FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Daily Signal has learned that the Sharia-Free America Caucus is looking to expand its efforts in preserving the U.S. Constitution beyond Washington in the 120th Congress.

The caucus, which has previously raised awareness of the controversial Islamic rule known as Sharia law and pushed legislation to protect the U.S. Constitution from it, is looking to work with state leaders to codify legislative efforts.

Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith told the Daily Signal that the Hoosier State could be a potential partner for the caucus, saying that he would “100 percent [be] all in on this.”

Beckwith said the idea to partner with the congressional caucus to protect his home state from a foreign law that enforces female genital mutilation and creates a hostile environment for those of other religions is not just his personal desire, but one shared by his Indiana constituents.

“This is an 80/20 issue, our offices have seen. It’s almost unlike any other issue,” Beckwith stated, adding that his office is receiving calls from citizens about the issue almost every day.

“I’ve gotten so much support, not just from Republicans, but also Democrats who see that the rise of Sharia is a problem,” he continued.

However, Beckwith explained that people need to raise awareness of what the law entails.

“Islam is not just a religion; it is a political and military ideology,” Beckwith said.

During his phone interview with the Daily Signal, Indiana’s lieutenant governor referred to some uninformed constituents as people who don’t realize the extent of the threat posed by Sharia law, adding that it “will destroy our Constitution.”

“Hoosiers are people who are normally reactive to things instead of being proactive,” he said. “But we don’t have the luxury of being reactive here—we have to understand the issue. Raising awareness will be important.”

One roadblock to defeating Sharia law in America, Beckwith continued, could come from Democrats aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, whom he called “useful idiots for Sharia.“

He cited the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 as a prime example of “what the red-green alliance will look like,” adding that, at the time, the Islamic revolutionary forces used socialist propaganda to secure sufficient public support to overthrow the government. The revolutionary forces then turned around and suppressed the same crowd of people who lifted them up, especially women.

“The only difference between Islam and the [Chinese Communist Party] is that Islam will hide behind a false religion to build a military ideology,” Beckwith said. “We saw it since Muhammad immigrated from Mecca to Medina; they immigrated, populated, and dominated.”

Despite the potential backlash, the lieutenant governor said he believes that “it’s in the realm of possibility” that Indiana will follow Florida and Texas in standing up to the Islamic rule.

“I see an appetite for it,” he concluded.

The idea might have support with state lawmakers. Previously, Indiana state Rep. Andrew Ireland told the Daily Signal that he is ready to work with colleagues to solidify the push in the Indiana Statehouse.

Other States

In Minnesota, state Sen. Michael Holmstrom unveiled a similar caucus in his state’s Legislature, as he previously told the Daily Signal.

On Tuesday, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., a member of the Sharia-Free America Caucus, told the Daily Signal that Florida could be another state that could further codify its fight against “Sharia and mainstream Islam.”

“We’ve certainly led on the issues to ban Sharia and fight back against the threat of mainstream Islam in Florida,” Fine stated. “I represent Florida, and that’s where I’ll be focused.”

Another state that could pursue a partnership with the caucus, Fine hinted, is Texas, where Islamic complexes such as the East Plano Islamic Center have continued to emerge throughout the state.

Most recently, Amy Mek, of the RISE Foundation, a group that raises awareness of extremist groups, also expressed concern about the Northside Islamic Center of San Antonio, which is being built outside Camp Bullis Military Training Reservation, a key U.S. military installation in the Lone Star State.

According to a RAIR Foundation USA report, the development will include a mosque, housing developments, K-12 educational institutions, businesses, and Sharia-compliant separate prayer areas for men, women, and children.

In an interview with the Daily Signal, Mek welcomed the news of the caucus’ potential expansion and future partnerships with states.

“RAIR Foundation strongly supports the congressional anti-Sharia Caucus,” she said, adding that it is a “useful step in educating federal officials about the dangers of Islam in America and in encouraging them to take action.”

Mek added that pressure by the federal government is not enough.

“Americans must also act at the grassroots and state level. Local anti-Sharia caucuses can press the federal government while taking concrete steps in their own communities,” she said. “State and local Sharia-free caucuses are a practical way to advance that work. When the federal government does not act, states retain both the authority and the responsibility to defend America.”

Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention was not a formal kickoff to an expected 2028 presidential campaign. But a close look at what he said suggests that, informally, in some respects, that’s exactly what it was.

Vance did not mention his rumored campaign, but he didn’t exactly deny that one was on the way. He brushed off chants of “48” by saying, “We gotta take care of business this November, then we can worry about what comes next.”

If Vance runs, he must perform a difficult trick all vice presidents seeking to follow their boss must do: paint himself as an heir to the president’s legacy while also differentiating himself from the unpopular policies of the administration. In this case, most prominently, the Iran war. 

Vance sought to accomplish this by suggesting Americans should not get lost in the specifics of the last 18 months, but to be like his friend Charlie Kirk and zoom out to view upcoming midterm elections as a battle between common sense and radicalism. 

“Charlie hated war,” Vance said. “Whether it was Europe or Africa or the Middle East, he didn’t care. He just hated war.

“But what I’m asking you to do is, do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater” of specific administration policies voters oppose, he continued. 

Vance eloquently reframed the midterms—and in doing so, perhaps the 2028 election—not as a referendum on issues like the Iran war, but as a choice between “giving the country over to a bunch of crazy people” or four more years of protecting the American dream.  

“Look, I’m not asking anybody to agree with me on every single issue,” Vance said, notably referring to himself and not the president. “I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration. What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months.”

Vance is betting on Trump’s wins, like border security, booting men from women’s sports, creating jobs, and lowering drug prices, tacitly asking voters to focus on these policies rather than war, the construction of the ballroom, or Trump’s controversial new plan to give every American adult $5,000, that latter two of which he didn’t even mention. 

Vance made it clear that a vote for a Democrat is not what it used to be. 

“I’m here to tell you this is who the Democrats are now, my friends, they’re not just the party of a little higher taxes, maybe some dumb regulations,” he said. “They’re not the party of FDR or JFK. Hell! They’re not even the party of Bill Clinton anymore. The Democrats are the party of hatred. They’re the party that despises America and the people who built it.”

That’s a strong message for the midterms. And it will work just as well in 2028.

Communism is on the ballot this November. That’s the message coming from GOP leaders who spoke at the 2026 Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention this week.

At the event, nearly every speaker touched on the radical Left and the socialist candidates that, they say, want communism in America.

“This is an election between common sense and communism, between America-loving patriots and hate-America extremists, between freedom and tyranny,” Majority Whip Tom Emmer said.

It’s an effective play—but also high stakes if the narrative takes root. What if the GOP gets crushed by commies?

Here’s their plan to avoid that.

When They Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them

The Democratic Socialists of America have made their priorities clear. They say they want to abolish the nuclear family, defund the police, abolish the U.S. Senate, grant mass amnesty for illegal immigrants, establish free universal health care, shut down the Department of War, and have government-run housing, ultimately leading to the fall of capitalism.

“I think most people realize what the stakes are,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, told the Daily Signal. “It is really for the survival of the republic.”

“You’ve got one side of the aisle that is quite explicitly running on a platform of tearing apart our constitutional foundations, abolishing the presidency, abolishing the Senate, and defunding the military—I mean, ideas that are genuinely insane. And I think they realize that Republicans are here, and we’ve got a platform to run on,” he continued.

Donald Trump Jr. spoke with the same intensity.

“We have two competing visions battling for the soul of America: … common sense versus extremism,” he said. “Commonsense Americans believe in merit, not DEI mandates. They believe in equal opportunity, not racial preferences. We aren’t apologizing for wanting safe streets and supporting our police.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, likewise did not hold back from calling out these candidates on stage.

“When people tell you who they are, believe them,” he said. “When Hasan Piker says America deserved 9/11, believe him. When Mamdani says he wants to seize the means of production, he means it. When Abdul El-Sayed says he has an obligation to comply with Sharia law, he means it. And when James Talarico says he wants to dismantle capitalism, he means it.”

Republicans Plan to Win

With a little more than seven weeks left until the November midterm election, where Americans will get ballots with socialist candidates on them, Republicans are working to show America the true reality of socialism and its slippery slope to communism.

“It now falls to us to preserve the country that we all love,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at the convention. “It is now being attacked from within.”

Trump reminded voters on Wednesday night that America has beaten communism once before and can do it again.

We Asked the Voters What They Think

The Daily Signal asked attendees at the event what they think Republicans must do to beat the radical Left and the socialist candidates they are running against.

“[The] number one thing to do is just bring up their own words, use their own words against them, show the people what these people believe,” one young voter from Michigan told the Daily Signal.

“[Michigan congressional candidate] William Lawrence, for instance, said things like, ‘I want to abolish the nuclear family and replace it with queer families.’ Just show these words to the American people [and] the American people won’t vote for them,” he said, referring to the race between Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., and Democrat William Lawrence.

Another attendee told the Daily Signal that Republicans need to teach voters about what socialism is, suggesting that some could be blinded by false promises about the policies.

“Most of the young people today don’t know what socialism is. If they just knew more about it, they’d probably be against it,” he said, adding that it means receiving everything for free and having all people under the control of the government.

“It sounds great, but it doesn’t work out if nobody can advance themselves to ever become rich. What’s the point? I like capitalism,” he concluded.

Another attendee told the Daily Signal that it comes down to getting the word out.

“Most people left of center that I know get one source of information and they just tune it out again,” she said. “If you sit down and have a conversation with them, a lot of times it opens them up a little. It’s not going to be an instant thing, but you know, their side would be a revolution. That’s not our way of doing things.”

“We need to be getting out and voting and making sure that these crazy ideas don’t get into office,” the female conventiongoer continued. “That’s a problem. They start out as ideas and teaching kids, and then they run for office, and next thing you know, you have socialism, and it just doesn’t work.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., noted earlier in the day that Charlie Kirk was one of the first young leaders to call out democratic socialists. One of the first slogans of his organization, Turning Point USA, was “Socialism Sucks.”

A spokeswoman for Students for Life Action who also attended the event told the Daily Signal said that it’s important to highlight the radical abortion policies these candidates are pushing.

“At Students for Life Action, our focus is on making sure that we have rights in place for all preborn babies, and so that is what I would really focus on, because what the radical left wants to do right now is to allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason,” she said.

“That is the regime that we had under Roe [Roe v. Wade], and that is what we have fought so hard to overcome. And yet there are people, including [Texas Democrat U.S. Senate candidate] James Talarico, who are running for supporting killing more babies,” she continued.

“I had a sign earlier that said, ‘Keep the GOP Pro-Life,’ and that’s what we’re really all standing here for—to make sure that the one party that has been able to say preborn babies should have a right to life continues to say that,” she concluded.

Another attendee told the Daily Signal the strategy is simple: point out all the “crazy things” that socialist candidates want to do. He said while Republicans should be talking about the “crazies,” they should also be highlighting the wins they have had in Congress and across the country.

“Those are things that are important that we’re not talking enough about, and I think we should. I think that will make a big impact on voters,” he said.

One final attendee the Daily Signal spoke with highlighted the importance of young voters, noting that Republicans need to target them.

“It’s the young people. We need to get to the young people because they’re the ones that are following this. And they think that we’ve got a problem between the two parties that can’t do anything,” he said.

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

Sami Winc:  It’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and I know that we’ve been watching New York and [New York Mayor] Mamdani, and there are a lot of people who are not happy Mamdani might come to ceremonies commemorating those who died on 9/11.  

I was wondering if you could give us a commemoration on 9/11 itself, and then, address the controversy going on in New York. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, we hadn’t done anything to them. In fact, you could make the argument under the Clinton administration—this is 25 years ago, so 2001—we were still in the shadow of eight years of Bill Clinton, and they had bombed our embassies, for example, and they had done other stuff all over the world, and we hadn’t done much. So they were emboldened and thought… 

They really did believe one of two things, and probably both: that we would not reply and try to go after them in Afghanistan, which we drove them out, and then we destroyed the Taliban for 15 years. And we would remove one of the great sponsors of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, and they didn’t believe that would happen. And more importantly, they thought, that people would rally to their cause in the Arab world, and that didn’t happen either. 

So their plans failed. Everybody said… I went back today and looked at what people were saying 25 years ago, and they all said that a second attack of that magnitude, it was not a question of if, but only when, and that did not happen. And that was because, for all the criticism of George W. Bush, he did clamp down on global terrorism.  

And for all the problems with Homeland Security and all of the bureaucratic stuff, we did not—We had a lot of terrorism incidents, but not anything of that magnitude. 

It did change our lives. You can’t go to an airport and think, even remember, what it was like 25 years prior to this. It changed everything. 

The only lament that I have, and I think a lot of our listeners share it, if you had said after 9/11, 25 years from now, you will have a socialist instead of Rudy Giuliani or someone like him in New York.  

Instead of all those fire guys risking their lives, NYPD, you’re going to have a guy who hates them. And he’s going to be a Muslim radical, and he’s going to represent the new socialist Democratic Party and Islamicist. And he’s going to announce he will confiscate private property of landlords he doesn’t like. 

And on the commemoration day 25 years from now, he will be mayor, and he will hand a pen that he signed the proclamation of observance for 9/11 25 years earlier. And by the way, he was in Uganda as a settler colonialist with the 1% Indian community that was running 65% of the wealth in his Victoria state. 

So he comes over here, and he will hand the pen as a gift to Mr. Ramzi Kassem, who’s standing to his left. And Mr. Kassem will have been the attorney for one of the hijackers that helped kill 3,000 people.  

And in addition to that, he will—in addition to that, he will hand the pen not to Mr. Kassem, but take the iconic head, the commissioner of the NYPD, and almost as a little servant, who was the only Jewish member of his inner cabinet that he inherited, the commissioner, Ms. Tisch, who is a very capable servant. She’s of the utmost professionality. She’s wonderful, and she’s in a beleaguered sense because this guy ran on the NYPD kills people, and it’s out of control, and it should be defunded. 

So then she has to hand this pen to somebody who’s an anti-Semite and tried to get, to qualify this horrible day on 9/11 by defending one of the hijackers and his family. So that, that’s where we are now. Nobody would have imagined that, but that’s where we are. 

And we’re up to a midterms, and if you had said, as we watch those brave people trying to determine whether they should be burned alive or smashed into smithereens, and they dived headfirst from the World Trade. And if you’d said to them, while they’re falling, in 25 years there’ll be a Mr. Abdul El-Sayed, and he will be running ahead in Michigan for Senate, and he will have with him on the campaign trail an associate, as will Mamdani, Hasan Piker, who said that you—you who are falling in the air—deserved this. You deserved it, and your country deserved it. 

I never thought I could imagine that. And what is the reason for that? And very briefly, what is the problem with Europe? What is the problem with Canada? Why did we have this problem with these people— And I’m not a nativist, I’m not a protectionist, but it’s immigration, both legal and illegal. 

Because we did not vet immigrants, we gave them a blank check to come in. We have 53 million people who were not born in the United States, and we don’t know who they are. And we have an additional, of that 53 million, at least 25 to 30 million are here illegally, and they’re coming from the poorest regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. 

Since 9/11, we’ve had about four million people come from the Middle East. And they don’t like us, and they are responsible, not because of colonialism or American imperial— They allowed their countries to be socialist communists, and they failed. And then they ran over here, and they’re in Canada. 

Forty-five percent, as I said, of the Canadian population either was not born in Canada or their parents were not born. And they brought— They were used by the Left as useful idiots and let in by the Left in exchange for pushing a Leftist communist agenda. 

So when you look at the people right now, as we head to the midterms, who are the most vocal, they weren’t even here, and their parents weren’t even here during 9/11. And they have made no effort to learn what 9/11 was, or they wouldn’t say stupid things. 

If you ask them, what was the Korean War about? How many people died on D-Day? What was Freedom of Fear speech by FDR? What was the Gettysburg Address? They have no interest. Not that they don’t know anything about our history or proto— They don’t care. 

I’m talking about you, Ilhan Omar, and said, “9/11, that was… Something happened on 9/11.” Yeah, it did. Muslims of your brand came over here and slaughtered 3,000 people, and you think it’s a joke. 

And then you see Mamdani, a radical, and then you have Ms. Melat Kiros comes over here from a completely failed state and wins the lottery to come into the United States with her parents and now says that we owe Black people, as herself, reparations. 

You can be in a state like California, no history of slavery, nobody’s alive for five generations who was a slave, nobody’s alive in California that ever had relatives that were slave owners. The so-called white population is 35% of the population, 35% of the state, and she’s calling for reparations, and they’re calling it in California. 

And you look at all of those. El-Sayed, he doesn’t want to admit that he’s bragging about Sharia law. He was at a campaign event where one of the imams said he wanted to fight United States. He hates the United States. And he’s had Hasan Piker all through him. 

Hasan Piker just warned the Jews. Here’s a second-generation American who’s a multimillionaire Turk, Turkish family. He says, “Hey, you Jews, you keep pushing Israel, we’re going to come after you. People are going to come after you.” 

So that’s where we are, and I never thought it would happen. 

Sami Winc: No, me neither. It seems we’re at a critical moment in our history once again, in fact. 

Victor Davis Hanson: They should remember that when the midterms, when they said, “I’m not—I can’t vote for Trump. He said ‘New America and Lake America.’ I can’t do that. Why would he do that?” 

Well, he did that. Maybe you’d disagree or not, but you do not disagree what he did at the border and what he is trying to do to deport some of these people who came in here illegally and killed people or hate and want to damage the United States. For that one reason, that one issue, they should vote for him. 

Sami Winc: Yeah. You’re reminding me of that interview that Elon Musk did with that reporter who was talking about him cozying up to the, quote, “far right.” And he said, “I wanna—I have a beef with you and the media. What is it that you have against secure borders, safe cities, and, you know, freedom of capital?” I can’t remember what he said, but nonetheless, she just looks at him. He’s— 

They label that far right. 

Victor Davis Hanson: She either didn’t even know when she was mouthing that, or she couldn’t say what she knew. And what she said is, “Well, we have an agenda that nobody wants. Nobody wants our trans agenda. Nobody wants our defund the police, so we have to bring in new constituents. So we opened the border and we got 12 million people. We have 30 here, so we have 42, 30 or 40 million illegal aliens maybe, and they’re going to be good, loyal Democrats, especially under mail-in ballots. So take that.” 

Sami Winc: Yeah. 

Victor Davis Hanson: That’s what they’re saying to us. 

We hate your country. We hate the country. We wanna re-imagine it. That’s what the term is. Reimagine America. 

Same thing with… Canada’s even worse. It only has 41 million people. 

And about 18 million of them are not born in Canada. Their parents weren’t born, and they’re from— And they don’t have a capitalist economy that can create goods and services to pay the enormous tab for welfare, and that’s one of the subtexts of Mr. [Mark] Carney’s fantasy house. 

Sami Winc: All right, Victor. So when you were commemorating 9/11, you made reference to a thing we—none of us should ever forget, which is the people that were on the top of those trade towers and couldn’t get down, and they were making the decision between being burned to death and jumping hundreds of feet down. And that’s a gruesome image. 

There’s also another gruesome image these days, and it is with that trial of Lindsay Clancy, which met as a mistrial, as everybody probably knows. But some jurors have come out to discuss what went on in the juror room. And they said, you know, things—oh, he—the one juror was very disconcerting. He finally understood, having a reasonable doubt. 

And then they said this, and this is what is getting a lot of play. the juror said, “But I didn’t understand because the guy, he had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.” 

That was—is a mind-boggling statement because how did 11 of them— 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I heard a lot of the jurors. They were all therapeutic. He wasn’t kind. He didn’t worry. He didn’t think about what she’s going through. 

And I can tell you that there was already another copycat killing where a woman just killed her child, hung him, hanged him. And, when “American Sniper” Chris Kyle, when he was killed by somebody he was trying to help who was traumatized. He was a hero of Iraq. He took this disturbed— 

And I can tell you that I’m not deprecating postpartum depression, but it’s not the same as going over to Iraq. I went to Iraq twice as an embedded reporter. I can tell you it’s not the same. 

And this distressed, traumatized guy repaid the magnanimity of these—our American sniper hero, and he shot him and killed him. And then he pleaded, “Well, I was disturbed.” 

And a Texas jury said, “You were disturbed. Yes, you were. And you were traumatized. Yes, you were. And so were 30, 40, 50,000 others that came over, but they don’t shoot and murder their friend right next to them. And you did, so we’re gonna convict you of murder,” and he is sitting in a state prison right now as I speak. 

And would you think, were there a lot of vets that were outside the courtroom and said, “This is terrible. We all suffer post… This is terrible. He’s our hero,” and not worry about the two people he butchered? No, there wasn’t. 

So there’s a sickness with this young generation of women and men. This is a Luigi Mangione. This is this new song on the internet where a woman has a million views, this rotund young woman, and she’s play-acting and wrote a song about killing Charlie Kirk, and how happy she is, and then she puts her finger to her jugular vein and starts pulling the trigger, and this is great. 

This is Hassan Piker leading a cheer about his death. This is Luigi Mangione getting a musical. It’s the same concept of these young, completely arrogant and ignorant generation that wanna virtue signal their caring or their performance or pity or… 

And they know that deep down inside, they would not want to be a child and have the mother that they, we all love and say, “Over here,” and then see her strangle your older sibling and then strangle you and then look at a baby who’s next and do this methodically, methodically and preplanned, and then said, “Well, I was depressed. I was depressed. I had postpartum depression, and I had too many …”

I have had problems after my surgery. I could not sleep because of all the drugs they gave me, 50 different drugs, and I had two huge incisions, one four-hour operation, another four. I had AFib. I had anemia. I had—I couldn’t—I’d lost four— 

Did I ever say, “Well, I took a Vicodin they gave me, and it must have, you know… They gave me a, a shot in the, I think it was kind of like an OxyContin shot, and I just freaked out”? No, no, I didn’t. 

Some—there were days in the hospital I didn’t even remember what the surgeon told me, but that’s no excuse to do something. 

And so, millions of women have births all over the United States every—in the Western Hemisphere—in the world every year, and they don’t go out and kill their children. And yet they were trying to make sure that she doesn’t have to account for that fact. 

And then the second thing they were all saying, “Well, she fell out of the balcony. She fell 13 feet. She jumped out.” Okay, so every time you got somebody who murders three people and they’re going to prison, or right before their sentence, they’re saying, “Well, I’m gonna jump out my window and I’ll probably be paralyzed. That means I don’t have to go to prison. I can stay home.” No. No. There’s something called deterrence. 

And for all you young men out there who are having problems as part of the lost generation, mostly of white males, and you’re bitter that you’ve been passed over for affirmative action reasons or DEI, and your degree is no good, and you don’t want to be an electrician or a plumber, and you’re in your basement of your parents’ proverbially, and you’re playing video games, and you’re not gonna get married, you don’t want the responsibility, you don’t want to be a father, you better be very careful when you date one of these types of women. 

You should ask them when you’re dating, “What do you feel about the Clancy case?” And if she said, “Well, I really feel sorry,” would you want to have children with that woman? Because she’s basically saying she’s sanctioning the killing of three people. 

And so, this act and the way that feminists reacted to it is only gonna further polarize the sexes. 

And the key subtext of this whole debate was that the husband—and now there’s a conspiracy theory that he was involved. I don’t know if Candace Owens is on that yet or not. 

But that the male is not—doesn’t have any say. He had no role in the procreation because the woman bears the child, and therefore it’s 100% her, her, her, her, her, not the husband. 

We don’t know anything about him, but we don’t even think, “Well, he loved these children and he was raising them and you deprived him of his own children.” And we don’t even think about that. 

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

At a 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the Pentagon, President Donald Trump paid tribute those who died 25 years ago.

“We will honor their lives. We will cherish their beautiful memories, and we will protect this country and its freedoms for every future generation,” he said. “We will protect it like never before. For anyone who lived it, no words can do justice to the anguish of that day.”

Trump said the world will never go back to how it was before the Twin Towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and United Flight 93 was hijacked and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

“We cannot forget that moment of immense and horrible evil that took place in this world, bent on the destruction of all that is good. But this morning, we also remember how America responded to that wickedness, when days like 9/11 we learn what a country is truly made of, we’re learning right now what we’re made of, and we have to be strong and we have to be smart,” he said.

“And Americans are made of a goodness and spirit that can transcend any earthly force,” he added, “and that’s what we’re doing better than anyone else has ever been able to do it, because we are sustained by a supreme strength far more powerful than steel alone.”

Trump said the U.S. has been tested many times, and is continuing to be tested.

“We salute our first responders and law enforcement, and we love them,” he said. “And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump said the United States is now stronger than ever before.

“It has never been as strong as it is right now,” he said. “Because of that spirit, when future generations come here in 25, 100, or 250 years from now, they will stand in a nation that is free and unyielding in the face of evil, and they will still honor the heroes of 9/11/2001, who no age will erase from the memory of time.”

DALLAS— Gov. Greg Abbott made an appearance at the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention, where he spoke on multiple issues, including immigration and Texas Democrats running for office.

On the last night of the convention, Abbott welcomed everyone to Texas and started his speech, saying that Texas has done more than any other state to protect the southern border. 

“No president has done more than [President] Donald Trump to secure our border,” Abbott said. “When Joe Biden was president, Texas had to step into the breach, and now Texas has the toughest laws on immigration of anybody in any state in the United States of America.”

Abbott touted new laws that banned sanctuary cities, made it a state crime to cross the border illegally, and built a border wall to protect Texans.

He then took aim at Texas Democrats running statewide, who have chosen to vote against “commonsense” policies.

“I’ll be honest with you. Democrats are not safe. They make our communities more dangerous,” Abbott said. “The Democrats running statewide in Texas, they have voted to defund police. That’s not Texas. That’s California crazy.” 

The governor continued, telling attendees that the Democrats on the ballot “defy common sense.” He used the example of legislation that banned foreign adversaries from buying Texas land, saying the Democrats in the Texas Legislature voted against it. 

Abbott spoke on two of the Democratic candidates running in Texas, Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico, who both spent time in the Texas Legislature. 

“Let me tell you two laws that these Democrats running for office in Texas they voted on. They voted to prosecute parents who supposedly misgender their own children in their own home. They voted to allow public schools to transition children behind their parents’ backs,” Abbott said. “But that’s not happening, because I put a stop to the craziness by signing laws that protect parents’ rights in the state of Texas.” 

Abbott’s speech ended with a hopeful message that the 2026 midterm election is a choice between “common sense and crazy.” 

“Common sense always wins. It will win this year, too,” he said. “Together, we are going to demolish the Democrats. We are going to keep Texas red, and we will help President Trump keep America great.” 

Abbott will be facing Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa in the governor’s race. 

Election Day is Nov. 3, 2026. 

Today, we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and honor the 2,977 innocent people who were killed that day.

For many of us, the details remain ingrained in our memories. We watched the tragedy unfold in real time, struggling to understand the magnitude of what we were witnessing. Others know September 11 only through photographs, recordings, history lessons, and the stories of those who lived through it. But whether the day is a personal memory or inherited history, its meaning belongs to every American.

Firefighters charged into smoke-filled buildings engulfed in flames. Police officers guided civilians to safety. Emergency medical personnel treated the injured beneath skies darkened by smoke and debris. Alongside those heroic first responders, ordinary Americans showed one another, and the world, how extraordinary our people can be. From the streets of Lower Manhattan and the lawn of the Pentagon to the skies above Pennsylvania aboard Flight 93, civilians risked their lives for their fellow countrymen. Many did so at great personal risk for people whose names they did not know and whom they had never met.

The service, sacrifice, and selflessness displayed that day would be matched only by the patriots who subsequently donned the uniform of the United States, left their families behind, and went to war to defend their fellow citizens and confront abroad the terrorists who had attacked us at home. At Heritage, we have the distinct privilege of calling several of those titans our colleagues. We remember their courage and honor the families who shared their sacrifice.

But remembrance requires more than recalling where we were or mourning those we lost. Whether you remember September 11 or know it only through the testimony of others, we must never forget why America was attacked. We must understand the ideology of Islamism that inspired the murder of innocent people, recognize the conditions in which such extremism flourishes, and have the courage to confront it before similar tragedies take place.

The terrorists did not attack America merely as a geographic place. They attacked what America represents: a Western nation, a free people governing themselves, raising families, building communities, and pursuing lives ordered toward human flourishing. Our way of life is exceptional among nations, but it is neither automatic nor self-sustaining.

The inheritance of Western civilization, shaped across generations from Jerusalem to Athens, from Rome to London, and ultimately to Philadelphia, must be cultivated and defended. Its preservation requires strong families, virtuous citizens, healthy civic institutions, the rule of law, and a common culture grounded in shared values capable of transmitting our principles from one generation to the next. Liberty survives only when a people understand it, cherish it, and accept responsibility for its defense.

In the decades since September 11, hubris has too often tempted us to believe that our freedoms can endure without vigilance or that every ideology is compatible with the American constitutional order. That is not so. A nation that seeks to remain great must possess the prudence to distinguish between those who seek to share in its civic life and those who reject its principles, excuse political violence, or cultivate contempt for the country that has received them.

We dishonor the memory of those who gave their lives when we dismiss the ideology that inspired their murder or allow hatred of America and its founding principles to take root here at home. We honor them when we defend the nation they loved, preserve the freedoms its enemies sought to destroy, and teach the next generation that citizenship carries duties as well as rights.

As we look to the years ahead, let us resolve to build a country worthy of the Americans we witnessed on September 11, 2001: courageous in danger, generous toward neighbors, united in purpose, and proud of the nation they inherited.

The terrorists sought to fill America with fear and division. They failed. Twenty-five years later, the responsibility is ours to ensure that they continue to fail. We do so by remembering the fallen, honoring those who served, defending our inheritance, and renewing the bonds of citizenship that make us one people.

If we summon again the courage, confidence, and love of country that Americans displayed on that terrible day, we can pass to our children not a nation diminished by destructive ideologies, but one strengthened by remembrance of our heritage and prepared to meet the future with resolve.

Twenty-five years later, the images remain seared into our national memory: A brilliant September sky blackened by smoke; office papers drifting through the canyons of lower Manhattan; strangers running toward danger while thousands fled from it; and, by evening, an America stunned, grieving, and suddenly united.

Sept. 11, 2001, was not merely a date on the calendar or a chapter in a history book. It was a wound to the American soul—and a summons to remember what citizenship, sacrifice, and love of country truly require of us.

Like many Americans, I have spent considerable time reflecting on that day and on the quarter-century that has followed. My perspective is a deeply personal one. On 9/11, I was a vice president of a public company headquartered in New York City, working from its Washington, D.C., office. When the first hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center, our company lost 358 colleagues and consultants, 358 families, 358 unfinished stories. They were not statistics. They were friends, mentors, coworkers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives.

Months later, I was recalled to active duty as an officer in the United States Navy. In time, President George W. Bush appointed me Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs. Among my responsibilities, I took part in the 2006 operation that transferred high-value detainees from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay, including alleged co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks. In a way I could never have imagined that September morning, the circle closed: from mourning colleagues murdered in New York to helping ensure that those accused of plotting the attacks faced the machinery of American justice.

In the days after the attacks, my company—like so many families, businesses, firehouses, police precincts, military units, churches, and communities touched by that evil—worked without pause to communicate, comfort, and care for those left behind. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, people and institutions found their own ways to honor the dead. Some built memorials. Some endowed scholarships. Some raised children who would know the names and stories of relatives they never had the chance to meet. Others put on the uniform and carried America’s colors into distant and dangerous places.

Over these 25 years, I have remained close to former colleagues who endured that terrible day. I completed 30 years of Navy service in 2022, but I have also stayed connected to shipmates—many of whom deployed again and again in the long wars that followed 9/11. Their service, and the sacrifices borne quietly by their families, remind us that the cost of that morning did not end when the smoke cleared.

This week, I returned to New York to share a meal with former colleagues who lived through the horror and carried its burdens forward. We remembered those who never came home, and we spoke about what their lives—and the years since their deaths—have taught us. To honor the fallen is not simply to lower a flag, recite their names, or pause for a moment of silence, indispensable as those acts are. It is to ask whether we remain worthy of their memory; whether we still cherish the freedoms they enjoyed, defend the nation they called home, teach the next generation what happened, and summon again the courage, unity, and patriotism that illuminated one of America’s darkest days. These are the lessons we learned. These are the lessons we must carry forward.

We remember the dead as they deserved to be remembered: not as abstractions, not as statistics, but as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues, Americans and neighbors—men and women whose lives were taken from us in an act of barbarism and whose memory now imposes upon the living a sacred duty.

We remember that day and those lost in a solemn manner, without being theatrical, patriotic without being political, religious without being sectarian, and elegant without ostentation. We don’t sugarcoat what happened that day or who was responsible.  We know what happened, and we know who did it.  Our loved ones and colleagues were real people whose desks were filled, whose calendars were full, whose families expected them home, and whose colleagues still carry them in memory.

This week, and on 9/11 itself, we remember, participate, and are drawn toward events that appeal to the better angels of our national character. We look to those who invoke God’s grace and the consolations of faith. We surrender to music, to a grief that words alone cannot carry. We know that the United States is not merely a place on a map, but an inheritance—bought at great price, defended by brave souls, and entrusted to us for safekeeping.

We remember the first responders of New York City—the firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, Port Authority officers, and ordinary citizens who ran toward the fire, smoke, steel, and death when every natural instinct told others to flee.

On 9/11, the courage of New York’s first responders illuminated the darkest morning in modern American history. They did not ask who needed saving before they climbed the stairs. They did not calculate the odds before they entered the towers. They went because duty called, because strangers were in peril, and because that is what civilization asks of brave men and women in the hour of trial.

Those who died that day in those towers were themselves exemplars of quiet courage. They were not soldiers on a battlefield. They were professionals at work, engaged in the ordinary pursuits of free people in a free economy: building businesses, serving clients, mentoring younger colleagues, raising families, planning futures. But history sometimes summons ordinary citizens into extraordinary consequences. Their deaths were an assault on America’s civic peace, and their memory is now inseparable from the national story of endurance after 9/11.

Those of us who worked for companies in the World Trade Center at the time remember the days and weeks that followed not as a blur, but as a sequence of wounds. We wept. We consoled. We attended funerals. We helped those whose burdens were heavier than our own. We tried, somehow, to move forward—first by the minute, then by the hour, then by the day. Grief yielded, slowly and imperfectly, to resolve. Memory became obligation. In time, those companies did what the best institutions in America have always done: They absorbed sorrow, protected the living, honored the dead, and turned tragedy into forward determination.

In an age when too many public rituals collapse into slogans, performance, or self-congratulation, we yearn for something rarer and nobler. Let the names speak. Let prayer speak. Let music speak. Let grief speak. And, above all, let love of country speak—not loudly, not boastfully, but with the quiet confidence of a people who know that evil may wound America, but it cannot define her.

Sept. 11 was a day of murder and ash, of falling steel and broken families. But it was also a day on which America saw, again, the meaning of courage: in first responders climbing upward into danger; in office workers helping one another down darkened stairwells; in families who endured the unendurable. 

We chose not to forget, not to cheapen memory, and not to allow time to dilute duty.

Twenty-five years later, the obligation remains. We remember our colleagues because their lives mattered. We remember our shipmates because their sacrifice made our country stronger.  We honor New York’s first responders because courage matters. We cherish America because freedom matters. Remembrance is not a passive act. It is the ultimate act of patriotism.

Socialist governments across the globe are renowned for regularly imprisoning political opposition, people of faith, and various other dissidents. But socialists in America want one freed. His name is Nicolás Maduro, and today he sits in a Brooklyn jail cell awaiting trial on federal drug-trafficking and weapons charges.

He’s not a president “kidnapped” by the United States, as many loud voices love to claim. Maduro is the former Venezuelan dictator whose regime destroyed my family’s livelihood, tortured my cousin, accused me of terrorism and, importantly, harmed American citizens. Yet the Democratic Socialists of America formally demands Maduro’s return to Venezuela.

This is not merely a foreign policy position. It is a logical conclusion from what socialists in America have been clear about for years: Eradicate American values of self-government, individualism, and capitalism. Now the DSA has put a face to a name.

Maduro was not simply a bad president. He is an indicted narco-terrorist who committed crimes against Americans. 

The U.S. Department of Justice first indicted him in 2020 for building some of the world’s most violent drug trafficking and narco-terrorist organizations to move cocaine into the United States. Drug trafficking was not Maduro’s only crime. The regime ran an official government conspiracy of sending violent criminals to the United States with the not-so-secret goal to subvert this country. Among them were members of the dangerous gang Tren de Aragua who were responsible for countless armed robberies, sexual assaults, and for the vicious murders of Laken Riley and of Jocelyn Nungaray. 

The DSA is not merely asking for due process for Nicolas Maduro. The socialists’ official statement insists there is “no substantiated evidence” senior Venezuelan officials are narco-terrorists. The DSA then demands “a return of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores to Venezuela.” That wording matters.

The DSA still calls Maduro “president,”—a dictator who “won” elections most international observers concluded were stolen. Neither Trump nor Biden recognized Maduro as president. 

I know Maduro firsthand because his regime accused me of being a terrorist.

I was born in Venezuela and lived the failures of socialism. Inflation, price controls, and government control of the economy forced my parents to close our cosmetics business. They made sacrifices and sometimes went without food so I could eat.

Those experiences inspired me to become an activist against Maduro’s regime.

I spoke publicly for capitalism and liberty. I was soon expelled from school, labeled a “terrorist” under the so-called “Law Against Hatred,” and threatened with as many as 20 years in prison.

My cousin had already been tortured by Maduro’s regime and spent more than two years behind bars as a political prisoner. My family did not want the same for me, so I fled. I immigrated legally to the United States and received asylum.

America saved my life. But while millions like me were fleeing Venezuela’s socialist nightmare, the DSA went there, met with Maduro, and praised its economic failures.

In 2021, the DSA sent what it called a “historic delegation” to Venezuela. Its members traveled the country, visited with Maduro, and said they witnessed “the construction of Venezuelan socialism.” They somehow said this with a straight-face while 94 percent of the Venezuelans lived in poverty, hundreds of political prisoners remained behind bars, and millions had already escaped.

The DSA delegation did not visit Venezuela to confront Maduro over political prisoners, torture, hunger, nor stolen elections. It wasn’t an accident. The DSA delegates went in socialist solidarity.

The DSA wants Maduro freed because, ideologically, it is Nicolás Maduro. 

Hugo Chávez, the socialist dictator who ruled before Maduro, rewrote Venezuela’s constitution and abolished the Senate. Socialists there expanded state control over the economy and expropriated farms, factories, banks, supermarkets, and private businesses. 

Sound familiar? The DSA has proposed rewriting the U.S. Constitution and abolishing the Senate. It promotes public ownership of major sectors of the American economy. These are structural ideas with very real precedents in Venezuela.

American socialists do not defend Maduro on policy or legal grounds. They defend Maduro out of ideological sympathy.

Maduro is not a symbol of resistance. He is the symbol of a system that took our businesses, our freedom, our family members, and our country. He also killed Americans by sending Tren de Aragua criminals and drugs into the United States.

For years, the DSA has told Americans what system it wants to build. By demanding Nicolás Maduro’s return, it is also showing us the lives they are willing to destroy along the way.

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

It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in this field in Western Pennsylvania, drawn here by the story of citizens rising up against tyranny. I’ll be in a small space confined to the aisle of a Boeing 757, known in history now as United Airlines Flight 93.

In 2006, I had been working in news radio for only a few months. My instincts told me that, of all the stories to cover on that fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, most people would be going to New York City and the Pentagon, but I felt compelled to cover the story that few covered, because it is mired in controversy.

Within weeks of the terror attacks in 2001, we knew that President George W. Bush had been briefed on what he needed to do, and when he needed to do it, in order to scramble pilots into their fighter jets to bring down any airplanes that we couldn’t account for. This fueled the opinion that Flight 93 must have been shot down by an F-16 that no one in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, saw.

I say that with confidence because, on that fifth anniversary, I talked to as many people in Somerset, Pennsylvania, as I could. Many of them remembered, viscerally, that morning, and the only sound they heard was the one airplane and then one crash. I know the internet doesn’t buy it, but that human intel is good enough for me. That’s a lesson that I would be drawn back to in August 2017, when people who had never been to Charlottesville, Virginia, told me that I was wrong about events I personally witnessed.

So, we arrived on this Thursday morning preparing for a couple of days of coverage of the 25th anniversary, having only seen photographs and artist renderings of the memorial that had been built here. I told Flight 93 National Memorial superintendent Stephen Clark that the visuals I had seen invoke the same feeling I get from the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii—a gentle grace belying the horrific ugliness that was being commemorated. And I had not even experienced the Tower of Voices, a brilliant sculpture that greets visitors to the Flight 93 memorial in Western Pennsylvania with 40 giant wind chimes—one for each of the passengers on that fateful flight.

Twenty years ago, the broadcasters were kept three quarters of a mile away from the crash site because it was still being investigated. All we could see from where the satellite trucks were lined up around my radio station booth was the charred tree line where the plane had gone in. That has now been replaced by a walking trail that takes you right down to where the impact site was. Challenge coins are left by visitors, and flowers are left by the Wall of Names, which follows the exact route Flight 93 took into this former strip mine before coming to rest not a mile away from an elementary school.

That is another part of the story I learned from the residents 20 years ago on my first visit here. If the passengers had taken 30 more seconds to say, “Let’s roll,” and try to retake the plane, one can only imagine what a demolished elementary school would have added to an already inconceivable tragedy.

In fairness, I must point out that just last week the Department of War announced that plans are in the works for a memorial to those who lost their lives at the Pentagon in 2001. If you’ve not seen the brilliant adaptation of the World Trade Center ground zero, you are also missing out on another shining example of what beauty humans can create when confronted with pain.

Maybe that beauty has left us with a generation of 20-somethings in this nation that do not understand what it felt like to be confronted by radicals who claimed that they were allowed to kill you because their religion told them to. Today’s universities call these murderers “marginalized.”

Millions of Muslims that never would think of committing such atrocities—and who live and work in the United States next to Quakers, Lutherans, and Jews—are the ones being marginalized. They are being marginalized in equal parts by these radical Islamists, and by the press.

Long before Israel existed, Thomas Jefferson faced this same jihad when he met with Sidi Haji Abdrahaman in Tripoli to find out why the Barbary Corsairs were taking prisoner American sailors and stealing their cargo—when America was new nation that had not had any interaction or caused any conflict to be the basis for these attacks. Jefferson was told that raiding non-Muslims was part of their religious law.

Jefferson, undoubtedly one of the most pacifist of the founding fathers, advised Daniel Shays, President of the Confederate States of America, that waging war to end these attacks might be necessary.

In my recent interview with former Virginia Sen. George Allen, he offered this perspective: “You got to recognize that there are forces, evil forces, terrorist forces around the world, that would mean us harm. And they will do it. They’ll do it with bots, they’ll do it with cyber, they’ll do it with influencers, and they’ll do it militarily.”

Asked about Israel, former Sen. Allen said, “Israel, which is a wellspring in the wilderness, that’s our best ally in the Middle East.”

Speaking of the young Americans that weren’t born by 2001, he added, “These college campuses … like the University of Virginia, where two-thirds of the students last spring voted to sanction, boycott, and disinvest from any company that does business with Israel, these folks are on the side of the terrorists in Hamas.”

What about today?

When President Bush said to the nation in 2002 that we would root out “the state sponsors of terrorism,” doesn’t that mean Iran? To that question, Allen answered: “Of course, Hamas, they were funded by Iran—same with Hezbollah, same with the Houthis. And so, to me, you need to learn from history. Being blissfully stupid, ignorant, or being a dupe for these terrorists is so stupid. It’s worse when it’s dangerous to the free world, to our country, to our allies, to commerce, and everything.”

If only there was someone taking the debate to these college campuses to demand that these students defend their radicalism in the light of day. Oh, right, this is also the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

More tomorrow. Never Forget.

Listen to Joe Thomas’ full interview with former Sen. George Allen here.

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

Only three times in American history has the United States been attacked on its home soil: during the War of 1812, on Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, and on Sept. 11, 2001. In every case, America fought back. 

With roughly a third of the American population under 25 years old and living in a post-9/11 world, many do not appreciate the audacity and speed of America’s initial response to the 9/11 attacks. Just 15 days after the nation was shocked, and while the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was still smoldering, America struck back. 

On Sept. 26, 2001, in the freezing pre-dawn of an Afghan winter, a single helicopter navigated the dangerous 16,000-foot peaks of the Hindu Kush. On board was an elite eight-man CIA team code-named Operation Jawbreaker. Landing in the Panjshir Valley carrying satellite radios and $3 million in nonsequential $100 bills, they set out to secure alliances with anti-Taliban warlords—entirely isolated, ten days before the official military campaign began. 

That campaign, Operation Enduring Freedom, launched on Oct. 7 with U.S. airstrikes to topple the Taliban regime and eliminate al-Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan. Twelve days later, Special Forces Operational Detachments Alpha 595 and 555 inserted to rally the Northern Alliance and launch a lightning campaign toward the strategic stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif. If they failed, they would be hunted down in the mountains; if they succeeded, they would break the spine of the Taliban. 

Nothing in the Green Berets’ training manuals prepared them for the terrain or transport. Upon linking up with ethnic Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdur Dostum, the twelve men of ODA 595 discovered that moving through the steep gorges of the Dari-a-Souf Valley meant riding horseback. 

The horses were small, spirited, and outfitted with primitive, wooden Afghan saddles that were agonizingly uncomfortable. Few operators had riding experience. Yet they mounted up, wore local wool pakols for warmth, and rode alongside Dostum’s militia. 

It was a staggering clash of centuries: modern warriors carrying space-age satellite GPS receivers and laser target designators guiding horse cavalry charges against Soviet-era T-55 tanks. The ODA 595 team leader’s declassified situation report, read publicly to a stunned Pentagon press corps, captured the sheer boldness of the mission: 

“I am advising a man on how best to employ light infantry and horse cavalry in the attack against Taliban T-55s… and machine guns–a tactic which I think became outdated with the invention of the Gatling Gun … We have witnessed the horse cavalry bounding overwatch from spur to spur to attack Taliban strongpoints–the last several kilometers under mortar, artillery, and sniper fire.”    

A man on horseback could not destroy a battle tank—but a B-52 strategic bomber miles above, connected to his radio, could. 

This seemingly incongruous type of warfare reached its peak on Nov. 5 at the fortified village of Bai Beche. The Taliban were bunkered in deep trenches protected by armor and heavy machine guns. After two Northern Alliance attacks were bloodily repulsed, ODA 595 climbed to high ground to paint the defenses with laser designators and call in precision strikes. 

Dostum planned a cavalry charge immediately following the airstrike, but in the confusion of battle, 250 horsemen charged prematurely—galloping straight toward enemy lines while 2,000-pound bombs were still falling. Resting hot AK-47 barrels across their forearms, the horsemen fired wildly into the trenches under exploding mortar fire. Just as they reached the trenches, the laser-guided bombs struck directly in the center of the Taliban positions. 

Before the smoke cleared, the horsemen swept through the blast zone, overrunning the shell-shocked defenders. As one ODA 595 operator recalled: “Three or four bombs hit right in the middle of the enemy position. Almost immediately after the bombs exploded, the horses swept across the objective … It was the finest sight I ever saw.” 

These initial victories came with a cost. On Nov. 25, 2001, Mike Spann—a former Marine and CIA officer on that first helicopter into Afghanistan—became the first American killed in the conflict. His final conversation with his parents remains a chilling warning: “What everyone needs to understand is that these people hate you. They hate you because you are an American.” 

Barely six weeks after the most devastating attack in American history, these few hundred “Horse Soldiers,” working alongside anti-Taliban allies and backed by U.S. airpower, started the toppling of the Taliban regime. Simultaneously, Marines from Task Force 58, who conducted the longest amphibious raid in history,  and the U.S. Army Rangers completed the action and captured Kabul and Kandahar. 

On this 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, let us remember those American special operators who climbed onto wooden saddles, rode under artillery fire in the Afghan mountains, and wrote a chapter of heroism that will not be forgotten.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the country we love did something it rarely does: It stopped arguing with itself. For a few weeks after the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, there was no red America or blue America. There was just America, standing in line to give blood, enlisting in numbers recruiters hadn’t seen since Vietnam, hanging flags off overpasses in towns that had never flown one.

A generation of young men and women who had never set foot on a battlefield signed up to fight a war on the other side of the world because they understood, without needing it explained to them, what it meant to be an American. That instinct, service before self, nation before party, is part of the legacy of 9/11. It is also what we appear to have lost over the last quarter century.   

A stranger reality has dawned on Americans on this anniversary: Not only have we lost the sense of what it means to be American, but we are once again faced with a new wave of radical anti-Americanism—one that is popular among the most educated and seemingly assimilated of our youth. Some of our traditional European allies are bastions of anti-American Islamist sympathy, while our Middle East partners appear most aligned with us on the threat from Islamism and other anti-American ideologies.   

We face a crisis over the very definition of assimilation. Just as we expect new citizens to understand and embrace what it means to be American, we must at the same time focus on familiarizing those born and bred in America with what that heritage means.  

A nation that cannot control who enters it, and that treats assimilation as an afterthought rather than a precondition, cannot expect newcomers to inherit its habits of citizenship. 

We want to be careful here, because this isn’t an argument against immigrants; generations of immigrants have earned their place in this country. It is an argument against a past policy regime that stopped asking new arrivals to become Americans and started merely processing them as caseloads.

Citizenship used to be something you earned; increasingly it has become a status you’re issued. That distinction is the whole ballgame, and pretending otherwise is how a country loses its center of gravity.   

Nowhere is that loss of definition more visible than in New York City, now governed by democratic socialist policies and leaders who intend for their America Last movement to expand across the country. 

It is worth noting that these harmful policies were not hidden from voters; the policymakers ran on this platform, and New Yorkers elected them. But an anniversary like this one is exactly the moment to say plainly what those policies get wrong.

Socialism does not build; it nationalizes the returns on private risk-taking and then wonders why people stop taking risks. The businesses that fled New York during the pandemic did not return to a city promising rent freezes and government-run grocery stores. Instead, they went to states like Texas and Florida, where the tax bill doesn’t read like a punishment for succeeding. 

A city that poured this year’s most intense energy into how to spend other people’s money never got around to asking what happens once there’s less of it to spend. This is a poor governing philosophy. 

When the 9/11 terror attacks happened, ordinary Americans didn’t wait for a committee to convene. They just moved, and what moved them was the oldest American idea there is: that free people, unafraid of risk and unashamed of ambition, build things no command economy could, and that when free people are attacked, they don’t ask the government’s permission to fight back.

That idea is what separates American exceptionalism from every alternative on offer, and it is precisely the idea a generation raised on institutional apology has been taught to distrust.   

We spent the 2010s teaching kids that the country that produced Iwo Jima and the Berlin Airlift was a project to be deconstructed. We are now watching what that teaching produces: an officer corps that has to run ad campaigns to explain why young Americans should answer the call to serve, in a nation that used to have to talk them out of enlisting.   

Twenty-five years on, the real test of this anniversary isn’t how well we remember one September morning. The test is whether we can recommit to what that morning briefly made us: a country confident enough in itself to insist that citizenship carries obligations as well as rights; reject the fantasy that socialism is compassion; and raise its children to believe, correctly, that they were born into the freest, most self-correcting, most worth-defending nation in human history.

That is the only foundation from which a country goes from woke back to warfighting—and wins. 

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

The Center for Christian Virtue has announced that its Christian Education Network initiative is expanding with eight state affiliates. In 2024, The Heritage Foundation awarded the center $100,000 to support its Education Restoration Initiative and expand the Ohio Christian Education Network schools model across the country.

Aaron Baer, the president of the Center for Christian Virtue, spoke with the Daily Signal about the expansion, agreeing it was a “full circle moment,” as the grant money was used for this purpose.

According to the Center’s announcement, the eight state affiliates include not only Ohio with the Center for Christian Virtue, but also the Alaska Family Policy, the Frontline Policy in Georgia, the Indiana Family Institute, The Family Foundation in Kentucky, the Massachusetts Family Institute, the Pennsylvania Family Council, and The Family Foundation of Virginia.

The affiliates “will organize and equip Christian schools to engage policymakers, defend their ability to operate according to their beliefs, and advocate for policies that give parents greater control over where and how their children are educated,” the announcement said.

As Baer also explained it, these affiliates act “as partners in states all over the country to help us recruit” and “help Christian schools maximize the opportunity to reach more kids.”

The Massachusetts affiliate is particularly noteworthy, given that the commonwealth hasn’t officially opted into a state tax credit for school choice, though Baer pointed out that “they’re launching an affiliate with us because families in those states can still give to the tax credit.”

“That’s one of the things that we’re doing with this is we’re saying, ‘Hey, this is a huge opportunity for us,’ to get families all over the country, to be giving, to help kids escape from these failing public schools.”

Ohio plays a major role in providing a model. “What we’re really doing is we’re taking the Ohio model of the Ohio Christian Education Network, and we’re setting it up in states all over the country,” Baer explained, given that it’s “been so successful.” When the Ohio Christian Education Network was launched in 2018, he also shared, about 14% of Ohio students were out of public schools, and now it’s about 22%.

As the press release also explained, “[Christian Education Network] grew out of the success of the Ohio Christian Education Network, which has built a statewide coalition of Christian schools and become an influential voice on education policy in Ohio,” adding that the “national network is designed to help leaders in other states build similar coalitions tailored to their own communities and policy environments.”

“We’re seeing a huge growth in kids leaving the public education system and accessing a high-quality Christian education,” Baer said. “And now, because of this new federal school choice tax credit, we’re able to help other states replicate this model,” he added, referring to a provision of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” signed into law in July of last year.

“It’s really cool to see all these states come on with us, and we’re expecting to have many more over the next few months,” Baer also previewed.

A federal jury in Richmond convicted three people this week on charges that they defrauded Medicaid out of more than $11 million. The charges relate to billing by their company, Divine Youth Counseling LLC.

The three people, 31-year-old twin sisters E’mon and Armone’ Ambers, as well as 32-year-old Traquan Brown, billed Medicaid for a service known as Crisis Stabilization and Mobile Crisis. 

“The defendants falsely claimed that two mental health professionals simultaneously provided services to Medicaid recipients, when in truth, at most a single mental health professional was present for the service,” the Justice Department wrote. “The false claims that two professionals provided ‘Team Treatment’ services caused millions of dollars of loss to Medicaid.”

In addition to the billing fraud, the three were also convicted on charges that they illegally provided hotel rooms for Medicaid recipients to encourage them to obtain Medicaid services from Divine Youth.

E’mon Ambers could be sentenced to up to 92 years in prison, while Armone’ Ambers could be sentenced to 42 years in prison. Traquan Brown could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

On Dec. 14, the court will hold a hearing to consider whether to claw back some of the money that the trio misappropriated. “The assets subject to forfeiture include $5,937,156.30 in funds seized pursuant to a federal seizure warrant,” the Justice Department noted.

Elsewhere in Richmond, Gov. Abigail Spanberger launched an effort this week to improve state services and reduce the size and scope of bad state contracts. The Democrat named Andrea Fletcher to be the first director of the Virginia Digital Service. Fletcher previously worked as the first chief digital strategy officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Spanberger had called for the creation of the team earlier this year as part of the compromise that allowed lawmakers to pass a budget in June. “Virginia Digital Service will bring together expert technical talent to modernize state systems, improve government websites, and speed up the delivery of the services that families rely on every day,” the governor said.

The creation of the team follows last month’s revelation that a previous reform effort launched by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin had fallen short. “We uncovered a $52 million loss at the Department of Social Services on a failed effort to replace the commonwealth’s antiquated child support enforcement system,” Spanberger said. “Virginia paid serious money, and all we got were tools that barely worked.”

Spanberger also tapped Daniel Young to be the state’s next inspector general. Young has spent years working for the federal government, including stints at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and as an assistant United States attorney.

“I have worked to combat fraud and corruption throughout my career in public service, and I look forward to fighting fraud, waste, and abuse in this new role,” Young said last week. “The dedicated public servants who work in the Office of the State Inspector General are committed to making government more transparent and more accountable for all Virginians, and it is a privilege to support their efforts.”

If his nomination is approved by the General Assembly, Young would serve a four-year term investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse in Virginia’s state government.

In a keynote speech, Vice President JD Vance criticized liberal candidates, defended the family, remembered his friend Charlie Kirk, and even addressed speculation as to whether he would launch a presidential campaign.

‘Party of Hatred’

Vance responded to Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who suggested his grandfather wouldn’t have liked his wife Usha’s skin color.

“The man Democrats are running for Senate in Michigan this fall—his name is Abdul El-Sayed—saw me describing what a decent man my grandfather was,” Vance said. “And you know what Abdul did? He asked, mockingly, whether I’d bring Usha with me ‘back in time to meet Papaw.'”

“Abdul looks at him, sees the color of his skin, and decides that he could never have loved my wife,” he added.

Though El-Sayed himself was raised by his white step-grandparents, Vance said, he chose to baselessly denounce Vance’s grandparents.

“This is who the Democrats are now,” he said. “They aren’t the party of higher taxes and a little more regulation. They aren’t the party of FDR, or JFK, or even Bill Clinton. No—the Democrats are the party of hatred.”

Vance said Democrats hate America and those who built it. He said it’s “the party that can find sympathy for the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, but says people with names like James Vance are incapable of loving people with names like Usha.”

“And that is why we will never let them win,” he said.

‘A Good Man’

On the one-year anniversary of Kirk’s assassination, Vance also honored his friend’s legacy.

“One year ago today, that good friend was taken from us. Charlie Kirk was assassinated,” Vance said. “He left behind two children too young to fully understand, and a wife who has carried on his mission with more courage than most of us will ever be asked to show.”

Vance spoke directly to Kirk’s two young children.

“History will record that your father was a great man,” he said. “But those of us who loved him know something even better: He was a good man. And I want you to know what your dad knew. Scripture says that God is a father to the fatherless. That every one of us is adopted into His family.”

Vance, who has shared that Kirk’s death inspired him to have a fourth child, said every American child is born with a birthright to inherit the blessings of this country. He said he has thought a lot about what this birthright means for his new baby, Alec, and his three other children.

‘Stay the Hell Away From Our Kids’

He juxtaposed this vision with the vision of a Democrat candidate named Will Lawrence running in Michigan who has said: “F the nuclear family.”

“To the radicals who wish to abolish my family and the thousands and millions of other families all across our country, we have a simple message for them: Stay the hell away from our kids,” he said.

Vance said the far left is working to see that “your children never see that birthright.”

Vance said the “good life” is not guaranteed, but every American needs to fight for it.

“And this fall, the Democrats are running candidates who will tell your children what they’re allowed to say, how they’re allowed to live, and importantly, who they ought to hate, because that’s what the Democrat Party is about in 2026. It’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about foreign fraudsters, and it’s about who they hate, and we got to send their asses packing in November.”

He urged voters to send the message that the country doesn’t belong to the radical left.

“This country was handed down to us by our parents and their parents before them,” he said. “We received this national birthright, and we are going to fight for it by electing Republicans this November.”

El-Sayed wasn’t the only candidate Vance criticized.

“These are candidates who, when they’re not calling to repeal the Second Amendment, they will attack you as a literal white supremacist if you dare to criticize Sharia law.”

“ In the great state of New York, congressional Democrats tell us that the July Fourth celebration is really about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico—I can’t even say that without laughing.  Can you just imagine Thomas Jefferson writing away, all about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico?”

“And these aren’t media personalities, these aren’t weirdos on social media, these are the candidates that congressional Demoxrats have put forth for you to vote for in November.”

Vance also criticized James Talarico, the Texas Democrat Senate candidate, saying, “He will not shut up about how there are six genders; he will not shut up about how ‘God is nonbinary’—I don’t know what the hell that even means, my friends—he won’t shut up about how having traditional Christian values makes you a bigot.

“A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history. It’s not a good place.”

Next Step for Vance?

When the crowd chanted “48,” Vance said, “We gotta take care of business this November, then we can worry about what comes next.”

Vance said Kirk served as “a great example of how to disagree but still participate in the work of saving this country.”

“What I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did,” he said. “Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”

“Look, I’m not asking anybody to agree with me on every single issue,” he added. “I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration. What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months.”

‘Demolish the Extremists’

President Donald Trump, who closed out the night by speaking after Vance, instructed the audience to repeat after him in a pledge to vote red in the midterms. 

“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends,” he said. “I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do.”

“I am going to go out and I’m going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on Nov. 3,” he said, “or we are going to vote before that.”

Trump jokingly asked the audience if they know what happens if they don’t vote: “You go to hell.” 

The audience chanted: “Vote, vote, vote.” 

“We will reject these radical left lunatics,” Trump said. “We will demolish the extremists, fanatics, lunatics, and criminals who want to destroy our country. They want to destroy the country.” 

Trump also again called for sending a $5,000 check to every American adult citizen, which he first discussed in his keynote at the convention Wednesday night.

“ If we win the midterms, we will, on the other hand, provide a, let’s call it Trump dividend: $5,000 for every adult citizen in our country. And we can do that because our country has never done better. We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars. There’s never been any country, not even close, that’s come anywhere near.”

Donald Trump Jr. took the stage on Thursday at the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention, where he honored Charlie Kirk, drew a stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats, and urged conservatives to turn out for the upcoming midterm elections.

He began by remembering Kirk on the one-year anniversary of the conservative activist’s assassination.

“Charlie loved this country more than anything. He understood the moment that we are in. He understood that the future of Western civilization was on the line in 2024 and beyond,” Trump Jr. said.

He added that Republicans would continue the political movement Kirk helped build.

“We will not back down. We will not fold. We will honor Charlie by carrying his torch to save this nation that we all love so dearly.”

Trump Jr. went on to highlight Kirk’s focus on faith, family, free speech, and economic opportunity.

“He believed young men and women should be able to live a good life without being forced to kneel to the latest woke leftist ideology.”

The eldest child of the U.S. president contrasted that vision with his characterization of the political Left, saying, “The Left want obedience, they want total control of your life.”

Pointing to issues such as transgender policies, immigration, policing, and constitutional rights, Trump Jr. framed the political divide as a choice between two ideas.

“We have two competing visions battling for the soul of America: … common sense versus extremism,” he said. “Commonsense Americans believe in merit, not DEI mandates. They believe in equal opportunity, not racial preferences. We aren’t apologizing for wanting safe streets and supporting our police.”

Trump Jr. then shifted from policy differences to political violence, accusing some on the political Left of celebrating or making light of violent attacks.

“Leftist radicals actually celebrated the cold-blooded murder of a father shot in the back on a New York City street. They mocked the attempted assassination of my father. And [they cheered] the sick coward who slithered onto a roof to assassinate our great friend Charlie.”

Turning next to the rise of democratic socialism, Trump Jr. argued that its history has been marked by suffering, and he accused Democrats of concealing the consequences of their policies.

“The truth is, the story of socialism is a story of mass suffering. Democrats know they can’t tell the truth about their policies because the American people would reject them outright.”

Trump Jr. closed by urging Republican voters not to become complacent heading into November.

“None of us, not a single one of us, can afford to sleep through the midterms,” he said.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript 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, yesterday, big win for the—this is how the Associated Press calls it—the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany party. There was an election in the state of—where the heck is it? Saxony something or other. Oh, Saxony-Anhalt. And they pulled 44% of the vote. Not a majority. 

The rest of the vote split between the Christian Democrats, the Union, which was the [Friedrich] Merz party. Their numbers from the prior election were down by half. So, there’s question of how … Will a coalition be cobbled together that’ll allow AFD to govern? Of course, it’s policy for everyone that they will not allow this party to govern.  

But anyway, Victor, you’ve talked before about the people of Europe are saying, “We’re done. We’re done.” Your thoughts on this election? 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I think they should look at the United States. And that was one of the things that I think people would like about the book. I tried to show step by step by step, the more you said [President Donald] Trump was Hitler, the more you tried to get him off the ballot, the more you waged five courtroom lawfares against him, the more you raided his home, the more people tried to kill him, at each increment, his popularity increased. 

And that’s what’s happening in Europe. Everybody is sick of this. And what is this? Open borders, illegal immigration, green energy, destroying the competitiveness of European businesses and corporations through expensive energy that’s not reliable.  

And I’ll say one of the things that the Alternative for Deutschland is doing is they want to get out of NATO. 

I mean, I don’t know if they want to get out of NATO yet, but they want to get out of the EU now, and that was a big issue. And because they feel it’s basically an unelected group of bureaucrats that’s running it for their own benefit.  

But the point is they’re gonna try to suppress this and suppress this and suppress this, and therefore it’s gonna get stronger and stronger. 

It’s gonna happen in France. I think [Emmanuel] Macron will be out, his party will be out, the British left will be out. This crazy Spanish prime minister, [Pedro] Sanchez, will be out. [Georgia] Meloni will probably survive because she was able to kind of have a war with Trump, but she’s still conservative. 

I don’t know what’ll happen. But it’s an existential question now. The people really do believe they will not survive as Europe unless they … And some people in the United States say, “Well, we have 16%, 17% of the population immigrants, and we’re struggling with this, but some of these countries only have eight or nine.” 

Yes, but they don’t have any experience with our melting pot, with mass immigration that formed this country. And so, this is a new experience for them, and it’s not a good experience. You know, I was watching a British mystery, “Endeavor.” It’s about the first years of Inspector Morris. 

It’s a series, and it was [set] in 1916 and ’17. And throughout the series, it went on for, I think, seven or eight years, maybe nine years, I can’t remember. But it talks about … And all of British TV is left-center. So, basically, one of the constant themes is how wonderful people are who were immigrants in, say, 1915. 

It takes place a little earlier. It was filmed in 2017, but it’s more about the 1960s and ’70s. That’s the locale. That’s the dramatic date. So, that was when it first started. And you know what the attitude is? All of these white racists are terrible. They treat these noble Pakistanis and noble Ugandans, but there’s not very many of them. 

So, it’s very easy to champion open borders, see? And that is how it started. But when that reached a critical mass, then people became emboldened and said, “Why do I have to hide what I feel about Islam? I don’t have to hide it anymore. We’re in the majority in certain cities in England. We’re gonna just say it.” 

It’s kind of like [Abdul] El-Sayed. We run Central Michigan.  

Fowler: Right.  

Hanson: So, I’m not gonna hide it anymore.  

The immigration today is different, and the Germans understand that it’s not intended to assimilate, acculturate, and integrate. It’s intended to create their own culture from their homelands and do it as a parasitical entity that takes the economic prosperity of free-market Western European or Eastern European capitalism and freedom and security, and within that embryo that it has an umbilical cord that gives it money, welfare, protection, you name it, then they can create a little Egypt or a little Saudi Arabia or a little Iraq or a little Syria. 

And then, once they establish that, they can grow it a little bit bigger and then a little bit bigger and then a little bit bigger. Now, some of you are going to say, “Well, at some point, don’t they understand that if they don’t change and integrate, all they’re going to do is grow misery like they did in their home country?” 

Yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna stop. Right. They will grow it to a point where the entire system falls down. Collapses. And look at Los Angeles. People said, “There’s only not that many homeless people. There’s not that many unassimilated immigrants. There’s not that many people who are booing the United States when they play soccer against Mexico.” 

Yes, but that group grew and grew and grew, and now it’s reached critical mass, and people left and left and left. And there is no umbilical cord that can save Los Angeles because the people who are running Los Angeles don’t want to integrate in many cases, or they’re so hard left they don’t like the United States. 

But there’s not enough people in California now to lift, to allow the whole LA Basin to be antithetical to America anymore.  

Fowler: Yeah.  

Hanson: And you can see what’s happening. When you have tribal chauvinism and tribal racism, these tribes then turn on each other. And I think, Jack, you pointed out … 

Fowler:  Well, like blacks and Latinos in LA, there’s a thing going on. 

Hanson: Yes. You would think that in a normal world, especially when 35% of the California population is white, that when Hispanics want to have an athletic event, a run, a half marathon, marathon, whatever, and it goes through or starts from an area heavily black, which is only 3% now of the state, 41 or 42% of the state is Hispanic. 

You would think they would say, the leaders of the black community, “Well, we’re going to try to integrate.” Your worst impression would say, and it would be based on evidence, “Well, they’re all anti-white, so this is an intersectionality harmony.”  

No, it’s not. And then your next impression would be, “Well, nobody would be stupid enough to kick out Hispanics from a black community and risk rising ethnic and racial tensions when that particular group is 15 times larger than my group.” 

Fowler: Mm-hmm. 

Hanson: No, they did it anyway. So the black community say, “Get out of here. This is our neighborhood. We don’t want to be gentrified by upscale Mexican-American people who buy our houses.”  

And that’s what’s happening because there’s nobody who says, “Hey, nobody identify by your tribe. You are Americans, and your tribe is irrelevant or incidental. Right. Not essential to who you are.” Not Karen Bass, not Rama, whatever her name is, [Nithya Raman] that’s running for mayor as a socialist alternative. None of them.  

Only Spencer Pratt, who mysteriously lost, I should say, because he was way ahead.  

Fowler: It’s this ignorance, Victor, a lot of people have. And I don’t mean that people are ignorant. 

It’s just, there’s an assumption that blacks and Hispanics in America are all, you know, buddy-buddy, and they’re not. And I get a sense that the hostility from one to the other is more black hostility toward Hispanic than … 

Hanson: I don’t know about that. 

Fowler: No?  

Hanson: I grew up, I mean, living in a Hispanic community. 

My parents were John F. Kennedy civil rights Democrats. And I think I mentioned when Martin Luther King came to Grace Cathedral, they drove us all the way up to San Francisco, and then we were on time, and then somebody called us when we got there and said a black family didn’t have a ride. 

So, we went all the way over to Hunter’s Point, picked them up, came back, and by that time, we’d lost our place, and they just pushed me into the cathedral, and I heard him. I was the only one in my family.  

But my point is, they were big supporters, as they should have been, against racism. But when we came home from first, second, third, fourth, fifth grade, I went to school with maybe 90 … 

At that particular K through third grade and fourth grade, another school, fourth to sixth, I would say it was 95% Hispanic. It was on the west side of Selma. And I was on the edge of town, so that’s where we went. We should have gone to a farm school, which was mostly ethnic, you know, Armenian, white, Japanese. 

But my parents thought it would be good for us to go to a predominantly Hispanic school because she thought, you know, you have to get along with people. And maybe out of that 300 or 400 kids at school, there were three or four blacks, and they were tormented endlessly. I won’t mention the words in Spanish that were called at them. 

And then I can remember going out on hot days, you know, in May before school got out, and we would play baseball. And a few Mexican American kids, or people, there were a lot of people who were illegal, they would say things like, “I gotta wear a long shirt.” I’d say, “Why? It’s so hot.” 

“My mom said I don’t want to look like a N-word.”  

I had some people work side by side building a concrete wall, and the person said to me, “I won’t work at 3 or 4 with a short sleeve. I gotta wear a long sleeve,” because he was really sweating. And I thought it was a theory of hydration or something, because my grandfather wore a long sleeve when he was by himself. 

He said, “I don’t wanna get dark like a N-word.”  

Fowler: Yeah.  

Hanson: There was enormous prejudice in the … that was introduced, you know. The Spanish conquistadors had gradations of which Indigenous people were dark and which were not so dark.  

And today you’ll see people who will … On the one hand, I’ve had friends, on the one hand, they’re associates, on the one hand they will buy into all of Mexico’s problems were caused by La Malinche and Cortes. 

All the Aztec or Indigenous people who joined the awful conquistadors and destroyed the beautiful Aztec culture. And at the same time, they’ll tell me a day later, “You know, my family, the Rojas are my … You know, I’m an Alvarado. I come right from Pedro Alvarado, the red-haired conquistador. 

“And my family was pretty good. We always married people that were Spanish, not Mexican.”  

And, you know, there were 20% of the Mexican-American community, many from northern Mexico, you wouldn’t know the difference between an Irish guy with black hair and a person from Mexico with black hair. They were pure white. 

And they felt that they … And their parents would not let them, when I got to high school, they did not want them dating people who were dark. And so I don’t think it’s just coming from the African American community. 

Fowler: Yeah. Well, you’re intimate with it, know best there, so. 

Hanson: Well, I also have in my extended [family], my brother’s stepchildren, two of them are Mexican American, and my other brother was married to someone who was Mexican American. She passed away.  

And then I grew up, I was kind of free range on the ranch by two people who worked for my grandfather who watched us. 

So, we would go out and work, and they would be our supervisors. You know, we would … My grandfather, “Go out to the North 20 and sucker all those vines, and Joe will take you or Manuel will help you.” And they were, you know, kind of our tutors. 

So, we learned a lot about racial things and stuff, and they would, you know, they’d say, “You know, Victor, watch out for the Armenian neighbor. Watch out for that Okie over there. Watch out for the Japanese.” 

Only they didn’t quite use those terms. So you got a tutorial that Mexican American people had as many or as few prejudices as white people. 

The idea that this white supremacy is our problem, that’s not true. Yeah. It’s every single group.  

Fowler: Right. 

Hanson: If they’re allowed to remain in a group and they’re unquestioned, they will have racial chauvinism just like any other group.  

Jack Fowler: But they will claim, especially, I think among the black community, that they are incapable of being racist, you know? 

And that the only people capable of being racist in America are whites, you know? 

Hanson: Well, I would … If you reject the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and you reject the liberal white tradition, and you say it’s foreign to your culture, then it’s incumbent upon you to show that there are people in your culture that believe in ecumenicalism. 

And I don’t see that as an Indigenous tradition myself in Native American or particularly Mexican culture. I don’t see it … The people in black culture, like Martin Luther King, in his early years at least, were an exception, not the rule. And he was losing influence to Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown and the Black Panthers, etc. 

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

DALLAS—Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, credited Charlie Kirk for bringing him and President Donald Trump together and for making the Make America Healthy Again agenda possible.

“Charlie played a critical and indispensable role in bringing me and President Trump together,” he said on Thursday at the 2026 Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention. “In fact, it was something that he was trying to do for almost a year. … And today, on the first anniversary of his assassination, I can’t stand here without thinking about him.”

Kennedy reflected on the first time he met Trump at an event with Kirk, where they shook hands and promised to make America healthy again.

“Some of my Democratic friends told me that I was a fool for trusting Trump, and so I want to make the record clear right now: President Trump has kept every single promise that he can make without exception,” he said.

“We have kept our promise to the American people. Today, two years into this administration, Americans are eating more real food.”

Kennedy noted major MAHA wins, including an 8% increase in real food sales in 2025 and a 7% drop in obesity after nearly 40 years of increases in America. Kennedy also announced a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that indicates the administration reversed a 30-year decline in longevity, indicating Americans are healthier and living longer.

“I am so grateful to God for giving our country a leader like this. …We are making America healthy again. It’s up to you now. We need to elect a Republican Congress to keep this momentum,” he said.

DALLAS—The midterm elections are just weeks away, but House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans are “not done yet.” The GOP has a guaranteed majority until January, when the next Congress begins, and they still have time to pass legislation and codify the conservative agenda.

Johnson took the stage on Thursday night at the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention to remind Republicans who they are running against and what might happen if Democrats win the majority.

“We’re not just running to decide the majority of Congress for the next two years,” Johnson said. “It now falls to us to fight to preserve the country that we all love. It’s now being attacked from within,” he continued, warning that next year there will be communists in Congress.

Johnson said that this has been the most productive Congress in the history of the institution since 1789.

“In the House, we passed over 900 pieces of legislation, and that includes the SAVE America Act four times. It’s been the most productive Congress in 80 years, and we are not done yet,” he continued.

“Right now, our Republican majority and President [Donald] Trump are working around the clock. The president never sleeps, and we don’t either,” he said.

Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, told the Daily Signal that Republicans should be doing everything they can to pass Trump’s policies to ensure they are law, even after the president leaves office.

“We ought to be doing as much as we practically can to get as many of the president’s executive orders codified into law,” Gill told the Daily Signal when asked what he hopes the 119th Congress can accomplish from now until the next Congress.

“There’s a lot we can still do on the DOGE front. These are very, very popular policies ensuring that American tax dollars aren’t being wasted. That’s something that a lot of Democrats, at least outside of Washington, would support as well,” Gill continued.

“I think that there’s a slew of issues that we ought to be focused on, and I think sanctuary cities should be sort of priority No. 1, and DOGE probably priority No. 2,” he concluded.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., echoed a similar response when asked if he is hopeful Republicans will be able to codify Trump’s border policies into law, including stricter immigration policy and ending sanctuary cities.

“I think ending sanctuary cities and states is paramount, the vast majority of Americans agree with that, and certainly that is something that I would like to see come to the floor for a vote,” Lawler told the Daily Signal on Day One of the convention.

On Day Two of the convention, Thursday, Lawler brought Sheridan Gorman’s family on stage to speak about how sanctuary city policies led to Gorman getting murdered by an illegal alien.

“From my vantage point, sanctuary jurisdictions need to end,” Lawler continued, speaking to the Daily Signal. “I think a lot of the border policies that the President has enacted need to be enshrined into law because we do not want to go backwards and allow [former President] Joe Biden’s policies to come back and allow the floodgates to open at our borders because Democrats refuse to enforce stricter border policies.”

Speaking at the Republican National Committee’s Midterm Convention on Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, marked the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the approaching anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, using both tragedies to warn about the growing threat from political and religious extremism.

“The hate that killed Charlie Kirk, that knocked down the Twin Towers, that led to the assassination attempts on President [Donald] Trump … it just keeps getting worse and worse.”

Cruz went on to identify what he called a “red-green alliance,” which he described as communists and Islamists “coming together and sweeping over the Democratic Party.”

The Texas senator argued that the two ideologies, despite their differences, have become united by what he described as a shared set of enemies.

“They hate Christians, they hate Jews, they hate capitalism, they hate the Constitution, and they hate America,” he said.

Cruz then turned to his own family’s experience with communism in Cuba.

“My family has bled and been imprisoned and tortured by communists in Cuba—that’s what communists do.”

The senator then drew a parallel between what his family experienced under communism and what he described as oppression and violence carried out under Islamism.

“Islamism, likewise, produces murder and oppression—from the forced wearing of hijabs to the stoning of rape victims, from the systematic murder of homosexuals to the honor killings and barbarism of October 7th and 9/11.”

“Hear me now: Sharia law has no place in America,” he added.

Cruz argued that Sharia law is “fundamentally inconsistent” with the U.S. Constitution before turning his attention to Democrats and their associations with controversial political figures. The senator specifically targeted Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed over his relationship with political streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that America “deserved 9/11.”

“Why does El-Sayed refuse to disavow Hasan Piker? Why does Chuck Schumer refuse to disavow El Sayed? Their threats are not simply empty words.”

Cruz closed by sharing a question his father, who fled Cuba for the United States, has repeatedly asked him about American freedom.

“Over and over again my father asked me, ‘If we lose our freedom here [in America] …where will we go?'” 

Cruz answered the question with a call to defend the country.

“We go nowhere. We will unite. We will stand up. We will defend our nation. And we will defend our freedom,” he said.