Tariffs can be a powerful and effective tool of statecraft. The evidence could be seen last year when resistant trading partners were dragged to the negotiating table. The progress with the United Kingdom, India, Japan, and others is real, as is the leverage that produced it.

However, as I’ve argued before, tariffs without significant domestic reforms won’t solve our manufacturing malaise but will make it worse.

Like any tool, tariffs can be right for one job but wrong for another. They’ve proven well-suited to changing another government’s behavior in certain instances, opening the door to more favorable terms for American exporters or reducing fentanyl pouring into the country.

Anyone who dismisses tariffs as categorically destructive isn’t paying attention.

They are far less suited to the distinct goal of rebuilding domestic steel and aluminum production—with the current 50% rate, imposed as it has been, inflicting avoidable harm on the much larger economy that uses those metals. Instead, domestic reforms would be a better tool for the job.

Consider a distinction that often gets lost: a penalty tells a company what not to do; a reward tells it what to do.

A tariff is a penalty—it discourages imports but builds not a single mill or smelter. A production incentive does the opposite: it tells firms precisely what we want—build here—and helps them bear the enormous capital cost.

If the objective is reshoring critical industry, rewards are better aimed, and they get there without burdening every downstream factory and consumer.

To be clear, this means targeted, time-limited incentives—like tax credits that phase out as capacity comes online—not the open-ended industrial policy that lets subsidies harden into permanent entitlements. It’s also strictly limited to national security purposes, not Capitol Hill cronies looking for a handout.

The effects on the downstream economy are a serious consideration. For every American in steel production, roughly 80 work for a manufacturer that uses steel; in aluminum, the ratio is about 177 to one. A penalty on metal raises costs for these far larger workforces immediately, while any gain to producers arrives slowly.

The 2018 steel tariffs added perhaps a thousand mill jobs while raising input costs across a sector that employs vastly more, and several analyses found the net effect on manufacturing employment was negative.

Then, as now, there was also no phase-in, which compounds the damage.

You cannot conjure a mill or smelter on the timeline of a customs notice—permitting, financing, construction, and the reliable electricity aluminum demands all take years. A 50% wall erected overnight cannot summon capacity that physically doesn’t exist yet; in the interim, it only raises prices.

Domestic steel has run at roughly twice the price paid elsewhere, with mill products up more than 20% year over year. Buying American is no escape: walled off from imports, domestic mills raise their own prices to match. A schedule that rose as new capacity came online would let the market adjust instead of absorbing a shock.

The strain is already visible: layoffs tied to higher metal costs at firms like John Deere, Molson Coors, and Caterpillar. Costs have also increased for many consumer staples, like canned goods.

None of this contradicts the view that tariffs have a place. But as I warned last spring, the on-again, off-again tariffs and their seemingly arbitrary rates have made planning generally, and capital expenditures specifically, extraordinarily difficult, and which—left without offsetting deals—increases costs, reduces employment, and stalls growth.

And we should be honest, as I also argued last spring, that the Rust Belt was created far more by domestic policy—a punishing tax code, regulatory compliance costs estimated at more than $50,000 per worker—than by foreign competition.

Tariffs alone can’t cure that; at best, they buy a temporary reprieve while the condition worsens, like enduring chemotherapy for lung cancer while continuing to smoke.

Tariffs have and can continue to work as leverage, opening foreign markets and winning genuinely reciprocal terms.

But to reshore steel and aluminum, permanent reforms and temporary rewards are better tools for the job than penalties. Reforms and rewards achieve the same goal the tariffs are meant to serve, while sparing the millions of Americans in the metal-using economy from collateral damage.

During the 2020 presidential debate with President Donald Trump, Joe Biden infamously declared that Antifa was “an idea, not an organization,” echoing a leftist talking point that deflected from the violent riots that summer. Yet the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Antifa agitators in this second Trump administration should dispel this notion once and for all.

Not only do self-described anti-fascists exist, but they have organized in groups that feature in indictments and guilty verdicts. While these Antifa groups may be loosely organized and often rely on mutual aid networks, the notion that they are not organized and therefore cannot be monitored in the same way that left-leaning groups monitor white nationalist organizations is a farce.

At least two high-profile cases illustrate the nature of Antifa agitation groups and how they support and inspire violence.

Direct Action Minnesota

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted 15 members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota, charging them with conspiracy to impede a federal officer, multiple counts of interstate stalking, interstate threats, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, counts of assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.

Kyle Wagner, named in the Direct Action Minnesota indictment, faces charges of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and solicitation to commit a crime of violence. According to the indictment, he allegedly identified himself as “Antifa,” and wore a sweatshirt with the text “I’m Antifa.”

The indictment describes groups such as the Black Cat Worker’s Collective as an “Antifa affinity group.” At a Feb. 7 rally hosted by the collective, attendees wore “Antifa”-branded sweatshirts.

The indictment states that Direct Action Minnesota “worked closely with other direct action groups, Antifa affinity groups, [rapid response networks], and other organizations to plan for an execute direct actions. DAMN infiltrated and exploited lawful protests to more efficiently carry out its direct actions targeting operations involving ICE as well as supporting federal and state law enforcement.”

“DAMN relied upon otherwise lawful protesters and ‘strength in numbers’ to distract law enforcement and enable DAMN members to carry out its direct action operations,” the indictment claims.

The indictment quotes Wagner comparing federal immigration forces to Nazis and urging violence against them. “Sorry, but welcome to America 2026, where the Second Amendment is the only thing that’s going to keep you f—ing protected from literal f—ing Nazi gun men that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity.” He later allegedly added, “Get your f—ing guns and stop these f—ing people.”

Wagner and other defendants allegedly trained other Antifa affinity groups at “Anarchist Speaking Tour” events in Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Seattle in April 2026.

Authorities had already arrested Wagner on federal threat and cyberstalking charges, accusing him of calling for the murder of ICE officers.

Prairieland Facility Attack

In March, a jury convicted eight alleged members of an Antifa cell for providing material support to terrorists.

The jury convicted eight people of riot, providing material support to terrorists, and other charges related to a July 4, 2025, riot outside the Prairieland Detention Facility operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rioters set off fireworks, and when police arrived at the scene, one of the rioters opened fire, wounding an officer in the shoulder.

Before trial, seven other defendants pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists.

The agitators organized via the app Signal and had Antifa magazines and other materials showing leftist ideology and anti-government intentions, the government argued at trial. Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, told the Daily Signal that the verdicts will help advance Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which directs federal agencies to combat organized political violence, especially in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination in September.

“Antifa was found to be a domestic terrorist organization and that these defendants were found to provide material support, I think, is very consistent with NSPM-7 and the priority of this administration to try to stop political violence by domestic terrorist groups,” Raybould said.

“This case shows a road map for charging individuals that commit violent acts that are coordinating through their Antifa affiliation,” he explained.

Raybould noted that “the Antifa membership, which was demonstrated through Signal chats, through pamphlets and flyers and their messages back and forth, really showed that there was hostility towards ICE agents and this government installation and that it was coordinated—they weren’t just peaceful protesters.”

Antifa Is Real

These cases give the lie to the old canard that Antifa isn’t an organization, but an ideology.

“The Trump administration remains fully committed to holding all criminals accountable – especially Antifa agitators,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Signal.  “President Trump and his entire Administration are focused on investigating, disrupting, dismantling, and prosecuting individuals and entities engaged in organized political violence and domestic terrorism – specifically sophisticated and organized campaigns.”

“Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” she added. “The Trump administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities and put an end to any illegal activities.”

Yes, Antifa networks are often loosely connected, but that does not mean they do not exist. Americans should see through this inane talking point.

Although major sports wins bring celebration, the festivities are often marred in big cities by unruly behavior. That was particularly the case in New York, following the Knicks’ June 13 clinching of the NBA championship. The parade that followed brought more chaos.

Following that victory over the San Antonio Spurs—the Knicks’ first title in 53 years—hooligans took to the streets, vandalizing as they went, including targeting and torching a school bus. Those in the crowd cheered. Police, meanwhile, could not visibly be seen.

As he showed footage of the chaos during Friday’s episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast” on the Daily Signal, host Tony Kinnett noted how those burning the school bus were both white and black. And the bus driver begging the crowd to stop was black. “The point of the story is that it is not about the race, it is all about the culture,” Kinnett observed.

The revelry of the parade was marred by random gunshots fired into the air to “just cause chaos and panic because that is the celebratory nature that has come out of some of these events,” as Kinnett mentioned.

Meanwhile, New York isn’t doing much to stop lawlessness. “There’s no condemnation of this from the city level. There’s nothing. [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani is busy running around patting himself on the back and praising Islamic migrant stuff,” Kinnett said, also addressing how liberals excuse such behavior as how “it just happens.”

The New York Department of Sanitation unveiled commemorative garbage cans to celebrate the Knicks’ win. (They’re also available online for purchase.) Fans reacted by stealing them, dumping out trash onto the city sidewalk to do so. People could be heard cheering in the background.

During the parade, an individual appeared to be passed out from a drug overdose on the roof of a platform, as individuals sought to help. Kinnett observed that it took place with a “cop standing there, doing very little, ’cause this is just normal behavior in New York.”

The passed-out man was revived using Narcan. He then proceeded to try to kiss the woman who gave him that Narcan.

This is a stunning juxtaposition with the amount of support the United States is getting from visitors from around the world who are here for the FIFA World Cup. These visitors, Kinnett said, “realize that everything they’ve been told by people like Keir Starmer about the United States, things that they’ve been told about by, for example, Zohran Mamdani, is a lie and that the United States is freaking incredible.”

Japanese guests receive particular attention for how respectful they’ve been, as they come to games ready with garbage bags to clean up trash afterward. For Kinnett, culture plays a significant role. “There are cultures that are objectively better than others because of how they carry themselves.”

A young Japanese woman picking up trash shared that it is part of their “culture,” but also a matter of respect, “respect for everything, respect for the players, supporters, and also for the stadium.” The young woman shared, “We are honored to be here, so we don’t want to make a mess and then leave it.”

Kinnett showed side-by-side footage to even more deeply contrast the behavior of Knicks fans fighting in the streets and the more respectful guests in America.

A federal judge in Minnesota, who has donated to an immigrant legal aid group, quashed several federal grand jury subpoenas of documents from Gov. Tim Walz and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul over compliance with immigration enforcement.

In a 29-page opinion issued Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz of the District of Minnesota accused the Trump administration’s Justice Department of seeking to “harass political opponents” by initiating a criminal investigation and using grand jury subpoenas to pressure state and local officials into changing their immigration policies.

The judge has acknowledged being a donor for “many years” to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, an organization that provides free legal representation to low-income immigrants and refugees. Schiltz has also clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the agency’s alleged violation of court orders.

The grand jury subpoenas sought records related to federal immigration enforcement, including communications regarding cooperation or noncooperation with ICE and other federal immigration authorities; requests for assistance from immigration officials; communications among state and local officials concerning immigration enforcement; and training or guidance provided to employees regarding interactions with ICE.

The subpoenas were issued to the offices of Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, as well as the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners and the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners.

“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action—particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take—is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand jury process,” Schiltz wrote.

“The only question, then, is whether the challenged subpoenas were issued for one of these forbidden purposes,” he continued. “The court has no doubt that they were.”

In January, Fox News first reported that Schiltz donated to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in 2019, citing the organization’s annual report.

In a statement to Fox News, Schiltz said he has “donated for many years to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.”

“I have also donated for many years to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid,” he added. “I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation.”

Schiltz was appointed by President George W. Bush and previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In January, Schiltz ordered acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to appear in court to explain why the agency had failed to comply with court orders and caused what the judge described as significant hardship for immigrants in the state.

“The practical consequence of respondents’ failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong),” Schiltz wrote.

The following month, Schiltz issued another warning to the Justice Department and ICE, writing: “This Court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt. One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.”

In the end, as the Virginia General Assembly returned Monday for a perfunctory vote on the one-sided $212 billion tax plan, it appears that the Senate president pro tempore was holding up the process not on the principle of clawing tax dollars from data center operators—they were the most eye-catching hostages to take—but for getting legalized marijuana put into the budget.

As soon as Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced that there was a Senate plan ready to go with a tax on excess electric usage, Sen. Louise Lucas’ lifting of opposition that she had only just picked up in the previous six months—given her long support of sales tax abatement for technology purchased by data center operators—one doesn’t have to wait for the FBI to finish its investigation of the senator’s business ventures to know why.

By the way, the Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission’s 2025 report says that each dollar of those tax breaks created $6.10 of labor income. Based on Virginia’s 5.75% tax rate, the commonwealth only “sacrificed” 65 cents, and once you start calculating the economic impact of people with more money to spend, the actual ‘cost’ continues to go down.

One red flag (the Left loves those) to watch for is a common Virginia General Assembly mistake: counting their chickens before they hatch.

The budget presumes that the “usage fee” that data centers will be asked to pay for excess electricity will generate $1.2 billion in tax collections, and they are gleefully already spending those dollars, despite an industry push to make these centers self-sustaining electrically. This has been a very popular campaign and is taking hold all over the country.

What happens when the Virginia spenders “only” collect three-quarters of a billion dollars?

We learned about how this will play out when Virginians started buying up electric vehicles.

Albemarle County alone had the highest concentration of Teslas per capita in the United States before the Left decided it hated Elon Musk. The Virginia Department of Transportation was in crisis mode because it was tracking to receive far less gasoline tax money to fund its operations, so the General Assembly created a special “highway use fee” for electric and hybrid vehicles.

I hope you are not holding your breath that they don’t try to institute an “information superhighway” (an ancient name for the internet, kids) usage fee. Or maybe postage on emails? Don’t laugh. History may not repeat, but it rhymes.

Plus, the Virginia budget will allow your locality to impose a 1% sales tax to fund the singularly least transparent portion of government: the school division capital expenditure budget. Adding that to the 7% that your electric bills will be going up for a plan that even Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor, Josh Shapiro, won’t participate in—the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative—how’s that “Affordability Agenda” shaping up?

Question: If NOT charging a dollar of tax created $6 of income, what do you think charging MORE taxes will do?

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

Over the weekend, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee spoke out against establishment Republicans for asking senators behind closed doors to stop talking about the SAVE America Act after publicly advocating for the legislation.

Lee’s remarks come after the Daily Caller reported that during a Republican Senate lunch, longtime conservative senators told Lee and other legislative advocates of the act to overlook the legislation.

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office refuted the remarks, Lee’s comments seem to confirm the outlet’s reporting.

“To donors: Pass the SAVE America Act. To Fox News: Pass the SAVE America Act. On talk radio: Pass the SAVE America Act. At campaign rallies: Pass the SAVE America Act. To Senate Republicans behind closed doors: Stop talking about the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote about Republican Senate leadership.

Lee, while on “Fox News Sunday,” then blamed “lazy Republicans” as the reason for the SAVE America Act not passing.

The controversy comes after Senate Republicans, including Thune, have refused to invoke an endless debate that would overrule the Senate’s 60-vote threshold rule, known as the filibuster.

In another post, one responding to Sen. Tom Cotton’s statement on Fox News that the Senate Republican conference does not have enough votes to pass the voter ID legislation, Lee contradicted the claim by saying that Republicans are “not powerless” and “should act like it.”

“We have 50 votes for the SAVE America Act. With the @VP, we have a simple majority,” Lee added in another post. “The fact that we don’t currently have 60 votes for cloture doesn’t mean it can’t pass. It just means we have to work harder to break the filibuster. We have to shed the defeatist attitude.”

Simultaneously, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., announced that President Donald Trump will attend the next Senate Republican lunch, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

Scott, who is a staunch supporter of the president and a hardline advocate of the voter ID law, chairs the Senate GOP Steering Committee, which hosts the weekly lunch.

While Scott did not mention why the president will be in attendance, Lee wrote on X after Scott’s announcement that the president will “not give up” on the SAVE America Act.

“Good chat with President Trump tonight. He’s not giving up on the SAVE America Act. Neither am I,” Lee wrote. “He’s as convinced as I am that we can get this done if the Senate’s willing to do the hard work.”

Scott quoted the tweet, adding that Senate Republicans are “going to work” with the president to ensure the legislation’s passage.

“If we put in the work, we can make this happen,” Scott said. “We’re going to work with @POTUS and FIGHT for the SAVE America Act.”

Amid massive party infighting, the U.S. House of Representatives is coming together to put a bipartisan end to chemicals poisoning Americans with Parkinson’s disease.

The bipartisan Paraquat Prevention Act would cancel all legal use of the herbicide paraquat, which has been linked to the neurological disorder and is massively produced by China.

“The United States has no business allowing a chemical linked to Parkinson’s disease to keep being sprayed on American farmland, and this bill ends that,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., the author of the bill, said in a press release.

Paraquat is a generic herbicide used for weed control and is banned in every nation in the European Union and more than 70 countries worldwide, including China. Despite China’s ban on the chemical, it is a leading manufacturer of paraquat, exporting roughly 78 million pounds to American ports every year.

Vermont recently became the first U.S. state to restrict the chemical’s use.

“Vermont just proved a paraquat ban is possible. Now Congress must make it national,” co-author Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said. “Our bill cancels paraquat’s registration outright. No more reviews, no more waiting, no more excuses.”

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, the Environmental Protection Agency must register any pesticide to be sold or distributed in the United States.

The bill directs the EPA to “cancel the registration of all uses of paraquat,” including revoking any exemption allowing for the presence of paraquat in or on food, and bans the sale and use of existing paraquat stocks. Under this legislation, the EPA administrator, currently Lee Zeldin, may not re-register paraquat as an EPA-registered herbicide.

“Independent scientific evidence has found that exposure to paraquat has led to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, yet the EPA has continued to allow this pesticide to be used in our communities,” Andi Fristedt, executive vice president for the Parkinson’s Foundation, said in support of the bill.

“By banning paraquat, the Paraquat Prevention Act would protect Americans and help create a world where fewer people develop Parkinson’s disease in the first place,” Fristedt continued.

According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, roughly 1.1 million Americans live with the disease and nearly 90,000 are diagnosed every year.

The disease currently has no cure. While it is not fatal, complications can be life-threatening. Parkinson’s, a neurological disorder, primarily affects motor skills and degenerates nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine, causing cognitive impairment, mental health disorders, and sleep disturbances.

“Paraquat exposure is one of the clearest preventable risks linked to Parkinson’s disease,” Dan Feehan, chief policy and government affairs officer at The Michael J. Fox Foundation, said.

Both research foundations have backed this bipartisan bill, congratulating and thanking the members for bringing it to the forefront.

Luna Named the MAHA Queen

This is not the first pesticide fight Luna has taken on. As a young mom serving in Congress, she has taken on the role of a Make America Healthy Again member. The movement, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has made its mark on the midterms as an essential voter bloc Republicans must win to hold the majority.

Luna has proved herself to be someone who will fight for MAHA priorities. She recently had a major win in the 2026 farm bill, where she got her amendment through to strip pesticide liability protections from the package. While that bill passed the House, it is likely to be heavily marked up by the Senate.

Though Pingree is a progressive member of the U.S. House, earning an 8% on the Heritage Action Scorecard, she has pledged to work across the aisle with MAHA moms. Her work as a farmer in Maine led her to a career in politics. While she won’t be supporting President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, she is on board with MAHA—an important position for Republicans to win moderate voters in the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump will discuss the SAVE America Act with senators at Wednesday’s closed-door luncheon, at the invitation of Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott.

“He wants, we all want to get the SAVE America Act done,” Scott told Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday. “I’ve invited him to lunch on Wednesday to meet with Republican senators.”

A White House official confirmed to The Daily Signal that Trump accepted the invitation.

The SAVE America Act would mandate photo identification and proof of citizenship in federal elections, terminate vote-by-mail, and require local governments to regularly purge their voter rolls. It would also ban men from women’s sports and prohibit transgender procedures for children.

Scott said the Senate can begin passing the package piecemeal.

“Let’s do a vote just on voter ID,” he said. “Let’s do a vote on just, you have to be American to vote, maybe just to share voter rolls. We’ve got to get this done.”

Scott said the Senate needs to stay in session to pass the package as quickly as possible.

“We all need to figure out how to come together,” he said. “If we have to stay in D.C. to get it done, let’s stay in D.C. to get this done. This is important. Secure these elections.”

Scott wants senators to strategize with the president about passing the bill despite tight margins. Though the act is a top White House priority, four Senate Republicans recently joined Democrats to keep the voter ID provision out of a reconciliation package.

As a result, Congress’ only remaining option to pass the bill may be to terminate the filibuster, to which Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly expressed opposition.

“Let’s talk about how we get it done. What can he do? What can we do? But we’ve got to get the SAVE America Act passed,” he said.

Last week, Trump demanded that the bill be attached to an extension of a spy powers provision, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“I think the president wants to add SAVE America to pretty much everything,” Thune told reporters. “But that, obviously, is not realistic to get the FISA bill done. And we want to get the FISA bill done.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced more than $700 million in federal funding Wednesday aimed at addressing addiction, mental illness, and homelessness, advancing President Donald Trump’s Great American Recovery Initiative.

This investment from the Trump administration draws a sharp contrast from the counterdrug addiction initiatives made by former President Joe Biden and some Democrat state administrations, like that of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who directed millions in taxpayer dollars in housing for drug-addicted homeless, free syringes (needles), and “crack kits” for withdrawing addicts.

The goal of these programs was to provide the homeless a place to stay, in order for them to focus on combating their addiction and preventing deaths from withdrawal. Despite the hopes, drug-related deaths still surpassed 100,000 annually under Biden, for the first time ever.

Under Trump’s administration, however, those numbers have already fallen to the lowest ever, while the number of recovering drug addicts in America has increased.

“These investments will help move people from the streets into treatment and recovery, strengthen families, save lives, and make communities safer,” Kennedy wrote in a press release.

Kennedy unveiled the funding during a visit to a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic operated by Easterseals MORC. The package includes a $96 million opportunity for a new program called Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support, or STREETS, along with $612 million for additional behavioral health initiatives.

The Great American Recovery Initiative, launched by Trump earlier this year, seeks to coordinate a nationwide response to addiction through prevention, treatment, and long-term recovery efforts across federal agencies and local partners.

The STREETS program, administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is central to the new funding. STREETS will provide up to $24 million annually over four years, awarding eight communities as much as $3 million each per year to develop coordinated systems of care for homeless individuals battling substance use disorders or serious mental illness.

As stated by the agency, the initiative, fueled by the investment, emphasizes and encourages a street-based outreach and coordination among local governments, health providers, housing services, law enforcement, and courts to move individuals into treatment and recovery.

Of the $700 million in the funding package, $223.1 million will be used to expand and strengthen Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, which provide comprehensive, community-based mental health and addiction care.

Another $238.6 million of that sum will support the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline to improve state and local response capacity and enhance services for high-risk populations.

The investment also allocates $80 million for substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery programs, including rural emergency medical services training and youth-focused prevention efforts.

The remaining $70-plus million will go toward mental health services, including programs addressing childhood trauma, mobile crisis care, and diversion from the criminal justice system into community-based treatment, which has been proven to be effective in overturning addiction.

In the press release, Christopher D. Carroll, principal deputy assistant secretary at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said community-based clinics are central to the administration’s approach.

“Every community deserves access to effective behavioral health services that help people prevent addiction, achieve recovery, address mental health challenges, and respond to crises,” Carroll said. “Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics are a cornerstone of this effort, providing comprehensive, community-based care that helps people sustain recovery and rebuild their lives.”

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

Sami Winc: Victor, let’s go ahead and get to the memorandum of understanding. It was a very short two-page document, easy to read through, dealt largely with the peace agreement.  

You know what I thought was really interesting? They emphasized Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanon. It must have been written in there three times that they’re making a peace deal, but also for Lebanon.  

And the Strait of Hormuz will be open, and the Iranians will give up their nuclear material and not build any more nukes.  

And then the sanctions. And I thought that it seemed kind of light on the sanctions, was the only thing that I noticed. Although there’s lots of criticism out there, I was wondering your thoughts. 

Victor Davis Hanson: I think a lot of people are missing a couple of premises. No. 1, we don’t know the extent of damage in Iran. No ground troops, no embedded reporters, no news, no internet there.  

[President Donald] Trump said a trillion dollars or two trillion. Maybe even if it’s a half trillion, it’s a fifty-year investment in the military nuclear industrial complex, and a lot of it’s ruined.  

And they have been embargoed, and they’ve been sanctioned. Their assets are frozen. They’re losing $400 million a day in revenue. So, they’re in bad shape. We don’t know how bad they are. That’s No. 1. 

No. 2, Iran is not a protectorate of the United States. It’s 93 million people. It’s one and a half times the size of Texas. And we don’t have a good record of going in on the ground and managing a country. 

We saw that in Afghanistan. We saw that in Iraq. Seventy-five hundred dead, $2 trillion, and look at it, the Taliban is still in control. So, we’re not going to go in there and manage it. If you’re not going to go in there and manage it, then your control over that regime is limited, especially when it has patrons that are nuclear like Russia and China, and they want to get back in. 

So, my point is simply this: Can you stop them from enriching? Yes. You can say we’re going to bomb the moment we see you tamper with Pickaxe Mountain or any of those areas.  

And can we stop them from closing the straits? Yes. You have to open the straits or we’re not going to lift the blockade.  

The key to all this memorandum of understanding is, will he use force when they inevitably cheat? So, a week from now, if they think, “Well, we got a lot of concessions. We’re going to send three missiles into the hated UAE, and we’re going to send a couple more into Kuwait and have a big Shia restive population.”  

And if Trump says, “Oh, that was just a love tap,” it won’t work. He’s got to say, “OK, you sent three, you’re going to lose 10 bridges. You sent three against Kuwait, you’re going to lose a power grid.” He hasn’t done that yet. 

People forget there’s a whole list of targets that [Barack] Obama went after in Libya and a whole typology that [Bill] Clinton went after. We were in the same place in Serbia in 1999. It was not working after 60 days. We limited, and then all of a sudden Clinton went wild. All the bridges gone in the Danube, the grid.  I wouldn’t do it. He hits museums. He hits hospitals. He hit everything. Anytime he heard they were using something that he thought he wouldn’t hit, they hit, and that stopped him after 78 days. 

My point is, they have a whole list of targets that we haven’t even touched, but you can shut down that entire economy in two days if you hit them. You take out two big power plants in Tehran, and you’re in trouble. And you take out the power—where’s all these missile factories and everything? Where are they getting their power? It’s on the grid. You hit them, and they’re in trouble. So, we can do that.  

And if he’s going to do it, it doesn’t really matter. All he has to say is, “We can’t control what you do, but if we decide you’re funding terrorists that attack us, if we find that you’re building missiles that are shoot launching … ”  

He doesn’t have to have them in the memorandum of understanding. He should have the nuclear enrichment, and he should have the straits. 

Meanwhile, he’s telling the UAE and the Israelis and the Turks, “Hey, you guys, you all have avenues for pipelines. Get to it. So, double your capacity, Saudi, to ship out the Red Sea. Double your, triple your capacity, UAE—you’re on the right side of the Strait of Hormuz—go straight into the Persian Gulf and double that. And then Turkey, get a long pipeline into the oil fields. You can do it. And Israel, cut a deal and go right out of Haifa and do it now so the next time they do it, we’re not over a barrel.” And I think they’re doing that. 

Final thing is we don’t care what the Left says because one day he’s Hitler and the next day he’s Neville Chamberlain. Hakeem Jeffries can’t figure that out. Oh, he’s just—he’s a chicken. He tacoed out. Trump always chickens out. The next day he’s Neville Chamberlain.  

Oh, this is not—we didn’t get anything. This was a useless preemptive war that was too—you know, we’re striking a school, you know, all this stuff. It’s just whatever Trump’s for, that you don’t pay any attention to it. 

But on the right, what they’re doing is they’re getting attacked in two places. So, there’s Steve Bannon, Tucker [Carlson], Candace [Owens], Megyn Kelly, podcasters, and some politicians are angry that they did anything at all.  

So, now it’s like, we didn’t want you to do anything, but now you haven’t done anything. They’ve done a lot. They keep thinking that this is like the Obama deal when Iran was ascendant, convinced that Obama wouldn’t lift a finger militarily, and they had all this infrastructure. They’re devastated. It’s not this—they’re not in 2016, and Trump isn’t Obama. He’s got a lot more assets at his disposal. 

He doesn’t have some crazy idea that he’s going to champion a Shia alternate crescent to rival the moderate Arab regimes and Israel and empower Damascus, Tehran, Gaza, Beirut. That was Obama, Valerie Jarrett’s, Ben Rhodes’ idea.  

So, there’s a lot of assets, but people have to realize that he’s under a lot of pressure. If he loses the House—and the history says 38 out of the last 41 midterms, the in-party lost seats. If he loses the House, No. 1, they’re going to impeach him on day one. I don’t mean that literally, but it’s going to start.  

No. 2, they’re going to call in the entire Trump family, and they have the power of subpoena, and they’re going to tie him up. 

So, he’s getting House members, and they’re saying to him, “Believe it or not, Mr. President, given our redistricting, we’re going to beat these guys. The redistricting is going to help, and given that racial gerrymandering is going to stop some of that, and given that no one likes this socialist agenda that their radical candidates are promoting, and given that the price of oil is going down, $67 a barrel, $65 is break-even. They’re down to below $4 a gallon. It was only, I think, $3.30.” 

They’re saying to the president, “We can win. We have a chance of doing the incredible. We can win. But you can’t stay in there too long. If you stay in there too long and the price of oil goes up, we’re dead. So, cut a deal, and then if you have to do something, just do it a day or two at a time and keep the strait open.” 

So, he’s under that pressure. 

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

Maine fathers are standing up for their daughters, challenging the secretary of state’s decision to invalidate their ballot initiative that aims to protect women’s sports from men claiming to be transgender.

“Maine is far too progressive to continue allowing sexist, regressive, and illegal sex-based discrimination in our schools, and the daily violation of the civil rights of our state’s most vulnerable population: its children,” Leyland Streiff, leader of Maine Girl Dads, told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

“Yet shockingly, we have watched this violation of sex-based civil rights happen every day in Maine’s schools,” he added. “Just this past April, young female schoolchildren (and their mothers, coaches, and advocates) testified to the State Judiciary Committee in Augusta about voyeurism, masturbation, violence, and mental trauma from males in female bathrooms and locker rooms.”

He also noted that a male athlete won a state women’s pole vault competition last year.

Streiff’s group acquired more than enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot. The initiative would prevent boy students from competing on girls’ teams and protect girls locker rooms and bathrooms from boys, even if they claim to identify as transgender.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced in March that her office found the initiative, formally titled “An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex,” valid, with 71,033 signatures—far more than the 67,682 signatures required.

Yet Streiff noted that the Maine Women’s Lobby and EqualityMaine opposed his effort. He said the groups recruited three citizens to file a legal challenge against the effort. He claimed the legal challenge is headed by the Elias Law Group, the firm of Democrat lawyer Marc Elias.

“We believe democracy should be protected and exercised, and this referendum should be debated by Mainers at the ballot box—not by a bunch of out-of-state lawyers,” Streiff said.

The Daily Signal reached out to the Women’s Lobby, EqualityMaine, and Elias Law Group for comment, and none of them responded by publication time. The Daily Signal asked them who is funding the efforts against the initiative.

A coalition of groups led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law, and the Maine Women’s Lobby condemned the initiative in February as an “attack on public education.” The coalition condemned the campaign’s financial backing, referring to an $800,000 contribution from conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein.

Last month, Bellows announced that, after reviewing the signatures again, the ballot initiative fell short. Her office found 67,150 signatures valid, slightly more than 500 below the threshold.

Bellows’ office, when reached for comment, referred the Daily Signal to the May press release finding the signatures insufficient.

“We have appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and remain very confident in the challenges we’ve raised to the Secretary of State’s reasoning and decisioning,” the Maine Girl Dads leader said. “Oral arguments have been scheduled for July 1st, and we anticipate a ruling by mid-July. A successful appeal will keep us on the November 2026 ballot.”

Streiff described his position as “progressive” and the transgender activist position as regressive.

“Everyone has a sex, sex is not gender, and there is no right or wrong way to be a male or female (dress, feel, present, even identify however you want—we believe that’s fantastic),” he told the Daily Signal. “Sex is big enough for everyone, and does not require anyone to conform to regressive stereotypes.”

He also noted that Maine Girl Dads is “nonpartisan by design, as our daughters’ rights shouldn’t be a political ploy or a party-line issue.”

The Maine Girl Dads say their position is “purely paternal, never political, and based on common sense.” Streiff said the group has “tons of Democrats and independents alongside Republicans in our midst.”

“The elected bureaucrats in Augusta have taken radical positions that are simply at odds with the beliefs of those who voted them in,” he argued. “The truth is the majority of Mainers—of all walks of life and political persuasions—believe in sex-designated sports and spaces in schools. To them, to us, and to our daughters, this is not a political stance but a commonsense approach to fairness, dignity, and the protection of long-held federal civil rights.”

“We dads are simply doing what dads do—showing our kids that we’re willing to do the right thing, especially when it’s hard, because our example will shape them and shape their world,” Streiff concluded.

LONDON, June 22 (Reuters)—Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday he was quitting, paving the way for what is expected to be an orderly transfer of power to front-runner Andy Burnham, who could become Britain’s seventh leader in 10 years as early as next month.

In an emotional speech, Starmer said he had listened to his governing Labour Party and realized that he was no longer the man who should lead it into a national election due in 2029.

After making his announcement on the steps of his Downing Street office and London residence, Starmer’s move to stand down could have triggered a divisive leadership contest, but several Labour lawmakers said they now expect more of a coronation.

Burnham, a 56-year-old career politician, quickly won the support of another potential leadership rival, former health minister Wes Streeting, with one Labour lawmaker saying it was more likely the former mayor would now be installed as leader.

Political Churn in Britain

By appointing Britain’s seventh prime minister since the Brexit vote to leave the European Union 10 years ago, the Labour government is the latest to fall foul of voter anger over politicians’ failure to deliver on their promises of change.

Starmer said he would ask the Labour Party’s organizing committee to set out a timeline for a leadership contest to find his replacement. Nominations would open on July 9, close by mid-July, and if there is a contest, a new leader will be in place by September. A coronation could mean a new leader would enter office by mid-July.

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer from my parliamentary party to that question and I accept that answer with good grace,” he said.

After describing the achievements his government had secured in his two years of power, a man who was often criticized for being robotic became visibly emotional, his voice cracking when he thanked his family for their support.

“When I leave the biggest job in the country, I will spend more time on the most important job, being the best husband I can to my fantastic wife Vic, who has been a rock by my side through good times and bad, and being the best dad I can to my beautiful children, who are my pride and my joy.”

Pressure Had Been Building for Months

Starmer spent the weekend with his wife, Victoria, at his country residence to consider his future. With support draining away, he realized the political reality of his position.

There was some sadness in the Labour ranks, with Industry Minister Chris McDonald saying his speech underlined the fact “he’s a really decent man”. However, others said he had been treated the way he treated others as prime minister, being “royally done over.”

The threat to Starmer, which had been building for months, increased sharply on Friday when Burnham decisively won a parliamentary election to return to Westminster, beating a candidate from Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK party, which has led opinion polls for more than a year.

That victory gave hope to Labour lawmakers that Burnham, known for his strong communication skills, could transform the fortunes of a party that has lost support under Starmer.

The pound rose against other currencies and British government bonds rallied after Streeting’s announcement, as investors welcomed a more certain path to Burnham’s premiership.

Despite hoping for a smooth handover, the change is not without risk.

Burnham, who is expected to arrive in London on Monday to take up his newly won seat for the northwestern English area of Makerfield, has yet to flesh out a full policy agenda and Reform’s Farage immediately called for a national election.

“I’ve had enough of waiting around. Britain needs change – real change, not another washed-up has-been shoved into place by the uniparty,” Farage said in a statement.

No Clear Approach Yet

Beyond saying that Britain needs fundamental change and that he wants to bring down the cost of living, Burnham has yet to make clear his approach to foreign affairs, the economy and defense.

Like Starmer, he could find he has little room to maneuver, hemmed in by bond market investors opposed to any additional borrowing, and confronted by an angry electorate that believes the country is not working properly.

Britain already has the highest borrowing costs in the Group of Seven wealthy nations due to its high debt and interest payments, years of anemic economic growth, its struggles to cut spending, and the need to invest in areas like defense.

(Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Alistair Smout, David Milliken, Sam Tabahriti, William James, and Sarah Young; editing by Barbara Lewis, Kate Holton, and Sharon Singleton)

John Quincy Adams’ 1821 Fourth of July address has had a long legacy. It has become a touchstone in debates about foreign policy to this day, thanks to Adams’ ringing assertion that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”  

Adams was the U.S. secretary of state at the time, and he would soon help President James Monroe draft what we now call the Monroe Doctrine. Adams was expected to be a presidential contender in 1824—and he not only was a candidate, he won, following his father’s footsteps to the highest office in the land. 

When a committee of citizens in Washington, D.C., invited Adams to give an Independence Day speech in 1821, they knew his remarks would be significant for the whole country. Like the Declaration of Independence itself, however, Adams’ comments were directed to the world as well as his fellow Americans.  

The Napoleonic Wars had ended only a few years earlier, and they had been, in effect, a world war. Even America had become involved—the War of 1812 was part of the wider conflict. And as happened after World War II, in the early 19th century, the Napoleonic Wars were followed by a kind of Cold War. The French Revolution and Napoleon had tried to plunge all of Europe into revolution for liberté, égalité, and fraternité.  

France was defeated, but the revolution’s ideals were not, and the victorious traditional powers of Europe now struggled to prevent revolution from erupting anew. Prussia, Russia, and Austria formed the Holy Alliance against revolutionary movements, and many of Europe’s Christian powers even feared the rebellion of Greeks against the rule of the Ottoman Empire would inflame radical causes elsewhere. 

Wasn’t America also a revolutionary republic that had fought to win its independence from the British Empire? In Britain itself, there was divided opinion about revolutionary movements, with liberal Whigs tending to sympathize with independence efforts everywhere. They saw the Holy Alliance as an ideological, geopolitical, and indeed spiritual enemy to be defeated in a cold war to advance liberalism, democracy, human rights, and enlightenment. The Catholic Church and hereditary monarchy were evils that held back human progress, they firmly believed. 

British liberals accused Americans of hypocrisy. Our nation was founded in a revolution, and the Declaration of Independence set out universal ideals that we now stood accused of doing nothing to support. The Whigs who sympathized with the French Revolution’s ideals wanted the U.S. and Britain to work together in the 19th century to promote movements for liberalism and independence. This, they insisted, was America’s duty to its own ideals, as they had been set out in the Declaration. Many Americans agreed with this—just as many had been supportive of the French Revolution. 

John Quincy Adams was the descendant of Massachusetts Puritans. He had no love for the Catholic Church. His father had been a driving force behind American independence. When other leaders in the Continental Congress still sought reconciliation with the king, John Adams insisted that independence was the right and necessary path. And despite what his sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, Thomas Jefferson would later say, John Adams was no monarchist. Neither was his son.  

John Quincy Adams’ 1821 speech on the Declaration makes his principles clear: Traditional monarchy was founded in unjust conquest, and only after the Protestant Reformation did a proper understanding of liberty in matters of conscience and religion arise, which subsequently led to a reformation in the moral principles of politics as well.  

For Secretary Adams, that was the enduring significance of the Declaration of Independence: “It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government.  … It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the unalterable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination; but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union.”  

Adams even appropriated the language of Europe’s counterrevolutionaries in support of the declaration: “In the reperusal and hearing of this instrument,” Adams said, referring to the declaration, we “renew the genuine Holy Alliance of its principles.” 

John Quincy Adams was unwilling to yield an inch to America’s liberal critics overseas—his speech asserted that America was indeed the champion of an idea, and even an idea of freedom the critics might recognize. Yet they were wrong to think they understood that idea better than Americans themselves did.  

Adams knew that what rightly followed from the declaration’s principles of self-government was not endless intervention in the affairs of other nations but rather the opposite. For Adams, history was a tale of the opposition between “liberty and force,” and America was the first nation in history to show that liberty could be the basis of political order. To get involved in the inveterate ideological and territorial wars of Europe and the rest of the world would transform America from a free and peaceful country into just another instrument of force.  

“By once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence,” Adams warned, America “would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.”  

What is most important, according to Adams, is not whether there is a good cause at stake in a foreign conflict, but rather the principle that a free nation like America is not preoccupied with the use of force. Wars and armies were what gave rise to kings and servitude. Adams was no pacifist, nor even a strict non-interventionist. He had no illusions about removing force from statecraft and the nature of the state itself. But he was vigilant lest the attempt to use force for good but not strictly necessary ends should lead back to the conditions of the past.  

His concern was not only about practical effects but above all about losing the moral object of our independence. That would be a loss to humanity, as the example of a state not defined by war and power was sacrificed to the dream of doing good through the instruments of empire. 

There is much more in Adams’ 1821 Fourth of July address that speaks to questions of our time and of all time. Adams combines ideas from Cicero, Edmund Burke, and Adam Smith to explore how natural sympathies bind political societies together.  

“It is a common Government,” says Adams, meaning common justice and political association, “that constitutes our Country. But in THAT association, all the sympathies of domestic life and kindred blood, all the moral ligatures of friendship and of neighborhood, are combined with that instinctive and mysterious context between man and physical nature, which binds the first perceptions of childhood in a chain of sympathy with the last gasp of expiring age, to the spot of our nativity.”  

America was more than just an idea—the idea had to be given substance by a people naturally joined together as families, friends, and inhabitants of a shared land. In the presence of such bonds, even a lack of freedom might be tolerable, as Americans tolerated more than a century of existence as Britain’s colonists. Yet the very distance between Britain and America attenuated those natural connections to the mother country, while Americans formed closer bonds with one another in that land that was their own:  

Long before the Declaration of Independence, the great mass of the people of America and the people of Britain had become total strangers to each other. The people of America were known to the people of Britain only through the transactions of trade. … The sympathies most essential to the communion of country were, between the British and the American people, extinct. 

There is a lesson here for those who today think a nation can be merely an economy, a regulatory domain within which strangers buy and sell from one another.  

John Quincy Adams’ 1821 Fourth of July address is an American classic for all the reasons it’s well-remembered, but for more many more, too. It deserves to be read and revisited as often as the Declaration of Independence itself is. 

Last week, the Trump administration announced that it’s ramping up enforcement of its hospital price transparency rule to overcome widespread noncompliance. “Our message to hospitals is simple: Post your real prices,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Come into compliance immediately or prepare for serious consequences.” 

Actual, upfront prices, as President Donald Trump’s federal rule requires, are urgently needed to empower consumers to compare and save and ultimately reverse runaway costs. As a state lawmaker, I have seen firsthand the power of price transparency as a political issue beyond Washington. 

Despite being outspent by a 6-to-1 margin, I won reelection by a landslide in last month’s Republican primary for my seat in the Ohio House of Representatives. I attribute much of this victory to my record of pursuing commonsense solutions to the state’s outrageous health care costs. The lesson for other candidates running for office this year, especially conservatives, is to lean into health care reform in general and price transparency in particular.
 
As Trump led on this crucial issue at the federal level, I authored a hospital price transparency bill in Ohio that codified Trump’s rule into state law. It became law 18 months ago and went into effect last April. It requires hospitals to publish their actual prices, not estimates, by health insurance plan. This information finally pulls back the veil on health care costs that have long been hidden until they arrive on bills in the mail weeks after treatment.
 
With upfront prices, Ohioans can protect themselves from hospital price gouging and choose affordable treatments. Employers, who provide coverage for most of Ohio’s working families, can compare costs, steer employees to the best value and reduce plan premiums. With lower health plan expenditures, Ohio businesses can be more competitive, and workers can earn higher pay.
 
Ohio hospital price disclosures are now aggregated online by the free Ohio Hospital Price Finder. Users can look up treatments and spot wildly different costs for the same care. For example, a diagnostic colonoscopy ranges from $842 to $3,525 at Trinity Medical Center East in Steubenville, depending on health coverage. And a knee arthroscopy varies from $1,479 to $6,199. Published prices will create competition, controlling and converging costs just as in every other sector of the economy.
 
Unfortunately, the hospital lobby and entrenched health care interests fought my bill every step of the way. Why? Because hidden prices protect profits.
 
When patients don’t know what they’ll owe until after care is delivered, overcharging proliferates and is almost impossible to fight. Employers and workers absorb those costs through higher insurance premiums, lower wages, and larger out-of-pocket expenses.
 
Thanks to my courageous colleagues in Columbus, hospitals lost that fight. But the special interests were determined to take me out in the primary. In the end, our campaign won decisively because we stood with patients, workers, and employers, and voters couldn’t be fooled. Like most Americans, they are tired of being crushed by health care costs that they didn’t know and often wouldn’t have accepted if they had known about them upfront.
 
Republican candidates—who for too long have run from health care reform—have the opportunity to tap into this frustration in their own campaigns. Price transparency is a market-based, effective solution that requires no new spending, income transfers, or burdensome regulations.
 
Polling shows a bipartisan supermajority of more than 90% of Americans support this reform. That’s because our predatory health care system preys on people of all political persuasions.
 
Following the Trump administration’s lead, my legislation gives consumers in my state the weapons to fight back and substantially reduce costs. Other candidates who believe in free market solutions should join this health care reform train and ride it to public office and an affordable health care future.

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

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump is revoking the visas of three foreign nationals charged with defrauding the American people, the Daily Signal can first report.

Three foreign nationals who the State Department says “swindled investors, looted taxpayer-funded programs, and abused the system” will no longer be allowed to enter the United States.

“The State Department is protecting Americans from foreign fraudsters by ensuring these foreigners can’t travel to the United States,” a spokesperson told the Daily Signal.

The State Department revoked the visa of one foreign national whose charges include securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

“A foreign national advising individuals on their investments  stole millions of dollars from people trying to grow their businesses and savings, abusing their trust and wrecking their financial security,” a spokesperson said. “We won’t tolerate fraud that harms hardworking Americans and undermines confidence in our markets. Visa revoked.”

Another foreign national claimed to operate a legitimate business helping vulnerable patients access health care. Instead, the individual was part of a Medicaid scam, billing for more than $5 million of fake services. The person was charged with felony fraud and convicted of grand theft of $100,000 or more.

The third foreign national built a company by faking revenue and fooling investors, according to the State Department. The individual was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

“This foreign national swindled millions of dollars from clients, then recycled the same false claims and forged letters to secure a visa,” the spokesperson said. “Visa revoked.”

The Trump administration has put a strong emphasis on cracking down on fraud, with Vice President JD Vance leading the task force on anti-fraud efforts.

A growing number of Americans are feeling less patriotic about their country as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

According to a Public Religion Research Institute poll released last week, “Just half of Americans are extremely or very proud of being an American (51%) or of America’s 250-year history (49%).”

Those low numbers are being fueled by Democrats, according to the survey.

“Most Republicans (83% and 82%, respectively) are extremely or very proud, compared with over four in ten independents (43% and 44%), and three in ten Democrats (31% and 28%),” the Public Religion Research Institute poll revealed.

A mere 24% said America is a good moral example for the world, while 18% said they approved of how democracy is working in the United States today.

The American Dream

There is also a sharp partisan divide about the American Dream. When respondents were asked whether they believed if you work hard, you’ll get ahead, just 49% agreed vs. 50% who disagreed. “Republicans are notably more likely to believe in the American Dream (76%) than independents (46%) and Democrats (30%),” the poll found.

PRRI President Robert P. Jones told Axios, “What you really see is one vision of the country, and one mood among Republicans, and a very, very different vision of the country and mood among both independents and Democrats.”  

The survey also asked about the role of God in America.

“Just 44% of Americans agree with the idea that God has granted America a special role in human history, compared with a slim majority who disagree (52%),” according to the Public Religion Research Institute data.

In 2012, a majority of all religious groups believed in God’s providence for America. Today, that was true for only Latter-day Saints, white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, and black Protestants.

Progressives Prefer Europe

In addition to the decline in patriotism, progressives in the United States also view several European countries more favorably than their own country, according to recent polling from the Napolitan News Service. 

“The progressive base has a higher—significantly higher—opinion of France, the U.K., and Germany than they do of the United States,” said Scott Rasmussen, founder of the Napolitan Institute and president of RMG Research. 

Among voters who hold progressive policy positions, 81% viewed France favorably, 78% viewed the United Kingdom favorably, and 67% viewed Germany favorably, according to the Napolitan News Service. 

Rasmussen noted that while progressives profess to “love the country” and “believe in America’s founding ideals,” they “are more likely to be disenchanted” when the president is a Republican like Donald Trump. 

Progressives’ viewpoints on their country, therefore, shift depending on who is in office, Rasmussen said. With Trump as president, there is “an inclination for some of these progressives” to be “a little bit embarrassed, and that’s reflected in the data,” he noted. 

Virginians are facing some tough battles this year, and it didn’t have to be that way.

Republican leaders are getting heat for two votes taken on June 13 at the Republican Party of Virginia State Central Committee meeting. That’s not fair. They should take heat for the fact that neither of them should have been necessary.

The first was what to do with the accusations that the Lynchburg Republican Committee had violated the law, and the second was whether to issue a Resolution Opposing the three constitutional amendments on the ballot in November.

First, at the risk of challenging “watching grass grow” for your attention, I’m going to give you more background than the press (and social media posts) are putting out there about the Lynchburg situation and then show you why it should not have been necessary.

The State Central Committee voted to dissolve the Lynchburg Republican Committee and invalidate their firehouse primary for city council. Yes, that is an extreme measure.

It comes in the wake of Attorney General Jay Jones launching an investigation into the firehouse primary the unit held. The AG’s letter states that, “The OAG has reviewed allegations that the LRCC implemented an inadequate absentee ballot process for the primary and that certain protected voters were excluded from participating in the election.”

The AG is not looking into whether political parties can hold firehouse primaries, as some have suggested; they are looking into allegations by Republicans who were kept from participating in this one. City Councilor Chris Faraldi told WFXR-TV that some of the issues come down to establishing email ballots. “When you consider the implications of fraud, of cheating, just with that fact alone that was determined.” This is where the Republican State Central Committee comes in.

They voted 55-17 to declare the results invalid, disband the committee, and bar the leadership from returning for the rest of the term. The exception was Steven “Doc” Troxel, who was commended for trying to run a fair process.

So, how would this have been avoided? The blame lies with the “Convention Ban” that was passed during the COVID lockdowns. It was called HB2020 before it got its catchy name “The Convention Ban,” and the vote in the House of Delegates was 53-44, with all Republicans voting “nay.”

Here’s the avoidable part: in the 2019 general election, the GOP lost the majority in the House. Democrats flipped Districts 28, 40, 76, 83, 91, and 94, and only eight races saw higher than a 50% voter turnout.

Two of those flipped seats were open, and the other four Republican incumbents were ousted with most of the district voters sitting it out: Tim Hugo (HD-40, to Dan Helmer, turnout 49.5%), Chris Jones (HD-76, to Clint Jenkins, 44.3%), Christopher Stolle (HD-83, to Nancy Guy, 40.3%), and David Yancey (HD-94, to Shelly Simonds, 38.8%).

Because this was also the year that 12 Virginia Beach employees were killed by a co-worker, gun-control advocates like Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” sent $573,000 alone to flip these seats. (Doesn’t sound like much by today’s standards, but it was a lot then.) Democrats also knew that this would be the Assembly that would finally wrest political districts from partisan assembly members (ironic, huh?).

Regardless, there were lots of votes left uncast, and at least some of those might have been Republicans (sarcasm).

The other State Central vote Saturday was the one that established a party position against the three constitutional amendments—amendments that flew through the General Assembly because Democrats flipped 14 House seats. Yes, those elections had low turnouts, too.

House District 30: John McAuliff ousted Geary Higgins by 900 votes. Mark Downey defeated Chad Green by 1,300, and Bobby Orrock was sent home by 1,500. Much was made of the millions of dollars that were poured into them from outside Virginia on behalf of Democrats. Hearing of all those dollars coming in became a great way to get GOP voters to “self-suppress.”

Sure, the amendments can be stopped, but it would have been easier to stop them before they got started.

An EMS worker would tell you that if someone is turning purple, it means that they are being choked of oxygen. A state turns purple due to a lack of political oxygen getting to the “red” blood cells.

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

Imagine for a moment that you’re at a Donald Trump rally. As you approach the event, you come across a Republican protester wearing an anti-Trump mask and carrying a “No more wars” sign. Perhaps the person is also accusing the president of being too cozy with corporations.

Does that sound unlikely?

Well, outside a Democratic meeting this week—an event sponsored by a Democrat state senator and featuring an appearance by L. Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the state’s most influential lawmaker—stood the Virginia Democratic Party’s version of just such a protester.

This Democrat sported a cardboard image of the Democrat governor wearing a mock tiara that said: “Diva Data Center.” The protester was holding a “No more data centers” sign and hinted the governor is too close to Dominion Energy. The protester wasn’t shunned for shaming a governor from her own party; other rally-goers seemed to welcome her presence.

The governor’s rift with Democrats goes deeper.

Earlier that same day, Spanberger’s staff reportedly asked two Democrats who’ve appeared recently with Lucas to leave a bill signing that Spanberger was hosting. “It’s a shame the governor decided to take these actions today,” Sen. Russet Perry told Virginia Scope. “I’ve never been publicly critical or disparaging of her and genuinely wish her the best. But it is my job as a senator, in a coequal branch, to fight for my constituents.”

Spanberger herself was met by anti-data center protesters at an event in Loudoun County this week.

One of Spanberger’s hurdles is the same one faced by all governors: Virginia is the only state that limits its governor to a single consecutive term. That means that the governor’s strongest day is Election Day, and it can be a downhill slide from there.

Still, Spanberger has taken that slide on steroids. She scored 57 percent of the vote in November 2025, sweeping into office in a state that had narrowly elected Republican Glenn Youngkin four years earlier.

But the honeymoon was short. By the end of March, just more than two months into her term, a George Mason University poll put Spanberger’s job approval at 47 percent; it found that 46 percent disapproved. As a candidate, Spanberger benefited from a weak opponent: few voters seemed excited about then-Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. So it makes sense that the new governor would lose some support as Republicans and independents fantasized about what might have been.

But a 10-point drop in such a short time frame is surprising, especially since the state remains in generally good shape. It isn’t as if Virginia has endured a natural disaster or similar external threat. In fact, general fund revenues soared throughout the beginning of her tenure. Revenues jumped 6.9 percent in April year over year, and total collections are running 3.3 percent ahead of projections.

The governor angered Democrats by vetoing 31 bills they passed this year, including attempts to grant collective bargaining rights to public employees and to create a market for the sale of cannabis products. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell criticized Spanberger for vetoing bills instead of negotiating with lawmakers while those bills were being drafted.

“It’s hard to work with a governor’s office that has opinions when they don’t share them before they act, or they don’t share them during the legislative process,” he told the Virginia Mercury. “Governor Spanberger’s proposals were serious policy proposals, but they were made about two months too late.”

Spanberger’s biggest problem seems to be weak support within her own party. Following the release of the poll, Sen. Lucas trolled the governor on social media. “Interesting poll—my numbers are doing just fine,” she wrote. “The problem she has to correct is her policies don’t match her rhetoric from the campaign trail. Her issue is credibility.”

Still, there are signs that Spanberger may eventually solidify her support inside her party. The cannabis proposal is expected to be included in a budget compromise bill that lawmakers must pass next week. That bill is likely to include some changes to the state’s support for data centers, which Senate Democrats and Republicans have called for.

Gov. Spanberger seems to be gambling that she can steer a centrist path between Virginia Republicans and legislative Democrats. She still has three and a half years left in her term and will lead the commonwealth through another election when a new Senate and House will be chosen in 2027. Youngkin found ways to flex his power even after Democrats took control of both houses of the state legislature in 2023, and perhaps she can chart a similar course.

Only time will tell whether she can pull off the high-wire act.

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

Canada is headed for yet another recession, and their globalist prime minister is blaming immigrants—but not in the way you’d expect. He’s not pointing to the millions of people from the third world who flooded in, gutting wages and driving home prices to Hong Kong levels. Instead, it’s the opposite.

The immigrants that Liberals imported into Canada were used to wallpaper over the country’s rotting economy, which has underperformed Japan for almost a generation now. Two weeks ago, Statistics Canada announced Canada is in a recession, making it the third economic downturn in the 11 years since Liberal Justin Trudeau took office.

That’s a recession every three and a half years. For perspective, America has had only a single official recession in 17 years, and that was during the COVID-19 madness. Canada’s globalist-in-chief Mark Carney is ignoring his nation’s long-standing economic malaise and blaming immigrants—or rather, a supposed lack thereof—for the problem.

Hilariously, he thinks the source of the problem is that he reduced migration to the already bloated pre-Covid level. In other words, he’s admitting that pretty much all of Canada’s growth was artificially boosted by counting migrant costs and welfare as GDP. Even these statistical illusions failed to boost growth past Japan’s levels.

Previously, Trudeau’s Canada in 2015 was taking in almost a quarter-million migrants per year (the equivalent of 2 million a year in U.S. population terms). By Covid, he’d doubled that past 400,000 a year, about 4 million in U.S. terms.

Then, it went vertical to over one million migrants per year. In U.S. terms, that’s equivalent to 9 million per year—President Joe Biden, eat your heart out.

It’s worth noting, however, that mass importation of foreigners was a key part of “improving” the economic statistics in the U.S. under Biden. Essentially all of America’s net job growth from pre-pandemic to when Biden left office went to foreign-born workers as native-born Americans lost jobs on net.

Similarly, with so many illegal aliens in the country and not being accurately captured by the Census Bureau’s population estimates, economic figures like GDP per capita were gross overestimates.

Just as the flood of migrants under Biden was unsustainable for the U.S., so too is a million migrants a year in a country one-eighth the size. After all, it takes time for Canadians to learn Punjabi, and the natives were getting restless. So, Carney returned to Trudeau’s bloated annual rate of 400,000 and is using the 600,000 gap as his excuse for recession.

Of course, 400,000 is still extremely high considering native Canadians are growing at 34,000 per year. As in, under Trudeau immigrants made up 96% of future Canadians—1 million immigrants, 34,000 natives. And under Carney that’s still 92% of Canadians being replaced—400,000 versus 34,000.

But if not from changes to immigration, why is Canada’s economy so bad? Put simply, liberals destroyed the nation’s business environment while crushing regular Canadians with taxes, bureaucratic red tape, and sky-high house prices.

In the past 10 years, business investment collapsed by one-third, with more than $1 trillion fleeing—that’s a large sum in Canada—during a period when U.S. business investment nearly doubled, rising nearly $2 trillion per year.

Carney could easily fix Canada, considering that the country is swimming in oil and gas, wheat and hydro, and only has a tiny population. By all rights it should be the Saudi Arabia of the north, where residents don’t pay any taxes.

The winning formula looks like what Trump is trying to do here: slashing the federal workforce to its lowest level in 60 years, expanding domestic energy production, supply-side tax cuts on work and investment, cutting 120 regulations for every new one added, and dramatically reducing spending.

Previous Conservative governments essentially did just that. They kept red tape and bureaucracy under control to the point Canada was almost as rich per person as the U.S. when Trudeau took office—today, it’s poorer than West Virginia. Carney’s ignoring the winning formula and instead creating more red tape, especially on energy, which is why Alberta’s voting in October on whether to hold a referendum for independence.

He’s also hiking government spending when the economy’s shrinking, doubling deficits, hiring more parasitic bureaucrats, and even doubling down on censorship. Eventually, Canadian voters will rebel. The question is whether they’ll be voting in Punjabi by then.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—President Donald Trump announced British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will step down days after the release of a report saying 250,000 girls were raped by Muslim “grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom.

Restore Britain Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe released the “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” on Tuesday, stoking fury at Starmer, a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Trump posted about Starmer’s rumored departure Sunday on Truth Social.

Rumors of Starmer’s potential resignation have increased in the days after Andy Burnham won a by-election after promising to launch an intra-party challenge to Starmer. The British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Starmer leaves office after becoming increasingly unpopular since taking office in 2024, having nearly been forced out of office after files pertaining to registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released in January. The files revealed the registered sex offender’s close ties to Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s hand-picked ambassador to the United States. While Starmer claimed Mandelson misled him about his links to Epstein, the revelations led to the Reform Party sweeping local council elections.

The Lowe report states that “predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs across towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom” engaged in the “systematic targeting” of predominately white girls.

“Across Britain, clear evidence of organised abuse by Pakistani gangs, among other majority-Muslim ethnic groups, was ignored because confronting it risked accusations of racism,” the Lowe report continues.

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation