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

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. The November 2026 elections will be determined, fairly or not, largely on the status of the economy. The Left knows that.

They know two things. One, the enormous, projected gain in oil and natural gas production. Two, the deregulation and tax cuts involved in the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that will kick in in full in 2026 and some $10 trillion in foreign investment, even if that’s maybe only half of what’s promised, but that’s an enormous amount, seven or eight times more than President Joe Biden received in his last year of office.

You add all of that up: An economy right now that is doing well, and Black Friday, following Thanksgiving, had almost $11 billion in online sales. That was a record, not just better than last year at this time under the Biden administration, but better than in any time in history.

So, the economy is already strong, and you can imagine that these catalysts and this stimuli that are coming—deregulation, tax reduction, massive foreign investment, expelling 2 million people from the United States per year who were probably on social assistance, involved in many cases of crime. You can see what’s going to happen. The economy is going to boom in 2026, and the Left knows that.

So, what is their strategy?

Don’t talk about the Trump economy.

And we’ve seen what? Go after Tesla. Firebomb Tesla dealerships. Drive Tesla automobiles off the road because Elon Musk was the prince of darkness, and he was involved in the Department of Government Efficiency. Demonize DOGE.

Go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Have street theater. Have riots. Call them Gestapo. Say they’re worse than Hitler.

Go after the National Guard that has cleaned up Washington, D.C. Encourage massive resistance. Call it illegal.

Shut down the government. Shut down the government for longer than any period in history—40 days. Shut it down for no purpose. It gained nothing. Supposedly, it gained nothing. Shut it down.

Have major senators on the Democratic side and representatives cut a video. Have them tell the American soldiers, all 1.3 million active-duty strong, you don’t have to obey an order. If, in your legal wisdom, your vast knowledge of jurisprudence, if you’re a private and he says, “Go over that hill,” I don’t have to do it. It’s illegal.

Create disruption.

And the piece of resistance, the Epstein files.

You had the Epstein files for four years under Joe Biden, Democrats. You knew that President Donald Trump expelled him from his circle of friends before he was convicted of anything.

But there are about 80% or 90% of people in the so-called Epstein files—these are emails. These are text messages. These are transcripts from court proceedings. These may be IRS files. But 80% to 90% are Democrats. That’s why it was not released during the Democratic administration.

But no matter, just say, “Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files.” And so, Donald Trump finally says, “OK, they’re released.” And what do we hear? Crickets. Maybe a little bit about Larry Summers, Democrat, but silence.

Why doesn’t the Left demand that every single name be released? Because they have more Democratic donors than Trump has Republican donors that are mentioned in it.

So, the Epstein files, like the shutdown, like the street theater, like all the videos, like all the smuddy language, they were designed for one point, one reason, one goal: Keep your mind off the economy. Create a word called “affordability.” The real message is: We Democrats raised prices by 21% when we were in power, 5.2% per year. We had enormous budget deficits. We ran the debt up by $8 trillion. We had a $1.1 trillion deficit. Don’t talk about that. Just say that Donald Trump, in 10 months, has a 3% inflation rate, the same as when he entered office, and therefore, he’s responsible for the 21% that we ran up, and we’ll call it affordability.

My message to the Trump administration and all of you listening is: Tune out all of the street theater, all the pornography, all the smuddy language, all the insurrectionary activity, and just focus on the economy and talk two points. Two points: how much better it is already than the average of the four years prior, but more importantly, demonstrate why it’s going to be booming in 2026 and why the Democrats don’t want you to think about that.

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

The post Democrats Want to Distract You From This Before Midterms appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump said he is “seriously” looking into replicating a version of the Australian retirement savings accounts program to increase the U.S. birth rate.

On Tuesday, billionaires Michael and Susan Dell pledged to donate $6.25 billion to the Trump accounts, originally called MAGA Baby Bonuses, which were created by the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.” The plan was pitched as a way to incentivize people to have more children. The Daily Signal asked Trump if he had any further policy proposals in the works to raise the birth rate.

“There’s a certain Australian plan that people like,” he said. “There’s a plan where, not for children necessarily, but for people, working people, and we are looking at other things different from this. I think this is very unique, but different from this, but very important.”

The president clarified that he was referring to Australia’s retirement savings accounts program.

Australia’s superannuation program, which was introduced in 1992, requires companies to contribute 11% of their workers’ monthly pay into a retirement plan. Employees can top up contributions from their paychecks.

“We’re looking at it very seriously,” Trump said. “It’s a good plan. It’s worked out very well.”

The post Trump ‘Seriously’ Considering Implementing Australian Retirement Program appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado clerk, spent her second Thanksgiving in state prison, as local Democrats struggle to keep her there–despite the national ambitions of their governor.

The organization representing the 64 Rocky Mountain State county clerks sent a Nov. 21 letter to Democrat Colorado Gov. Jared S. Polis urging the governor to reject entreaties from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, specifically its Bureau of Prisons, and move Peters from state to federal custody.

Transferring Peters into federal custody without any federal crime or sentence would not give the Department of Justice, through the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the ability to amend her sentence or grant her parole. The transfer would give the federal government control over Peters’ living conditions and confinement rules, potentially improving her quality of life while serving her time until Colorado elects a more sympathetic governor who could parole or even pardon her.

“We, the multi-partisan Colorado County Clerks Association, respectfully ask that you not transfer former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to federal custody,” read the letter, which was not signed, but sent on CCCA letterhead. 

The 70-year-old Peters was convicted in October 2024 of various charges related to her efforts, with other individuals, to review the voting machines her county used during the 2020 presidential election. 

Peters, a Republican, who buried her Navy SEAL son in 2017, after he was killed in an air show accident, was sentenced to nine years in state lockup and assessed thousands of dollars in fines. 

Peters expressed her gratitude for those fighting to free her from prison with an X-post Friday. 

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who kept me in their thoughts and sent prayers yesterday. This is the second year that I have spent Thanksgiving in prison,” she wrote.

“Even when life challenges us and tragedy strikes, may we always remain grateful for the countless blessings we have each day,” she wrote. Complicating the clerks’ demand to keep Peters in her cell has been the failure of Polis to react directly to the federal request.

The clerks wrote that the governor needs to speak out about what he is going to do–and requested a face-to-face meeting with Polis. “This personal meeting is crucial to ensure that the voices of those who bore the brunt of these events are fully heard.”

A spokesman told Politco the governor was vigilant against an intrusive federal government, but would not address the Peters matter directly:

“Governor Polis takes his responsibilities seriously and has been clear that he will take threats from the federal government head-on – especially when they undermine our democracy – which is why we have vigorously defended Colorado’s values during this turbulent time,” Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman said.

Just as Polis has played it soft regarding Peters, he has not dodged questions about his White House ambitions, which, if acted upon, would require he reach out to voters outside the safe confines of deep purple Colorado. 

In 2022, the governor told the host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” that he would not rule out running for president. In February, appearing at the Politico Governors Summit, he claimed that seeking national office after his term ends in 2027 is not on the table. “I don’t have any plans to even think about that.”

Of course.

“Colorado’s clerks, Republicans and Democrats, and unaffiliated, have spent decades building one of the most accessible, secure, and transparent election systems in the nation,” the clerks said.

“Every clerk in the state adhered to Colorado’s meticulous certification, audit, and oversight requirements,” they said. “These officials did their work with professionalism, accuracy, and integrity, even under tremendous pressure.”

Peters’ actions were the exception, they said.

“Ms. Peters was the one clerk who chose not to,” they said. “Her actions were not mistakes or misunderstandings; they were deliberate violations of Colorado law and or attempts to undermine public trust.”

Colorado Public Radio reported that the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent a Nov. 12 letter to the Colorado Department of Corrections requesting custody of Peters.

“Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) can confirm that on November 12, 2025, we received a letter from the Federal Bureau of Prisons regarding Tina Peters,” a DOC spokesperson wrote.

“The letter is currently under review in accordance with all applicable departmental policies and procedures.”

The department said there is a multi-step process to formally approve the transfer of an incarcerated individual to another jurisdiction, including a multi-disciplinary assessment, and that it can’t be initiated by an outside entity.

“This process is typically reserved for complex cases involving significant, long-term safety and security needs,” said a DOC spokesperson.

Inmate swaps between states and with the federal government are common, and the procedures are codified in the Interstate Agreement on Detainers, as well as with court-sanctioned writs. 

The BOP request for an inmate transfer comes eight months after the Justice Department filed a March 3 Statement of Interest related to Peters’s own Feb. 6 federal habeas corpus petition, asserting to the judge that Justice was reviewing Peters’ conviction.

A habeas corpus proceeding is a challenge to the government’s circumstances for, literally, holding the body, or incarcerating an individual. It has a long history in English law, evolving from the centuries of conflict between the English monarchs and their nobles. The concept of this right to contest government detention was brought to the American colonies, and included in the Constitution’s Article I. 

The DOJ statement, which functioned as an amicus brief, was rejected March 11 by a state judge, and Aug. 18, Colorado’s Democrat Attorney General Philip J. Weiser filed a motion to dismiss the habeas corpus petition formally.

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

The post Polis Silent on Colorado’s County Clerks Demand He Reject Feds’ Ploy to Free Tina Peters appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Ohio is securing another win for election integrity by striking a deal with the federal government that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has called “historic.”

On Monday, LaRose, a Republican, announced the “long-term” agreement with the federal government to verify voter registration eligibility.

“Ohio has a duty to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote, and this agreement gives us the tools to do that job right,” LaRose said in a press release. “I appreciate the Trump administration for working with us to deliver long-term access to the federal data needed to protect election integrity.”

The recently announced agreement between Ohio and the federal government ensures that the Buckeye State has access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE System for short, for the next 20 years.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March allowing states to access the SAVE System, which allows for states to cross-check voter registration data. A judge recently upheld that executive order.

While there is an agreement in place with the Trump administration, which LaRose’s office says will “ensure unprecedented access to citizenship and other federal records for use in verifying voter registration eligibility,” the Biden administration was not so compliant. This caused Ohio and other states also experiencing similar issues to sue the Department of Homeland Security under the previous administration.

An Agreement That Was a Long Time Coming

Ohio reached the agreement with the Trump administration because of the litigation that began in the Biden era. Once a federal court approves the agreement filed last week, LaRose’s office explained, the litigation will come to an end.

The Daily Signal reached out to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for comment but did not hear back.

The litigation started in October 2024 because the Biden administration threw up roadblocks when LaRose sought increased access from DHS to verify the citizenship of voters.

“The Secretary’s office made four requests over the course of several months, which were ultimately denied by the Biden administration. The Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security only responded after Ohio Congressman and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to then-Secretary Mayorkas asking why DHS would not respond to Ohio’s requests,” the press release further explained. “In October 2024, Secretary LaRose sued the Biden DHS and Secretary Mayorkas, seeking access to the databases under federal law.”

The Bigger Picture

LaRose and the increasingly red state of Ohio have been focused on election integrity for years.

“Ohio has taken substantial actions in recent years to fortify and expand its voter list maintenance protocols, particularly aimed at enforcing a new state constitutional citizenship voting requirement,” the press release also mentioned. A state ballot initiative overwhelmingly passed in 2022 that reaffirmed that only citizens can vote in the Buckeye State.

Senate Bill 293 also passed the state Legislature in Ohio, which LaRose testified in favor of, though Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has yet to sign it. The bill “modif[ies] the deadlines governing the return of absent voter’s ballots” and also “codifies the Ohio Secretary of State’s current practice of reviewing the Statewide Voter Registration Database, on a monthly basis.”

LaRose’s announcement comes weeks after he announced a win on keeping foreign interference out of elections. As a result of a dropped lawsuit, a state law banning foreign contributions for ballot-measure campaigns has been upheld.

The post More Good News Comes for Ohio’s Efforts to Protect Elections appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of arguments from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office justifying subpoenas of a network of pro-life pregnancy centers on Tuesday. 

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin claimed First Choice Women’s Resource Centers may have made misleading comments about abortion and issued broad subpoenas to force the group to provide donor information, along with other documents.  

The justices are weighing whether New Jersey’s subpoena discouraged the group and donors from exercising their rights under the First and 14th amendments, which can be challenged in federal court, or whether the group must instead litigate its claims in state proceedings. 

Erin Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom represented First Choice, while Sundeep Iyer, chief counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, argued for New Jersey.

Here are four key takeaways from the oral arguments Tuesday.

1. ‘Suppression by Subpoena’

The American Civil Liberties Union, which consistently champions abortion access, sided with First Choice. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, asked about the ACLU’s amicus brief that warned of “suppression by subpoena and censorship by intimidation.”

Iyer argued that the issuance of a subpoena is not enough to chill free expression.

“You could have situations where there are other government statements or other government actions that themselves create an objective chill that might, together with the subpoena, be sufficient to establish standing,” Iyer said. 

However, Hawley argued that Platkin’s office had established a threat. 

“This is the context of a hostile attorney general who has issued a consumer alert, urged New Jerseyans to beware of pregnancy centers, and assembled a strike force against them,” Hawley said. 

The ACLU’s brief demonstrates that the question before the court is not a partisan or ideological matter, said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation. 

“The fact that the ACLU is on the pregnancy center’s side shows that a decision in this case will affect the First Amendment rights of groups across the ideological spectrum,” Jipping told The Daily Signal. 

“Conservative and liberal justices seemed interested in the same issues, and their questions suggest that First Choice is likely to prevail,” Jipping added. “The broader impact of the case will depend on how the Court resolves some of the technical questions that dominated the argument.”

2. ‘Ordinary Person’

First Choice has argued state’s subpoenas for donor and other information violated its First and 14th Amendment rights. Core to the state’s defense is that an attorney general’s subpoena is not “self-executing,” meaning it is effectively a request for documents until a court enforces it. 

Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said being told a subpoena had to be stamped by a judge would not be reassuring to an organization or a donor.

“What’s an ordinary person supposed to think? And what’s an ordinary person supposed to do based on what an ordinary person is supposed to think?” Kagan asked.

Iyer replied that the state court has not enforced the subpoena.

“You could look at the facts of this very case to see that the state has sought an enforcement order from this state court for more than two years. The state court has repeatedly declined to enforce production,” Iyer said. “My friends on the other side haven’t alleged anything about success rates, for example, for subpoena enforcement.”

3. ‘No Complaints’

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, asked, “Did you have complaints that form the basis of your concern about the fund-raising activities here?”

Iyer responded, “We certainly had complaints about crisis pregnancy centers.” But, when pressed, he admitted, “We haven’t had complaints about this specific center.”

Thomas replied, “So, you had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors?”

Iyer argued, “We had carefully canvassed all of the public information that is provided on the website, of First Choice, in making a determination that we wanted to initiate an investigation.” 

“State governments, federal government, initiate investigations all the time in the absence of complaints where they have a reason to suspect that there could be potential issues of legal compliance,” Iyer later said. 

Later, Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, “I gather that you think that website might have made them think that this was an entity that provided abortion care, as opposed to a pro-life entity.”

Iyer said, “That’s right, your honor.”

During the rebuttal at the end of the arguments, Hawley said the donor website has “pictures of smiling faces of babies and their families.” She added no one would question that the donor page belongs to a pro-life group and not Planned Parenthood.

4. ‘That’s Not How This Works’

In November 2023, Platkin’s office began targeting First Choice, demanding 10 years of documents.

“It commands it to produce 28 different categories of documents, including every solicitation, email, and text message it sent to its donors,” Hawley explained. “It commands it to produce donor names, addresses, phone numbers, as well as places of employment, Your Honor, and it also chilled First Choice and its donors’ First Amendment rights.” 

Plaintiffs point to precedent from the 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama, and the 2021 case of Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, which affirmed that organizations did not have to make public the name of their donors, out of fear of potential retaliation.

Arguing for the state, Iyer insisted that the attorney general’s office was trying to protect donors, not out their names. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, expressed doubts.

“You think it might have an effect on future potential donors to the organization to know that their name, phone number, address, etc. could be disclosed as a result of the subpoena?” Roberts asked. 

Iyer said, “It certainly has not, in this case.” 

Iyer said the plaintiffs produced no evidence of a donor afraid to donate to First Choice because of the attorney general’s action.

Roberts seemed unconvinced.  

“Somebody comes in and says, ‘I’m chilled. I don’t want to reveal my name, address, phone number, etc. Here’s my affidavit.’ That’s not gonna work, is it?” the chief justice asked. 

Iyer replied, “That is something they could have pleaded here, but they did not plead it.”

The post 4 Takeaways From Supreme Court First Amendment Case on Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the Department of War’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, citing the “fog of war.”

Hegseth said during the second strike on Sept. 2, the boat “was on fire,” so he didn’t personally see survivors, and he said he “didn’t stick around” for the remainder of the mission following the first strike. He said Adm. Frank Bradley “made the correct decision” in sinking the boat, which he “had complete authority to do.”

“This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. “This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick. You plant fake stories in The Washington Post about ‘kill everybody,’ based on anonymous sources, not based in anything, not based in truth at all.”

Hegseth said reporters were throwing out “really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.”

“I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters,” he said. “President [Donald] Trump has empowered commanders—commanders—to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.”

A reporter asked Trump if he supported the second strike to kill survivors of the Venezuelan boat strike.

“All I know is this, every boat that’s blown up that you see, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said, adding that he still hasn’t gotten a lot of information.

“To me, it was an attack,” he said. “It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes.”

The president said he wants the drug boats taken out, and he is willing to attack on land if necessary.

“These people have killed over 200,000 people last year,” he said. “We’re taking those sons of b—- out.”

The post ‘Fog of War’: Hegseth Tells Press What They ‘Don’t Understand’ About Strikes on Narco-Terrorists appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Lawmakers in Washington are contemplating an artificial intelligence provision that could have wide ranging ramifications for how states and localities regulate the emerging technology and protect the vulnerable online.

The provision could be added to the National Defense Authorization Act that will direct how nearly $1 trillion will be spent on national defense for Fiscal Year 2026, The NDAA text is expected to be released this Thursday. While the precise language of the AI provision remains unknown, it could likely entail efforts to prevent states or localities from regulating AI and possibly even render many state laws to protect children moot.

According to a report from Axios, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., have shopped language around Capitol Hill that would preempt or override state-level AI regulations. Some of the bills that would come to regulate AI on the federal level would likely pass through Cruz’s Senate committee as the Texas senator eyes another White House bid in 2028.

The White House has supported efforts by Congress to get such AI provisions into law.

If Congress does decide to slip the AI provision into the NDAA, it would be the second time this year Congress has tried to add an AI provision of this nature to a large legislative item.

The Senate debated adding a 10-year AI regulation moratorium for states in the One Big Beautiful Bill that was signed into law in July. That AI provision mulled by the Senate would have withheld federal broadband funding to states if sought to enforce the laws passed by the duly elected representatives of their American citizens. Furthermore, federal broadband funds would have also been withheld if states and localities dared to address new concerns about AI for the 10 years following the enactment of the provisions. Cruz was a proponent of placing the AI provision in the reconciliation package signed by President Donald Trump in July.

Proponents of the previously debated AI provision expressed concerns that America’s patchwork of AI regulations would hinder American technology companies’ abilities to compete with China and other rivals of the U.S. The provision as written would therefore have affected red and blue states alike including the technology hubs of Texas and California. It was ultimately removed in the final version of the budget bill by a vote of 99 to 1 in the Senate.

Some Republicans in Congress, however, are throwing cold water on putting an AI provision into the NDAA.

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., has reportedly said he does not think a moratorium on individual state regulation of AI will be included in the final version of the NDAA. 

“From what I hear, it’s kind of lost its momentum. It doesn’t have enough support,” Rogers said according to Politico. 

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Texas has already passed legislation regulating the utilization of AI in censoring viewpoints on the Internet as well as user privacy protections from AI-empowered data harvesting, allowing Americans to opt-out of being profiled. Such laws are widely supported by the chief law enforcement officers of dozens of states as demonstrated by a National Association of Attorneys General letter to congressional leadership in May that came out against the 10-year moratorium.

The letter noted the absence of federal action addressing the potential harms of AI, which has required states to step up and protect their residents themselves by passing laws. 

“These include laws designed to protect against AI-generated explicit material, prohibit deep-fakes designed to mislead voters and consumers, protect renters when algorithms are used to set rent, prevent spam phone calls and texts, require basic disclosures when consumers are interacting with specific kinds of AI, and ensure identity protection for endorsements and other AI-generated content,” the attorneys general letter explained.

The moratorium was also opposed by one of the most prominent Republican state executives in the country, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders. 

“Congressional Republicans like Sen. [Marsha] Blackburn, Sen. [Josh] Hawley, and members of the House Freedom Caucus are right: The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will be a huge win for the American people, but can’t include a provision that strips states of their right to regulate AI,” Sanders said to The Daily Signal in June about the moratorium. 

When asked about the return of the potential regulatory ban, Sanders’s office told The Daily Signal that, “Governor Sanders supports President Trump’s leadership to unleash American AI dominance and looks forward to working with his administration and other stakeholders to make sure we win the race against China and also protect Americans.”

The post Congress Could Slip a Major AI Regulation Change Into the NDAA appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump called affordability “a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing.”

“Look, affordability’s a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing. And they didn’t end it when, look, they lost it in a landslide,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.  

Trump bashed Democrats for using the word “affordability” as a “con job.”  

“But the word affordability is a Democrat scam,” Trump said, adding that the Biden administration “had the worst inflation in the history of our country.” 

Trump called it a “fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. You just say it—affordability.”

Trump claimed that Democrats don’t know that prices were “much higher” under President Joe Biden, pointing to the prices of gas as an example. Today, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $2.99. One year ago, the average price was $3.047, according to AAA.  

“But our prices now for energy, and for gasoline are really low. Electricity is coming down, and when that comes down, everything comes down,” Trump said.

“Beef is coming down now. We’ve done certain magic and beef is coming down,” the president said, adding, “we fixed inflation.”

“We’re gonna get prices down still further, but we brought them down,” he said. “The reason that they had the highest inflation in the history of our country is because they had the highest prices. But we brought them down, and now we have normal inflation.”

The U.S. inflation rate hit a 30-year high at 8% in 2022 under the Biden administration. The inflation rate today is 3.01%.  

Politicians in Washington and around the country have talked more about the issue of affordability following the elections in November. Affordability surfaced as the key issue voters cared about in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, and the mayoral race in New York. Republican losses in those elections, and the margins by which the GOP candidates lost, is partially being attributed to a failure to address the affordability crisis in America.  

Since taking office, Trump has pushed for a decrease in interest rates. Trump has continued to call on the Federal Reserve to decrease them following the recent elections.

In November, the White House said Trump plans to ramp up domestic travel ahead of midterms as he sells voters on his affordability accomplishments.  

The post ‘HOAX’?: Trump Changes Tune on Affordability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Minnesota whistleblowers went viral on X over the weekend after accusing Gov. Tim Walz of enabling fraud by retaliating against whistleblowers, and the social media platform suspended their account in a move conservatives suggest may represent another form of retaliation.

“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” the X account posted on Saturday. “Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports.”

The whistleblower account claimed that Walz’s appointed leaders had threatened the families of whistleblowers to keep the fraud hidden, and it claimed that “no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud.”

The post came amid increased national attention to the fraudsters who stole hundreds of millions from U.S. taxpayers in the last few years. The office of U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen has charged 78 defendants connected to the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, and 56 of them have pleaded guilty. Last month, conservative journalist Christopher Rufo highlighted how many fraudsters sent cash to the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab.

By Monday, the whistleblower’s X post garnered nearly 37 million views. Suddenly, the entire account disappeared.

Retaliation?

“Certainly it was retaliation, the question is by whom?” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, told The Daily Signal in an interview Monday.

Glahn had been following the fraud stories for years, and he said the X account gave him information that only insiders in the Minnesota bureaucracy would know.

State Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican and chair of the committee on Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, told The Daily Signal that she has spoken with the whistleblowers behind the X account on the phone and in person.

She suggested that “someone went to X and said, ‘They’re not who they say they are,’ which just is not true.”

“I and many of my colleagues went on X and asked Elon Musk and X to reinstate them, because we know they are a legitimate whistleblower account,” Robbins explained. She said the account has been “regarded as legitimate in Minnesota for a long time.”

Rep. Marion Rarick, another Republican on the committee, told The Daily Signal, “I have spoken with them directly, including in person, and yes, verified their identities as current or previous [Department of Human Services] employees.”

The account, @Minnesota_DHS, had a blue check mark and went by the name “Minnesota Department of Human Services Employees,” claiming to represent 480 staff at the department. After X suspended the account, it reemerged as a “commentary account” named “Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary” and claims to represent “over 480 Minnesota State Stewards.”

“The Minnesota Department of Human Services did not take any steps yesterday to have the account suspended,” the department told The Daily Signal.

Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether the governor played any role in the suspension. X also did not respond to a request for comment.

Walz Admin Pushback

The Department of Human Services noted that the whistleblower account “does not represent the views of the agency,” and denied accusations of retaliation.

“Any perception that employees are being discouraged from raising issues, or that efforts are being made to identify those who speak up, is false and runs counter to our values and expectations,” the department told The Daily Signal. “Retaliation of any kind is strictly prohibited.”

The department says it “is fighting fraud in our state day-in and day-out.”

Walz’s office declined to comment for this story, but it directed The Daily Signal to an executive order Walz issued in September, and a message he sent to all state government employees.

The order directs state agencies to “intensify efforts to prevent, detect, and combat fraud across Minnesota government programs.”

“We have no tolerance for fraud in the State of Minnesota,” Walz said at the time. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you will be prosecuted and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

The message to government employees highlighted signs of suspicious activity to monitor.

“It is particularly important that supervisors and agency leaders work diligently to build a culture of compliance in our agencies so that employees trust that their concerns are valued and taken seriously,” Walz wrote.

Fraud Should Not Be Partisan

Robbins, who is running for governor in 2026, agreed with whistleblowers in blaming Walz, particularly for allowing agency heads to retaliate against whistleblowers.

“He’s certainly heard about it and allowed his commissioners, his people in these agencies, to continue it,” Robbins said. “He rolled out a very late fraud crackdown in the fall, because there’s so much pressure for him to do something and he has done nothing for 7 years.”

“I think these whistleblowers are heroes,” she added. “They have tried to go through the internal channels for flagging things, and they have been ignored, retaliated against.”

The representative credited the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, along with her own fraud committee, which first met in February, for exposing the fraud. She also addressed the Somali community.

“Two things can be true at the same time: Most of the fraud of the people so far indicted and prosecuted has been from the Somali community. Also, some of the best whistleblowers have come from the Somali community,” Robbins said.

“For too long, people were afraid to identify that a lot of the fraud came from the community,” fearful of racism accusations. “That was one of the reasons it was allowed to go on for so long.”

The post RETALIATION? Minnesota Whistleblowers Who Blamed Tim Walz for Enabling Fraud Get Suspended on X appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Democrats recently blamed the Trump administration’s efforts to rein in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for poor information security. But the agency was fully staffed during the Biden administration when a massive–and still unresolved–data breach occurred. 

In February 2023, CFPB experienced a data breach that forwarded the confidential information of 256,000 consumers to a personal email address. The CFPB fired the staffer who emailed a spreadsheet with the names, transactions, and account numbers. 

The breach may have contained customer information from more than 50 financial institutions.

Protecting data of consumers compromised in this breach is a separate issue from whether the CFPB should continue to exist in its current state, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Daily Signal.

He said he intends to find out directly from the agency.

“I have not blown off or forgotten about this,” Sessions noted. “The big question that needs to be answered is when were notices given to consumers?”

“If the CFPB has followed the law, people who were affected have been notified,” he said. “I will go directly to the CFPB and ask questions to be sure they follow the law.”

Trump named Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought acting director of the CFPB, which falls under the Federal Reserve. Vought eliminated the agency’s budget request for the next quarter and ordered about 1,700 employees not to perform any work.

Vought has proposed cutting the CFPB workforce by as much as 90%. 

“CFPB is an unaccountable agency that DC bureaucrats have weaponized to the detriment of consumers,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, told The Daily Signal. 

“Under Democrat control, the bureau was responsible for one of the biggest data breaches in recent American history,” Barr said. “I commend Director Russ Vought and President Trump for cleaning up the rogue CFPB, empowering consumers and financial institutions.” 

In November, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, pointed to an audit by the Federal Reserve’s Office of Inspector General that said staffing and funding cuts at the CFPB were to blame for lack of information security. 

“To put it bluntly: consumers and their data are more at risk than ever and more vulnerable to bad actors due to the Trump Administration’s harmful actions,” a Waters press release says. “The continued dismantling of the CFPB will only worsen this crisis.” 

A Waters spokesperson did not respond to inquiries for this story on Tuesday.

The IG report says security issues were “compounded by the loss of contractor resources supporting information security continuous monitoring and testing activities and the departure of agency personnel.” 

Experts have noted that personal financial information stored at the agency has been in jeopardy since the agency’s beginning. 

A CFPB spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal for this story on Monday or Tuesday.

After the 2023 breach happened, a CFPB spokesperson said in a statement at the time, “The CFPB takes data privacy very seriously, and this unauthorized transfer of personal and confidential data is completely unacceptable.” 

The CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to regulate banks, credit card companies, lenders, and other financial services companies. It receives funding through the Federal Reserve.

The post House Republicans Seek Answers on Biden-Era Data Breach of 256,000 Consumers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As America turns 250 years old, it’s important to remember that freedom, not top-down communism, created our prosperity, Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins said in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday morning.

The SEC chairman’s speech about “Revitalizing American Markets” comes a month after New York voters elected socialist Zohran Mamdani to lead the city.

Atkins highlighted the benefits of the American economic and financial system, explained its origin in a longer English tradition, and warned about the dangers of the SEC weaponizing disclosure rules to promote a social agenda.

In his remarks, Atkins said the American 250th anniversary deserves serious reflection.

“In seven months, [the American] story will reach a rare milestone when our Republic marks its 250th year,” he said, noting that the creation of the U.S. was a special moment because the Founding Fathers stood for the idea that rights were “neither permissions to be earned nor privileges to be revoked.”

The attitudes of the Founders were shaped in part by what came before them in the Old World and the New World, Atkins said. The SEC chairman said that before the U.S. was a nation, it was an “investment.”

“The first English settlements in this hemisphere were financed through joint-stock enterprises that allowed people to pool together and share in the risk and the reward of a very uncertain venture,” he said.

He said that New York, once named “New Amsterdam,” also began as an investment project, foreshadowing its future as the major center of global finance.

Atkins noted that a long English legacy of restrained government power, the preservation of property rights, and predictable rules rather than “royal whim” allowed for market and human flourishing. The Founding Fathers inherited that worldview, he said, then “forged a more perfect union.”

The SEC chairman pointed to Alexander Hamilton, buried in nearby Trinity Church, as a man who understood that “markets, structured properly, can unleash the might of American dynamism as no monarch or government ministry possibly could.”

It was the commercial nature of the American people, Atkins said, quoting Hamilton in Federalist 11, that so greatly defines the country and creates an “inexhaustible mine of national wealth.”

Atkins said freedom and dynamism produced remarkable prosperity for the American people. In the 20th century, other regimes tried to create a top-down model of growth, he said, but these proved disastrous in comparison to the free system of the United States.

“The Soviet and communist system of central planning, coercion, mass murder, seizing private property, and suppressing private enterprise, for example, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions,” Atkins said. “While the American approach empowered its citizens to innovate, to invest, and to build wealth within predictable and enforceable frameworks.”

The message from this larger set of historical examples is clear, Atkins said.

“Across this long sweep of innovation, a pattern emerges with clarity: The great leaps of American life were always produced by a willingness to tolerate and accept risks within a system that rewards those who take those risks,” he said. “Our prosperity is no accident of history—nor is our primacy assured in the future. The 20th century was a triumph of economic freedom over doctrines that sought to constrain it.”

Atkins warned that “principles do not preserve themselves.” He said that freedom is not a “relic” that we inherit, but a responsibility we must assume. In recent years, “our regulatory frameworks have veered from the founding ideals that helped the United States to once stand without peer as the world’s destination for public companies,” the SEC chairman said.

There were over 7,000 companies listed on the U.S. stock exchanges in the mid-1990s, Atkins said, but that number had fallen by “40%” in recent years. He said this was the result of “regulatory creep” that had stifled the path to “public ownership.”

He said these changes are important because all too often in recent years, “special interest groups, politicians, and at times even the SEC itself,” have “weaponized” disclosure requirements to “advance social and political agenda that stray far from the SEC’s mission.”

“One of my priorities as chairman is to reform the SEC’s disclosure rules with two goals in mind,” he said. “First, the SEC must root its disclosure requirements in the concept of financial materiality. Second, these requirements must scale with a company’s size and maturity.”

With these changes, Atkins said he could set the SEC on a better path to fulfilling its original mission as a benign steward of financial markets.

“So as America’s 250th anniversary approaches, the question before us is not whether our entrepreneurs have the capacity to reinvigorate our capital markets, but whether we, as regulators, have the will,” he concluded. “In this new day at the SEC, and under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, I am pleased to report that we do.”

The post SEC Chairman Says at NYSE That Top-down ‘Communism’ Is a Proven Failure appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Republican leadership committed to addressing affordability and national security issues at the Republican National Committee on Tuesday. 

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who started the press conference by offering her prayers and condolences to the families of the two National Guard members shot in the nation’s capital, promised legislative work on lowering the burden of regulations.

“House Republicans are acting on our affordability agenda. Will move forward with the Dump Red Tape Act and the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act. These are real reforms to roll back Washington’s overreach and put power back where it belongs. The power needs to be with the workers, with the families and with the job creators, not with the government,” McClain said.

Other Republicans at Tuesday’s press conference pointed to government waste and unaccountability as driving forces of the affordability crisis, both on the state and federal level.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., addressed recent reports of millions of dollars worth of fraud crushing his home state’s social services.

“One billion—that’s how much money has been stolen from the hard working taxpayers in my home state of Minnesota,” Emmer told reporters. “And if that’s not egregious enough, some of these taxpayer dollars have allegedly been diverted to Al-Shabaab terrorists.”

“Under the failed leadership of [Gov.] Tim Walz, Minnesota has become a hotbed for fraud,” Emmer added.

Emmer emphasized the importance of discussing the massive fraud perpetuated on taxpayers without fear. 

“Let me be clear, it is not racist to call out criminal behavior, and we’re going to not cower to baseless labels, while Minnesotans, including law abiding Somali Americans, get robbed blind,” the Minnesota congressman said.

He also thanked President Donald Trump for raising awareness about the systemic defrauding, which he said had been under covered despite awareness of the existence of criminal behavior for years. 

Walz, a Democrat, said, “You commit fraud in Minnesota, you’re going to prison. I don’t care what color you are, what religion you are.”

“But sitting on the sidelines and throwing out accusations, and let’s be very clear, demonizing an entire population and lying to people about the safety and security of this state, is beneath that,” he added, according to a Minneapolis-St. Paul Fox affiliate.

When asked about the president’s description of Walz as “retarded,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said, “that’s not the word that I would choose.”

Meanwhile, a growing contingent on Capitol Hill is looking to perform more oversight of the Trump administrations strikes on Venezuelan drug boats. Johnson was asked about these strikes on Tuesday, but wanted to avoid getting ahead of the relevant committees.

“I’m not going to prejudge any of that,” Johnson said of the strikes. “As you know, both of the Armed Services Committees in the Senate and the House will be having hearings on this to review, and that’s their role.”

“I don’t know how much of the tape should be released, because I’m not sure how much is sensitive with regard to national security and all that. I haven’t had a chance to review it, so I’m not going to prejudge it. But I will say that, you know, it’s not an unprecedented thing,” Johnson said.

The speaker then noted the precedent set by previous administrations.

“One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama, President Obama, he had, I think there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it okay? And second secondary strikes are not unusual. It has to happen if a mission is going to be completed,” the speaker explained.

Republican leadership also promised to address concerns over Chinese Communist Party influence operations in the United States.

Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, noted that Congress would be considering legislation this week designed to combat the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on American youth. He explained how a Des Moines public school group had been taken on an all-expenses-paid-for trip to China where they were surveilled and propagandized. 

“I’ve had parents across Iowa say, ‘How is this allowed to happen?’ And the simple truth is, there’s no law preventing it,” Nunn explained, adding that, “The Chinese government is creating a series of shell organizations to recruit kids to come to China and then exploit them the moment they sit down in soil inside Beijing.”

The post House GOP Pushing Affordability Heading Into Election Year appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With November’s stinging election results not even a month behind the Virginia GOP, their chairman, state Sen. Mark Peake, announced that he will be stepping down.

Peake told The Daily Signal that he’s leaving his post at the end of December because he wanted to make sure he could devote his full effort in the Virginia Senate to defeating the redistricting referendum before it needs a special election.

He also said that the state’s Republican Party requires a chairman who can devote a similar amount of energy to getting out the vote should it make it to a Spring special election, and beyond that, helping win whatever districts there will be come November’s midterms.

Peake stepped in after longtime chair Rich Anderson earned a post as assistant secretary of the Air Force.

Cameron Hamilton has announced that he wants the State Central Committee to consider him. Hamilton mounted a challenge for the GOP nomination in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District in 2024 and his wife Karen was just elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates from the 62nd District, succeeding the retired Nick Freitas.

Some other frontrunners for the chairmanship include current chairs of Virginia’s 1st, 5th, and 6th congressional districts. They are Jeff Ryer, Rick Buchanan, and John Massoud respectively.

Ryer has helped Rep. Rob Wittman win reelection in a very competitive district while even outperforming statewide and national Republicans. Buchanan led the 5th District through the tumultuous (and expensive) primary battle between challenger John McGuire and incumbent Rep. Bob Good. Buchanan also pulled the district together to deliver a 15% victory for McGuire in the general election.

Massoud helped Rep. Ben Cline build a strong base that supports him at a better-than-60% clip and has also managed to withstand out-of-state money attempting to flip Virginia House 34th District where incumbent Tony Wilt survived the 2025 “blue wave.”

Would Loudoun County GOP Chairman Scott Pio try again for the chairman position? He has been vocal on social media about the need for a change and called for Peake to step down in the wake of the Democrat sweep of the statewide races and a 14-seat “flip” in the house. He was a candidate for the position when Anderson departed and lost to Peake at the State Central Committee vote.

The post Virginia GOP Chairman Announces He Will Step Down appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When the American Civil Liberties Union agrees with pro-life, gun rights, and business groups in the Supreme Court, there must be a pretty clear and important principle at stake. The case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, and the Court heard arguments on Dec. 2. The important principle is whether the First Amendment allows a state to pry into private organizations’ internal communications and uncover donor lists, supposedly in the name of the “public interest,” even when those organizations have not been accused of violating any law. Every organization across the ideological spectrum will be affected by the Court’s decision.

The Case

First Choice is a group of faith-based organizations in New Jersey that has been helping women with unplanned pregnancies for 40 years, providing counseling, medical services, and practical support. In November 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a subpoena to First Choice demanding a breathtaking range of inside information. This included everything from videos shown to clients; internal guidance to personnel regarding interactions with clients; 10 years of documents supporting claims about abortion complications, effects, and costs; “documents concerning the development of content for [First Choice’s] website”; and documents that “identify donations made to [First Choice].”

What on earth could this service organization have done for the state to pounce like this? Like other states, New Jersey has laws that prohibit deceptive practices by companies or charitable organizations. If a targeted organization refuses to comply with a subpoena, the attorney general may seek a state court order compelling compliance. In this case, Platkin claimed to be enforcing those laws even though he had not accused First Choice of violating any of them.

There’s little doubt what Platkin is really up to. Government officials, especially in liberal states like New Jersey, have zeroed in on pregnancy centers for negative treatment. They have looked the other way as pregnancy centers have been bombed, blockaded, and vandalized. In July 2022, Platkin formed a “strike force” to promote abortion access, including a statewide campaign to disparage pregnancy centers and dissuade anyone from seeking their help, using as the excuse the fact that pregnancy centers do not provide abortions. The truth is that this heavy-handed treatment—and especially the demand for names, phone numbers, and addresses of donors—appears intended to make pregnancy centers seem controversial and, therefore, to suppress donations and other support.

Represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Choice sued under a federal statute for redressing a violation of constitutional rights. They allege that the subpoena, with its threats of contempt and possible loss of operating licenses, violated the First Amendment’s protection for free speech and association. The U.S. District Court first said that First Choice would have to wait until the state actually attempted to enforce the subpoena through a court order. Then, when such an order was issued, the district court said First Choice would still have to wait because that order had not specifically threatened contempt for non-compliance.

Even Platkin no longer defended this goal-shifting approach. Instead, in the Supreme Court, he argued that the threat of enforcement was not sufficiently “imminent” to justify the courts stepping in and preventing him from seeking information from First Choice.

The Arguments

This issue dominated the Supreme Court argument, with both conservative and liberal justices probing in different ways whether the language of the subpoena created a “credible threat of enforcement” that could chill the speech or association of First Choice or its donors. Several justices, for example, asked whether similar language in a letter simply requesting the information, rather than a formal subpoena, would have created such a threat. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch also asked whether the fact that the subpoena was not “self-executing,” that is, required an additional court order to enforce it, made any difference. Barrett suggested that the language threatening consequences, rather than how language was communicated, was the most important factor.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether the Court should look only at the language of the subpoena when it was issued or also consider whether courts were likely to ultimately support the state’s effort at enforcement. Justice Clarence Thomas’ questions highlighted that no complaints had been lodged against First Choice, again raising the question of Platkin’s real purpose in launching this probe.

These technical questions were important for three reasons. First, the Court was trying to figure out how this case fit into its own past decisions. Second, as the broad interest by many different groups outside the litigation attests, how the Court decides this case will potentially affect every state’s investigative efforts and the rights of all private groups to resist them. The New Jersey statute Platkin used here allowed him to issue broad subpoenas whenever he thinks doing so might be in “public interest.” The New Jersey Supreme Court has described this as literally “the power of inquisition.” It takes no imagination to see how a hostile attorney general could use this power (no doubt in the name of the public interest) to harass and even suppress groups and activities that he politically opposes.

Third, at issue too is whether federal courts and statutes are actually available when federal constitutional rights are allegedly violated. Making that contingent on whether and how state courts decide certain issues would compromise a critical way that citizens can defend against an aggressive and ideological government campaign.

First Choice Likely to Win

The fact that both liberal and conservative justices asked similar kinds of questions, and the Court’s own precedents protecting similar information from government-forced disclosure, suggest that First Choice is likely to win here. The dozens of groups filing briefs as interested parties suggests that the real question is how such a win will affect all of them.

The post Supreme Court Skeptical of New Jersey’s Intrusive Probe of Pregnancy Center appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A large majority of Americans no longer think it’s affordable to raise children. According to data from the 2025 American Family Survey, 71% of participants said it’s not affordable for most people to raise children. This is a 13-percentage point increase from 2024 and a 20-percentage point increase from 2015.

Along similar lines, the most common barrier to having children cited by the survey’s participants was insufficient money (43% chose this as at least one of the barriers among a list of options presented). Adults ages 18 to 29 and those ages 30 to 44 were most likely to cite this as a reason for limiting the number of children they have or plan to have.  

It’s not surprising Americans’ concerns about the costs of raising children have climbed recently. Inflation has been at historic highs for several years now, and despite declining from its peak in 2022 inflation remains well above pre-pandemic levels. And housing prices are off the charts, hitting an all-time high in 2023 and not declining much since then.   

On a more upbeat note, perspectives about the cost of raising a family were more positive when American Family Survey participants were asked specifically about their own family situation, compared to perceptions about families in general. While 49% of respondents said the cost associated with raising a family ranked in the top three concerns for families in general, only 25% said it ranked as a top three concern for their own family. Although 25% is still a significant share of people, survey participants seemed to have a more negative view of family affordability conceptually than what is happening on the ground for them.  

It’s also notable that while people commonly cite affordability as a barrier to having children—and not only in the American Family Survey—U.S. birth rates were declining even before inflation and housing prices were soaring. Even in strong economic times during the last decade, birth rates continued to fall.

The American Family Survey also shows that the share of people reporting that not having enough money was a reason for limiting the number of children they have or plan to have doesn’t vary much across income levels. Forty-seven percent of people with incomes under $40,000 cited insufficient funds as a barrier to having children, not much different from the 43% of participants with $40,000 to $80,000 and the 42% with incomes above $80,000 per year that said the same thing.  

Median household income in the United States has increased steadily for several decades as well, even in the last few years, despite dropping some during the pandemic. Median incomes among men ages 25-29 and ages 30-35 specifically (since men are most likely to be the primary breadwinner in the home) have also trended upward in the last few years.

So, while high housing costs and inflation could explain recent declines in births, they probably aren’t a particularly good explanation for the longer-term trends of declining birth rates.  

Other factors besides hard numbers are likely driving concerns about the costs associated with raising children though. Expectations about what is required to raise a child have increased over time. Parents feel more pressure to invest greater time and resources into their children than past generations of parents did.

Another factor is that opportunity costs associated with having children have also grown. During the past several decades educational and career opportunities have increased, particularly for women. And the greater economic well-being the country has experienced over time increases the freedom people have to do things like travel, pursue personal goals, and invest in self-improvement.

While the economy is certainly part of the story when it comes to adults feeling concerned about raising children, it will likely require more than just economic reforms to change perspectives and behaviors surrounding family formation. Cultural norms and infrastructures that make it easier to raise children will likely also be necessary.

For example, workplace norms that support employees in being able to spend time with their families, more realistic material expectations about what is needed to start and raise a family, laws and cultural norms that give parents more freedom in how they raise their children (e.g., Free-Range Kids laws), educational choice options for families, and communities that provide places for families to gather easily and affordably are also necessary components.

The last few years especially have increased economic pressure on families. Smart economic policies that drive down pressure on the housing market and help reduce inflation are crucial for families. Such economic reforms must be coupled with cultural reforms though if we hope to see change in perspectives and behaviors surrounding bearing and raising children.   

The post New Survey Shows Increased Concerns About the Cost of Raising Children appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is recommending the U.S. implement new travel bans.  

“I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” Noem wrote on X Monday night.  

“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS,” the DHS secretary added.  

Noem’s post followed a meeting she had with President Donald Trump only days after an Afghan national shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after the Wednesday shooting, and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe is still in the hospital but is showing positive signs of recovery, according to West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey. Both Beckstrom and Wolfe were West Virginia National Guard members.  

Following the shooting, Trump directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause all asylum decisions. When asked about the move, Trump told reporters he thought the administration would maintain the pause for a “long time.”  

“We don’t want those people. We have enough problems,” Trump said Sunday, adding, “Many of them are no good and they shouldn’t be in our country.” 

Trump named the African country of Somalia as a nation whose citizens he does not want to enter the U.S. 

Two days after the attack on the National Guard members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. had paused the issuance of all visas to Afghans.  

“The United States has no higher priority than protecting our nation and our people,” Rubio said.  

Thousands of Afghans came to the U.S. after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, many of whom worked alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and feared for their safety under terrorist rule. 

Trump shared a photo on Truth Social of hundreds of Afghans packed into a large plane headed to the U.S. during the fall of Kabul.  

“This is part of the horrendous airlift from Afghanistan,” Trump wrote above the image on Thanksgiving Day. “Hundreds of thousands of people poured into our Country totally unvetted and unchecked. We will fix it, but will never forget what Crooked Joe Biden and his Thugs did to our Country!”  

Trump continued in a second post, pledging to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”  

Trump also pledged to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”  

Since taking office, Trump has prioritized securing America’s borders and stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. after over 10 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. under the four years of the Biden administration.  

In September, DHS announced that over two million illegal aliens had either chosen to self-deport or had been removed from the U.S. since the start of the Trump administration in January.   

This is a developing story and may be updated.  

The post Noem Recommends Travel Ban on Nations Sending ‘Killers’ to US  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For years, gun control advocates have clung to a now-tired narrative on the costs and benefits of civilian gun ownership. The narrative paints the Second Amendment as the primary cause of an alleged (and seemingly perpetual) “gun violence epidemic,” while insisting that ordinary civilians rarely rely on firearms for self-defense. Prominent gun control groups like Everytown routinely weaponize this narrative to lament the very existence of the right to keep and bear arms—and to advocate for increasingly severe restrictions on civilian gun ownership. 

There’s just one problem: Gun control advocates’ own data tells a very different story. 

Earlier this month, Everytown invited American gun owners to attend the group’s online gun safety training classes, which lectured attendees on the fact that defensive gun uses are an “exceedingly rare” phenomenon. Astute gun owners, however, noticed something peculiar—the numbers simply did not add up.

The lecturers insisted, on the one hand, that the nation suffered from a gun violence epidemic because an average of 47,000 Americans died from gunshot wounds annually over the last five years (at least half of those deaths are suicides). Yet, on the other hand, the training materials stated that those supposedly “rare” defensive gun uses occurred at an average of 69,000 times annually since 2019—making them 22% more “common” than the gun deaths allegedly reaching epidemic levels.  

In other words, Everytown inadvertently admitted that Second Amendment advocates have been right all along—ordinary Americans routinely rely on the right to keep and bear arms.   

Everytown’s numbers are, of course, also extreme outliers in the overall body of research on the prevalence of defensive gun use. Almost every major study—including the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually. In 2021, a professor at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business conducted the most comprehensive study ever undertaken on the issue, concluding that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the U.S. every year.  

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. 

(Read accounts from past months and years here.) 

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in October. You can explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. 

• Oct. 3, Athens Township, Pennsylvania. A woman and her husband stopped by the home of her ex-husband’s mother for a visit, at her invitation. During the visit, the ex-husband—who also lived in the home—“violently attacked and assaulted” the woman’s current husband. The assailant pinned the husband to the floor, repeatedly punched him in the head, and struck him in the face with a picture frame, inflicting a serious head injury. Fearing for his life, the husband—a concealed carry permit holder—drew his firearm and fatally shot his assailant.  

• Oct. 4, San Antonio, Texas. When a masked robber entered a smoke shop late at night and brandished a firearm at an employee, the employee drew his own gun and shot the robber multiple times. The suspect’s wounds ultimately proved fatal, but the employee wasn’t injured.

• Oct. 7, Albany, Louisiana. Police say that a gun owner who shot and wounded a would-be arsonist was legally justified in his actions, noting that the man whom he shot had poured gasoline around a home and was in the process of attempting to set it on fire with someone still inside. The injured suspect faces a charge of attempted aggravated arson.   

• Oct. 10, Phoenix, Arizona. A woman fatally shot her ex-boyfriend after he forced his way into her apartment late at night while she and her two children were home. The woman told police that she’d recently ended the relationship.   

• Oct. 11, Deltona, Florida. A woman shot and injured her husband in self-defense after he forced his way into the home and assaulted her after she had locked her doors, fearing for her safety during a confrontation. Police arrested the husband, who had a history of violent criminal charges and now faces additional charges of battery, giving false information to law enforcement, and violating his probation.  

• Oct. 13, Miami, Florida. Four masked men clad in all-black clothing confronted a woman as she sat in her car in front of her home, pointed a rifle at her, and forced her inside the home at gunpoint. The intruders kicked open a locked bedroom door, only to be met with gunfire from the woman’s boyfriend, who’d armed himself when he heard the commotion. The rounds injured one intruder and sent the others fleeing. The boyfriend successfully detained the injured suspect at gunpoint until police arrived.  

• Oct. 16, Chicago, Illinois. A woman exchanged gunfire with two armed intruders who entered her home and assaulted another resident. The suspects fled and neither victim was injured during the shooting. 

• Oct. 19, Compton, California. Employees at a beauty supply store asked a man to leave after he allegedly followed a woman into the business and groped her. This enraged the man, who verbally berated employees and threw merchandise around the store before brandishing an object that appeared to be a knife and threatening to kill everyone inside. A female customer drew a gun and first fired a warning shot. When the man turned toward her, however, she fired another round, this time fatally striking him. The armed customer cooperated with investigators and wasn’t arrested.   

• Oct. 25, Carson City, Nevada. Local authorities described how a verbal altercation between two men at a gas station took a “bizarre turn” that ended with one of the men being shot in self-defense by a female resident during a home invasion. Apparently, the verbal dispute escalated into a car chase that caused two different hit-and-run accidents before one of the men—for reasons that remain unclear—forced his way into a home occupied by people with no connection to the preceding events.  

• Oct. 28, Memphis, Tennessee. A man returned to his mother’s home after being “forcefully removed” during an altercation with her husband. He broke a front glass window, reached inside through the shattered glass, and grabbed his mother by the neck, prompting her husband to shoot and critically injure him in her defense. Police later learned that the son had an active arrest warrant for theft charges.   

• Oct. 31, Humble, Texas. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a man who repeatedly tried to enter the deputy’s pick-up truck—where he’d just strapped in his young child—despite multiple commands to stop. The man apparently had a history of serious mental illness and family members said he’d been acting increasingly erratic in the days leading up to the shooting. 

The standard gun control narrative is one that collapses under the weight of its own (severely undercounted) data. Everytown can dress up their own contradictions and reframe them as genuine concern, but the numbers give the game away. The truth is simple: Lawful gun ownership benefits ordinary Americans, who routinely rely on their Second Amendment rights to protect life, liberty, and property.

The post Gun Control Group Accidentally Admits That Defensive Gun Uses Are Common  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

To say we live in weird times is an understatement. And as amazing as the technology is, the world of artificial intelligence is making life in a weird world all the more so.

In the past month, the song at the top of Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart was not written and sung by a down-on-his-luck guitar player with boots and a cowboy hat. It wasn’t even sung by a pop star as a crossover hit, as has recently been the trend. The No. 1 song, “Walk My Walk,” by the artist Breaking Rust, was 100% generated by AI.

It’s a catchy tune, with pop-like beats and a depth of lyric that rivals most chart-topping country songs—which is to say not that deep. The chorus is defiant: “You can kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk, I’m gonna keep on talking and walk my walk.” I’m not sure if telling someone to “kick rocks” is a real insult in certain regions, or just an AI hallucination, but it gets the point across that the singer is going to go his (its?) own way.

If I had to be honest, it’s not all that bad, compared with the balance of popular songs on the market. It so perfectly hits the spot of the music market that I suspect the AI prompt that started it was something like, “Write me a catchy country song that mimics the style of chart toppers over the past two years.”

Real Music on Ice?

It’s not just country music that’s getting the AI love. A group called Fake Music Lab (at least it’s honest!) made a video called “Reimagining ‘Ice Ice Baby’ as a soul song,” taking the ’90s hit rap song by Vanilla Ice and using AI to generate what Ice himself might call a pretty dope melody. In fact, in a twist, Vanilla Ice apparently thought the AI version of his song was so VIP that he reposted it on his own YouTube channel. I guess anything less than the best is not a felony after all.

If ’90s rap is not immune, then other genres are certainly fair game. Fake Music Lab also has a bluegrass version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” and an outfit called ReGrooved has a “dark country” version of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight.” For these AI cover songs, the flattery of imitation (and paid royalties on the songs) may outweigh any copyright or brand-dilution concerns the artist might have. Given that they’re all robotic voices, no singers were harmed in the production of these songs—except the ones who didn’t get the job.

In Praise of Robots

When it comes to praising the Lord through music, Asaph the psalmist said it best:

So we will not be silent before You.

Morning and evening, Your praise will dwell on our lips.

Our children will learn the refrain of Your faithfulness,

and their children after them will proclaim it anew.

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

His steadfast love is the song that upholds the world.

Except Asaph never said that. ChatGPT said it when I asked it to write me a psalm in the style of Asaph that talks about singing praises. It turns out AI is well-versed enough in the Scriptures to write a pretty decent psalm. 

And it’s not just chatbots writing verse on demand. Just like in country and pop music, AI is generating lyrics, music, and vocals for Christian songs. For example, a YouTube channel called Bible Folk has released in recent months a spate of long videos that contain dozens of songs based on books of the Bible. One video, titled “If the Apostle Paul sang Romans in Folk, it would sound like this …” tackles themes from the book of Romans. With folk backing tracks and a country-like voice, the “album” features songs with lyrics like:

I am not ashamed of the gospel call

It is the path that saves us all

To everyone who will believe

the gift of God we freely receive.

Like Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk,” the music is not awful, especially when compared with its contemporary Christian music competition. Though the Bible Folk lyrics are generally pretty simple, they are at times more theologically robust than some CCM songs. The lyric above is, after all, a paraphrase of Romans 1:16—and if we apply poetic license broadly, a real person writing such songs might be applauded.

But a real person is not writing, and a real person is not singing, and any applause would fall on deaf ears—if there were any performers’ ears to hear. These AI songs are at best arrangements of material that living musicians have explored and written in the past century or so of recorded music. All in good fun, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a computer to make ordered sounds.

The Wisdom of Ick

But there’s something about AI music—especially of the Christian sort—that doesn’t sit well. And it’s hard to say what that wrong feeling is. A certain “ick factor” presents itself when you find out that it’s a machine writing the song, writing and playing the beat, and packaging it all together. The late ethicist Leon Kass, when describing a similar feeling people get when thinking about human cloning, called this the wisdom of repugnance:

Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted— though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it.

That wisdom is an echo of what David the (real) psalmist sang about in Psalm 8:4-6:

What is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet

Machines may be shiny and new, but they are not crowned by God with glory and honor. And last I checked, machines are still included in the “all things” under the feet of mankind. When those things get turned upside down, the world feels a bit more icky.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the lasting difference between AI music and music made by human beings will be that AI music will not be lasting. The classic AI tracks of yesteryear will fade into obscurity within months, to be remembered only by future AIs who train themselves on available music. 

Only real music will persist, and anything less than the best is a felony. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Originally published by The Washington Stand

The post Artificial Music for Artificial Ears: AI Rocks the Jukebox appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Left is attacking pregnancy centers again. Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin. First Choice is a network of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) serving vulnerable pregnant women in New Jersey.

Matthew Platkin is New Jersey’s attorney general, and he is trying to make life hell for PRCs in his state. How? By launching a series of politically targeted lawsuits with the goal of donor doxing and death by paperwork. 

Platkin has targeted First Choice on the basis of its religious and pro-life views by issuing the organization a burdensome subpoena seeking confidential donor and client information. It’s good old-fashioned lawfare.

I say the Left is attacking PRCs again, but it’s never really stopped. The last time PRCs had their day at the Supreme Court it was because Democrats, led by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, tried to force the pro-life centers to advertise and refer for abortion, a violation of their free speech and, in many cases, religious beliefs. Thankfully, the Supreme Court agreed with the PRCs.

Since then, the Left has only turned up the pressure on PRCs through rhetorical attacks, legal harassment, and outright vandalism and violence. Why?

Because pregnancy resource centers are unquestionably an increasingly important—and arguably essential—part of a post-Dobbs world that shifted the legal landscape around abortion. Yet the stubborn realities of crisis pregnancy have not. Pregnancy resource centers exist not only to meet the immediate needs of those women, but also to help those who want to be moms thrive in that role. This perpetually vexes the Left’s pro-choice idealogues.

What Pregnancy Resource Centers Do

Pregnancy resource centers first stabilize an almost always unstable situation. They meet the immediate health and material needs of pregnant moms in crisis. For some, that means baby supplies (diapers and formula). In just one year, PRCs nationwide served an estimated 1.85 million people, providing 2 million baby outfits, 1.3 million packages of diapers, 19,000 strollers, and more than 30,000 car seats. In New Jersey, where Platkin is on the hunt, PRCs served more than 23,000 men, women, and children with 8,713 pregnancy tests, 6,872 ultrasounds performed by licensed medical professionals, 9025 packs of diapers, 75,472 baby outfits, and 1,658 cans of formula.

For others, that help takes the form of housing. A woman named Monica found such help when fleeing domestic violence and homelessness while pregnant. Aid for Women pregnancy center’s maternity home, Heather’s House, took her in immediately and stayed with her for the course of her pregnancy and after she had a baby boy. The center’s staff even babysat while Monica took ESL classes.

“I can’t even begin to express how much Aid for Women has impacted my life. I was able to work on establishing a life for me and my son,” she said in an interview. “Everything in my life has been touched by Aid for Women and their support of me, not just having a place to live, but real support of me as a woman and as a person, has changed the direction both of our lives could have gone.”

Helping mothers establish a life is what PRCs specialize in. An estimated 1 in 4 women report their abortion as “unwanted or coerced,” 60% of post-abortive women say they would have preferred to have their baby if they had more emotional or financial support. One study found that 61% of women reported “high levels of pressure” to have abortions. PRCs provide women the support they need to not only make a true choice, but also to thrive as mothers.

Many offer career counseling, life coaching and parenting classes. One PRC so empowered Claire Anctil-Cathey that the former client went on to establish one herself. She said her pregnancy was like “being in total darkness” until she sought help at a PRC. It was like “being led into the light by people who just stepped in and cared for me and provided me the support that I needed one step at a time to get to a place where I was on my feet.”

“No one’s ever looked at them and said, ‘Well, you can do this, and we can help you,’” Claire says of her center’s clients. “Our main goal is to provide these women with the same sort of support that they would have from a loving, healthy family.”

This is what New Jersey’s attorney general and the Left want to shut down. So far, it isn’t working. The number of PRCs increased by 35% over a decade, and they now outnumber abortion clinics by a 3-to-1 ratio. Small wonder that 70% of those polled said PRCs should receive public funding.

They have become an essential part of a new, genuinely pro-mother era. The Supreme Court should shield them from ideological attacks aimed at shuttering them.  

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

The post The Supreme Court Can End New Jersey’s War on Pregnancy Resource Centers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler examine how the Left put forth the “waxen effigy” of former President Joe Biden, then used the autopen to enact its radical policies.

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

Jack Fowler: Well, Victor, since we’re talking about fake things, let’s talk about the autopen, which was used by Joe Biden in thousands of ways to free people, criminals, hardcore criminals, murderers, dirt bags, etc. We’ve heard a lot about this for the last year, and [President] Donald Trump put out a statement the other day and I’d like to get your comments on it.

Here’s what he wrote on Truth Social:

Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the auto pen, which was approximately 92% of them is hereby terminated and no further force or effect. The autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the president of the United States. The radical left lunatics, circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the presidency away from him. I’m hereby canceling all executive orders and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden because the people who operated the autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the autopen process, and if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Victor Davis Hanson: That raises a lot of issues. No. 1, I don’t know how you post facto, go back and undo things that he did. I mean, I don’t know why he pardoned Hunter Biden, [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, I think [Dr. Anthony] Fauci. Are all of those invalid, and if so, who adjudicates that?

What if they say, “No, he’s pardon me”? So, they’re all going to have to go through the courts. When Trump says things like “Sleepy Joe Biden” and all of this, people, they kind of roll their eyes and [think], “There goes Trump.” But actually, he’s responding to something that is quite egregious. We’ve never had it in American history.

We came close with Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson covering up his stroke for over a year. But we never really had a president that at some point, I think, in the campaign of 2020, there were two decisions made. One, that the Democratic Party was going to lose, according to the polls, if they nominated an Elizabeth Warren, a Cory Booker, a Bernie Sanders, a Pete Buttigieg, etc.

And two, given that Joe Biden was the only viable candidate, they were going to use him as a moderate veneer and sell him to the American people as a return to normalcy. That is, we would start remembering what Joe Biden said in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Remember when he talked about a jungle and crime, and his poor mother was endangered, and he was against illegal immigration. So, they passed that nonexistent Joe Biden as a waxen effigy. Then they used him, and they perpetrated the most radical agenda, I think more radical than the New Deal. They destroyed the border. They destroyed jurisprudence as we know it. They weaponized all the [Justice Department], the FBI, the CIA. They destroyed deterrence abroad. They sort of begged Iran to get back in the Iran deal.

The Kabul pullout was the worst military disaster in the last 50 years. It empowered [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to go into [Ukraine]. I could go on.

So, Trump has a point, and the question is, they knew he was incompetent, non compos mentis. He was not in control of his faculties. And then they had another agenda and that was to get particular green, DEI, ESG, radical initiatives into the Cabinet and the institutions that had no public support. And they put them on the desk, and they used the autopen and to the degree Joe Biden knew about it, and I don’t think he even did. There’s no way that he can ever under oath identify any of those things in detail. Just no way it’s going to happen.

So, then the question is, are they going to call in the people who did it and what will they say? “Well, I talked to Biden.” Well, do you have documents? “No.” And then people will say “To what degree does Trump”—as do all presidents—“use the autopen?” And he’ll have to explain that he has done it on his direction, or he has an executive order, or he has a written chief of staff order, or somebody is in the room with him. I don’t know.

But he’s got a good point is what I’m trying to say. And it sounds crazy, but what was really crazy is what they did. This was the biggest sham perpetrated on the American people in my lifetime. It makes Watergate look like a joke. They had somebody who completely was a zombie and didn’t know where he was or what he was saying, and they used him as a prop to initiate and advance a radical agenda that had it been explicit and open, and people knew what they were going to do about the border or crime or critical race, critical legal theory, or DEI, they would’ve never voted for it. They knew that and that’s why they kicked out all the other nominees. Like dominoes, they quit the primary of 2020.

He hadn’t won Nevada, he hadn’t won New Hampshire, he hadn’t won Iowa. And Jim Clyburn and everybody said, “I will deliver the black vote in South Carolina. And we will win, and then we will get them all out. We’ll promise them various things. We’ll promise Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders a socialist agenda. We will promise Pete Buttigieg a cabinet post, etc.” And that’s where we are.

And Trump, he’s got a right to be furious, and that he doesn’t speak about it in sober and judicious tones, a lot of people resent that. But compared to what actually happened, his description—as uncouth and crude as it can be—is absolutely spot on.

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

The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Autopen and the ‘Waxen Effigy’ President appeared first on The Daily Signal.