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.

Tucker Carlson recently assembled a group of like-minded apostate MAGA conservatives for a meeting to discuss apparently a possible third-party run in 2028. I think a lot of us were mystified for a lot of reasons. One of them was that third parties in American political history really have had no record in the modern era of ever winning. 

They do affect the election in some cases, but that’s only to hurt the party that is more ideologically akin to the third-party run. For example, in 1912, William Howard Taft, the incumbent president, was challenged by his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, who didn’t like the first term of Taft. He created the Bull Moose third party. 

What was the effect of that? He split the conservative Republican vote, and thereby, he elected one of the most liberal progressives in the history of the United States, contrary to both his views and Taft’s, Woodrow Wilson. 

Ross Perot was a conservative. He said he was from Texas. So was George H.W. Bush, up for reelection in 1992 against Bill Clinton. What did Perot do? He ran a third-party ticket. He was angry at the Bushes. He felt they were not correct on some conservative issues, debt and other things. And he succeeded in ensuring that Bill Clinton, a Democrat, would win the election with less than 50% of the vote. 

He did it again in 1996. He may have had an effect even on that election when Bob Dole lost the election, but Bill Clinton, once again, didn’t win 50% of the vote, given the 10% that Ross Perot won. 

And of course, most famously in 2000, Al Gore ran against George W. Bush. It was a very close election. It was contested in Florida. And as you remember, after the vote was counted and George W. Bush won, Al Gore contested it. He lost that vote. But the margin was almost minuscule in Florida, which determined the entire election. 

You could argue that the 1% or 2% of the vote that third-party candidate Ralph Nader got ensured that Gore lost that election. 

So, I don’t know the purpose of what the Tucker Carlson group is, because historically it would suggest that all they want to do is make sure that Donald Trump’s successor, JD Vance or Marco Rubio, loses the 2028 election. 

What is their agenda? 

Well, they’ve said that they have 10 points if they really are going to form a third party. I looked at them. I could say confidently that 80%, 8 out of 10, are what they’re getting right now with Donald Trump. 

They’re worried about a porous border. They’re worried about crime. They’re worried about DEI. They’re worried about the family. They’re worried about all of these things. 

But who’s giving them relief? Who’s offering a remedy to their anxieties? Donald Trump is. Do they really think the Left has a better idea that will better fit their agenda on the border that saw 12 million people come in under Joe Biden, or defund the police, or the DEI chauvinism that came in under the Democrats? 

So, their agenda is very similar to what they’re getting now, except on two issues on which they differ. They do not want wars abroad, and they feel if we have collateral damage, we had it in World War II, we had it in Korea, we had it in Vietnam, we’ve had it in every war we’ve fought, especially now in the Middle East, where the enemy uses human shields on the premise that the United States doesn’t deliberately hit civilians, and therefore, they’re willing to expose their own civilians’ lives to protect their combatants. 

Tucker would have us pay cash reparations to any civilian who was killed in a war. You can imagine how that would work in the real world. 

So, given all of this, the agenda they’re getting pretty much dovetails with what we have in Washington. And given the record that third parties don’t work too well, other than to hurt the similarly ideologically akin party, why are they doing this? 

And I think you could argue that they have two concerns. 

One of them is their careers had once been rather spectacular. Tucker Carlson had the largest audience on Fox News. He was getting paid $20 million a year. And then, for a variety of reasons, not all his fault, that career blew up, and he was summarily fired on a Friday afternoon without warning. 

And now he’s had some success, but not quite the audience that he had or the influence, and he’s become kind of bitter about it. 

Marjorie Taylor-Greene was an intimate of the MAGA movement. She was camped out at Mar-a-Lago. She was on the phone with Donald Trump. Tucker crossed Donald Trump on the Iran war. Marjorie Taylor Greene crossed him on the Epstein files, even though Trump released over a million files and the previous administration released none. 

And yet, she now is out. She didn’t even run for office because she wouldn’t have even been nominated by her own party in her congressional district in Georgia. 

Thomas Massie was sort of famous as the ultra-pure MAGA philosopher, intellectual, doctrinaire pro-Trump, and he started to criticize Donald Trump on the Iran war, like Tucker, and support for Israel, like Tucker, and he felt he was invulnerable. 

He was an incumbent. He had a national profile. He didn’t even win the nomination of the Republican Party. His career is over. 

Joe Kent ran, as I recall, for Congress on two occasions in Oregon. He came close, but he asked for the endorsement of Donald Trump. He gave it to him. He still failed. 

He wanted an appointment. He had military and intelligence expertise. They appointed him. I think Tulsi Gabbard came to work. 

In other words, he was lifted out of obscurity by Donald Trump, and then he started to disagree, and he saw that Tulsi Gabbard was going to leave [as director of national intelligence]. There was going to be a shake-up in personnel, and he wanted to preempt that and quit, and with a Parthian shot, he blasted Donald Trump. 

My point is that all of them have personal grievances. 

Finally, there is another issue that has come up, and it’s more controversial. 

Of those 10 points, as I said, they agree with Donald Trump on almost all of them. They even agree that RFK and his food agenda are exactly what they feel as well. Who would ever have appointed RFK except Donald Trump? 

But there are two areas where, of their 10 points, they disagree apparently. 

One of them is conducting wars in the Middle East or foreign wars they feel are at the expense of America. 

You could make the argument that they might be logical, except Iran, we know now, had the ability to produce a nuclear weapon probably within a year, and it had rockets, unlike what it had pledged under prior treaties, that could reach every European capital, and within four or five years would have reached the United States. 

And given their nihilist, almost suicidal ideology, it would be very dangerous to have that country with that type of weaponry threatening our Western allies and ourselves. 

But nevertheless, that was one area of disagreement. 

And the other is they felt that the Israeli government was conducting undue influence in the United States and, by association, I think you can read between the lines, the Jewish lobby. 

All of them have gone after AIPAC. 

But that’s not just the end of it. They have said things, and they have had hosts or people with views like Darryl Cooper, who really blamed World War II, the U.S. intervention into World War II, on Jewish influence, and has downplayed the deaths of Jews in World War II in various subtle ways, but nonetheless, he has. 

And Nick Fuentes, who makes no apologies, is forthright and candid that he’s very critical of Jewish people in general, and their support of Israel is secondary to that. He feels Jews don’t represent the Christian tradition, that they have too much money, and they’re too vocal, and we know the whole story. 

And so, really, to sum up, the third-party movement, if that’s what we want to call it, has no historical precedent that it works. 

It seems kind of incoherent because its ideology is 80% to 85% identical to the Trump administration. 

Most of the people who are guiding this movement owe allegiance to Donald Trump, who has helped them in the past. They turned on him, they had fights, so much of their zeal is personal angst. 

And finally, there is an element of anti-Israelism and antisemitic anger that also fuels it. 

It’s not going to go anywhere, but it may, as it’s designed, as spoilers, try to hurt someone that they once and very recently assured us was essential to the United States, that is the Trump MAGA agenda and Donald Trump as president. 

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

President Donald Trump’s administration has identified hundreds of medical institutions that turned children into lifelong patients through gender-related “sex-rejecting procedures for minors,” according to a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The effort marks yet another move by the administration against medical institutions that provide so-called gender-affirming care, as well as the “fraudulent insurance coding” that was used to pay for it.

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance, standing alongside HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Assistant Secretary Adm. Brian Christine, announced the release of “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of ‘Gender Medicine.’” The report details how doctors and hospitals convince children to undergo sex changes for profit.

The report marks the first time the federal agency has analyzed the financial motives that push hospitals to advocate for such practices, sometimes without patients’ informed consent.

“The findings raise serious questions about what the families were told, what insurers were told, and how these procedures were billed,” Kennedy stated at a press conference.

According to the report, more than 225 hospitals and clinics are among the institutions that persuade children and families to undergo such gender-related procedures. In addition, the report reviews nationwide claims data from 2015 through 2025 to see how these were funded.

“[The report] identifies approximately $50 million in insurance claims for puberty blockers billed using endocrine disorder diagnostic code E34.9 (Endocrine Disorder, Unspecified). It further reports that nearly $11 million in claims for patients ages 13–17 were billed using a diagnosis code for precocious puberty E301—findings the report says warrant additional review of insurance coding practices,” an HHS press release states.

The officials said those actions have been referred to the Department of Justice and the HHS Office of Inspector General for potentially violating federal law.

“If the medical establishment failed children, we will confront that failure and hold them accountable,” Christine said at the press conference.

Christine said his predecessor under the Biden administration, Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, pushed gender-affirming care for minors. “And there’s nothing caring about that,” Christine stated. “These are sex-rejecting, mutilating, transgender procedures.”

Christine added that despite the Biden administration’s efforts, the battle against transgender surgeries for children is changing course.

Hundreds of hospitals and clinics mentioned in the report, the Justice Department said, “preyed on vulnerable children” and convinced their families that their kids “needed life-altering medical treatments” instead of “compassion and counseling.”

Vance described the accusations found in the report as “crazy,” adding that they “demand investigation.”

“It’s on those of us in power to seek justice for those who were harmed by these doctors,” the vice president said. “People got rich, not by actually doing what is good for the patient, but by actually mutilating these kids. It was disgraceful.”

The school year starts this month in almost every district in Virginia, a change from the state’s long-time policy of beginning the year in early September. Administrators in Central Virginia are beginning the semester with a health concern: a measles outbreak in the region.

The Virginia Department of Health reported 177 cases of measles statewide as of Aug. 13. Most of those cases, 154, were in three adjoining counties: Buckingham (126), Cumberland (18), and Prince Edward (10). Some 5% of patients who contracted the virus were hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported from the disease.

While there haven’t been any new measles cases in several weeks, the beginning of the school year means students will be in close contact once again, and measles is easily spread. Virginia requires students to have two doses of the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine before they may attend classes, but there are some exceptions. “We definitely want to be more vigilant about checking immunizations at the beginning of the school year,” Felicia Preston of Martinsville Public Schools told the Virginia Cardinal.

So far this year, seven of the measles cases reported in Virginia were tied to international travel, while 170 cases were apparently contracted domestically. Last year state officials reported a total of five cases, and most were linked to travel overseas. There was one case reported in Virginia each year in 2024 and 2023.

Measles can usually be prevented with a vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a 95% vaccination rate can provide what is known as “herd immunity,” which makes it difficult for the virus to spread.

At the end of the 2024 school year, 94.2% of Virginia’s kindergartners had received at least one dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The MMR vaccination rate is somewhat lower for 2-year-olds, with 86% of Virginians having had at least one dose of the MMR vaccine. In the three counties involved in the current outbreak, Buckingham’s vaccination rate is 74.1%, Cumberland’s is 64.6%, and Prince Edward’s is 43.9%.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump called for the three vaccines to be broken into three separate shots. “We want it in three separate vaccinations, given at separate times. Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal but just very effective,” he said during the signing of an executive order in the Oval Office. “So the MMR, we want to have separate visits, separate times. The vaccine being broken into three separate single doses and vaccines being administered in separate visits, for example, at one year, you should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day.”

There are no manufacturers currently licensed in the United States to produce individual measles, mumps, or rubella shots.

The state’s Department of Health pushed back against Trump’s proposal. “Virginia’s families should be able to trust that our vaccine recommendations are grounded in the best available science and focused on protecting the health and well-being of their children,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Cameron Webb said. “The evidence supporting the [American Academy of Pediatrics] immunization schedule is extensive, and we remain confident that following it is one of the best ways to protect children from serious, preventable diseases.”

The department will maintain its schedule but will also convene a new Workgroup on Childhood Immunization Schedules and Public Health Emergencies later this month. It will include doctors and public health experts and will be charged with reviewing Virginia’s policies on childhood vaccination schedules.

After Tuesday’s primary results, officeholders and pundits from the Democratic Party establishment went on a full-on offensive against the insurgent Democratic Socialists of America.

Irony abounded as allegations that voter fraud and funny business with failing “zip drives” were used to allegedly keep socialist internet-star state Rep. Francesca Hong from winning the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin by 4,000 votes to David Crowley, who, if you believe polls, was trailing by over 10% coming into Tuesday.

Weird, huh? Maybe we can ask Elaine Luria and Liz Cheney to look into it for us?

The media, sensing a “Survivor”-esque controversy, started dragging members of the Democratic Party into a Wednesday of angst-riddled commentary and hackneyed platitudes like “We’re a ‘Big Tent’ party.”

It began with former Congressman-turned-TV-show host Joe Scarborough, after going on his own highly aggressive rant regarding Democrat socialism in the party. “I think most mainstream voters would say they’re whacked-out things, when they’re talking about going to pro-Hamas rallies the day after Hamas slaughtered more Jews than on any day since the Holocaust. I think 90% of Americans would think that is abhorrent.” And by the afternoon it had made it all the way to the Virginia governor’s mansion.

Scarborough, who, while representing Florida’s panhandle in Congress from 1994-2001, was a member of the “Contract With America” coalition that called for sweeping cuts in the U.S. government, including plans to “privatize, localize, consolidate, or eliminate” the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich even chose Scarborough to head the task force on cutting the Department of Education. To which Scarborough said, “Our goal is to get as much money, power, and authority out of Washington and get as much money, power, and authority into the classroom as possible.” Funny how he has such animus toward President Donald Trump.

Not being who they appear to be seems to be part of the party platform. Among the Democrats being asked “the question” was Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” ostensibly to humble-brag about her attempts to influence the merger of Dominion Energy and Florida’s NextEra, was asked how reconciling the DSA candidates into the future of the party “ultimately shakes out.”

Before I share her answer, remember that she has, since taking office just seven months ago, attempted to oversee a massive gun ban that the courts have already ruled unconstitutional in other states (see New Jersey) and a massive expansion of sales taxes that were “tabled” when the voters caught wind of them. (“Tabled” meaning they will be brought back by the General Assembly in January.)

All this after campaigning as “a moderate” who just wanted to “protect Virginians from the ‘chaos’ of the Trump administration” and DOGE cuts.

Hey Guv, look back on what ol’ “Morning Joe” was going to try and do in the 1990s!

So, Virginia’s governor said, with a straight face I should point out, “Anyone who’s running for office should be telling voters what it is they are for, what it is they intend to do, who they are as people, what experience they bring to bear.” (Emphasis added.)

To his credit, host Andrew Ross Sorkin pressed Spanberger on support for defunding the police and support for Hamas’ antisemitic rhetoric. The governor went on to toss a two-minute-long “word salad,” saying that first responders were important for responding to floods and never said anything about Hamas until the show cut away to break.

Before you get too excited about all this “Democrat Disarray,” keep this in mind: How would one rebrand the party of Obamacare whose 2026 candidates (like Tom Perriello, who was there in 2010) are campaigning on addressing the high costs of health care? A party that wants Virginia voters to ignore that the rising costs of electricity are because of Gov. Ralph Northam’s “Clean Virginia 2030” economic “suicide pact” with California?

Create a “boogeyman” party that wants most of the same stuff but seems “more radical.”

There is a species of fish called, and I’m not making this up, the blue catfish, and it lives in the James River near Richmond. I think the Democratic Party needs a new mascot.

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

While many states have banned gender procedures for kids, Texas is going a step further, launching the nation’s first detransition clinic.

When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Texas Children’s Hospital and a Dallas-area doctor in February, he accused them of illegally transitioning minors and using Medicaid funds to cover the procedures. Now, a settlement requires the hospital to establish America’s first detransition clinic, offering five years of free, hospital-funded care for children recovering from gender procedures. The hospital also agreed to permanently revoke the privileges of five doctors who carried out the surgeries and never rehire or credential them. The clinic must open by the end of October.

In other words, Texas Children’s Hospital is now being forced to heal the hurt children. Other states should follow Texas’ lead, pairing bans on transgender procedures for minors with specialized care for detransitioners.

Texas Children’s Hospital first drew national scrutiny in 2023 when whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim exposed internal records showing the hospital had continued dangerous gender procedures on children despite publicly claiming it would pause the program. At the time, Paxton had defined the practice as “child abuse” under state law.

Soon after the revelations, Texas passed Senate Bill 14, which bans health care providers from using puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender procedures on minors. Paxton also investigated Texas Children’s Hospital.

Andrew Mahaleris, Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, said the governor was proud to sign the law protecting kids from gender mutilation.

“These procedures are madness, and Texas treats them as such,” Mahaleris told the Daily Signal. “The new detransition clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital is the first in the nation and holds institutions accountable as a model for other states. Texas puts the health and safety of its kids first.”

While the new detransition clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital is a win for kids, it is a major loss for leftists. Karen Loewy, senior counsel at LGBTQ+ activist group Lambda Legal, criticized the hospital for punishing the doctors involved and giving in to what she called “relentless pressure campaigns” from Paxton and the Trump administration. This echoes the sentiment of those who support surgeries for children in the name of “gender-affirming care.”

But the story of Soren Aldaco, a Texas resident, shows the real consequences of gender procedures on kids.

As a teenager, Aldaco fell into gender dysphoria. She said counselors and doctors encouraged hormones and therapy, pressuring her to pursue a medical transition.

After a therapist recommended a double mastectomy, she went through the surgery at age 19. This left her with severe complications, including immense pain and blood pooling around her chest wounds, according to court records.

Ultimately, despite the empty promises of her doctors and therapist, Aldaco regretted the life-altering surgery. She attributed her struggles with gender to difficult teenage years and outside influences. Alcado detransitioned, and eventually sued her former therapist for medical negligence.

This story has become all too familiar among American youth. Chloe Cole, who began transitioning at age 12, is just one of many detransitioners who have stepped up to advocate for kids.

Beyond Texas, 25 other states have restricted transgender procedures for minors, signaling growing concern among lawmakers about their potential harms and laying the groundwork for more states to establish detransition clinics. Even blue states have increasingly stopped providing transgender-related treatments to minors amid pressure from the Trump administration.

Puberty often brings confusion and discomfort. But instead of helping kids navigate those changes in the healthy way, hospitals and doctors took advantage of them—assuring that they were born in the wrong body, and that “changing” genders would solve their problems.

For that reason, other states that have banned gender procedures on minors must follow Texas’ lead. Simply banning further abuse is not enough. True justice requires restitution and healing for the lives ruined by lies.

The settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital is poetic justice—and it should be just the beginning.

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

This Monday in a crowded room of people beaming with pride and excitement, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey smiled for the cameras as she enthusiastically signed legislation legalizing abortion for any reason, at any time, right up to the moment of birth.

It’s hard to overstate just how jarring and bizarre this is. A room full of people is happily cheering about a newfound “right” to end the lives of fully developed, viable preborn children for whatever reason they please. You expect to see handshakes and pats on the back at a bill-signing ceremony for a new community outreach program or tax cuts. But abortion on demand?

What happened in Massachusetts is a tragedy wrapped up in the trimmings and trappings of a celebration.

Massachusetts joins nine other states (Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont) that allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. And to be clear, Massachusetts already had an extreme abortion policy. The previous 24-week cutoff had exceptions so vague that they were exceptions in name only. Monday’s signing ceremony was the result of the abortion industry’s years of work to ensure that unborn children have no protections whatsoever, even seconds before birth.

Euphemisms about “access” and “women’s health” are sad attempts to hide the reality of late-term abortions. Here are the facts that Healey and the abortion industry don’t want you to know.

Every state, including pro-life ones, already allows doctors to step in to save lives. Doctors treat ectopic pregnancies and manage miscarriages all the time. When a woman’s life is in danger, delivery before viability isn’t even considered an abortion. That’s because in these cases, the goal is not to directly and deliberately end an unborn child’s life.

Imagine two rooms at a hospital: In one, a doctor induces delivery because a pregnant woman has sepsis and her life is in immediate danger. The baby girl is born alive and receives medical care. Perhaps she’s only 18 weeks old and won’t live long, so she receives comfort care while her parents rock her in their arms.

In the other room, there’s a child diagnosed with a serious heart condition, and the parents aren’t interested in treatment. An abortionist tears the 26-week-old baby boy apart limb from limb in a dilation and evacuation abortion. Or maybe the abortionist injects him with a drug to cause cardiac arrest and then delivers him dead (intact or in pieces).

The doctor in the first room treated the unborn child as the patient she is. The abortionist in the second room didn’t consider the baby boy with a treatable heart condition a patient at all.

Doctors can—and do—save mothers’ lives without turning to induced abortion. All pregnancies come to an end, some sooner than others. Pro-life doctors routinely navigate how to end pregnancy ethically. Elective, induced abortion is not part of the equation. And if a woman is truly suffering from a life-threatening emergency, there’s no time for a multi-day late-term abortion procedure. Delivery or cesarean section is the quickest, safest way to separate mother and baby. Then, both patients can receive care.

Late-term abortions are often elective, and even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has admitted it. Most women “seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” The Atlantic magazine profiled an abortionist in Colorado who “specializes” in late-term abortion. He performs sex-selection abortions and said at least half of his abortions are on perfectly healthy babies.

Late-term abortions are tragically more common than people realize. In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent 2022 abortion data report, nearly 5,000 babies were aborted at or after 21 weeks’ gestation. At that stage, if given proper medical care, many premature babies can survive. The real number is higher, though, because some radically pro-abortion states, such as California and Maryland, don’t submit any abortion data.

There is also good news that abortion advocates prefer to ignore. Innovations in perinatal hospice, palliative care, and treatment options offer parents and babies something better than abortion. Even when a child is not expected to survive long, we can support parents in their grief. We can give babies the dignity of a loving embrace before they pass from this life. We can pursue cutting-edge treatment options that weren’t possible even a few years ago.

The truth is that abortion is a violent act against an innocent person. That’s the case whether the person happens to be the size of a tadpole, is due to be born tomorrow, or was born two days ago. Our humanity doesn’t depend on our location, stage of development, medical prognosis, or perceived burden to others.

The high-fives and photo ops don’t hide the fact that what happened in Massachusetts is a tragedy, not a triumph. Maybe one day, Healey and her cheering companions will realize that in a race to the bottom, nobody wins.

A federal judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard University that had alleged the school failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns of Massachusetts, a Bill Clinton appointee, ruled the federal government failed to show an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks by Hamas. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed the lawsuit in March.

“Only three incidents are alleged to have occurred after this period, all of which took place nearly a full year later (and more than one full academic year before this case was filed) in March of 2025,” Stearns wrote in his ruling.

Stearns further said the Justice Department didn’t demonstrate failures by the university after Harvard was warned in June 2025 that it was not complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The provision prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in programs that receive federal funding.

“Without diminishing any concern arising from these occurrences, the court finds them, singly and collectively, to be too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day,” the judge continued.

In a March press release announcing the lawsuit, the Justice Department said the university “ignored what its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias deemed the ‘exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities.’”

“This Department of Justice will not tolerate the harassment, assault, or intimidation of Jewish and Israeli students, and neither should Harvard,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement when the lawsuit was filed.

The Trump administration previously sought to freeze Harvard’s existing grants and seek repayment of grants already distributed.

The Justice Department complaint filed in March says that since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel “Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard University were harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon.”

“For several years, Jewish and Israeli students endured a hostile educational environment,” the complaint says.

The complaint later adds, “One method by which Jewish and Israeli students were exposed to harassment was that in many cases, demonstrations occurred in classrooms and libraries where students can expect the ability to retreat to a greater measure of relief from protests than they might in a public square.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—After the McKinney City Council unanimously voted to approve a mosque relocation proposal, a group of residents is now pushing a recall effort against several members of the council.

On Wednesday, Ashley Marie, a local resident, announced on X that a recall effort was underway. The petition seeks to recall McKinney Mayor Bill Cox and Council Members Justin Beller, Geré Feltus, and Ernest Lynch. 

“This recall exists because the government does not get the final say—We the People do. When elected officials ignore the community and force decisions we never approved, they forfeit the right to stay in power,” Marie told the Daily Signal in a written statement. “We are seeing it with the amphitheater, the airport.”

The petition states that the grounds for removal are based on “a loss of public confidence in the ability of the officers named herein to faithfully represent the citizens of the City of McKinney.”

The Proposed Site

The proposed site is a 5-acre tract along Virginia Parkway near two residential neighborhoods and a high school. It would include a 37,000-square-foot facility with a mosque, educational spaces, a gymnasium, and meeting rooms. It will also be designed to accommodate 3,000 people.

The facility would be operated by the McKinney Islamic Association, which currently operates a mosque on Eldorado Parkway in a shopping center that includes multiple businesses. The organization says its growing congregation has created the need for a larger facility.

The Council Vote

After the McKinney Planning and Zoning Commission voted 7-0 to recommend approval of the association’s plan, the proposal was sent to the McKinney City Council for final approval.

On Aug. 4, the council members unanimously voted to approve the mosque relocation proposal, a decision that led many residents and even elected officials to speak in opposition.

Some residents at the meeting expressed concerns about the proposed site. Some said Sharia law is incompatible with American traditions and values, and one Iranian survivor spoke to the council and urged members to reject the proposal.

Republican U.S. Rep. Keith Self also spoke to the council, telling members to “honor your oath that starts with the U.S. Constitution.”

Other attendees at the meeting supported the proposal, saying the mosque and its members have been part of the community for years, and that the relocation would give a new generation the opportunity to foster community and mutual understanding.

Following public comments, some residents became upset after Beller criticized their concerns as “reckless political rhetoric” and moved to approve the proposed site.

The petitioners have until Sept. 26 to collect 5,805 signatures, which is equivalent to 30% of the turnout in the last general election.

“This is an accountability issue, and we don’t beg for accountability. We take it,” Marie said. “Remove them. Silence is how they win.”

Special Senate Committee on Aging Chairman Rick Scott sent a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James demanding answers on alleged rampant Medicare fraud in her state.

The Florida Republican’s letter noted that the number of indictments and convictions for Medicare fraud has declined under the New York Medicaid Fraud Control Unit since James assumed her role.

For instance, from 2023 through 2025, New York secured only 53 Medicaid fraud convictions, while the next-lowest state with a similar population secured 129 convictions, Scott’s letter said. In four of the past five years, New York recorded fewer than 10 criminal fraud indictments, ranking last among comparable states every year from 2021 through 2025.

In his letter, Scott added that the unit’s performance “fell off a cliff” in 2020, as fraud convictions decreased from 56 in 2019 to only 14 in 2020, and patient abuse and neglect convictions collapsed from 30 to just four over that same period.

“These figures are difficult to reconcile with the size and complexity of New York’s Medicaid program. A state serving millions of beneficiaries that generates so few prosecutable cases raises serious questions about the priorities and effectiveness of your office’s enforcement efforts,” Scott wrote, adding that the “timing of this collapse is hard to ignore.”

The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided to decertify the state’s fraud control unit and suspend future grant funding.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III stated in a July 2 release announcing the decertification that “based on its own reported statistics,” the fraud control unit “has failed to address public benefits crime in any meaningful way,” and had “averaged more than 100 indictments per year” before James’ time in office.

The Office of the New York State Attorney General did not reply to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

The state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has been ranked among the top of similarly sized units for patient abuse and neglect convictions since 2017; however, it has fallen in the rankings when compared with other states of similar size for at least five consecutive years since 2020, a year after James became state attorney general, Scott said.

“Most troubling is the drastic drop in patient abuse and neglect prosecutions, which directly affect elderly and disabled Medicaid beneficiaries,” Scott continued.

Scott noted in his letter that despite having received more than 2,000 abuse and neglect allegations each year, the unit was only able to obtain two or fewer convictions in each of the past three years.

“Those numbers strongly suggest that most allegations are either not being successfully investigated or are otherwise failing to result in criminal accountability,” Scott said in his letter.

Scott attributed the unit’s performance to “statistical illiteracy, not outperformance.”

“The poor return on investment for New York’s MFCU has been consistent, lagging behind the national MFCU average in five of the last six years,” Scott continued. “A state the size of New York, funded at $60 million per year in federal funds and maintaining a staff of more than 270 employees, should not be returning less than half the national average and then touting its presence in a press release as a ‘national leader in effectively investigating and prosecuting Medicaid fraud schemes.'”

How James Can Reinstate Certification

The senator is demanding that the attorney general explain why the fraud control unit should regain certification from HHS’ inspector general.

He requested that the office provide copies of the corrective action plans it submitted to the inspector general, covering staff, referrals, case progression, and cooperation, in order to achieve full recertification before the Sept. 30, 2026, deadline.

Scott’s letter also states that James’ office must provide an explanation of why the unit’s 2015 strategic plan was allowed to persist for more than a decade without producing adequate criminal enforcement outcomes, as well as copies of the corrective action plans submitted to the inspector general covering staff, referrals, case progression, and cooperation to achieve full recertification before the Sept. 30, 2026, deadline.

Under the administration of President Joe Biden, foreign service officers were asked to read materials on critical race theory, reparations, and so-called white fragility.

The Biden State Department provided a document titled “Resources for Talking About Racism and Injustices” to instructors of Foreign Service Officers. The materials covered topics including “When White Women Cry: How White Women Tears Oppress Women of Color.”

“As shown through this scenario, the White woman’s reality is visible, acknowledged, and legitimized because of her tears, while a woman of color’s reality, like her struggle, is invisible, overlooked, and pathologized based on the operating ‘standard of humanity,'” the article said.

Foreign Service Officers were also asked to read materials including “Where are you in your understanding of your whiteness?“; “Tools for interrupting microaggressions”; “Anti-Racism for Kids 101“; and “In Defense of Looting.” The last document describes looting by groups like the Black Panthers as “one of the most righteous anti-white supremacist tactics available” throughout American history.

President Donald Trump’s State Department has since changed the reading list to include key documents on America’s founding, the Daily Signal can first report. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the Trump administration is doing away with what he called “fringe DEI ideology.”

“The Trump Administration knows that a dedicated, patriotic Foreign Service makes America stronger,” he told the Daily Signal. “That’s why the State Department has reformed the Foreign Service, scrapping fringe DEI ideology and replacing it with a renewed focus on geopolitics, economic statecraft, and diplomatic history to ensure that America’s diplomats are prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

Other resources of Biden’s State Department included “How to Be Anti-Racist in [Humanitarian] Aid“; Robin Diangelo’s “White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement“; and “From White Racist to White Anti-Racist.”

“Racism is the norm rather than an aberration,” Diangelo wrote in “White Fragility.” She added, “Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion.”

Diplomats were also asked to listen to The New York Times’ “1619” podcast by Nikole Hannah-Jones. The 1619 Project was a multimedia effort by Hannah-Jones and others at The New York Times to reframe the American founding by centering it on the oppression of minorities. The original project argued that protecting slavery was a major reason America declared independence, but this claim was widely disputed by historians.

One of the recommended materials, “The Case for Reparations,” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, argues that reparations are essential for the United States to “reckon with our compounding moral debts.” Otherwise, America will “never be whole,” he argued.

Now, the Trump administration requires officers to read a variety of documents and other influential historical texts on the founding of the U.S. The reading list now includes George Washington’s Farewell Address, materials on the Monroe Doctrine, and “The Federalist Papers.”

Foreign Service Officers are also assigned newer texts on international relations, such as Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?”; Nicholas Eberstadt’s “Demography and International Relations”; Henry Kissinger’s “Diplomacy”; and President Ronald Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech.

“The State Department will continue to build a diplomatic service that can deliver for the American people at anytime, anywhere in the world,” Pigott said, “and encourages patriotic Americans to join the Foreign Service.”

New Jersey recently exposed a problem poised to change the national conversation about election administration. State officials disclosed a so-called processing error at the Motor Vehicle Commission that resulted in approximately 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens registering to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.

The numbers are troubling, but they are not the most important part of the story. Those individuals reportedly did not falsely claim to be citizens. They told the government they were not U.S. citizens, yet they were registered anyway.

Election officials often assure the public that such incidents are isolated anomalies, clerical mistakes, or software glitches. One case, standing alone, may deserve that description.

But Virginia recently removed more than 6,500 voter registrations associated with declared noncitizens, while North Carolina is investigating nearly 1,600 registrations flagged by the federal SAVE system. Alabama, Iowa, and Ohio have reported similar findings, including documented voting histories among some noncitizen registrants.

At what point does a “glitch” become a systemic vulnerability?

A responsible election system should protect eligible citizens from erroneous removal while also identifying registrations that do not belong on the rolls. Those objectives are complementary, not contradictory.

This is not simply a matter of imperfect databases. Federal prosecutors have recently brought cases in Texas, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and New Jersey involving noncitizens who registered or voted unlawfully. In Texas, British citizen Ada Ngozi Otuka pleaded guilty after prosecutors said she voted in multiple elections over more than a decade despite never becoming a U.S. citizen.

The evidence is no longer hypothetical. Noncitizens do make it onto voter rolls, many have cast ballots, and election officials sometimes do not discover the problem until years later—if at all.

Removing ineligible registrations protects future elections, and prosecuting those who knowingly violate election law punishes offenders, but neither can retrieve an unlawful ballot after it has been counted and incorporated into a certified election result.

Every unlawful ballot counted dilutes the weight of ballots lawfully cast by eligible American citizens.

At the same time, voters themselves are demanding stronger safeguards. This November, voters in Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, and West Virginia will decide on measures explicitly reaffirming that voting is reserved for U.S. citizens. Those initiatives reflect growing public recognition that citizenship should be verified, not simply assumed.

States deserve credit for conducting citizenship audits and for removing ineligible registrations, all while protecting the rights of eligible citizens. Every audit to discover ineligible entries improves voter confidence in future elections. But the current push exposes a prior weakness: Noncitizen voters should never get on American voter rolls at all.

The SAVE America Act can shore up these weaknesses. Existing law already limits voting to U.S. citizens. Thus, the issue is not whether noncitizen voting is legal, but whether citizenship is verified before someone is added to the voter rolls. The SAVE America Act would move that safeguard to the beginning of the registration process rather than relying primarily on audits, database comparisons, and criminal investigations years later.

Reasonable people can debate the details of how that verification should work and how best to protect naturalized citizens from erroneous removal. But ensuring only citizens are able to vote should not be controversial.

Election officials should know whether an applicant is eligible before adding that person to the voter rolls, not years later after another audit, another prosecution, or another election “glitch.”

States are proving that voter-roll maintenance works because they are finding invalid registrations. They deserve credit for doing so.

But cleanup is not prevention.

The real measure of election integrity is not the number of post-hoc removals for ineligible registrations but whether such ineligible registrations are prevented in the first place.

The SAVE America Act offers the preventive answer: Citizenship verification before registration, rather than prosecution after an illegal ballot has already been cast.

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.

Recently, the Left in general and Democrats in particular have been criticizing a lot of things that this administration has done. This came up with the confirmation hearings of Attorney General Todd Blanche, and people suggested that, though he may have been qualified, he had too close a relationship as a personal attorney, or he acted in a legal capacity with [President] Donald Trump, and therefore there would be an incestuous relationship between the [Justice Department] and the White House.

But who broke that standard? I think it was broken during the JFK administration. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic president, appointed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general. They conferred daily. If we were worried that that was an aberration, remember Eric Holder bragged that he was, quote, Obama’s wingman. So, the Democrats have had a long history of a close relationship between the DOJ and the White House.

We’ve been told that the Democratic Party is very angry because some local, i.e., state or county or municipal, prosecutors might take a look at Anthony Fauci and see if he had criminal exposure other than federal exposure. And people said, well, what business do these local prosecutors have looking at Anthony Fauci, who was a federal bureaucrat? And if he did anything wrong, it would be a federal offense. You can’t have freelancing prosecutors all over the United States going after—yes, you can. We established that principle with Donald Trump. 

Remember that Letitia James went after him for a real estate deal in which Deutsche Bank, the lender, had no problem with the loan as it was conducted. She was the attorney general of New York. Alvin Bragg could not get Donald Trump on anything other than to bootstrap a federal campaign violation that even federal prosecutors didn’t want to touch. He was just the municipal DA of Manhattan.

Fani Willis met her paramour, Nathan Wade, who was part of her legal team. He met in the White House with Joe Biden, and she was only a Fulton County prosecutor. So, long ago, we dispensed with the idea that regional or local or state or county prosecutors can’t go after a high-profile federal official, and there’s nobody more high-profile than the United States president.

Then we heard last week that they were worried that Donald Trump’s IRS may be too partisan. I think they destroyed that barrier as well. Do you remember Lois Lerner? She was pretty much conducting special audits of Tea Party groups and other conservative-affiliated groups to make sure they did not get nonprofit status, and that was going into the election year 2012.

Do we remember the New York Legislature when Donald Trump’s tax returns were released illegally by the federal IRS? The Legislature in New York piled on and said, we’ll pass a bill that says anybody this year, i.e., Trump, who is under federal audit and whose tax returns are subpoenaed by a congressional committee, once they saw them, we’re going to turn over his confidential state records as well. That was about as weaponizing the state and federal IRSs as you could imagine.

How about election denialism?

Hillary Clinton. You remember, anybody, the 2016 election? Hillary Clinton, she lost the Electoral College. She won the popular vote. What did she say almost immediately? That Donald Trump was not legitimately elected. In other words, he wasn’t our real president. Was she an outlier? No. Former President Jimmy Carter said that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. He was an election denialist.

Stacey Abrams, you remember her? She ran for governor of Georgia and lost by 50,000 votes. She toured the country for two years and said she was the real governor of Georgia, she won that election. She was really an election denialist.

Do we remember in 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore? Al Gore said that he really didn’t lose the key swing state of Florida. Later, The New York Times conducted an affiliated investigation of the county returns that Al Gore had sued to get a hold of. They looked at them, and guess what? George W. Bush did win Florida and, with Florida, won the election. Did that stop the Left? No.

They said that George W. Bush was selected. He was not elected. Do you remember that? Do you remember the 2004 election, when a large contingent of the Democratic House refused to honor the vote in Ohio and voted not to accept George Bush’s popular-vote victory in Ohio that put him over the top?

So, that bar was destroyed a long time ago, and it’s pretty low or nonexistent that you don’t deny an election result. That’s what the Left taught us, at least. 

We were told that the Supreme Court of the United States is too weaponized, too consistently conservative, voting in a bloc. There’s been a lot of studies. One of them showed that the six-justice majority votes anywhere from 60% to 64% in line with their conservative philosophy in cases that come up with an ideological theme to them.

And how about our three left-wing, Democratic judges? The same study found that they are a little bit more partisan. Up to 70% of ideological cases, they vote consistently with the Left.

In other words, if you believe in a weaponized Supreme Court, the greatest offenders are the three liberal justices, which you don’t hear.

We’re talking about a weaponized FBI a lot. Kash Patel has weaponized the FBI. I don’t think he has, but if he were to weaponize it, he would be tutored by James Comey. You remember James Comey? He, 245 times before a House Oversight Committee, said he couldn’t remember, or he didn’t know, or he had amnesia.

He inaugurated the bogus Operation Crossfire effort to promulgate the lie that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. That was during the campaign. Had that lie been widely publicized and widely believed, it would have affected the election. Donald Trump wouldn’t have won.

No sooner had Donald Trump been elected than, with Operation Two that was Oxford Comma, they tried to suggest the sitting president had Russian ties. That was a lie, too.

Andrew McCabe, his interim successor, lied four times under oath on ideological or political matters. His lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, forged a document and submitted it to a FISA court. That was an FBI lawyer. I could go on with Robert Mueller, the Mueller investigation, claiming under oath he didn’t know what the Steele dossier was, even though it prompted his very appointment. I would say the FBI was pretty weaponized and politicized by the time Kash Patel got there.

Finally, we hear that it’s very unfair to bring in Anthony Fauci before a congressional committee.

Why would you try to find something that was criminal in the activity of a federal bureaucrat? After all, he’s a member of government. Can he just say, I don’t want to come, or when he’s there, can he just answer a question? Why would he be forced, unless the questions were designed to embarrass him, to take the Fifth?

Well, we crossed that river a long time ago when Congress subpoenaed, for no real criminal activity, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, former White House aides. Both of them refused to participate. In other words, they refused to show up and plead the Fifth Amendment, like Anthony Fauci. 

And guess what? They arrested Peter Navarro on the street in shackles. Both of them served four-month sentences in jail. Congress had them jailed.

Then we come to domestic spying, where they said Donald Trump is spying on his enemies. He’s conducting a surveillance state. It’s not true, but if it were true, where did he get that idea?

Well, Barack Obama, remember, surveilled the phone data of Associated Press reporters. They also went after Fox News reporter James Rosen. I think they even subpoenaed the calls he made to his grandmother.

And then, of course, Jack Smith, he went to the National Archives to get the phone data of prominent senators and congressmen that he felt were ideological adversaries, maybe?

He not only got their phone data, but he got their actual text messages. 

What’s my point in all this? Long ago, the Democratic Party and the Left believed that any means necessary were justified for their noble ends of mandated equality, and we’ve seen president after president on the Left do that. And so it’s the height of irony, or maybe not irony, but projectionism.

So, I’ll leave you with the idea that anytime somebody on the left accuses the Trump administration of a misuse of government, it’s likely a reflection that they’ve already done that themselves.

Thank you very much. Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

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

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday arrested five illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes and drug offenses, the agency announced Tuesday.

“Yesterday, ICE arrested murderers, violent assailants, kidnappers, drug traffickers, and other dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities,” Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told the Daily Signal. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, ICE is making our nation safer by removing illegal aliens from our communities.”

“When you remove criminal illegal aliens like these from our country, crime rates fall, and the American people are safer,” Mullin added. The Department of Homeland Security claimed that nearly 70% of the illegal aliens ICE arrested have been charged with or convicted of a crime in the United States.

ICE provided the Daily Signal with names and mugshots for five illegal aliens.

1. Rie Hachiyanagi

ICE arrested Rie Hachiyanagi, a criminal illegal alien from Japan. ICE claimed that a Framingham, Massachusetts, jury convicted her on three counts of assault to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon—a fire poker, a rock, and scissors—mayhem, and home invasion.

2. Mohamed Elshenawy

ICE arrested Mohamed Elshenawy, a criminal illegal alien from Egypt. ICE claimed that a jury in Red Bluff, California, convicted Elshenawy of attempted murder, terroristic threats, and battery against a police officer.

3. Eder Hernandez-Morales

ICE arrested Eder Hernandez-Morales, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico. ICE said a jury in Los Angeles convicted him of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, vandalism, theft, receiving known stolen property, and possession of a controlled substance.

4. Victor A Calles-Flores

ICE arrested Victor A Calles-Flores, a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador. ICE said a jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, convicted him of kidnapping and transporting a stolen vehicle.

5. Sergio Calvio-Ayala

ICE arrested Sergio Calvio-Ayala, a criminal illegal alien from Costa Rica. ICE said a jury in Newark, New Jersey, convicted him of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine.

President Donald Trump’s administration and allies on Capitol Hill have put forth efforts to crack down on the practice of traveling to the United States to give birth to an American citizen, known as birth tourism.

As announced in a Wednesday statement, the State Department created the Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force to work with the Department of Homeland Security to investigate suspected cases of birth tourism by going after suspected foreign nationals who use temporary visas to travel to the United States to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

The department is working with the Bureau of Consular Affairs and consular officers, stationed at U.S. embassies and consulates, who have identified what officials described as recurring patterns of deception among some visa applicants.

The department warned that foreign nationals who intentionally misrepresent the purpose of their travel to the United States may become permanently ineligible for a visa or admission into the country.

Based on the findings of the task force and cooperating institutions, State Department officials have said that the initiative has examined the travel histories of visa holders worldwide and has already resulted in the revocation of more than 600 visas, which the department believed indicated potential ineligibility.

Aside from revoking visas from foreign nationals believed to be facilitators of birth tourism, the task force is also targeting the tourism networks they run.

According to the State Department, some facilitators advertise themselves as doulas, midwives, or wellness advocates while promoting services that include visa assistance, hospital arrangements, and guidance on giving birth in the United States.

Officials also allege that some operators forge medical records, coach clients to conceal the true purpose of their travel, or avoid paying hospital bills. Online advertisements often promise “automatic citizenship” and “a future without borders,” according to the department.

In its release, the department noted several examples uncovered during investigations into people who ultimately had their visas revoked by the task force, including a couple who claimed they were on a shopping vacation but were actually traveling to give birth to two children.

Another case included one of a traveler who obtained a visa for what was described as a vacation to Orlando, but instead traveled to Los Angeles and gave birth five days after arriving in the United States.

The State Department has claimed that the task force will continue its efforts.

Trump’s Allies on the Hill

In the Senate, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced the SAFE KIDS Act earlier this year, which would address loopholes in existing U.S. immigration law.

“There has to be some value to American citizenship. We need to keep the rest of the world from exploiting our immigration system, and that includes letting adversarial nations like Communist China use surrogacy to do it,” Scott previously told the Daily Signal.

“We’ve already seen troubling cases of human trafficking and abuse linked to international surrogacy schemes, as our foreign adversaries prove willing to exploit every loophole they can to destroy us,” the senator from Florida continued.

If enacted into law, Scott’s effort, which has been co-sponsored by Sens. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jim Banks, R-Ind., Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., John Kennedy, R-La., Tim Sheehy., R-Mon., Dave McCormick, R-Pa., and Todd Young, R-Ind., would give people who profit off birthright citizenship—by knowingly or recklessly facilitating a prohibited commercial surrogacy agreement with citizens from a foreign adversarial nation—a misdemeanor.

The law would also invalidate any commercial surrogacy agreement that is entered into with a citizen of a foreign adversarial nation.

Solicitor General John Sauer asked the Supreme Court Wednesday to expedite review of a court order blocking President Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot policy.

In June, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts, a Barack Obama appointee, blocked Trump’s mail ballot order for 23 states challenging the policy. The president’s order prevents the U.S. Postal Service from mailing ballots to residents not listed as eligible voters, instructing the USPS to send lists of eligible voters to states ahead of the November elections.

Sauer, in his Wednesday filing, urged the court to act quickly ahead of the elections. “Otherwise, the district court’s erroneous orders will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement Section 3 of the Executive Order for the federal elections in November, thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity,” the filing stated.

Trump signed the executive order in March, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”

The order called for the Department of Homeland Security to create lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state and to send those lists to states at least 60 days before a federal election. For mail-in ballots, the order directed the U.S. Postal Service to send a list of eligible voters to states and prohibited the Postal Service from mailing ballots to residents not on the lists. Trump directed the attorney general to investigate and potentially prosecute state and local officials who issue federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote.

In a lawsuit led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, 23 states and the District of Columbia sued to block Trump’s order. Talwani in June opted not to rule on the case, but rather determined that the plaintiff states’ claims regarding the upcoming midterm elections were ready for review and that Trump’s executive order “created a ‘direct and immediate dilemma’” for them.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause the matter. Then the administration, on July 27, asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

On Aug. 3, the states filed a brief with the high court saying Talwani’s ruling means the federal government would rush a voter system ahead of the November elections to the detriment of states.

“It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities,” the states said in their brief.

“Under this new program, USPS, a budget-strapped agency that has struggled to administer a variety of programs in recent years, would require state governments to assemble (and then upload to an untested online USPS ‘portal’) lists of voters registered to cast mail ballots,” the states said. “States would also be forced to redesign their ballot mail to adopt barcodes that USPS would scan to make voter-eligibility determinations. And USPS would refuse to deliver ballots for voters not identified in its database.”

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared in Los Angeles on Tuesday to announce the Trump administration’s latest push to overhaul the state’s response to the homelessness crisis.

California has long struggled with homelessness, and recent scandals involving taxpayer dollars flowing to troubled nonprofits have intensified scrutiny. The Trump administration announced in June that it would cut off federal funding to Los Angeles.

At a press conference held at the Dream Center, a faith-based nonprofit, Turner told the Daily Signal the administration wants to see actual results—people getting off the streets and receiving treatment.

“What we’re looking for is, we’re looking for the Dream Center and places like the Dream Center that are results-oriented, that have a true continuum of care. The Dream Center does not receive funding that’s passed by the Senate. It’s [funded] by friends, family, churches, private people,” Turner said. “What we’re looking for is what you see here, to bring someone in. Bring them in, house them, put the ax to the root.”

He added, “What is the problem? Why are they homeless? [It is] drug addiction, mental illness. To treat that and then get them healed and transform that to a life of self-sufficiency, that’s what we’re looking for. It’s a new paradigm. … It’s not just housing—it’s not housing first.”

Both Turner and Kennedy emphasized that places like the Dream Center are faith-based nonprofits. During his remarks, Kennedy highlighted that under the Biden administration, former HHS Secretary and current Democrat California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra refused to fund faith-based organizations.

That approach has shifted under the Trump administration. Kennedy said faith-based groups like the Dream Center are now prioritized by HUD and HHS because of their results.

“During the Biden administration, the White House made the decision that my agency and Scott’s agency could no longer give money to faith-based organizations. I’m told the states also cut off funding to faith-based organizations, and that was downgraded during the COVID crisis,” Kennedy said. “All the government officials in Los Angeles, including Adam Schiff across the state, were telling people to go to the Dream Center to get meals. The meal burden here went from 1,000 meals a day to 10,000, because there was no place else for people to go.” 

“When they went to the government agencies, my agency, and asked for support, my agency told them, ‘We can’t help you because you’re a faith-based organization.’ It made no sense,” he added. “And we have now changed that and put faith-based organizations front and center, because they’re doing it better than the government can do. They’re doing it at one-tenth the price that we’re paying.”

Homelessness in the state rose significantly under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, climbing from an estimated 151,000 people in 2019 to 181,934 in 2025, according to HUD’s latest annual report. Los Angeles’ homeless population also increased this year, with the county’s unsheltered count rising 3.3% and the city’s unsheltered count rising 7.9%, according to data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

In addition to the rising numbers, officials, including Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, have promoted a “Housing First” strategy that focuses primarily on moving people off the streets and into taxpayer-funded housing. Yet, with an estimated $1 billion spent on efforts such as Project Homekey, the city has either stalled on finishing units intended for homeless residents or seen some of those units damaged by occupants struggling with mental illness or addiction.

While the state has spent upwards of $26 billion on the homelessness crisis, questions about where the money is going continue to grow.

“Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability and zero results,” Turner said during the press conference. “The LA Continuum of Care led by LAHSA had received $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the last five years—that’s $1 billion over the last five years with no accountability and zero results. And despite receiving more federal homelessness funding than any other jurisdiction in our nation, LA remains the epicenter of the nation’s drug-fueled homelessness crisis.”

“During that same decade, the homelessness in LA doubled. HUD funding to LA nearly tripled. How many know that’s a problem? … We’ve got to run a new play. That play is not working.”

Crackdowns on Los Angeles nonprofits and their CEOs that received taxpayer dollars through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority have also come from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

In January, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of South Los Angeles charity executive Alexander Soofer, charging him with fraudulently obtaining $23 million in taxpayer funds intended to combat homelessness while allegedly pocketing $10 million for himself. 

Additionally, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that a Southern California nonprofit running domestic violence shelters paid its longtime chief executive, Carol Adelkoff, more than $1.6 million in salary and vacation pay over two years, even though she lived in Hawaii.

With funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority halted, the agency has sued the Trump administration over roughly $240 million now in limbo.

A federal judge’s ruling on Friday struck down HUD’s attempt to shift federal funding away from permanent housing. As a result, HUD will have to issue new guidelines for its annual homelessness grant competition, a decision that could affect the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The freeze on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority funding and the push for faith-based, results-driven programs mark a clear break from the housing-first model that has dominated California for years. For now, hundreds of millions remain in limbo while the administration insists taxpayer money will only follow programs that get people off the streets and into recovery.

“Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump and Vice President [JD] Vance, we are rooting out corruption and ensuring that those who need care are truly going to get it. The days of funding corrupt failure are over. The Trump administration will not fund a homeless industrial complex any longer,” Turner said. 

“At HUD, we’re only interested in real results,” he continued. “And that’s actually helping our fellow Americans get off the streets, out of addiction, and on the path to self-sufficiency.”

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the departure of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Leavitt is leaving at the end of the month “so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

The president added that Leavitt will become one of his “top outside advisors” and work with the Republican Party to win the upcoming midterm elections in November.

In his post, Trump then described Leavitt as “one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office. and thanked her “for a job well done!”

Leavitt gave birth to her second child, Viviana, in May, after leaving her post temporarily to go on maternity leave. She returned to the role in June.

“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” Leavitt wrote on X.

“Our country is facing an existential threat from an increasingly extremist Democrat Party that seeks to destroy everything great about America, and I believe it is incumbent upon all of us who care about this country to fight back against that threat,” she added, writing, “My fight is entering a new phase, but it is far from over.”

The president described Leavitt as “one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office.”

Sen. Rick Scott was among those who praised Leavitt on social media following her announcement.

“Karoline Leavitt did a fantastic job as White House Press Secretary! Children are such a blessing and her decision is one to be admired. God bless her and her family!” the Florida Republican wrote.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X that “Leavitt has served President Trump and the American people with courage and conviction. She’s a great colleague, a fearless voice for the President’s agenda and a true professional.”

Most Notable Moments

Last March, Leavitt told the Daily Signal’s politics editor, Bradley Devlin, during an interview that the president “loves young people,” and noted that as part of the reason why she had “the honor” of serving in the role.

“Many people told him that I was too young to have this position, and he told me, ‘You’re not. When I was 21, I was building buildings in Manhattan, and I believe you can have this job.'”

The youngest White House press secretary began her time in the second Trump administration, opening up the White House press briefings to new media voices and restoring the ones of 440 journalists and media outlets that were revoked under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

In March 2025, after Trump’s address to the nation, Leavitt referred to the Democratic Party as the party of “insanity and hate,” which “wants to put America last,” because “they’ve allowed their Trump Derangement Syndrome to stop them from celebrating America and their people,” after congressional Democrats and media alike failed to celebrate the achievements touted by the president during the address.

“It’s not just the Democrat Party, the mainstream media still doesn’t get it,” Leavitt continued. “Last night, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace disgustingly looped in a 13-year-old boy with brain cancer into an attack on the president over January 6.”

In August 2025, while Russia and Ukraine peace talks were ongoing, Leavitt slammed the American media for allegedly attempting to sabotage the peace talks with faulty coverage of the president’s foreign policy.

“One thing that has not changed is the media’s negative and downright false coverage of President Trump and his foreign policy accomplishments,” she said.

“From the beginning of this entire process, much of the left-wing media has been actively rooting against the president of the United States in the pursuit of peace,” Leavitt continued.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has intervened in a Dallas County case to protect the life of an unborn baby boy who was diagnosed in utero with a serious heart condition.

The child, known as baby Gabriel, was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped.

Treatment for Gabriel’s condition requires three staged surgeries, beginning with the Norwood procedure shortly after birth.

Information provided to Paxton’s office shows that Gabriel was diagnosed at 20 weeks’ gestation. The intended parents, who reside in California and are using a surrogate mother from Alaska, requested that Gabriel be terminated. Following their request, the surrogate traveled to Texas to seek protection and ensure that Gabriel could receive the lifesaving surgery he needed to survive. 

The intended parents have refused to consent to the surgery upon birth and may attempt to transport Gabriel out of Texas to prevent him from receiving the procedure, according to Paxton’s office.

After learning of the situation, Paxton filed an intervention in the case and asked a district court to prohibit Gabriel from being removed from the state.

On Tuesday afternoon, Paxton announced that a Dallas County judge had entered an emergency temporary order preventing Gabriel from being removed from Texas.

Under the emergency order, Texas law governs the child’s parentage, protection, and medical decision-making. Once Gabriel is born, Susan Dueslar will be appointed as the guardian ad litem for the child.

The court also ordered that “upon the child’s live birth, medically indicated stabilizing and life-sustaining care shall be provided to the child pending further order of this Court. No person shall withhold, direct the withholding of, obstruct, or delay that care.”

Paxton applauded the court’s order, saying his office will continue to protect Gabriel.

“The court has made the right decision in immediately acting to protect baby Gabriel’s life and ensure he receives the care he deserves,” Paxton said. “My office utilized every tool at our disposal to protect life, and we will not back down in continuing to support baby Gabriel’s well-being. Every child in our state deserves to be cared for and protected, and that’s exactly what I’ll fight for.” 

In addition to the intervention, Paxton sent a letter to UT Southwestern Medical Center and the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, reminding the hospitals of their legal obligations to provide lifesaving care to Gabriel upon his birth.

“Where a parent refuses consent to medically indicated treatment, the authority to override that refusal belongs to the State and to the State alone,” the letter reads. “A hospital cannot override a refusal on its own authority, and neither can a physician outside an emergency. Where time permits, the proper course is court intervention. Texas courts have entered exactly those orders, including appointing a governmental entity as temporary managing conservator with authority to consent to treatment over the family’s objection.”

Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communications for Texas Right to Life, told the Daily Signal that Paxton is right to protect Gabriel.

“The attorney general absolutely did the right thing here,” Schwartz said. “A child’s life is worth more than a contract.”

“This case exposes big problems with surrogacy: A woman is treated as a reproductive contractor, and a baby is treated as a product for sale,” she continued. “Baby Gabriel and every other child conceived in surrogacy have infinite worth that no legal contract can cancel.”

The order will take effect once Gabriel is born and will remain in effect until further order from the court.

Federal prosecutors have charged 11 people with involvement in more than 1,000 fake marriages to gain legal status in the United States over the last decade.

The two-count indictment alleges that some foreign nationals paid as much as $100,000 to be in the sham marriages, according to the Justice Department. The scheme was primarily for Chinese nationals.

“This scheme was not a quick, fly-by-night operation, but rather a yearslong, multimillion-dollar cottage industry to criminally assist people who would not, or legally could not, otherwise become citizens of the United States,” Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Wednesday. “The men and women who facilitated this scheme were all naturalized citizens, originally from China, and one green card holder.”

The attorney general added, “Not only are we protecting our physical borders from unlawful crossings, but we are also preventing immigration fraud schemes that are just another way to skirt the immigration laws of the United States.”

The 11 arrests occurred Wednesday morning. The indictment covers a period from at least 2016 through July 2026, with an investigation led by U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald for the Southern District of New York.

“Today’s arrests have dismantled a central component of one of the largest marriage fraud schemes charged in United States history,” McDonald said.

However, the case covered alleged sham marriages arranged in other states as well, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. Marriages were also allegedly arranged abroad in China and the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.

The network included alleged facilitators who oversaw the scheme and foreign-national customers; recruiters who found willing U.S. citizens; and assistants who prepared immigration paperwork, such as green card applications, for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The defendants were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration fraud. If convicted, they could face a maximum penalty of five years in prison. They were also each charged with one count of conspiracy to encourage the unlawful residence of aliens in the United States. If convicted, this crime carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The indictment alleges foreign nationals paid facilitators as much as approximately $100,000 for a sham marriage and assistance in obtaining lawful permanent resident status.

Facilitators allegedly paid participating U.S. citizens up to $30,000 and paid recruiters commissions of as much as approximately $5,000 for each citizen recruited, according to the Justice Department.

In total, the defendants and their co-conspirators recruited hundreds of U.S. citizens to enter into sham marriages, the Justice Department said.

According to the Justice Department, the defendants arrested Wednesday morning were: Amy Cheng, also known as “Amy Zhou,” 72, of Brooklyn, New York; Xiao Mei Chan, also known as “Carmen,” 64, of Queens, New York; Christine Lu, also known as “Lily,” 52, of Queens; Jing Yan Ye, also known as “Serene,” 43, of Staten Island, New York; Xiao Yan Chen, also known as “Anna,” 48, of Brooklyn; Gang Zheng, also known as “Michael” and “Mike,” 61, of Queens; Anthony Cheng, 47, of Staten Island; Michelle Duenas, 35, of Staten Island; Angela Duenas, 26, of Staten Island; Sigrid Cetino, 32, of Peekskill, New York; and Erika Johnson, 43, of Ossining, New York.

Support for voter ID looks to be dividing Ohio Democrats. Dr. Amy Acton, their nominee for governor, has come out in support of Issue 3 for the November election.

On Friday, Acton told Signal Statewide that she accepts the possibility that Ohio’s voter ID law may become enshrined in the state constitution.

“This amendment has overwhelming support from Ohioans across the state. As this doesn’t change what is already law, as governor, I will support it,” Acton told Signal Ohio.

“At the same time, as both a candidate and governor, I will fight to ensure that all eligible Ohio voters, regardless of party, can access the required identification easily and at no cost, so they can exercise their fundamental right and have their voices heard,” she added.

While the amendment is popular, many state Democrats, including Kathleen Clyde, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, have criticized the policy.

The Daily Signal reached out to the Ohio Democratic Party for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Voter ID has also pitted the Democrat and Republican nominees for secretary of state. Democrat state Rep. Allison Russo opposes Issue 3, while Republican Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague promoted it and predicted it would pass “overwhelmingly.

In a statement to the Daily Signal, Sprague’s campaign reiterated that support while criticizing both Acton and Russo.

“Amy Acton is in favor of Issue 3 only because she’s seen the polling and knows Ohioans overwhelmingly back photo ID as the most effective way to secure our elections,” Dalton Throckmorton, campaign manager for Sprague for Ohio, told the Daily Signal. “In doing so, she has left Allison Russo, who spent her career voting against photo ID, stranded on an island and having to explain why she’s against secure elections.”

Russo, meanwhile, reiterated her opposition to Issue 3, which she voted against in the General Assembly.

“My position is clear and unchanged. I oppose the constitutional amendment because it is unnecessary, and I believe locking it into the Ohio Constitution is overkill, plain and simple,” a statement from Russo to the Daily Signal said.

“But we’re a big tent party. Unlike Republicans, who fall in line even if it forces working people to pay higher gas prices or lose their homes due to high property taxes or enter into a prolonged war without end, we are the adults in the room, and we can have differences of opinion. That’s democracy,” she continued.

State Sen. Jane Timken, who sponsored the Ohio Senate resolution to put Issue 3 on the ballot, says voter ID has sent the Democrats into “disarray.”

“It’s a desperate political calculation [for Acton] to distance herself from her own Democrat party that is taking orders from socialists who support open borders and men in women’s sports. They [democratic socialists] want to end the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution. They demand photo ID for [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani’s grocery store but not for voting in our elections,” Timken told the Daily Signal.

“They are in such disarray. Her running mate, David Pepper, is on the record opposing photo ID,” she added.

Pepper provided opposition testimony against Senate Bill 153, which would strengthen Ohio voter registration rules.

As Acton noted, Voter ID is already state law. However, Republicans like Timken and others argue that it must be added to the state constitution to make it permanent and difficult for a future legislature to repeal.

Acton has already come under fire from Democrats over her support for protecting women’s sports, which she called “settled law” after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws on the matter.

The Daily Signal also reached out to the Acton campaign for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.