Residents of the United Kingdom born after 2009 will be permanently barred from purchasing cigarettes under the government’s new Tobacco and Vapes Bill, a measure aimed at creating what officials call a “smoke‑free generation.”

The legislation also tightens regulations on vaping, including banning the sale of vaping and nicotine products to those under age 18 and restricting advertising, in‑store displays, free distribution, and discounting.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the bill, which is expected to receive royal assent next week, would reduce smoking rates and prevent young people from becoming addicted to nicotine, easing long‑term pressure on the National Health Service.

“Children in the U.K. will be part of the first smoke‑free generation, protected from a lifetime of addiction and harm,” Streeting said. “Prevention is better than cure—this reform will save lives, ease pressure on the NHS, and build a healthier Britain.”

The legislation builds on a law passed last year banning the sale of single‑use disposable vapes, citing concerns over youth use and environmental damage.

Under the new bill, ministers will also gain expanded authority to regulate the flavors and packaging of tobacco, vaping, and nicotine products through secondary legislation.

While Ohio has laws preventing municipalities from passing local gun control ordinances, Senate lawmakers say gun owners need further protection of their Second Amendment rights.

State Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, introduced Senate Bill 278 last fall to let private citizens sue localities that pass gun control measures. The bill, which amends Section 9.68 of the Revised Code, allows individuals to sue for punitive or exemplary damages.

“A person, group, or entity adversely affected by any manner of ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or other action enacted or enforced by a political subdivision” can bring civil action against the political subdivision, the bill’s text states.

Last week, the Ohio Senate passed Johnson’s bill by a 24-9 vote, sending the legislation on to the House.

During a recent episode of “The President’s Podcast,” John Fortney, communication director for the Senate Republican Caucus, described the bill as one that goes after “an unconstitutional law by a municipality.”

Fortney said he thought the Ohio Supreme Court already addressed the matter. Johnson, a guest on the program, said political subdivisions within the state are still enacting gun laws that are “contrary to the Ohio Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, and established state law.”

In 2022, Johnson had helped make Ohio a “constitutional carry” state in which gun owners may carry weapons concealed without a permit. Ohio has another law that prevents local governments from enacting gun control ordinances.

Johnson said SB 278 is now necessary to punish municipalities that ignore state law, and to help any person “that gets rung up by some silly little ordinance … and has to defend himself or herself in a court of law.”

While Ohio law prohibits subdivisions from passing anti-gun ordinances, some municipalities ignore them, Johnson said.

“A lot of places that are very liberal on gun laws and regulations and want to see a lot more [restrictions], and don’t really care about what happens to one’s rights, are passing these regulations and different silly things that are clearly unconstitutional,” Johnson said.

Thus Senate Bill 278, which now has passed the full Senate. Johnson said his bill “hopefully will help localities like Columbus understand that they’re going to have to pay a cost for doing this.”

Johnson said leaders of political subdivisions know they’re doing “something that’s blatantly illegal” by passing gun ordinances. They are even “happy to do it.”

“Well, look at the harm you caused, and we’re going to prove that in the court of law and you’re going to pay for it,” he said.

Fortney called it “amazing” that local governments keep pushing illegal city ordinances that show no regard for what the Ohio Revised Code says, much less the Second Amendment.

The Legislature is on a break until May, with primary elections taking place on May 5. The House will take up the bill when it’s back in session.

Senate President Rob McColley, a Republican and Vivek Ramaswamy’s pick for lieutenant governor, also has spoken about the importance of SB 278.

“This is not a violation of home rule; home rule is still alive in the state of Ohio,” McColley told reporters. “In this case, offering more avenues for damages allows for a stronger deterrent,” McColley said.

The Ramaswamy-McColley ticket for governor was endorsed last week by the Buckeye Firearms Association. On X, McColley posted clips and pictures of Ramaswamy speaking about that endorsement and promoting the Second Amendment.

Morphing numerous bills into one giant legislative package is often a recipe for wasteful spending, but an anti-fraud measure from Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman Joni Ernst aims to save taxpayers $240 billion.

In January, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., requested that Ernst, an Iowa Republican, draft a legislative package to prevent fraud cases similar to Minnesota’s $9 billion welfare scandal.

This week, she released the Protecting American Taxpayers Act, which packages 17 anti-fraud bills introduced over the last year into one bill.

Although overcoming a Democrat filibuster is a challenge to passing legislation, Ernst anticipates bipartisan support for her measure.

“This is a package of a lot of different commonsense proposals,” Ernst told The Daily Signal. “Leader Thune wanted this package to include bills that had Democratic co-sponsors.”

One specific bill included in the anti-fraud omnibus is legislation by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which strengthens whistleblower protections for government contractors.

While the welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota and hospice fraud in California have gained significant attention, fraud has been a longstanding problem in federal programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion per year to fraud, according to a GAO analysis of budget years 2018 through 2022. The GAO also found that since 2003, improper payments have totaled about $2.8 trillion.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump launched the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President JD Vance. The task force aims to work with every agency to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within federal benefit programs.

Republicans sponsored Peters’ measure and the 16 other bills rolled into Ernst’s package. Several bills also gained Democrat co-sponsors, including Ernst’s legislation from last year to claw back unused federal spending for the COVID-19 pandemic, which had reached more than $65 billion.

About $1.4 billion in federal money is stolen through fraud, Ernst said.

“I started my elected political career as a county auditor, and it’s still amazing to me that the federal government can’t adhere to basic accounting practices that state and local governments do,” Ernst said.

Ernst’s package includes her bill requiring tax dollars hidden in budget line items listed as “Other Transaction Agreements” to be fully disclosed. Another proposal would extend statutes of limitations for COVID-19 fraud cases to ensure criminals are caught and held accountable. The package would further prevent anyone convicted of defrauding the Small Business Administration from getting future SBA loans.

There are also national security-related proposals in the package that could save money.

The bill includes a provision banning federal funds from going to countries under U.S. travel bans or arms embargoes. It also prohibits cash assistance to Afghanistan to prevent Taliban access. Another provision in the bill would require individuals who want to conduct international wire transfers to certify that they do not receive public assistance.

On Thursday, Republican Sens. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, John Cornyn of Texas, Jon Husted of Ohio, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, and James Lankford of Oklahoma issued statements in support of Ernst’s legislation.

The White House Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, stopped making headlines after its efforts to trim the budget. But Ernst said the Senate DOGE Caucus is still very engaged in fighting waste, fraud, and abuse. She was also glad to see the White House take a whole-of-government approach to fighting fraud with the Vance-led task force.

“We are thankful the vice president is the fraud czar,” Ernst said.

She noted that, occasionally, the “star power” of Elon Musk or video footage from online figure Nick Shirley is needed to draw attention to the problem of fraud.

“I’ve been working on fraud, waste, and abuse for 12 years since I was in the Senate. But sometimes we felt like we were spinning our wheels and the American people weren’t paying attention,” Ernst said. “Elon Musk gave star power to fighting waste, fraud, and abuse. Then Nick Shirley caught government waste on video, exposing what was happening to the American people.”

The Justice Department is closing its investigation into cost overruns in renovations at the Federal Reserve under Chairman Jerome Powell, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on Friday.

Pirro said the inspector general of the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs.

“The IG has the authority to hold the Federal Reserve accountable to American taxpayers,” Pirro wrote in a post on X. “I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas.”

Pirro added that while she directed her office to close the investigation, she would “not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.”

Pirro’s office opened the investigation in November at President Donald Trump’s bidding, reviewing whether Powell lied to a Senate committee about cost overruns for the construction of the new Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, D.C. The cost of construction had increased to $2.5 billion.

Deputies with Pirro’s office visited the Fed construction site last week but were denied entry without preclearance, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Powell has called the probe a pretext for Trump to pressure the Fed into cutting interest rates. He is serving as Fed chair until May, when his term expires. 

Trump has appointed Kevin Warsh to succeed Powell, but one key member of the Senate Banking Committee, North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, said he would not support Warsh’s confirmation while Powell’s investigation was open.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell contributed to this report.

Virginia Democrats got what they wanted Tuesday, or did they?

Voters narrowly approved a referendum (passing 51%) that hands the Democrat-controlled General Assembly the power to redraw congressional districts mid-decade, potentially flipping as many as four Republican House seats ahead of the fall midterms.

The ballot language put before Virginians read as follows: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

Before you accept that “the voters have spoken,” ask yourself one question: Were voters asked a “fair” question about election “fairness”? Before a fair outcome can be achieved, a fair process to achieve that outcome must first be put in place.

Read this phrase from the ballot again: “to restore fairness.”

Any researcher trained in survey and experimental methodologies will immediately recognize what happened here. Survey science has known for decades that question wording determines outcomes. Voters were not asked a neutral question but a leading one.

When a ballot question tells voters that a “yes” answer will restore fairness, it does something powerful and invisible: It presupposes that fairness has already been lost, and that voting “yes” is the correct and proper thing to do. Respondents are not being asked to weigh a policy trade-off. They are being nudged with the full authority of official government language to see one answer as obviously right.

This is not a subtle effect. It is one of the most well-documented phenomena in the social sciences. Researchers call it “acquiescence” or “experimenter demand bias”: People are significantly more likely to agree with a proposition when it is framed in morally loaded, affirmative terms.

Add the word “fairness”—one of the most universally valued concepts in democratic culture—to any question asked of voters, and you have a thumb firmly on the scale.

Remarkably, a Virginia circuit court judge saw exactly this. In February, Judge Jack Hurley Jr. issued a ruling blocking the referendum from proceeding, citing the phrase “restore fairness” as misleading and constitutionally problematic. He was right.

The Virginia Supreme Court overruled him on other procedural grounds and allowed the vote to proceed, but it explicitly reserved the right to revisit the question of the ballot language’s legality after the election. That review is still coming.

Think about what a neutrally worded question might have looked like: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to temporarily transfer congressional redistricting authority from the bipartisan Redistricting Commission to the General Assembly?” 

That is what voters were actually being asked to decide. That is the accurate description of the policy change.

Notice how different this rewording feels to read. Its language requires voters to actually weigh the trade-off, rather than simply affirm the universal value of fairness.

Democrats will argue that the “fairness” language reflects their genuine belief that Republican gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere created an unfair national map that Virginia is entitled to counteract. That is a political argument that they are welcome to make in campaign ads, in speeches, and on yard signs. What they are not entitled to do is embed one side’s contested political framing into the official text of a constitutional referendum and present it to voters as neutral fact.

This is not a partisan issue. To be clear: This critique applies with equal force to either the Democrat or Republican political party that manipulates ballot language to predetermine the answer. The problem is not which party benefits. Instead, the problem is that biased language is being used in an election. Official government language should not be manipulated to serve as a campaign tool in a referendum. This action corrodes legitimacy, regardless of who does it.

Virginia voters in 2020 did something admirable: They approved a constitutional amendment removing redistricting power from the Legislature and placing it in a bipartisan commission precisely to take partisan gamesmanship out of the process.

Tuesday’s referendum reversed that process, bypassing the very commission that Virginians had created. That reversal may or may not have been the right policy choice. But voters deserved to make it with clear eyes, not with a question that told them what the “fair” answer should be.

The redistricting battle now moves to the courts, where legal challenges to both the process and the ballot language remain active. Whatever the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately decides, the episode should prompt a broader conversation about ballot language standards.

Referendum questions are not campaign materials. They carry the imprimatur of the state itself, and they should be written by neutral parties, or at a very minimum reviewed by them, before being placed before voters.

When one party controls the Legislature, controls the governorship, drafts the map, writes the ballot question, and funds the campaign to pass it, the word “voter” starts to lose its meaning.

Virginia Democrats won Tuesday. Whether they won “fairly” and actually “restored fairness” is a question that the courts have not yet finished answering.

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

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

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

We’re about 60 days into the Iran war, and we’re getting a lot of mixed signals from the media, from the administration, from the Iranians, of course, who have no real government, there’s nothing more than a series of competing factions, of which we’re not sure who has the power in Tehran. 

But we should review very quickly what the options are. So, what are Iran’s options? Because people have made a fundamental logical error that survival is the same as victory or advantage. It’s not. Iran’s survival hinges on what the United States prefers to do, whether militarily, politically, morally, ethically.

But just because a nation survives doesn’t mean that it’s winning. Nazi Germany was flattened, but it survived. Japan was flattened, but it survived. So just because Iran now is talking loudly and boastfully does not mean it has not been soundly defeated.

The next question is, will the regime survive, at least? And they have three options. The first is the soft—the non-hardliners or the soft-power people could come in. The parliamentary elected officials, such as they are in Iran, could capitulate. They wouldn’t capitulate and say, “We give up.” 

They would say, we meet your demands, and those would be international inspections. There’s surrender of enriched uranium and inventories of their missile, rocket, and drone programs, and they’d have to give that up.

Or number two, they could continue what they are just starting to do as I speak—that is, they could start sending out their PT boats, these small fast craft that have rockets and some light artillery, machine guns, torpedoes, and attack tankers.

And then if we were to reply, they could hit the Gulf states, or they could hit tankers, or they could even shoot missiles at our fleet.

Or I think their preferred option is delay, delay—the same 47 years that we’re all accustomed to through seven different presidents.

Yes, we want to negotiate. Yes, we will give up our nuclear enrichment. No, we won’t today. Yesterday we said we will, but we thought it over. Yes, we will give up our missiles. But why don’t you make Hezbollah exempt from the deal. Again, like a rug merchant: barter, barter, delay, delay. And why are they doing this? 

They feel that they’re only six months away from the midterm elections, and when they hear Democratic senators such as Chris Murphy say that it was awesome that Iran—when they lied and said 12 tankers had broken out of the blockade—it was a complete lie. But when Chris Murphy, a U.S. senator, voiced and amplified that lie, and not only did that but editorialized and said it was awesome, that gives them hope. 

So does Tom Friedman, who said, well, I’d like him to lose, but not if it empowers President Donald Trump. So does Tim Walz and Chris Murphy going over to a socialist conference in Madrid. So, they feel that they can help build opposition, of course, in Europe and in the United States. 

One of the ironies is that the Arab Middle East, at least the Gulf states, are more pro-American right now and for this war than is the American Left. But they think the American Left can put pressure on Donald Trump, get elected in the midterms, control the House and Senate, and then enact the War Powers Act and cut off funding. That’s not going to happen, but that’s one of their strategies. 

What is our retaliatory strategy? We have a lot. Right now, we have a blockade, and we’re waging economic warfare. We’re trying to stop the importation of weapons and the selling of oil to starve the regime out. The problem we’re having with this, even though it’s reportedly costing them $420 million a day, is that there are avenues on the Caspian Sea where they can import Russian weapons. 

They have a rail line through two different countries that goes into China. They can import; they have mechanisms other than airlifting weapons into Iran. And so we don’t really know—and we don’t really know to what degree. There are Iranian oil tankers all over the world in transit from before the blockade, so it might take longer than we think. 

That’s a decision Donald Trump will have to make. And the pressures upon him will be the world economy, the price of gas in the Western world, the midterms coming up, his polls, and defections among his own MAGA supporters, etc., etc.

But otherwise, we can talk and talk, talk as they do. But the cards are in our hands because they are hemorrhaging money and we’re not. And we don’t need their oil. We don’t need their natural gas. We don’t need their petrochemicals. We only feel the pressure from others who are our friends that do need them. 

The second thing we can do is if they start to try to break the blockade, as they had recently by attacking tankers. We don’t have to go back to war. We can just kind of shrug and say, “Well, I guess you don’t want this bridge.” And then just announce—today—we’re going to announce it in advance. We’re going to take out this bridge, and tomorrow we’ll take out one of the four or five nuclear—excuse me—electrical generation plants. 

Not a full-scale war, but just tit for tat. But their hits will be very small, and our hits will be very great, and that will accelerate the economic strangulation. Or if they continue to do this, and we feel that the war has gone on too long, then we can hit where 90% of their oil comes from. 

And I say that because Venezuela is very rapidly making up the difference in Iranian oil, which, by the way, was going mostly to China—80% of it anyway. But the United States is ramping up production; Venezuela’s ramping up production. The more that we can enforce this blockade, the more Middle East oil gets out. 

So we could just say to Kharg Island, to the Iranians: We’re not going to hit your storage facilities. We’re not going to destroy the ability to pipe oil to Kharg Island and store it, but we are going to destroy the dock works, the cranes, the ports, so that you can fill up the oil all you want, and for the regime that follows you—hopefully a democratic or transitional government—but you’re not going to be able to export oil, even if you get a ship in there. 

And so we can say, well, if you have one of these Liberian tankers that’s masquerading as if it’s neutral but is actually controlled by China, it’s going in close to the Iranian coast, it’s going to park at Kharg, it won’t be able to get any oil because we can damage it from the air without invading. 

The bottom line is we have a lot of alternatives, and Iran has very few. But remember another thing: defeating an enemy soundly and then demanding unconditional surrender and forcing that government to abdicate are two different things. They’re very different, and the latter requires a lot more time—probably boots on the ground. 

It’s not on the agenda, but that does not mean that we can’t strangle this regime and make life go on as usual for the West and our partners. And I think you’ll see more of that in the upcoming days. 

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—The Commerce Department tapped a new director for the government’s safety-centered artificial intelligence organization, but later decided to go in another direction, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal. 

Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, was tapped to lead the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, but while Burns was in the onboarding process, the Commerce Department selected a different person to lead the organization—Dr. Chris Fall.

A Commerce Department official thanked Burns for his willingness to serve, but said the department decided to move in a different direction. Fall served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Energy as the director of the Office of Science.

“Dr. Chris Fall has been selected to serve as the next Director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). Dr. Fall brings the scientific leadership needed to ensure America leads the world in evaluating frontier AI models and advancing the technical standards that protect our national and economic security,” a Commerce Department spokesman told The Daily Signal.

Burns’ hiring would have been significant because he most recently worked at Anthropic, an AI company currently at odds with the Trump administration. 

Anthropic declined the Pentagon’s request for unrestricted use of its artificial technology. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security.”

However, Axios reported that the National Security Agency is using Anthropic’s powerful new model, Mythos Preview. Anthropic has only allowed Mythos access to about 40 organizations due to its potentially dangerous cyber hacking capabilities.  

The Commerce Department created the then-AI Safety Institute in November 2023 at the direction of President Joe Biden. Last June, the Trump administration renamed the agency to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, marking the administration’s embrace of AI development. 

“For far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security. Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at the time of the name change. “CAISI will evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation of these rapidly developing commercial AI systems while ensuring they remain secure to our national security standards.”

The story previously said that Burns would leave CAISI.

Wednesday’s California gubernatorial debate in San Francisco laid bare the results of 16 years of one-party Democrat rule: sky-high gas prices, tent cities, crumbling roads, and declining public safety, paired with little more than excuses and fantasies from the candidates.

The four Democrats—Tom Steyer, the self-styled “anti-billionaire” billionaire; Katie Porter, the climate alarmist; Matt Mahan, the eternal “San Jose success” salesman; and Xavier Becerra, the “experience candidate”—offered the same tired script of blame, subsidies, and government expansion. Only Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton brought reality to the stage.

Moderators opened with the question every California family feels in their wallet: Should we cut the gas tax?

Steyer blamed the war in Iran and demanded new taxes on oil company profits—ironic from a man who built his initial fortune at Farallon Capital investing heavily in fossil fuels before pivoting to green activism.

Porter delivered a climate sermon, claiming “we don’t breathe clean air,” and called for replacing the gas tax with a vague general-fund tax while pushing harder to eliminate fossil fuels.

Mahan acknowledged the gas tax is regressive and said he would suspend it for relief to working families, but quickly pivoted to class warfare—making corporations and the wealthy pay more.

Becerra fixated on potholes, blamed President Donald Trump (and mistakenly cited the war in Iraq), offered no actual solution, and fell back on his “experience.”

Bianco and Hilton spoke plainly. Bianco noted that Democrat policies have crippled the oil and auto industries, and that despite California having the nation’s highest gas tax, the revenue fails to fix roads amid rampant waste, fraud, and abuse. California now has some of the worst roads in the country. Cut the waste first. Hilton was even more direct: highest gas tax, worst roads, yet the state imports oil instead of using its own.

Both rejected new mileage taxes on electric vehicles. Hilton called for cutting spending and taxes across the board, while Bianco nailed the core issue: Sacramento doesn’t have a revenue shortage—it has a reckless spending addiction.

The same divide appeared on homelessness. With roughly 187,000 people living on California’s streets, Democrats issued polite report cards on Gavin Newsom’s failures. Porter gave a B grade, proudly calling herself “a notoriously hard grader,” and insisted it’s just a “housing problem” solvable with more prevention and shelter. Mahan touted his San Jose model and pushed for forcing people indoors. Becerra awarded an A for “effort,” floated zero-percent loans, and promised to keep people housed “no matter what.” Steyer pushed emergency housing that required neither cleanliness nor sobriety.

Bianco and Hilton cut through the illusions. This isn’t primarily a housing shortage—it’s mental illness, drugs, and alcohol. End the endless NGO grift, redirect the money to real treatment, enforce the law, and require people to accept help. Hilton gave Newsom a straightforward F grade. Porter’s claim that the “majority of homeless are working” only revealed how detached some candidates remain from reality.

On English proficiency for commercial truck drivers—an issue where California is the only state that refuses to ensure big-rig drivers can read road signs or communicate in English—Democrats reacted with outrage when shown a video of a California Highway Patrol officer administering a language proficiency test to a man who clearly couldn’t speak English.

Becerra vowed to fight the Trump administration’s “reckless” and “discriminatory” policy. Porter and Steyer invoked systemic racism and racial profiling. Mahan hid behind San Jose statistics. Bianco demanded an end to issuing licenses to unqualified drivers and called out the “racist garbage” excuses. Hilton strongly supported full compliance, citing the real dangers posed by drivers who cannot understand road signs.

Across other topics, including billionaires and AI, insurance costs, and utility rates, Democrats pivoted to attacks on Trump or corporate actors while pushing more regulation, subsidies, and taxes.

Becerra’s repeated boasts about his “experience fighting crises” rang hollow given his record as attorney general targeting pro-life activists and pregnancy centers, and as HHS Secretary losing track of over 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children.

Closing statements confirmed the split. Democrats recycled claims of San Jose success, accumulated experience, and anti-corporate purity. Bianco and Hilton stood apart as outsiders, warning that the Democratic platform is simply more of the same failed status quo.

California still has extraordinary natural advantages and talented people. Yet 16 years of one-party rule have delivered persistently high gas prices, sprawling tent encampments, failing infrastructure, and eroding safety standards.

Last night’s debate offered no real solutions from the Democratic candidates. Instead, it laid bare the real choice confronting California voters in the June top-two primary: double down on excuses, endless subsidies, and green virtue-signaling, or embrace spending discipline, regulatory restraint, and honest accountability to results.

Only Bianco and Hilton were willing to name those trade-offs plainly.

Californians, who live the consequences daily, must now decide whether fantasy or reality will guide the state’s next chapter. Think different. Vote different. The cycle of failure need not be permanent.

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

President Donald Trump is set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month for a historic bilateral meeting in Beijing. China is reportedly optimistic about the visit, hoping that U.S.-China relations can be improved after years of tension. However, caution is warranted—appearances can be deceiving.

Some in Washington are also optimistic, promoting the idea of a “G2”—a partnership in which the U.S. and China would jointly exercise global leadership, similar to the G7 model. Trump himself has occasionally considered the concept.

The president can use the Beijing meeting to pursue improved relations with China. Yet achieving real progress requires clearly communicating what changes in Chinese behavior are necessary to make a rapprochement possible.

A G2 partnership is unattainable at present. China actively leverages its assets against the U.S., and the Chinese Communist Party does not seek to align its governance with American standards or values.

Trump’s approach to the longstanding conflict with Iran has focused on prioritizing American and allied security; encouraging democratic movements within; and disrupting terrorist organizations such as the Quds Force, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, China has pursued its own interests, such as buying Iranian oil and, reportedly, shipping military equipment to Iran. While Trump has stated that China has agreed not to supply weapons to Iran, Chinese companies are exploiting the economic turmoil from the war, all while Beijing positions itself as a peacemaker—largely for economic reasons, in stark contrast to America’s tougher stance.

China does not see the Iran conflict as a chance for global security or democratic reform, but as an opportunity to antagonize the U.S. Xi, a vocal critic of Trump, recently compared America’s Iran policy to “the law of the jungle,” dismissing concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its history of violence.

For decades, the U.S. fostered a global system of peaceful trade and friendly competition. China entered this system and sought to exploit it, subsidizing domestic industries and manipulating currency to make exports cheaper, among other unfair practices.

Despite American openness since the 1970s, China has sold illicit fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels, leading to thousands of American deaths. China also exploits U.S. openness to foreign investment and immigration, engaging in large-scale intellectual property theft that enables rapid advancement up global value chains without the costs normally involved.

Intellectual property theft is part of a broader espionage campaign targeting American ideas and state secrets. Huawei, a major Chinese tech conglomerate, is used by the Chinese state to spy on the U.S. and challenge American dominance in 5G and AI. The FBI warns that Huawei, which controls 30% of the global telecom market, poses risks even to America’s nuclear arsenal.

There is no justification for the Trump administration to stop using creative strategies to counter Chinese power. For instance, to challenge Huawei, Trump approved the merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, forming a new tech leader capable of competing with China in critical technologies like AI and 5G.

While mergers require careful scrutiny, some lawmakers—including Sens. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren—alleged it was a backroom deal. Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence community has been clear that this move will help safeguard U.S. national security and provide a strong competitor to Huawei.

Trump has imposed tariffs on China, closed Confucius Institutes on American campuses, and called out China’s trade abuses. He has demonstrated a clear understanding of China’s long-term intentions.

Trump is right to meet with Xi. As former U.K. Ambassador Harold Macmillan said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” Still, these talks occur against the backdrop of a genuine threat to American interests from Chinese antagonism.

Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was asked about the idea of a G2. He responded that while China and the U.S. have significant influence, there are more than 190 countries in the world.

Wang’s remarks were not a genuine call for multilateral cooperation. Instead, they reflect China’s ongoing efforts to weaken the U.S. and undermine other nations committed to freedom and human rights.

Trust in diplomacy must always be accompanied by verification. Constructive partnership remains distant, and given China’s actions, America may be better off as a G1.

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

As rumors swirl that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito might retire at the end of this term, allowing President Donald Trump to name his replacement before the 2026 midterm elections, the justice could not have wished for a better send-off than Mollie Hemingway’s masterful and well-researched biography.

“Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution” captures Alito’s life story, his rise to the nation’s highest court, his judicial philosophy, and how the stars aligned to enable him to write the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade (1973).

Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and senior journalism fellow for Hillsdale College, writes that an old Latin phrase best captures Alito’s fearless determination to follow the law: fiat justitia, ruat caelum, which translates to “let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

When Alito wrote the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the heavens did appear to fall. A hostile news outlet published the full draft opinion, and pro-abortion activists launched a horrific pressure campaign to stop the opinion’s finalization. Vandals targeted pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches, and many began protesting outside of justices’ homes. At least one agitator attempted to assassinate a justice.

“In spite of political threats to the legitimacy of the court—accompanied by very real threats to the justices’ own lives—Alito had quietly and consistently delivered justice while also anchoring the team through its most controversial decision in half a century,” Hemingway writes. “The heavens had fallen, and Alito had done his duty, unawed.”

Who Is Alito?

After setting the stage with Dobbs in the introduction, Hemingway delves into Alito’s history. The justice grew up in an Italian American Catholic family in New Jersey, served in the military during the Vietnam War, and distinguished himself as a brilliant legal mind early on. Unlike Chief Justice John Roberts, he didn’t play the game to try to get nominated to the Supreme Court, but lightning struck and President George H.W. Bush gave him the opportunity.

Hemingway describes Alito as an “improbable justice.” While many Washington politicos succeed through “relentless diplomacy and self-promotion,” Alito “arrived at his position solely because of his intellect and hard work.”

While telling Alito’s story, Hemingway interweaves important details about the legal profession, explaining why the philosophy of Originalism—returning to the original public meaning of the Constitution—became so important.

‘The Best Court’

Hemingway next recounts the building of “the best court in history.”

She traces the history of each member of the current court, from Democrat nominees like Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Republican nominees from Trump’s first term and before: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. She analyzes each justice’s character and role on the bench.

Hemingway praises Kagan as “the smartest liberal justice,” and a “formidable writer.” She warns about Barrett’s “characteristic caution,” and heavily criticizes Roberts for essentially rewriting the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) on the fly to save it in 2012.

“Roberts never publicly supported the conservative legal movement in speeches and was never associated with its organizations, yet he skillfully conveyed the message that he was conservative,” Hemingway notes. Roberts seems too concerned with how the media perceives him, and Hemingway warns that his bowing to “political pressure politicized the court and encouraged similar pressure campaigns in the future.”

After setting up the court’s composition, Hemingway delves into Alito’s judicial philosophy as a “practical Originalist.” While Alito aims to restore the original public meaning of the Constitution, his approach differs from Thomas.

Thomas “plants a flag where he believes the court should be,” laying out “his vision in his opinions” and hoping to move the legal culture to catch up, but Alito “is more interested in the tactical work of assembling a majority to seize new ground today.” Hemingway notes that Alito’s history as a circuit court judge prepared him to deal with concrete cases more than abstract principles.

Overturning Roe

Hemingway breaks down the complex ecosystem of abortion law and the Supreme Court’s previous futile attempts to address it, before narrating Alito’s central achievement.

She recounts the many courageous decisions that had to happen in order to reverse Roe. She recounts how Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer tried to peel Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the decision.

In the end, the court overturned Roe, and Alito shepherded this key win through a complex process. It took a man of undaunted principle and unflinching courage to achieve this massive victory—and to stick by it, under pressure.

The full character of that man emerges from Hemingway’s prose, and Americans will be educated and edified by her masterful work.

If Alito does decide to retire, this book will help him do it on a high note.

Republican leaders in Georgia told The Daily Signal that Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is campaigning for reelection, is presenting himself as a moderate by emphasizing broadly popular issues rather than embracing what they describe as a sharply partisan voting record.

“He’s a great politician,” Rep. Rich McCormick, R‑Ga., said. “When he sees me at the airport, he comes up to me, knows my name, and asks how my kids are. He’s a good politician. He pretends that he’s not in a party that openly supports socialism.”

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R‑Ga., told The Daily Signal that Ossoff attempts to rebrand himself during election years.

“Once every six years, Jon Ossoff tries to distance himself from the radical Left Democrat agenda in order to convince Georgians he’s one of us,” Clyde told The Daily Signal. “But we aren’t fooled. His voting record shows support for policies that restrict Second Amendment rights, expand abortion access, increase taxes, and weaken voter ID laws.”

Nick Puglia, the National Republican Senatorial Committee press secretary, said Ossoff campaigns differently at home than he governs in Washington.

“Jon Ossoff says one thing in Georgia but does another in D.C.,” Puglia told The Daily Signal. “Ossoff is a fraud who fights for the radical Left’s open‑borders and tax‑hiking agenda.”

The Republicans’ remarks come as Ossoff has appeared to focus his campaign on bipartisan priorities such as veterans’ care, health care, and education, rather than on elements of his voting record that include opposing voter identification requirements while his campaign events require multiple forms of ID. Republicans also point to his support for green energy initiatives, positions on illegal immigration, and backing of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

“That doesn’t represent our values,” Clyde said. “We must fight to defeat him in November and return him to his deceptive career of fake journalism.”

McCormick echoed Clyde’s criticism, arguing Ossoff opposed the SAVE America Act because of its potential political consequences.

“He votes against it for the same reason New York City requires three forms of ID to shovel snow,” McCormick said. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

McCormick added that allowing roughly 10 million people to enter the country illegally could amount to the equivalent of 14 additional congressional seats.

“They’ve been trying to skew the future of America,” he said. “[Former President Joe] Biden was the first to realize that the only way to keep the future of a party alive—a party with outrageous claims and beliefs—was to strike down the SAVE America Act.”

McCormick also criticized Ossoff for failing to condemn Hasan Piker, a Democrat social media figure who has made antisemitic remarks and previously said the United States “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks.

Piker is actively promoting Ossoff.

“He’s working for him,” McCormick said. “He agrees with them.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 1.4 tons of methamphetamine in a routine commercial truck inspection at a California border crossing.

The seizure points to a broader trend of transnational criminal networks using legitimate trade infrastructure to smuggle industrial-scale narcotics into the United States.

On April 14, CBP officers with the Otay Mesa Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility in San Diego, California, referred a 2017 Freightliner Cascadia and its trailer, driven by a Mexican citizen, for secondary inspection after the truck arrived at the crossing from Mexico. According to CBP, the shipment manifest declared the cargo as corrugated cardboard boxes. However, officers found 300 packages of methamphetamine concealed within the trailer’s front wall, totaling 3,078.1 pounds and carrying an estimated street value of nearly $5 million.

According to CBP, transnational criminal organizations routinely attempt to exploit legitimate trade by concealing narcotics in otherwise lawful cargo and using misleading manifests. Officers are trained to identify indicators of illicit activity and remain vigilant in detecting and interdicting illegal narcotics from entering the U.S.

The incident highlights an organized effort to use ordinary paperwork to exploit a commercial trade lane and move a massive narcotics load through a port of entry that processes enormous volumes of lawful commerce every day. The bigger story is whether the U.S. has the manpower, technology, and operational ability to detect and prevent sophisticated cartel activity moving through legal channels disguised as legitimate trade.

In this case, a nonintrusive inspection revealed anomalies in the trailer’s front wall, and a canine unit alerted officers to the same area. A further search uncovered methamphetamine. The case has been turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation, which now has responsibility for identifying the broader network behind the smuggling attempt.

Otay Mesa Port Director Rosa E. Hernandez praised the officers’ work as “unwavering guardians,” saying their diligence prevented illegal narcotics from entering the country and kept communities safe.

“Supported by the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, our CBP officers at ports of entry are unwavering guardians,” said Hernandez. “Their diligence prevented illegal narcotics from entering our country, so our communities are kept safe from dangerous drugs.”

Earlier in April, CBP officers intercepted more than $1 million worth of cocaine hidden in a commercial passenger bus at the Hidalgo Port of Entry in Texas.

The Trump administration scored two legal victories this week in combating illegal immigration.

Appeals courts cleared the way for building a Florida immigration detention center that President Donald Trump calls “Alligator Alcatraz” and halted a California law requiring agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to unmask.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday stopped enforcement of the California law.

“This Department of Justice stands in unwavering and total support of the brave men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to enforce our immigration laws and keep American citizens safe,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a post on X, regarding ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Justice Department’s Civil Division defended the case.

“Today’s legal victory in the 9th Circuit halts enforcement of California’s mask ban for ICE agents and is a big win to protect law enforcement,” Blanche continued. “Congratulations to DOJ’s Civil Division on this major win in the 9th Circuit—another decisive victory in this administration’s effort to remove illegal aliens from this country.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed the bill requiring ICE agents to remove their masks, which he touted as the “first in the nation.”

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have argued that agents need masks for privacy reasons, as people have taken their photos for online posts, threatening them and their family members.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, which defended the state in the case, did not respond to an inquiry for this story by publication time.

In Florida, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed a lower court’s injunction against the construction of an ICE detention center for illegal aliens in the Everglades.

In a post on X, the Justice Department called the court ruling a “decisive victory in our effort to deliver on President Trump’s immigration agenda.”

The lower court had determined the facility did not comply with federal environmental review laws.

“This fight is far from over. Alligator Alcatraz was hastily erected in one of the most fragile ecosystems in the country without the most basic environmental review, at immense human and ecological cost,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in a statement after the appeals court ruling. “We are pursuing every legal avenue available to right this wrong.”

The Trump administration is upping its anti-fraud efforts with $300 million in funding to investigate and prosecute fraudsters and drug traffickers.

The Justice Department announced the “Special Attorneys Program,” in which state, local, tribal, and territorial governments can apply for grants for a federal prosecutor to probe crimes in their jurisdictions.

This is part of a broader whole-of-government effort following President Donald Trump’s appointment of a Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. The task force aims to work with every department and agency to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within federal benefit programs.

A key focus of the program would be investigating illegal aliens taking advantage of federal benefits, as well as drug and human trafficking crimes, according to the DOJ.

“This unprecedented funding opportunity is part of the Department of Justice’s historic effort to activate every available tool to secure the physical and financial security of our nation,” Colin McDonald, assistant attorney general for the National Fraud Enforcement Division, said in a public statement.

“We invite prosecutors across the country to join the mission to eliminate fraud, defeat the drug cartels, and rescue victims of trafficking,” McDonald added.

Under the Special Attorneys Program, the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division will appoint a special attorney in a U.S. attorney’s office for the qualifying jurisdiction.

The Trump administration has increased its anti-fraud efforts following reports of about $9 billion in fraud in Minnesota that included several politically connected nonprofits accessing federal funds.

This week, the Justice Department secured a grand jury indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges it paid about $3 million to various white supremacist organizations and misled donors and banks.

The Justice Department has also been investigating alleged hospice fraud in California.

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

Jack Fowler: Victor, before we get to Mark Kelly, I did want to mention this news. There are too many names here, but these—Michigan had a Democrat convention yesterday, on Sunday. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. I saw that. 

Fowler: And Amir Makled, who is a lawyer, a guy from Dearborn, and a Hezbollah praiser. He defeated—Democrats have the right to appoint a regent to the University of Michigan board. And the incumbent was Jordan Acker, who is, I’m assuming, Jewish because his house and his car were vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. But the Democrats of Michigan nominated this radical guy to sit on the board of the University of Michigan. So this party that was the party of Dan Rostenkowski and Tip O’Neill and even Bill Clinton—this is dead and over. 

Hanson: Yeah, I think they’re captive of a very small but apparently very influential group of people who are Islamic, and they vote a straight ticket, apparently. Because—I say that because the—is it El-Sayed, the candidate in the same state for the Senate? 

Fowler: Right. 

Hanson: He had a hot mic on where he said that he had to be careful about expressing any opinion about the death of Khamenei, this cruel, horrible dictator in Iran who had butchered 40,000 of his own people. Because it might not go well with his constituency. Meaning they were pro-Hezbollah. 

Fowler: Yeah. 

Hanson: And we had that person that tried to ram the synagogue, and he was an active—his family were active Hezbollah terrorists. 

So I don’t know what’s happened to the Democratic Party, but one of the worst things that historically happens to a party or a group or a nation when they spiral down into suicidal hatred, tribalism, is antisemitism is one of the first—it’s kind of like, you know, a sore throat when you know you’re getting very ill. And when you see it everywhere—and I see it everywhere—and it has so many manifestations. 

In Tucker’s case, it’s just the sheer volume. If he were to do one show every five or every ten on Bibi, or one in every eight on Israel, then you could argue that he’s just critical of Israel and the support that it garners. But it’s about 70% of his shows. And they’re all negative. And he had never done that before. 

And then when you see these random attacks on Jews, and you have nothing happening, you get the impression that either the majority of the Democratic Party agree, or they’re afraid to express opposition or objection because they’re going to be, themselves, targeted. So they wanted to cut off aid. Most of the Democrats, with few exceptions, wanted to cut off aid to Israel right when it’s in its existential war with Iran. 

I think that Europe is pro-Hezbollah. It’s pretty clear they are. France was, until they lost a French soldier. Now, all of a sudden, they’re worried. 

But if this doesn’t stop, this momentum—and I never thought I would say that about the United States—you’re going to see Jews that are targeted. Just everyday Jews. And they’re going to be—it’s going to be like, at the elite level, it’ll be like Gentleman’s Agreement, the Gregory Peck movie about that you politely don’t hire Jews or you don’t recruit them. 

Fowler: We don’t have a reservation at the restaurant or at the hotel, yeah. 

Hanson: And given Jewish meritocracy that dominated the Ivy League—30 or 40% in some years—after the antisemitic restrictions were removed. And then we went to the SAT meritocratic equality-of-opportunity admissions. It’s down to about—I think the Jewish numbers are way, way down by almost—they’ve decreased by two-thirds. And, so I don’t see a new young generation of Jews emerging from this country without having to be targeted by mostly people who are Islamic and the people who aid and abet them. 

And it’s going to be—I predict, unless somebody comes out and stops it—it’s going to get worse and worse and worse. All we can do as people is—each person, according to your station—is to demand that you treat people as an individual and not a collective. And you don’t pander and you don’t criticize, but when you hear people attacking Jews, you speak up against it. 

If you don’t, then you’re part of the problem. 

Fowler: There’s a great piece on that, if I just may make a note, Victor, to our, our, viewers and listeners who are very intelligent people. There’s a great online magazine called Tablet Magazine, and it

Hanson: It is—it’s excellent. I saw that article. Are you referring to the woman who was a Ph.D.? She’s a veteran and— 

Fowler: Yes. Meghan Mobbs, and she— 

Hanson: What to Die For? 

Fowler: The Things Worth Dying For, yeah. 

Hanson: That was a wonderful article. It was so rare to see somebody that was so brave and so persuasive. 

Right. And she’s also a Catholic, and it was an interesting thing about this journal. You know, they’re—I don’t want to say eclectic—but it’s that they allow these other kinds of voices to write for them. 

Yeah. I think that’s one—I remember, I think I told you once I was at my graduation and there was a person at this—I had won this award, and the awardees were at the table with the provost. And this woman was attacking the United States in World War II. 

And she kept going, going, going, and saying we were war criminals. And my father and my mom watched him drink one glass, two glasses, three glasses. And then I said to my mom, hey Mom, I think the fuse is lit. And then he got up and said, I didn’t fly 40 missions over Tokyo and my first cousin didn’t get killed in Okinawa for me to sit and hear this. Now you’re going to hear something. And then he let loose. So I feel that way about all the people who fought. That’s what her point was in the article. They didn’t fight and die and risk everything that so the University of Michigan could select somebody whose principal qualification was that he hated Jews. And he was pro-ISIS and Hezbollah and the whole bunch and was not shy about it. 

And so why I always think that, given our ethos, that a person who comes from a different country, if he qualifies for citizenship—he or she—and he’s a citizen, then they have as much right as somebody that I’ve been here on my mother’s side from the 18—I don’t know—20s. My father’s from 1870, ’80. 

But my point is they are just as much American. But that being said, if you do come over here and then when you arrive and you go full Ilhan Omar and you call it a trashy country and a dictatorship, then that allows people who have been living here to say to them: We didn’t die on Iwo Jima. We didn’t die at Belleau Wood. We didn’t die at Gettysburg for you to come over here and tell us that we’re no good. And we’re not going to take it. I’m sorry. And we need that attitude a lot more. So the immigrant has really changed. 

When we had Max Nikias, he was the ideal immigrant. He’s the ideal immigrant. He loves the country. He contributed so much to it. And yet that profile that he and millions represent—had once represented—is under attack now. I think it’s because of the indoctrination in the university. And the DEI component, that if you’re a DEI qualifier, you feel that you’re exempt from criticism and you have a right or a duty to trash your host country as white, racist, heterosexual, a whole bit. You know?

And I think it will continue until people say, You know what? You’re absurd. We’re not going to listen to you anymore. If everybody would say that, no matter what your particular background is, I think it would stop very quickly. 

Fowler: Someone was mentioning at the Philadelphia Society meeting, which I was at in Tampa this past weekend, about Peter Schramm, who I think you must have known Peter. 

Hanson: I met—yeah, I knew him a lot. I spoke in Ohio. Was it Ohio he was at? 

Fowler: He was at the Ashbrook Center. Yeah. He ran that. And Peter was born in Hungary and his family escaped during the ’56 revolution. But he asked his father, Why here? And essentially the father said, We were always Americans. We just weren’t born there. And I do think there are a lot of people that think like that and feel like that and are pat—but there are many, many more like Ilhan Omar and others who are still Somalians and still Pakistanis and Afghanis and whatever the heck. And do not like this place, yet they are big welfare recipients. 

Hanson: I don’t know. I’m really upset, though, because I was looking at some of the—Steve Hilton now claims, by the way, that the fraud in California has gone up to 400 billion. Billion. 

I mean, that would almost cut 25% of the deficit. And when you look at that and you look at the names that are coming in, a lot of them are naturalized citizens or they’re here as green card hold—I don’t know. But the reason I mention that is the immigrant has a special onus on him that his host was generous and allowed him to come in—just like a guest into somebody’s home. In that, you have to behave extraordinarily well. So when these people say, Well, he only had a DUI, why deport? 

You shouldn’t have any crime. You should be exemplary because this country bent over backwards to allow you to be a guest. And then when you come in here as the Somali community did, in many cases, and you defrauded the country, then you should be deported. Get a fair trial, adjudicate the evidence, and get out. Because you’ve abused the hospitality. And you rewarded our magnanimity with contempt. 

And so I’m getting really sick of all of this. And, you know—oh, immigrants, immi—immigration has been the backbone of the country. But there was a demonstration that said immigrants built the country. Well, they did in the sense that we only had a small population and we were immigrating here from 1820, 1810, even before. 

But that’s not what the sign meant. It meant that only people who were illegal had built the country. And that’s not true. It’s not true. 

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, the Senate adopted a budget framework to provide funds for immigration enforcement that Democrats have denied since February.

But getting that framework through the House in order to ultimately send a bill to the president’s desk may be a challenge.

Senate Republicans are pursuing a two-track approach—a party-line “reconciliation” bill to fund immigration enforcement, and a bipartisan appropriations bill to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Senate has already sent the House a bill that would fund all of DHS except for immigration enforcement. The House has yet to take action on it, as conservatives have demanded progress on reconciliation first.

The reconciliation process allows for Congress to enact major budgetary changes with a simple majority in the Senate.

The Senate voted 50-48 to adopt a budget resolution—a nonbinding blueprint for a party-line budget reconciliation bill. Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all present Democrats in opposition.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Budget Committee, has spearheaded the plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.

The law that governs reconciliation sets up a “vote-a-rama” before the final vote on any budget resolution, in which senators can propose as many amendments as they want.

The Senate followed the urging of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to keep the resolution “skinny,” voting down every amendment that was proposed, except for one from Graham to fund DHS’ efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants convicted of violence against minors.

The amendments were mostly Democrat-backed and aimed at forcing Republicans to vote down measures to boost entitlement spending. 

However, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., proposed an amendment to the goals of the SAVE America Act—a bill that would require photo identification and proof of citizenship in federal elections.

It failed as Republican Sens. Murkowski, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined Democrats in opposition.

Now, to open the path for reconciliation, the House will have to approve the resolution. 

Although the resolution does not have the force of law, the House rank-and-file will hold leverage in this situation, as leadership must get a resolution passed to move to reconciliation. The House has flouted leadership on recent critical votes.

Uniting the House Republican conference may be difficult, given that members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, distrustful of splitting up DHS funding, have called for a reconciliation bill to fund the whole agency, not just ICE and CBP.

Thune told reporters after the resolution’s passage that he hoped the White House and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., could get House members to unite around passing the resolution as is.

“They know it’s coming, and you know [Johnson’s] obviously got people who want to expand the scope too. But I think, hopefully, the White House will be engaged in trying to make sure we get the budget resolution done,” Thune said.

“It doesn’t seem like this should be that heavy of a lift, but nothing is easy these days,” he added.

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal Thursday morning that he believes the House might oppose the piecemeal funding of DHS.

“I think it will have a hard time passing the House,” Cloud said. “Isolating part of appropriations … it’s just the wrong way to run Congress.”

Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., is a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

 He told The Daily Signal he would prefer to keep the reconciliation bill skinny out of respect for appropriators’ authority.

“As an appropriator, that’s a preferred way,” he said, adding that the House is choosing to “trust but verify” and proceed with reconciliation before appropriations.

“I don’t want to expand it,” he said.

The Justice Department reached a settlement with Carter Page, a 2016 Trump campaign aide targeted for surveillance as part of a federal investigation into alleged collusion with Russia.

The Associated Press cited a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity in saying the settlement was for $1.25 million. The Justice Department’s filing to the Supreme Court Wednesday did not reveal a dollar amount.

The Justice Department and the FBI investigated whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russians to affect the outcome of the election. The probe ended in 2019, when special counsel Robert Mueller issued a report finding no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia. Page has consistently denied any improper ties to Russia.

The Justice Department Office of Inspector General later issued a report critical of the Russia investigation and found problems with the surveillance applications in the case.

Page sued in 2020, asserting he was the victim of “unlawful spying” by the FBI. The federal complaint alleged the FBI’s 2016 and 2017 applications for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court contained omissions and errors. The same year Page filed the lawsuit, his book “Abuse and Power: How an Innocent American Was Framed in an Attempted Coup Against the President,” was published.

Lower courts determined that Page waited too long to file a lawsuit, so he appealed to the Supreme Court. The appeal was pending when the Justice Department informed the high court Wednesday that it had reached a settlement with Page on his claims.

It’s fascinating to watch as American cities are forced to rediscover common sense.

An interesting report in The Atlantic, of all places, on Monday highlighted how the San Francisco Bay Area, like a broken clock, finally hit on a good idea.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, which for years has been plagued by low ridership and dysfunction, has apparently had a huge turnaround.

The Atlantic’s Henry Grabar noted, with some surprise, that all it took was one simple trick: Last year, BART widely installed new fare gates by station exits and entrances.

These new and improved gates made fare evasion dramatically more difficult than it was with the old 1970s-style, waist-high gates. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen fare evaders effortlessly hop over those old gates as if they weren’t even there.

The effect of just this one change has been staggering, apparently. Crime is way down 41% since last year, according to BART’s numbers—and maintenance costs have plummeted.

“Workers spent nearly 1,000 fewer hours cleaning up after unruly passengers in the six months following the gates’ installation, compared with the six months before,” The Atlantic noted.

This while ridership is way up. Revenue is now projected to increase by $10 million a year thanks to the change.

BART General Manager Bob Powers said in January that “infrastructure upgrades” alongside “improved fare gates and station lighting, with additional safety presence and customer-centered service” have made BART a more “comfortable experience for everyone who rides.”

What do you know, they’ve finally dabbled in the most basic steps to improve public transit ridership by making it *gulp* safer. Maybe this doesn’t seem as remarkable to you as it does to me, but I grew up in the Bay Area. The depth of policy idiocy in the land of my birth is typically bottomless.

But lo and behold, the green shoots of sanity in the craziest part of California.

It’s notable that this happened after a study by Yale’s Center for Policing Equity said last May that stopping fare evasion wouldn’t decrease crime or make the system safer.

Furthermore, the study said that doing more to make sure people obeyed the law would disproportionately affect “marginalized groups, including black and brown riders, low-income individuals, people experiencing mental health crises, and individuals who are unhoused.”

The report recommended that additional social workers, less enforcement, and discounted fares for special groups would solve things.

I guess not.

Crime is down and left-wing social engineers suffer most.

It’s in that Yale study where you see the roots of why everything seemingly went to hell following the 2020 Great Awokening. It was ideology, force-fed to our society by do-gooder social elites with impressive credentials and an equally impressive misunderstanding of human nature.

The most prestigious institutions in the world convinced Western societies that they had to throw out good sense and good policy to stop “systemic racism.” What followed was more criminality, more dysfunction, and ultimately more suffering for people of all skin colors.

The Atlantic’s Grabar acknowledged that BART’s “success story with lessons for all types of public spaces.” Grabar called it the “fare-gate theory.”

“To protect the shared rooms of communal life, human intervention isn’t always necessary, affordable, or desirable. Instead, physical and technological obstacles—an architecture of good behavior—can keep out bad actors and deter the worst impulses of everyone else,” he concluded.

That’s funny, because this is hardly a new idea. It’s based on the same set of principles that drove New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s crime-fighting revolution in the late 1990s. The “broken windows theory” essentially came down to policing small crimes to stop bigger ones.

The truth is that most people are not criminals. Most obey the laws and try to do what’s right. Most crime, whether petty or felonious, is committed by the same antisocial people.

A September report by the New York Post illustrated this point.

According to NYPD statistics, a group of 63 people had more than 5,000 arrests among them. Yet, the New York Post reported, only five were in jail as of the piece’s publication.

“The motley crew has amassed a disturbing rap sheet for crimes including assault, robbery, theft, turnstile-jumping and a string of other nuisance offenses—but they largely remain free because the state’s lax criminal-justice reforms bar judges from holding them on bail,” the Post reported.

A later New York Post report in March tracked just five Subway career criminals who had a “whopping 590 busts between them—including more than 100 arrests for violent felonies like robbery and rape.”

Now, most of these folks should be behind bars more permanently. That would keep the whole city safe from their villainy. But it appears that putting up even the smallest barriers to entry could at least keep public transportation safe. And that would be a huge win for the countless people who’ve been victimized and perhaps many others who want to use subway but are too afraid to do so.

Unfortunately, New York is going the opposite direction as the democratic socialist mayor still wants to experiment with his “free bus” idea. It’s a plan that’s both unaffordable and neglects the lesson that BART so recently learned about how fare enforcement keeps the crime away.

There are more and more examples of how increased law enforcement and even minimal prevention methods work. Let’s hope that this trend continues. Enduring increased criminality doesn’t have to be the price for living in or visiting a city.

Rep. Chip Roy told The Daily Signal that the Justice Department’s indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, while a welcome move, represents just one step in a broader effort the administration has undertaken against leftist groups.

“The indictments are an enormously important step forward and an indication that the administration is taking this seriously,” the Texas Republican member told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Wednesday. Roy said the administration recognizes “the need to not just expose” the Left’s activities but “to actually have consequences” for them.

“We know that there are significant efforts underway across agencies to continue to root out not just SPLC but the vast array of Marxists and leftists that are actively engaging in this activity to undermine our society,” he added. “I think it’s important that the indictments are indicative of what we know of the SPLC but we also know that it’s a much bigger network and the administration does, too.”

“We know that the administration is looking beyond SPLC and are actively engaged in investigations in pursuing the overall network,” Roy concluded.

Roy responded to the DOJ’s indictment, handed down Tuesday, which alleges the SPLC had paid $3 million to a set of “informants” in white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. The indictment charges the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of false statements to banks (regarding shell companies it created to cloak these payments), and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment of money laundering.

Roy called for an investigation into the network of leftist nonprofits funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American billionaire now living in China, after leaders of that network met with the Cuban Communist Party’s Politburo.

Roy has called for a select committee in Congress to investigate Antifa and the radical Left’s infrastructure after the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

“I don’t know how we hold them accountable yet,” he admitted. “We should try, but the one thing I know we must do is expose it.”

“We need to expose it on the national stage for all to see what they’ve been up to and that it’s purposeful and that every American’s life is more in danger or in jeopardy because of it,” he warned.

Roy sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and to the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., respectively, on Sept. 11, citing “a sustained breakdown of law and order, fueled not by chance, but by anti-American ideology.”

The letter cites numerous examples of violent threats, including the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, the shooter who targeted Republican members’ 2017 Congressional Baseball Game practice, crimes committed by illegal aliens, violent riots featuring Antifa, the soft-on-crime approach of prosecutors supported by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros, and more.

The Open Society Foundations, founded by Soros and chaired by his son, Alex, responded to Trump’s recent suggestion that Soros funds violence. The foundations “do not support or fund violent protests,” the group stated. “Allegations to the contrary are false, and the threats against our founder and chair are outrageous.”

Roy’s letter notes that the Southern Poverty Law Center put both Turning Point USA and the conservative Christian nonprofit Family Research Council on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, only for both organizations to be the target of shootings.

The SPLC, which gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s, has put nonprofits such as Focus on the Family, PragerU, Moms for Liberty, and more on the “hate map,” saying they form part of the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The SPLC has reportedly engaged in information sharing with Antifa agitators through a mediator, and one of its lawyers was arrested at a Molotov cocktail riot.

The Treasury Department, the IRS, the FBI, and other agencies are reportedly investigating left-wing groups accused of funding or organizing violence.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune encouraged senators to stop talking about President Donald Trump’s stated priority of nuking the filibuster, according to two sources familiar with the matter. 

After a few moderates at the Senate’s Wednesday steering lunch urged the Republican conference not to talk about nuking the filibuster, Thune agreed that the move lacks the necessary support in the current conference, the sources said. 

Thune clearly seemed to agree with the members asking their colleagues to stop discussing it, the sources said. 

Trump has repeatedly demanded that Republicans eliminate the filibuster to require only a simple majority vote to pass key agenda items, instead of needing the customary 60 votes to end debate. His agenda includes the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to vote in federal elections, as well as funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Some in the Republican caucus remain firmly opposed to eliminating the filibuster, while others are warming up to the idea. 

“By ending the filibuster now, Republicans could pass important legislation that the public overwhelmingly supports, but Democrats oppose,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wrote in The Wall Steet Journal in March.

“My fellow conservatives and I have proudly used the 60-vote threshold to protect the country from all sorts of bad ideas and dangerous policies,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wrote in a March 11 opinion article for the New York Post. “But when the reality on the ground changes, leaders must take stock and adapt.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said he has “seen enough” and is ready to abolish the filibuster.

“I have seen enough, and heard enough excuses. We cannot let Democrats sabotage this country,” he said. “If nuking the filibuster is the only way to deliver on wildly popular legislation like the SAVE America Act, then we need to nuke the filibuster and start passing bills.”

But Thune has repeatedly said that there are not enough votes to eliminate the filibuster. 

“Again, reality is, the votes aren’t there, and we can talk about the relative merits of the filibuster, or whether it’s relevant in the modern world,” Thune recently told reporters. “All those things are great conversations, but the practical reality is, the math isn’t there. It doesn’t add up, we don’t have the votes.” 

However, Trump has said that terminating the filibuster will yield key victories for Republicans.

“I say, end the filibuster,” Trump told The Daily Signal March 29. “Terminate the filibuster. Just vote, and you’ll get everything you want.”