you think holds more water? 

Cuccinelli: So, politically, in a midterm year with a Republican president who is good at many things, but there’s nothing he’s better at than pissing off his opponents. I mean, they ran this whole campaign here Tuesday against him, and he makes that easy. Let’s just face it. He does a lot of great things, but he really motivates the opposition, and this midterm year is going to be very hard for Republicans.

This is not going to be a Youngkin-looking map. I wish it was, but it’s just not very realistic.

Thomas: Well, Ken, it’s…

Cuccinelli: We do, but the court shouldn’t care about any of this, right? They should just care about, here’s the Constitution.

Was it obeyed? And the answer here is blatantly and brazenly, no, it was violated. 

Thomas: Electiontransparency.org. I’m going to leave you with this one, Ken. Isn’t it fun listening to Democrats talk about activist judges? 

Cuccinelli: Yeah, I did get a kick out of that.

Thomas: Yes. We have to find our fun where we can. Bless you, sir. You have a great morning, and thanks for taking some time out with us today. 

Cuccinelli: Always good to talk to you, Joe.

Thomas: And please, if you can, contribute electiontransparency.org.

The suspected shooter at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was charged with attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, also faces charges of transporting a firearm across state lines and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He appeared in federal court in Washington for his arraignment on Monday.

A federal judge advised Allen of his legal rights, and prosecutors asked for his detention while the case moves forward.

Camera footage caught Allen running through the security perimeter and charging toward the Washington Hilton ballroom, where the dinner was being held. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, administration officials, and members of the White House press corps were all in attendance.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for the District of Columbia said Allen would be charged with assault on a federal officer after he shot a Secret Service agent.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said other charges, including attempted assassination, were possible.

Allen left a manifesto with family members referring to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and expressing plans to target senior Trump administration officials who were present in the hotel ballroom.

This marked the third attempt on Trump’s life. He was shot in the ear in Pennsylvania at a campaign stop in 2024, and a would-be shooter was stopped near Trump’s Florida home later that year.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday compared the rhetoric in Allen’s manifesto to criticism of Trump by his political opponents.

“Much of the manifesto of the would-be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many,” Leavitt said during the White House briefing. “The entire Democrat Party has made its pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist.”

Allen traveled by train from California to Washington and booked a room at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the dinner took place, officials said.

Trump was set to deliver remarks later in the evening and was rushed off the stage by security personnel after shots were fired.

Reuters contributed to this story.

The California gubernatorial debate went exactly how you would expect.

Democrats deflecting blame and rerunning the same tired talking points instead of offering real solutions to California’s mounting list of problems. Climate sermons from private jet flyers, tax the rich rhetoric from billionaires, and homelessness solutions from leaders of failed cities who still think more government is the answer, all while blaming President Donald Trump for nearly everything. And not a SINGLE mention of the rampant fraud in the state from the Democrats.

Yet another reminder of why so many voters feel frustrated with the direction of the state.

There are not enough homes for every foster child, yet under the Biden administration, children were put in the system because of their parents’ beliefs about gender, said Assistant Secretary of Health Alex Adams. 

Adams, who oversees the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services, is working to stop Child Protective Services from taking kids away from their families because of the child’s gender identity. 

“When a child is removed from a family, you are inflicting permanent, irreversible harm on both the child as well as the parents,” Adams told The Daily Signal. “That’s not a decision that should be made lightly, and it should be reserved to the most significant cases of abuse or neglect as judged by a court.” 

For instance, Abby Martinez lost custody of her daughter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services after the girl, Yaeli, started identifying as a boy. Three years later, Yaeli committed suicide. 

President Donald Trump at the State of the Union highlighted Sage Blair, who reportedly became a human trafficking victim after her school hid her transgender identity from her mother.

“One case is too many,” Adams said of family separation cases. 

Adams sent letters to all 50 states telling them that under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, they cannot separate children from their parents due to the child’s gender identity.

“A state child welfare agency should respect the sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of the family,” Adams said. “No child should enter foster care because of differences in values like that.” 

Adams is also making sure families aren’t prevented from fostering due to gender policies. 

“Too many states have put in place requirements that foster families need to commit to affirming certain pronouns of children in their custody, that foster parents might have to commit to certain medical procedures,” Adams said. “And that’s deterring families of faith from stepping forward, from fostering as well.”

Statistically, families of faith are most likely to foster, Adams said. 

“If every house of worship in the country had just one family who committed to fostering, our ratio of homes to kids would be four to one,” he said. “If we did that, we would have homes waiting on kids, not kids waiting on homes. So, we have to be very deliberate about authentically engaging with the faith-based community.” 

Since Adams’ letters went out, two states have already committed to changing their policies. 

Vermont sent a letter saying that they were looking at their policies and committed to changing them, while Massachusetts enacted an emergency rule. 

“We’re continuing to have dialogue and continue to have a discussion internally with other units within HHS about what the most appropriate next steps would be,” he said. 

If states violate sincerely held religious beliefs, the administration will look at funding and regulation changes, he said.

The Supreme Court on Monday opted not to hear a gender secrecy case out of Florida, in which parents objected to a policy that kept their child’s school from informing them of a gender transition.

The case involves the School Board of Leon County, Florida, which in 2018 said that when students informed their school’s administration that they would assert a different gender identity, the school would treat students consistent with that gender identity. The plan said that school administrators revealing this to parents could be dangerous to the well-being of a student, CBS News reported. 

In March, the high court held that California couldn’t require school districts to withhold such information from parents.

In 2021, Florida enacted a statewide “Parents’ Bill of Rights” that included prohibiting public schools from keeping such information secret from parents. Leon County schools revised their policy in 2022 to comply with the law. 

Before that, the student at the center of the case—known as A.G. in court papers—told her parents, January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, that she wanted to change her name to “J” and use they/them pronouns. The parents didn’t agree on the pronouns, but permitted her to use J.  

The Littlejohns’ daughter, who attended a middle school in Tallahassee, Florida, reportedly told a school counselor she wanted to be nonbinary, having they/them pronouns. The counselor, social worker, and principal then met with her to plan an accommodation that included her preferred name and pronouns. The school officials didn’t tell the parents, who learned about the meeting from their daughter several days later. 

The parents told the school to stop meeting privately with their daughter and treating her as nonbinary. They were later given a copy of the transition support plan.

The parents sued the school board in 2021, alleging that their rights were violated. This lawsuit predated the Florida statute. 

A trial court dismissed the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled the Littlejohns failed to satisfy the standard for proving a violation of their substantive due process rights.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A new report from Mississippi State Auditor Shad White has uncovered that illegal aliens in the state received at least $10.5 million in Medicaid benefits between 2023 and 2025.

“If this money had gone to benefit lawful citizens, it could have reduced our taxes, paid our teachers, paid our police officers—frankly, anything would be better than serving as a magnet for illegal immigrants to come to the United States,” White told The Daily Signal.

“Mississippi taxpayers deserve to know the cost of illegal immigrants in our state, even if it makes some folks uncomfortable,” White added. “My team will always tell you how your money in being spent, warts and all.”

The new report comes after White’s office released a report in 2024 titled “How Illegal Immigration Hurts Mississippi Taxpayers,” which highlighted that state divisions were spending a staggering $4 million in taxpayer money on emergency services for illegal aliens.

However, that analysis excluded the cost of Medicaid to illegal immigrants because Mississippi’s Medicaid program failed to report expenditures for care for illegal immigrants despite being required by federal law.

Federal law requires hospitals to provide emergency medical services regardless of immigration status. It also requires states to report how much taxpayer money is spent providing those services to illegal immigrants.

This lack of disclosure prompted White to conduct a follow-up investigation into the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, which determined that the department was spending massive amounts of federal taxpayer dollars without reporting it.

“The only answer here is to have a federal government continue to do exactly what the Trump administration is doing, which is close our borders and enforce our immigration laws,” White continued. “In addition, I pushed hard for a new law to make illegal immigration a state crime, and that bill passed this year, which will also help.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Rep. Chip Roy of Texas sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, urging him to suspend funding for the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its affiliates and initiate debarment proceedings.

“Why should Americans’ taxpayer dollars go to groups like CAIR that facilitate terrorism?” Roy told The Daily Signal.

“On top of legislation I recently introduced designating CAIR as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization and revoking its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, I am asking Secretary Kennedy, Jr. to investigate CAIR for misuse of federal grant dollars, and to debar them from future grants if it has engaged in foul play,” he added.

“Groups like CAIR that support Hamas should not be lining their pockets on the backs of hardworking Americans.”

In his letter, Roy outlined CAIR’s receipt of more than $15 million in Department of Health and Human Services sub‑grants since 2022, largely for Afghan resettlement and legal services programs administered through California. He further states that CAIR’s association with Islamic terror organizations creates a “grave risk to national security” that should disbar the organization from receiving federal tax dollars.

“CAIR’s longstanding ties to terrorist organizations, including Hamas—a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)—combined with documented financial mismanagement and misuse of federal grant funds administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), pose a grave risk to national security and render CAIR unfit to receive taxpayer dollars,” the letter reads.

Roy’s letter claims CAIR has deep historical connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. As evidence, the lawmaker cites criminal cases involving past CAIR officials, and also CAIR’s listing as an unindicted co‑conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism‑financing case.

For its part, CAIR represents itself as a civil rights organization dedicated to promoting the understanding of Islam and empowering American Muslims.

The letter also accuses CAIR‑California of serious financial and compliance violations involving Office of Refugee Resettlement funds. These accusations include improper self‑funding and pass‑throughs to related affiliates, poor service delivery relative to funding received, inconsistent use of organizational names in grant documents, and failure to accurately disclose millions of dollars in federal grants on IRS filings.

Citing federal regulations governing suspension and debarment, the letter argues that this conduct justifies immediate action. It adds that continued funding is a risk to both taxpayer dollars and national security.

Finally, Roy is requesting that HHS fully investigate CAIR’s grant compliance and affiliations and take action if violations are confirmed.

CAIR did not immediately return a request for comment by The Daily Signal.

Across the country, lawmakers and industry groups are pushing to make it harder to sue pesticide manufacturers when their products fail to adequately warn consumers about risks or how to protect themselves when using these chemicals.

That debate between consumers and industry has now found its way to the Supreme Court. On April 27, the court will hear oral arguments in Monsanto v. Durnell. The case will likely be decided on technical legal grounds that won’t bear directly on the scientific questions at stake.

Still, if the court sides with Monsanto, producer of the weed killer Roundup, this could accelerate, and even cement, the political trend of shielding pesticide companies from liability. At stake is whether Americans can bring state “failure-to-warn” claims when federally registered products fail to disclose risks.

What the court decides could shape future accountability fights well beyond pesticides.

John Durnell, the plaintiff from Missouri, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of using Roundup without gloves or a mask. Some studies have linked repeated exposure to glyphosate, Roundup’s main ingredient, to this type of cancer. Like many others, he later sued Monsanto, arguing that the company failed to warn about cancer risks and proper protective measures.

Notably, the company removed glyphosate from its U.S. residential Roundup products in 2023.

The Missouri jury found Monsanto liable for failure-to-warn, though not for defective design or negligence. Monsanto is now appealing this decision, arguing that federal law shields it from liability. Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the registration, labeling, and distribution of pesticides in the U.S. Monsanto argues that because EPA approved Roundup, it cannot be held liable for failure-to-warn under state law.

The Supreme Court will not decide whether glyphosate causes cancer or whether Monsanto failed to warn appropriately. Instead, it will decide whether a state failure-to-warn civil claim can proceed when the EPA has approved the product label.

Monsanto may have the stronger legal argument because FIFRA states that a state cannot impose labeling or packaging requirements that differ from federal requirements.

However, the question is not entirely settled. In 2004, in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, the Supreme Court held that not all failure-to-warn claims are automatically preempted under FIFRA. State rules that impose labeling requirements “in addition to or different from” federal law are pre-empted. State claims that mirror FIFRA standards are not.

A related question is whether a jury verdict in favor of a failure-to-warn claim creates a new labeling requirement. The plaintiff will argue that it does not; the verdict simply holds a company accountable after harm occurs. Monsanto, however, will argue that such a verdict would effectively require a different label than the one EPA approved, so the case still turns on federal preemption.

This case is part of a broader trend. Since late last year, pesticide manufacturers have pushed for liability protection through multiple avenues. Those efforts are now advancing at both the state and federal levels.

State legislatures are moving fast. North Dakota, Georgia, and Kentucky have all advanced protections for pesticide manufacturers. Momentum has grown at the federal level as well. In February, President Donald Trump signed a national security-focused executive order involving protections for American glyphosate-based herbicide manufacturers.

If the court rules in Monsanto’s favor, the consequences would extend far beyond this case. Manufacturers could effectively become immune from state failure-to-warn claims. Courts could lose an important role in checking federal regulatory gaps, and individuals could lose a key path to hold companies accountable.

At a minimum, this issue is not as settled as liability-shield advocates suggest. The EPA withdrew its interim glyphosate safety decision in 2022 and is still revisiting the underlying review. Even if the court limits state failure-to-warn claims, the debate will not end there. Other non-label legal claims may emerge, including around design or manufacturing defects, fraud, or deceptive marketing. Congress could also create a clearer path for injured consumers to seek recourse.

This trend is not just about one pesticide or one lawsuit. It is about whether Americans can still turn to the courts when a product fails to warn about serious risks. If federal review becomes a broad shield against lawsuits under state law, injured consumers will have fewer options, and manufacturers will face less pressure to be transparent.

Courts should remain a vital check when regulators miss risks, move too slowly, or leave key questions unresolved. That is why pressure cannot stop at the Supreme Court. State legislatures, Congress, regulators, and consumers all have a role to play in demanding real accountability, clearer warnings, and safer alternatives when products carry serious risks.

THE CENTER SQUARE—Local, state, and federal efforts are ongoing to tackle oil theft in Texas. 

At the state level, the state Legislature, the Railroad Commission of Texas, and the Texas Department of Public Safety are working on several initiatives. 

Railroad Commission of Texas Chairman Jim Wright has been leading a new task force, addressing oilfield theft, including the theft of crude, trucks, equipment, tools, and materials, like copper. 

More than 40% of oil and natural gas operators in West Texas say their operations have been impacted by theft in the past year, a continued fallout of the border crisis.

However, oilfield theft is not new. Ten years ago, it caused an estimated annual loss of 10 million to 30 million barrels, or roughly $450 million to nearly $1.5 billion in revenue losses, The Center Square reported.

Oilfield theft is “an increasingly sophisticated crime that has been linked to organized crime and foreign criminal syndicates, costing Texans millions of dollars in lost state revenue,” the Railroad Commission of Texas said. Wright led a task force initiative earlier this month to focus on solutions. Their efforts are an outworking of legislation Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law last year, The Center Square reported. 

“Chairman Jim Wright has demonstrated strong, proactive leadership in tackling the growing challenge of oilfield theft by chairing the STOPTheft Task Force,” TIPRO President Ed Longanecker told The Center Square. TIPRO represents roughly 3,000 operators in Texas. “Through targeted collaboration among regulators, industry operators, law enforcement, and stakeholders, the task force will help to close critical gaps in the system, from production tracking to point of sale and develop[ing] practical recommendations to protect Texas producers, royalty owners, jobs, and state revenues from sophisticated criminal activity that impacts more than 50% of operators.” 

“By working directly with stakeholders and ensuring the Railroad Commission allocates the appropriate resources internally, Chairman Wright is addressing this type of criminal activity head-on. His commitment ensures we are not only addressing threats but strengthening the long-term integrity of Texas’ energy sector,” he said.

Wright and the oil and gas industry have also been working on a solution for water shortages in West Texas and other regions facing a drought, The Center Square reported.

The Texas House Committee on Energy Resources held a hearing on oil theft this week, chaired by state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo. At the hearing, DPS Captain Tim Murphy said a new DPS oilfield theft prevention unit began operating last July in response to new laws in effect. Five special agents are in the unit and have since trained 157 DPS officers in 36 departments on oil theft crime, he said.  

He cited an example of oil theft perpetrators who attempted to tap into a pipeline in the Pecos region but were unsuccessful and were injured. They fled but were caught by law enforcement in Florida.

He also referred to a major case in south Texas where cartels have been smuggling stolen oil from Mexico into Texas, The Center Square reported. In one case, a Utah father and son were charged with conspiring to materially support a Mexican cartel and foreign terrorist organization, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and commit money laundering; at least 77,000 barrels of stolen crude was forfeited.

The case was part of an ongoing border-related crime problem stretching from oil field theft in west Texas to illicit crude oil smuggling connected to Mexican cartels, The Center Square reported.

Last week, 14 people were indicted in Lubbock in connection with a large-scale oil theft conspiracy in the Permian Basin, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. They were charged with conspiracy to transport stolen property in interstate commerce. Several were charged with interstate transportation of stolen property, and receipt, possession, or sale of stolen property.

Three of the defendants are from Texas, 11 are from New Mexico. All but one are men. The scheme involved stealing crude from oil producers in southeastern New Mexico, some of which was stored on federal land leased by one of the alleged conspirators. It was then transported to Texas “for the purpose of enriching themselves” and sold below market price “for further sale at a profit,” according to the charges.

If convicted, they are facing decades in prison for multiple charges. 

Multiple law enforcement agencies are involved in oil theft crime investigations at the border, including Texas DPS, the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, DEA, IRS Criminal Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Marshals Service.

Originally published by The Center Square

“What’s happening??”

It was Elizabeth Mitchell, the Daily Signal’s White House reporter. She was seated next to me at Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. There was urgency and confusion in her voice.

Our table was to the right of and somewhat back from the dais, where President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, First Lady Melania Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang of CBS News were seated, along with others.

Elizabeth was looking in that general direction. I was looking at my salad. I turned toward her as she spoke. In a split second, before I tried to see what was happening, I knew, or at least feared, that something was very, very wrong.

I had been a White House reporter for many years, from the second term of Bill Clinton to the first of Trump. I know very well that “what’s happening?” is not a question you need to ask at a presidential event. Because, there is a plan, worked out days, weeks, or even months in advance, and everything always proceeds calmly according to plan. Surprising things may be said at a White House event—although even that was fairly unusual before Trump— but nothing surprising ever happens.

The night had seemed about the same as the dozen or so White House Correspondents’ dinners I had attended in the past, except for the massive security presence, which has grown around presidential events consistently since 9/11. Outside the venue was a vast Praetorian Guard of police and roadblocks, inside a proliferation of law enforcement, including Secret Service, who were somewhat identifiable even in their tuxes, intently surveying the area and looking incongruously unsociable.

A lot of this event is not as glamorous as you’d think. It doesn’t particularly need to be on your bucket list. You might find yourself chatting amicably with a celebrity, especially when Democrats have the White House, and Hollywood descends on the party.

I had crashed several pre-dinner cocktail parties that were onsite at the Washington Hilton, known archly among veteran journalists as the “Hinckley Hilton,” since that’s where John Hinckley tried to kill Ronald Reagan. These are all jammed with sweaty journalists and their guests, done up in tuxedos and dresses, climbing over each other to try to get to the bar. Kind of like a penguin colony diving into the ocean.

I was mainly seeking bourbon sours and hors d’oeuvres, which tend to be better than the dinner itself. Not this year, though, because the main plate would be “Prime Chateaubriand & Maine Lobster.” I hadn’t been to one of these events in a number of years, and I was delighted to find that the bartenders’ pouring arms had stiffened significantly, with my second bourbon sour amounting to more of a bourbon with a splash of sour. So I was in pretty good spirits, pun intended, by the time we were ordered to wander over to the ballroom for dinner.

Everything proceeded as planned. The president was introduced to the glorious notes of Hail to the Chief, played in person by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Next was The Presentation of Colors, one of my favorite parts, in which the flag of each armed service is marched over to the president as the sublime Trio Section of the National Emblem is played. Our salads, bread, and bottles of red and white wine had preceded us at the table, and we began to eat and drink to the clatter of silverware and the patter of light conversation.

“What’s happening??”

I turned to the middle of the room and saw people starting to lower themselves instinctively to avoid danger. Everything had been perfectly normal, and now nothing was normal at all. There was some kind of general commotion in the middle of the room, and someone went racing from the back directly toward the dais. That must be it, someone is speeding toward the president to try to kill him, I thought. I looked over at the dais, but there was suddenly no one seated at the head table, as if the thing had been decapitated.

The runner had disappeared into the activity in front of the dais, where tuxedoed Secret Service were leaping across tables and chairs. I thought they were subduing an attacker, but it turned out they were mainly trying to both get in front of the main table and start removing Cabinet secretaries in the line of succession. People in military uniforms materialized out of nowhere on the dais and trained their rifles on the crowd in case a bad guy popped out.

The room faded to silence. Many guests ducked under tables, but while there was fear in some faces, there was also a notable and admirable absence of panic. Instinct from my reporting years kicked in and I started taking video and stood up to get a better view.

Someone burst through the silence defiantly proclaiming, “God bless America” and trying to get a “USA! USA!” chant going, but everyone else realized that was a dumb idea while the Secret Service was trying to do its job, and he and one or two others quickly stifled it.

Soon, the silence rose to a murmur, and guests were just standing or sitting and waiting to be told what to do. People a thousand miles away watching the news began to know more than we did, texting us information, some of it wrong. “There was an explosion.” “One assailant was shot and killed, another taken to the hospital.” No explosion, no one killed. There were shots, and some in the room had heard them. I didn’t.

And then, a waiter blankly came by to start clearing the salads. As if absolutely nothing had happened. I guess people seemed like they were finished with their salads. He soon disappeared.

We were told to stay, the event would continue. That seemed quite unlikely. A little later, we were told to leave. And we did.

Labor activists in Savannah, Georgia, are organizing a May Day protest encouraging community members to step away from work, school, and shopping for a day as part of a broader national demonstration tied to International Workers’ Day. 

Organizers are calling on residents to close businesses, skip school, and avoid shopping on May 1 as a visible show of solidarity action.

Why Call for Protest? 

May Day Savannah organizers say the protest is a response to what they describe as increased pressure on immigrant communities and economic instability facing working people in a system that “puts profit over people.” 

Lauren Nowak is an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, one of the groups organizing this year’s May Day strike. She told The Daily Signal, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are used to terrorize communities, divide workers, and suppress organizing efforts.” 

“Working-class people are being forced to pay for crises they did not create, and that contradiction is pushing more people toward struggle,” Nowak said. 

What Is May Day? 

May Day is the informal name for International Workers’ Day, which began in 1889 as an annual observance tied to labor activism. It was established at an international workers’ congress in Paris with the help of labor, socialist, and Marxist parties. The day historically called for ending seven-day workweeks and securing eight-hour workdays. 

Nowak said this holiday “has always been about the power of the working class to challenge exploitation,” adding that its legacy is especially relevant today amid rising costs and deepening inequality. 

However, what began as a movement focused on workers’ rights and safety has evolved over time into a pageant for socialism and communism.

Nicole Huyer, senior research associate in the Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, said May Day, which once emphasized worker dignity and safe conditions, “has transitioned into an ideologically left-wing movement that no longer fights for workers—it just creates disruptions.” 

Economic and Community Impact 

Businesses are invited to participate by closing for the day, reducing business hours, posting May Day window signs, and sharing public statements on social media. 

Nowak said the goal of the protest is “about building unity, raising consciousness, and taking steps toward a society where the working class holds power.” 

Huyer said that instead of promoting class division, the focus should be on “policies that reward work and protect American families and interests [that] will incentivize long-lasting productivity gains reflected in future wages and the standard of living.” 

She said it’s counterproductive to allow children to miss a day of education and for workers to lose a day’s wages. “We can do two things at once: ensure workers’ rights and safety and recognize that billionaires and large firms are invaluable job creators for the economy and society.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center raises money by presenting itself as the expert on combating “hate,” and then exaggerating “hate” to scare donors into ponying up cash.

The problem? The SPLC’s inflated demand for “hate” has long outstripped the supply. Thousands of donors expect the SPLC to prove there’s enough “hate” to justify their donations, and that often leaves the center scrambling to keep up.

A jaw-dropping Justice Department indictment, filed Tuesday, appears to reveal yet another way the SPLC tried to meet this demand.

The SPLC has a clearinghouse for hate, a “hate map” that claims to reveal the “infrastructure of white supremacy.”

The SPLC map has included old shopkeepers in the South who still support the Confederacy, but most Americans know people like that are irrelevant.

The center’s more cunning strategy involves branding mainstream conservatives and Christians as “hate groups” and “anti-government extremists,” putting them on the map for the sin of disagreeing with the SPLC’s agenda.

That has the added bonus of delegitimizing the SPLC’s opponents—but it seems the center is running out of new groups to add. First, it was conservative Christians like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom. Then, it was opponents of illegal immigration, like the Federation on American Immigration Reform. Now, it’s Moms for Liberty, PragerU, Focus on the Family, and Turning Point USA. They’re on the cusp of adding the entire conservative movement to the map.

So, what do you do if you can’t keep exaggerating hate? Well, you manufacture your own, of course!

If a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville isn’t quite big enough, you can just pay someone to transport more people to attend.

If your “extremist files” on homegrown Nazis are running a bit sparse, why not just throw a cool seventy grand at the problem?

If Americans are catching on that the Ku Klux Klan basically doesn’t exist anymore, why not bankroll a Klan member’s lawsuit to try to sponsor a highway?

I’m not clever enough to come up with those ideas—I took them from the Justice Department’s indictment. Of course, that’s not the only strategy the indictment revealed.

To call this hate inflation strategy a risk would be a vast understatement. If the SPLC ever did this, they’d have to work overtime to bury it, so it would never see the light of day.

As it happens, the SPLC seems to have a strategy for that, too. The Justice Department outlines how the SPLC allegedly set up shell companies to hide the funding.

That’s where the alleged illegality comes in: six counts of wire fraud, four counts of false statements to federally insured banks, and one count of conspiracy to conceal money laundering.

What does the SPLC have to say for itself?

Well, it claims that it hired “paid confidential informants” to “gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.” That might make sense in the 1980s, when Klansmen actually firebombed the SPLC’s headquarters, but it makes far less sense during the period covered by the indictment, 2014 to 2023.

Maybe the SPLC would need an informant to tip them off if a Klansman targeted a church, for example. Instead, it seems the SPLC was supervising a leader at the Unite the Right rally as he made racist posts.

The SPLC hasn’t just been calling out hate—it seems to have been investing in it.

And, judging by the center’s $739.4 million endowment, it’s been paying dividends.

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump and officials in his administration were the likely targets of a suspect who fired on a security agent guarding the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Sunday.

The man fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent at a security checkpoint in the Washington Hilton hotel before being tackled and arrested. Trump and first lady Melania Trump were rushed out of the dinner.

“It does appear that he, he did, in fact, have set out to target folks that work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche told NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” adding that the suspect likely traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to Washington.

The suspect will be charged in federal court on Monday with assault of a federal officer, discharging a firearm and attempting to kill a federal officer, Blanche said, adding he did not know if there was an Iran connection to the attack.

Condemnation of Shooting

Trump told reporters at a late-night White House briefing that he believed he was the target of the attack. He said the Secret Service officer was saved by his bulletproof vest and was in “good shape.”

U.S. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed the officer had been released from a hospital.

ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl reported that Trump called him on Sunday morning and insisted that the White House Correspondent’s Association reschedule the dinner. “It has to happen,” Karl said Trump told him.

Around the world, leaders condemned the attack, and expressed relief that Trump and all present were safe, demonstrating solidarity with the United States. NATO leader Mark Rutte called it an attack “on our free and open societies” and leaders stressed violence had no place in a democracy.

The British embassy, which is preparing for King Charles’ visit to Washington starting on Monday, said in a statement that discussions were taking place on whether the incident may affect planning for the visit. A pre-visit brunch hosted by Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Christian Turner, was scheduled to proceed on Sunday.

Suspect Thought to Be a ‘Lone Wolf,’ Trump Says

A law enforcement official identified the suspect as Cole Tomas Allen, a California resident about 31 years old. Little was immediately known about Allen’s background, but social media postings suggested he was a teacher in Torrance, near Los Angeles.

Washington Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said the suspect was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. He was taken to a local hospital to be evaluated but it was too soon to say what his motivation was, Carroll said.

Bloomberg reported that Allen purchased a shotgun 8 months ago and a semi-automatic pistol 2 years earlier, citing a law enforcement intelligence profile.

Blanche said the suspect appeared to have checked into the Washington Hilton on Friday. Without naming the person, he said the suspect was not cooperating with investigators.

“There is something unique about the threats against President Trump and his cabinet that is disgusting and it shouldn’t be happening,” Blanche said on “ABC This Week.”

The chaotic events from around 8:35 p.m. raised fresh questions about the security of top U.S. officials, many of whom were gathered in the hotel’s expansive ballroom.

A focus of the investigation is likely to be how the gunman was able to smuggle the weapons into a hotel hosting one of Washington’s biggest black-tie events. Guests entering the lower ballroom area are screened by security, but the lobby and room levels are not secured.

The dinner was attended by many members of Trump’s cabinet and other senior administration officials amid heavy security. It was the first time Trump attended the event as president, having boycotted it in previous years.

The site of the dinner was the scene of an attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan, who was shot and wounded by a would-be assassin outside the hotel in 1981.

Closed-circuit TV footage released by Trump on Truth Social showed the suspect running rapidly through a security checkpoint, momentarily catching security personnel off-guard before they drew their weapons.

No shots were fired at the gunman who got through two checkpoints before being brought down.

“You know, he charged from 50 yards away, so he was very far away from the room. He was moving. He was really moving,” Trump said after the gala dinner was canceled.

Officials believe he is a “lone wolf,” Trump said.

How It Unfolded

Video footage shows Trump and his wife sitting at a banquet table on stage in conversation with someone when a commotion at the rear of the ballroom—caused by the noise of gunshots—triggers a ripple of gasps through the room.

People started screaming “Get down, get down!” Many of the 2,600 attendees dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns took cover under tables as security personnel drew their weapons, with some pushing cabinet secretaries to the floor and covering them with their bodies while others formed a protective cordon.

Security personnel in combat fatigues stormed the stage pointing rifles into the ballroom as Trump, his wife Melania and Vice President JD Vance were evacuated. Cabinet members who had been sitting at tables dotted around the vast room were escorted out by their security details one by one.

Trump stayed backstage for about an hour after being hustled from the stage, a source told Reuters. He later said he had not wanted to leave the event, a remark that echoed images of him defiantly pumping his fist after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

In that attempt, Trump was wounded in his upper ear by a 20-year-old gunman, who was shot dead by security personnel.

(Reporting by Bo Erickson, Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Steve Holland, Kanishka Singh, Tim Reid, Jonathan Landay, Steve Gorman, Trevor Hunnicutt, Susan Heavey, Jasper Ward, Gram Slattery, Humeyra Pamuk and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Writing by Tim Reid and David Lawder; Editing by William Mallard, Sergio Non, Ross Colvin, Caitlin Webber and Bill Berkrot)

When Assistant Secretary of Health Alex Adams led the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, he ended the state’s “orphan tax.” Now he is helping every other state do the same thing. 

“We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re gonna keep at this,” said Adams, who leads the Administration of Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services. “I think it’s morally wrong, and we’re gonna use every lever available to us.”

When parents die before withdrawing their Social Security benefits and their children subsequently enter the foster care system, about 30 states have a policy of taking the benefits to pay for their care instead of that money going directly to the child. 

Every child in the foster care system costs the state the same amount, but only orphans are expected to pay their own way. 

“That’s why it’s called the orphan tax,” Adams told The Daily Signal. “States are taxing orphans at 100% of their benefits to offset government expenses.” 

When Adams first heard about the tax, he couldn’t believe it was real. 

“It is literally the worst of the worst government I have come across,” Adams said. 

In December, ACF sent letters to 39 states that continued to tax orphans’ benefits, and so far, 10 have changed their policy. Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, and Kentucky passed legislation, while Nebraska and Louisiana’s governors signed executive orders. 

To push states to end the orphan tax, Adams said he started with “honey,” writing the letters, and said soon he’ll work up to “vinegar,” conditioning grants on ending the orphan tax. 

“Every governor has the ability to end this today through courage and executive action,” he said. “Several Republican governors ended it through executive order. I would challenge Gov. [Tim] Walz in Minnesota to end this through executive action and others. Let’s do right by these orphans.”

If an orphan has access to their parents’ Social Security benefits, it could change the course of their life, Adams said. 

“Having the resources that their parents left for them might change the entire trajectory between success or failure in life,” he said. “That’s a down payment on a house. It’s helps with rent. It’s an education or career technical education.”

“We’re gonna look for ways to continue to preserve those resources so that when youth age out of foster care,” he continued, “they have the resources necessary to be successful.”

The Biden administration also attempted to end the orphan tax, but it was unsuccessful. 

“The Biden administration put out a thin gruel on this, and basically tried to create the perception that they cared about the issue without taking any actual actions,” Adams said. 

“We’re traveling around the states—I’m actually gonna be in a state next week to do an event with a governor who’s gonna be ending it—and we mean what we say,” he said, “and we’re gonna continue to push on this.” 

Adams said the only argument he has heard in favor of the tax is that the state governments need the money. Adams, who was a state budget director for six legislative sessions, said he’s never seen this argument ring true. 

“There is no state budget director that I have ever come across that wants to balance their budget on the backs of orphans,” he said. “Have an honest conversation with your state budget director. Put a little bit of elbow grease in this and demonstrate the creativity with which I know every state budget director and child welfare director in the country can.”

Republican Sen. Jim Banks has come out in support of President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch in Washington, D.C., calling for it to serve as a template for the construction of more neoclassical architecture of its type in the capital.

Trump has proposed that a 250-foot triumphal arch be constructed on Columbia Island—a piece of land in the Potomac River.

“It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it sends a message that America is the greatest country in the history of the world,” Banks, R-Ind., told The Daily Signal in a statement about the proposed arch. 

Banks introduced the Beautifying Civic Architecture Act in Sept. 2025, which seeks to codify Trump’s “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” executive order.

Banks told The Daily Signal the bill “would ensure that more classically inspired projects like the Triumphal Arch are built in Washington, D.C., and around the country for many years to come.”

If it became law, it would make classical architecture the “preferred and default architecture” for federal buildings in Washington and would discourage brutalist and deconstructivist styles.

Trump’s proposed design for the arch, which would be the largest ever built, received initial approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a presidentially appointed board, in April.

The commission also approved a proposal to paint the granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. 

The plans for the arch have yet to receive approval from the National Capital Planning Commission—the agency tasked with providing guidance on building in the capital region—or from Congress.