President Trump holds a meeting with the Middle East Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) an assembly of mid-east allies for President Trump and the overall effort to bring peace and stability to the region.  Obviously, the number one concern of the assembly is the ongoing Iran conflict. Leaders from Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Kuwait […]

The post President Trump Meets with the Gulf Cooperation Council During UNGA Event appeared first on The Last Refuge.

President Trump emphasizes the importance of the western hemisphere and Latin America by participating in a second meeting of the “Shield of Americas” team.  The objective of the assembly is to secure the western hemisphere, coordinate economic, political, and security efforts among participating countries to strengthen judicial practices, improve investment opportunities, and build hemispheric partnerships. […]

The post President Trump Participates in a Shield of Americas Event at the United Nations appeared first on The Last Refuge.

OTTAWA — Famed hitman and coin-flipping enthusiast Anton Chigurh announced this week that he had been hired by the Canadian government to help out with its assisted suicide program.

A new AARP survey of Alaska voters finds a competitive Senate race and a major turnout gap between older and younger voters. Larry talks with AARP's John Hishta about what voters 50+ are saying about the race, affordability, Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug costs. For more information on the election and how you can vote in your state, visit https://www.AARP.org/votes.

A new AARP survey of Alaska voters finds a competitive Senate race and a major turnout gap between older and younger voters. Larry talks with AARP's John Hishta about what voters 50+ are saying about the race, affordability, Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug costs. For more information on the election and how you can vote in your state, visit https://www.AARP.org/votes.

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 five weeks from the midterms, and maybe we should have another update. Both sides seem to be increasingly confident, although I think the mood on the Democrats is that they’re about to achieve a historic capture of both the Senate and the House and put an end to [President] Donald Trump’s counterrevolution. 

The Republicans’ [mood] is a little bit more tentative. They feel that very slowly there’s a turnaround, and the momentum may be going their way, but they’re not sure they have enough time yet. They’re worried about two issues: the price of gas and the unpopularity of the Iran war. If you look at the polls, though, there’s some things to remember about if we go through these known unknowns of the election. 

The polls are very confident that the Democrats are gonna take the House and get very close, if not take the Senate. But we remember in the primaries, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan was supposed to defeat his opponent by nine to 10 points and only won by a point and a half. The polls were way off in the Francesca Hong Wisconsin Senate race. 

And they were off in many. They were overvaluing or they were too optimistic, as they were during the Trump-Harris [election]. As a general rule, most pollsters are: A, Democratic. Most polls tend to exaggerate the strength of a Democratic candidate for most of the race. And C, as the race gets down to the Election Day deadline, many of the pollsters will be more realistic so that they can save their reputations after the balloting is conducted. 

In addition to the polls, there’s uncertainty. We don’t know the effect. We don’t hear much about it. We had these great red-state redistricting wars, and we had the controversial Supreme Court racial gerrymandering case that said you could not artificially craft congressional districts for 750 or so thousand constituents on the basis of race to ensure an election of a person of a particular race. 

But we don’t know. We haven’t had really any analyses of how that’s going to translate in favor of the Republicans. Another known unknown is that in these individual key races in the swing states, states like Michigan and Texas especially, and Minnesota, it’s not really a swing state, but it is this time, we see that the Democratic candidates are outraising the Republicans. 

However, on the national level, when we look at political action committee money and private donors like Elon Musk, you can make the argument that the Republicans have a greater war chest. So, it’s hard to adjudicate exactly how the money’s going to be used, where it’s going to come from, and who has the advantage. 

Again, another known unknown. Something that came up with the Graham Platner candidacy that failed in Maine is that no one really knew how radical these socialists were. Let me give you a little context. Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani won New York, which is a very, very blue left-wing constituency, and he was pretty much not shy of saying that he was a socialist. 

The same thing was true of other candidates in the Democratic primaries in overwhelmingly blue areas in New York, in Los Angeles, in Denver. However, we really had not seen socialist, avowed socialist or Democrats whose records are indistinguishable or their advocacy is indistinguishable from socialists. 

We’ve never really seen them in statewide races. So we wanted to know how they would react, and it’s been quite amazing. Mr. [James] Talarico in Texas has disowned all of his prior record of talking about a multi-gendered God who’s nonbinary and that there were several genders, in his commentary about his favorite drag queen person, his desire to fight his whiteness, etc. 

These have dripped out. The same thing is true of Mr. [Abdul] El-Sayed in Michigan, Ms. [Peggy] Flanagan in Minnesota. And so, what’s happening is now that these hard-left candidates are in statewide races, they have the enthusiasm of that youthful, and I’ll be candid, over-polled group. But as the race wears on, they are desperately scrambling to hide, cleanse their social media accounts or mask their true socialist belief. 

And what’s happening is that causes a reaction from conservatives that are desperate to uncover all the things they’ve said in the past, and they’re pretty embarrassing, to tell you the truth. That’s another known unknown.  

In other words, how much information can the right get out to the public and disseminate it that shows that the candidates on the Democratic side are trying to hide who they are, so that they can get elected and then reveal their true selves only after the balloting is finished. 

How does that translate into what the races themselves look like? I would say Mr. El-Sayed is ahead in the polls, but given his increasingly revealed radical record and the over-polling that he enjoyed in the primary, I’d say his opponent, Mike Rogers, has a good chance.  

Troy Jackson is very close in most polls, if not in the lead, although Susan Collins in Maine is ahead in, I think, one poll. 

Traditionally, she on Election Day is anywhere from three to eight points behind in her past record, in her past two successful senatorial elections, and she wins. So I would say that she has a good chance of winning over Troy Jackson. Peggy Flanagan should have been a shoo-in. She is the Minnesota lieutenant governor. 

She’s very left-wing. Minnesota’s a left-wing state. But Michelle Tafoya is neck and neck. She was a sideline sports commentator. She has all this name recognition. She’s very smart, well-versed, attractive, well-funded. And in contrast, Ms. Flanagan is dealing with this Somali multibillion-dollar fraud scandal, which, as lieutenant governor, she didn’t seem to be worried about or at least didn’t move to act against it, and she’s tarred by her association with the very unpopular Tim Walz. 

That’s an odd race, but nobody expected that. James Talarico has been ahead in the polls because the conventional wisdom was Mr. [Ken] Paxton was a very weak candidate. John Cornyn, who was sort of a RINO Republican, sober, judicious, well-liked, but not necessarily a MAGA adherent, maybe he was an apostate on 10% of his voting, lost that primary, lost it handily, but he would have been a stronger candidate in the general election. 

Democrats always say they’re going to flip Texas because of the changing demography. The so-called white population is either no larger than any other group or a minority in Texas. The largest constituency seems to be Hispanic and a growing number of immigrants from India. Put that all together, and the Democrats always get ecstatic that they can flip Texas. 

They may do it, but I would be surprised if Texans are going to vote for someone who rejects the use of beef, said he was a vegetarian, commented on his favorite drag queen dancer, and apparently is ashamed of being white, and he has various views about the genders of divinities, and he’s also said that Christian. He’s spoken in negative terms about his own religion. 

Iowa. We don’t really know who’s going to win that race, but it is, Josh Turek was a very strong Democratic candidate, and it looks like maybe now he might not win. If you look at Kansas, the incumbent Roger Marshall has been behind. He’s almost tied now with the challenger Adam Hamilton. 

Just to close out, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire were all considered surprising because they are either blue states or purple states. Excuse me, red states or purple states. They thought that they would be sure Republican wins, and then the Democrats have done very well in polling, but it’s not over yet. 

The Republicans tend to be closing a little bit. So, put it all together, the polls are, we really don’t know the effect of these polls, the reliability of them. We don’t know exactly who’s gonna get how much money and from where. We really don’t know how well the Republicans are gonna be able to expose the socialist background of their opponents. 

But the big known unknowns, again, what’s gonna happen in Iran in the next five weeks? Is the regime going to get stronger? Is it gonna close the Strait? Is gas gonna skyrocket, or is there going to be a coalition, a new coalition of Gulf states, Israel, and the United States? Will gas stabilize or go down? 

Will the Iranian regime fall? Nobody really knows. I would say I will finish on one piece of advice. I think the Republican ticket in each state needs to emphasize that besides, other than gas prices, there’s a lot of good news. Lowest poverty rate we’ve learned this week in history, highest per capita income at $87,000 per person, record stock market, inflation, even with the price of gas is not, it’s only half of what it averaged during the Joe Biden administration. 

I could go on, but there’s a lot of good news that they could campaign on. And, I would say that the chances that the Republicans are gonna hold on to the Senate have gone up 60/40. The chances that the Democrats will take the House have declined probably from 70/30 to 60/40 in their favor. 

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

PITTSBURGH, PA — Local man Jeremiah Crisp took solace in the assurance that artificial intelligence would destroy all humanity in a fiery apocalypse before Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have the chance to be elected president.

Smith & Wesson gave its full-size M&P 2.0 an aluminum frame, improved trigger, night sights and optics-ready slide. We took the $969 9mm to the range.

The post S&W’s M&P9 M2.0 Metal Full-Size 9mm…The M&P, Perfected appeared first on The Truth About Guns.

A new poll conducted from Sept. 14-16 by Quantus Insights shows the Georgia Senate race tightening, with Rep. Mike Collins gaining ground on incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff.

The poll shows Ossoff leading Collins 48.2% to 44.4%, putting Collins within the margin of error.

“Jon Ossoff’s toxic far-left record is being exposed, and this race is tightening every day,” Collins campaign spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said in a press release.

“Georgians are rejecting Jon Ossoff for standing with the radical fringes of his party, and they’re backing Mike Collins’ commonsense businessman approach to cutting taxes, lowering costs, and delivering results in the U.S. Senate.”

The poll found that 6.5% of voters surveyed were undecided. Ossoff is leading among women at 54%, and Collins leads among men at 52.3%. Ossoff is leading among independents, at 41.8%.

While there was, seemingly, a high number of voters that remained undecided if they were “forced [to] lean” one way or another, the Collins campaign argued that the race was tightening.

One reason cited is that Republicans have ramped up spending with the midterms fast approaching. A couple of months back, Ossoff’s campaign spent $9 million compared to $1.3 million from Collins’ campaign, a Collins campaign polling memo said.

However, more recently, Ossoff spent about $35 million, compared to Collins’ $26 million.

In the polling memo, the Collins campaign emphasized that Ossoff has narrowed in on his “national profile,” as opposed to tackling the everyday challenges that Georgians face, like affordability and safety.

Moreover, the poll also showed demographic differences among voters. The survey found that Ossoff led Collins among minorities, while Collins led among white voters.

Despite the differences among different demographics, the variation by metro type was a toss-up. Ossoff led in the suburbs at 48%, compared with Collins’ 44%, a margin of only 4 percentage points.

The poll surveyed 645 likely voters through “SMS invitations” and had a margin of error of approximately 4.3 percentage points.

The Ossoff campaign did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

President Donald Trump said he supports a ban on U.S. diesel exports, putting him alongside Republicans who have pushed such an idea as diesel prices hit record highs.

Since late 2025, federal law enforcement has made 160 election fraud arrests and has 10 times as many investigations in motion, senior Trump administration officials said.

“We are investigating several hundred cases that are very much active right now. We are bringing several cases each week,” a Justice Department official told the Daily Signal Tuesday. “But I will say that we have thousands of cases that are in their infancy, where we are receiving public voter files.”

The Daily Signal reported Monday that the Justice Department has brought about two dozen voter fraud cases in September so far.

Previously, the Daily Signal reported that, as of late August, the second-term Trump Justice Department charged 50 noncitizens for voter fraud in its first one and a half years, compared to 13 such cases brought in the entirety of the Biden administration.

The Justice Department is combining its own internal database and tools, and distributing that information to U.S. attorneys’ offices, Homeland Security Investigations field offices, and the FBI.

“What you are seeing right now is stuff that has been in the hopper, and we have been working for a while now,” the Justice Department official said. “We think as the weeks progress, we will see those tranches, just in their infancy, start to really build and come to fruition as well.”

The administration also plans to release numbers on nonprosecutable cases, noting that more than 100,000 people have illegally registered to vote or voted, but the statute of limitations has expired for prosecution.

The uptick in arrests shows federal prosecutors are not just looking the other way on voter fraud, said Chad Ennis, vice president of the Honest Elections Project.

“The DOJ is finally putting the manpower into this. A lot of times all you have to do is look,” Ennis told thec Daily Signal. “Most of these prosecutions have been for in-person voting. In years past, most scattered prosecutions were for mail voting, or ballot harvesting operations.”

A Public Interest Legal Foundation database shows 1,376 elections ended in a tie since 1992, while another 533 were decided by a single vote in that time.

“Are thousands of fraudulent votes happening in one place? No,” Ennis said. “But local elections are more prone to fraud. It’s hard to steal a million votes. It’s not hard to steal 10 votes. Then someone has a city council to steer contracts their way, and it’s a good return on investment.”

A Homeland Security Investigations official said the agency is getting leads from across the country, with 1,600 cases in place, and 160 arrests for illegal voting or illegal voter registration.

“These are time-consuming cases. They take a lot of agent time, doing interviews, finding people, running down the official records, and determining if they voted and whether they voted in elections,” the HSI official said.

The HSI official said the agency works with other agencies, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the State Department, and the FBI to collect large amounts of registered voters, filter out noncitizens, determine if they voted, and then turn over that information to federal prosecutors. Prosecutors decide if a case can reach a conviction.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—An Albuquerque social worker is speaking out after suing to block a school district policy, alleging that it violates her First Amendment rights by forcing her to lie to parents about their students’ gender identities.

“I’m a social worker. My job is to support … emotional development, mental health, decision-making processes that affect a student’s well-being, but also to support parents, community, and students; and advocate for the health and well-being of the family,” Jeanette Martinez, the plaintiff, told the Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.

Yet Procedural Directive PJ30 directs Albuquerque Public Schools staff to adopt a child’s stated gender identity at school and hide that identity from parents—unless the child gives permission.

“When contacting the parent/guardian of a transgender student, school staff shall use the student’s legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student’s gender assigned at birth unless the student or parent/legal guardian has specified otherwise,” the policy states.

In addition to the policy, the lawsuit cites an April 21 training, conducted for the school district by the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. “You may be the one safe person at a school who’s using a kid’s pronouns, but if you don’t know whether the parents are cool with it or not, don’t call them that in front of their parents because it may be the only way to protect the safety at school,” the instructor stated.

‘A Wicked Presumption’

Mark Trammell, general counsel at the Center for American Liberty, which is representing Martinez, condemned gender secrecy policies.

“It’s a wicked presumption on behalf of schools,” he told the Daily Signal. “The presumption that parents are inherently abusive of their children, but that the state—the school—can do no wrong, and is all-knowing. It is a very socialist, it-takes-a-village type of approach, and it is so contrary to the Constitution.”

He said the policy “actually requires this conspiracy to lie to parents, and I think that compelled lie is so clearly unconstitutional.”

Martinez repeatedly sought a religious accommodation not to lie to parents.

“Never, ever was I told that I could be honest with parents,” she said.

“I’m being asked to go against my faith and what I believe is best for families and children,” Martinez said. “The parent should be the one providing the stability, the guidance, and the love.”

The social worker said that school officials told her, “If I was face-to-face with the student and the parent, then I was allowed to use the biological name only in front of the parent, so that the parent does not become aware that the student has transitioned.”

Martinez’s lawsuit claims that PJ30 violates the social worker’s free speech and religious freedom rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It discriminates against her on the basis of her viewpoint, it compels her to speak in violation of her conscience, and it forces her to violate her religious beliefs. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare PJ30 unlawful, and to block it with a preliminary and permanent injunction.

“APS does not comment on pending litigation,” Martin Salazar, senior director of communications at the school district, told the Daily Signal. “We will address the allegations in court, using the appropriate process.”

The Daily Signal reached out to the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, and did not receive a response by publication time.

A 10-Year-Old Boy

Martinez told the Daily Signal that her concerns grew from an incident involving a 10-year-old boy.

She said the boy had previously been committed to a mental hospital and suffered multiple mental-health challenges, but wanted to use the girls’ restroom.

She said school officials began treating him like a girl “overnight” and planned a transgender identity presentation for his class.

Martinez faulted the school for being “just way too passive.”

“They have literally said if a student says they are not a male or a female—opposite of what they are biologically—that it’s not their job to mentally assess a student,” she recalled. “If they say that’s what they are, then that is exactly what they are.”

“What if that’s not the answer?” Martinez recalled asking.

Trammell, the attorney, cited recent Supreme Court precedent upholding parental rights.

In Mirabelli v. Bonta (2026), the Supreme Court upheld an injunction against California’s gender secrecy policy, which mandated that school staff hide a student’s claimed transgender identity from parents unless the student expressly consented to reveal it.

The Supreme Court only granted preliminary relief, rather than ruling on the merits, so some states have kept similar policies.

“It is really only a matter of time, I think, until the Supreme Court takes up these types of cases on the merits and provides what I think is much needed guidance to all 50 states,” Trammell said.

Glock is suing Connecticut's chief state's attorney over a new law that bans any semiautomatic pistol that can be converted into an automatic weapon, CT Insider reported.