The Trump administration put some reasonable limits on federal student loans, and the Left is having a fit about it.

According to a Department of Education rule finalized in July, schools will now need to prove that their degrees are paying off for students to ensure that they remain eligible for federal funds.

The rule change was finalized in July but has only now gone viral. That’s likely because schools must report loan data at the beginning of October.

In my mind, the Trump administration’s policy is a necessary course correction. It’s especially important because of the explosion of direct student loans under President Barack Obama. America is awash in bad student loans that many young Americans struggle to pay off.

The administration’s policy change does two things.

One, it allows the federal government to be a better steward of taxpayer dollars. This is a very rare “W” on that front, let’s be honest.

Just as importantly, the new rule partially defunds both the institutions that are outright scamming students or are, even more perversely in my book, simply funding their unpopular ideological agenda through heaping helpings of public money.

Reasonable people may disagree about how much students are complicit in the explosion of student loan debt in America. But it didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it isn’t merely because millennials and zoomers are just that much more irresponsible than their predecessors.

This system of vast student loan debt and government entanglement, and higher education’s benefit from it, was a product of conscious policy decisions.

The Trump administration clearly intends to unwind this nexus and put the government on sounder economic footing.

Some leftist politicians and the institutional Left have noticed and are predictably apoplectic.

Here’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on X braying about how this is about President Donald Trump’s “oligarchy, greed, and corruption.”

The left-wing New Republic went with an X headline that read, “Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans.”

But that’s not true, as the Department of Education noted. The administration isn’t banning anything. It isn’t telling schools what programs to offer and which ones not to. It’s simply restricting taxpayer money from going to loans that are likely to end up underwater.

In a sense, they are protecting both the student and the taxpayer.

“Federal student loans are not a welfare program for failing college programs,” the department of Education wrote on X. “American students deserve education and training pathways that prepare them for the workforce—and transparency about programs that will never pay off.”

That’s right.

Funnily enough, even the Obama administration—which was generally happy to pump up the federal loan industry—considered a similar rule to keep cost and scams under control. Though it only wanted to go after “for-profit” colleges while letting their friends at big nonprofit universities off the hook, of course.

The New Republic’s contention that restricting taxpayer-backed loans “bans” students from certain majors does reveal a certain kind of toxic mentality common in big academia and among its media enablers. They think the taxpayer money faucet belongs to them by right, that the American people must fund not only student loans, but the institutions propped up by them.

It isn’t, and this Trump administration is the first White House in my lifetime that’s been willing to show them that’s not the case. Higher education is badly in need of a reckoning, across the board. For too long it has been monolithically ideological, racially discriminatory, negligent in its promises to students, and smugly detached from the American people who’ve unwittingly enabled them.

There’s your real source of “greed and corruption.”

What the Trump administration has done is to begin treating academia not as a kind of secular church, owed money just to exist, but as a public investment like any other.

If the American people are to continue subsidizing higher education, we should expect a return on that investment, and our political leaders should operate in our interest.

Now, economic growth may not be the primary purpose of our nation’s colleges and universities. A good education can and should be more than just an economic investment. But that burden of assessment belongs to the schools, not governments. There are a few very good ones that take no federal money at all and succeed tremendously, where parents and other benefactors are happy to continue their support.

Be more like Hillsdale, and your school will be just fine.

The federal government has become far too involved in this whole process. I’d argue that it’s ultimately weakened genuine education in America and made failed institutions increasingly unaccountable. It’s also caused college tuition to skyrocket.

The only way to fix that mess is to start putting restrictions on the loans and begin the process of narrowing the federal government’s interest in higher education as a whole.

The Left will hate it, the universities will squeal, but it must be done.

A pastoral letter that encourages Virginia voters to reject a pair of proposed amendments to the state constitution is going viral, with more than 200 signatures as of Tuesday morning, and more expected in the days ahead.

The letter asks Virginians to reject both Ballot Question 1, which would enshrine the right to an abortion into the state constitution, and Ballot Question 2, which would “remove the ban on same-sex marriage” in Virginia.

“We believe these two amendments must be rejected for the Commonwealth of Virginia because they will harm our state as they are opposed to human flourishing and contrary to the Word of God,” the pastors write in their open letter. “Let us seek one another’s true good and not mark our identity with the deprivations that these amendments would bring to the Constitution of Virginia.”

So far, the letter is limited to clergy. If it were available for laity to sign, one signer told the Daily Signal, it might garner thousands more signatures.

“We think it is important for pastors to speak with one voice to the state of Virginia,” Pastor Ben Purves of Occoquan Bible Church told the Daily Signal. “We’ve given our lives to care for communities in Virginia.”

The group that organized the letter checks the credentials of potential signers before posting their names, and it encourages pastors to share the letter with their congregations.

The letter is complementary to, and was inspired by, a high-profile “Catholics Vote No” campaign launched by Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington. Burbidge asked priests in 70 parishes across Northern Virginia to read a letter at Mass that opposed the amendments. That effort built on a joint statement he issued in August with Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout.

While the Protestant pastors don’t have the same sort of hierarchy that the Catholic bishops were able to utilize, Purves said this letter is spreading through word of mouth as church leaders sign it and share it with fellow pastors across Virginia.

Three constitutional amendments appear on the ballot this year. In addition to the first two questions, the third proposal would restore the voting rights of felons as soon as they have completed their sentences.

All three amendments, plus one that was approved by voters in April but set aside by the state Supreme Court in May on a technicality, were placed on the ballot after being passed twice by the General Assembly, with the 2025 legislative election taking place in between those votes.

In their letter, the pastors expressed strong opposition to Ballot Question 1.

“It is moral distortion to present this violation of the Sixth Commandment as a moral good or as a fundamental right, and it is deceptive framing to present abortion’s destruction of life as healthcare,” the letter says. “Mothers should not destroy the life in their wombs, and medical professionals should care for every human life, especially the lives of the most vulnerable.”

As for Ballot Question 2, the letter says, “The term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman into a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture. The institution of marriage is part of the bedrock of human civilization. It is presumptuous to imagine it can be redefined, and it is modern arrogance to believe this generation knows better than all past generations.”

Early voting is underway. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, some 220,969 voters had cast ballots through Sept. 28, well ahead of the pace set during the most recent midterm elections in 2022.

The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 23, 2026, with Election Day itself on Nov. 3.

On the latest episode of The Heritage Foundation podcast “The Power Hour,” host Jack Spencer talks energy with Heritage Foundation Executive Vice President Derrick Morgan. In this excerpt, Morgan explains why a potential ban on diesel exports to lower U.S. diesel prices is a bad idea.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jack Spencer: So what brings us here today for this special episode?

Derrick Morgan: Well, diesel prices are very, very high. There are a lot of reasons for that. And as part of that and the fact that you have an election coming up in less than two months probably has something to do with it too. You’ve got people that are really hurting out there. You’ve got harvest season in the ag community where people are trying to power up their combines and everything else with diesel fuel. You do have winter coming around the corner with home heating oil and so forth.

People are very, very concerned about high diesel prices, so they’re looking for some way to lower them. And unfortunately, in my view, they’re looking at a potential option of stopping diesel exports in a way to keep diesel here thinking that will lower prices. But there’s a lot of negative blowback that we could see if we do that.

Jack Spencer: You laid it out good. I mean, diesel prices are high. And there’s both sort of, from a public perspective, they want the politicians to do something. It’s election season. And banning exports seems on its face at least to be a perfectly appropriate thing to do. Keep it here. But a lot of people have tried this before. There are always these negative unintended consequences that occur. Walk us through some of that. Why should we be skeptical or wary of such a policy decision?

Derrick Morgan: Well, the energy markets now are very global in nature. And actually, there was a big change in 2015. We used to have a ban on exporting crude oil until 2015. And that was actually limiting American production. Once we got rid of that ban, American crude oil production skyrocketed. We’re now the number one producer in the world. And so, you might scratch your head and say, well, if that worked well to increase production, then why would we do the reverse when it comes to diesel? And the thought is, as an initial matter, if you stop the export, you have higher supply here.

There are a number of problems with that. First and foremost, you just don’t have a lot of places to put all that produced diesel. Right now, we export about a million and a half barrels a day. That is a lot. We do not have enough storage to do that for very long, to continue producing at the same rate.

There’s a couple of things that you can make, adjustments you can change when you have a barrel of crude oil come in, you have different yields for different fuels. So people don’t always understand how the refining process works. But you’re taking crude oil of one type or another and you put pressure, you add heat and so forth, and you get a yield of different fuels. You get gasoline, you get kerosene, you get jet fuel, you get diesel, etc.

And you can change that around a little bit with the knobs, but not that much. So you can maybe decrease the diesel yield from say 31.5%, maybe down to 29%. On the margins, right. So what do you do with all of this diesel? We’re not going to use it here in the U.S. We’ve been exporting it. Where do you put it?

You’re going to run out of storage pretty quickly. And that’s going to lead refiners to have to reduce the amount of the barrels that are going through the complex altogether. And what’s that going to do? S&P did an analysis of this, and they think that it could lead to about a million barrels a day less of gasoline. So we’re going to have less gasoline, which means higher prices on gasoline.

First order effect. You have more diesel, higher supply presumably. And in the very short run prices would go down. But then you’ve got these other fuels that they’re going to when productions are cut. And by the way, S&P looked at this. They’re estimating that in pretty short order, you’d have to cut refinery runs by about 12%. That means 12% less crude oil coming through, which means all the fuel supply going down. If you have that, it’s going to be a major problem. That’s the first problem.

Second problem: There are parts of the United States that don’t really have access to our awesome Gulf Coast refineries in Texas and Louisiana and elsewhere. The northeast United States relies on imports of diesel and home heating oil. Importantly, as winter is coming. They’re mostly importing that from Canada, some from Europe. And because of our lack of pipelines and Jones Act restrictions, it’s really hard to get that fuel up to the northeast. So you’re going to have parts of the northeast and potentially maybe the West Coast as well, that are going to be supplied by foreign suppliers.

If the United States, a million and a half barrels a day of diesel are taken off, the international diesel prices are going to spike. They’re going to go way up. And then those Americans are going to see higher prices right away. Those are two problems.

The third problem is our allies. And for someone struggling as a farmer struggling to get crops out of the field, it’s not quite as important, but it is something we do need to keep in mind. Latin America, one third of their diesel demand is from the United States. Ninety percent of their imports are from the United States.

We have become energy dominant, thanks in large measure to President Donald Trump and Europe, 50% of their diesel imports recently from the United States. So our allies are relying on us. We’ve become the world’s most reliable supplier. If we do this, we look a lot less reliable in the future. And they’ll look for suppliers somewhere else.

So those are three really big problems.

The University of California tells students that using pronouns or names corresponding to a person’s sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity can constitute sexual harassment. Now, an education watchdog has won an early victory in court to stop it from enforcing its misgendering policy.

The ruling comes amid a First Amendment challenge to University of California policies that classify certain instances of “misgendering” and “deadnaming” as potential harassment.

Training materials cited in Defending Education’s lawsuit included examples involving bathrooms, pronouns, and “deadnaming.”

Launched in June 2025, the university’s SHAPE (Sexual Violence and Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education) training requires undergraduate, graduate, and professional students across the UC System to complete annual training on sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination. According to the university’s website, students who fail to complete the mandatory training may have an academic hold placed on their records.

“[A] hostile environment may be created when someone demands that others use a particular bathroom that does not correspond to their gender identity or uses the incorrect pronoun,” the training materials state.

Another example states that intentionally using someone’s name from before a gender transition “may be a form of sexual harassment.”

Students found responsible for violating the Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy may face disciplinary action depending on the circumstances.

Defending Education, a national education advocacy organization, sued the University of California in June, arguing that the policy violates students’ First Amendment rights by treating the use of names or pronouns corresponding to a person’s sex assigned at birth as potential harassment.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Fred Slaughter granted the group a preliminary injunction, finding that Defending Education was likely to succeed on its First Amendment challenge to the provisions at issue.

The injunction bars the University of California from enforcing the challenged provisions against Defending Education members who attend UC System schools.

The injunction will stay in place while the case moves toward a final ruling on whether the policy is constitutional.

Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, called the ruling a victory against what the organization considers compelled speech.

“It is unconstitutional for public universities to compel student speech,” Neily said, adding that Defending Education would “continue to defend this principle in California and other schools across the country as needed.”

When the Daily Signal contacted the University of California Office of the President for comment, the university defended its policy, saying it is intended to address discrimination and harassment rather than constitutionally protected speech.

“The University of California’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy is designed to protect members of the university community from discrimination and harassment, not to regulate protected speech,” Stett Holbrook, associate director of strategic and critical communications, said.

“The University takes all reports of harassment seriously, including those involving gender identity, and applies the same legal standards to these reports as it does to all allegations of harassment.”

The spokesperson did not say if the university plans to appeal the ruling.

“While we disagree with the court’s ruling, UC will always seek to foster a welcoming environment that protects both freedom of expression and the fundamental rights of all members of our community,” Holbrook said.

Texas’ 15th Congressional District is shaping up to be a closely watched race in South Texas, with Democrat Bobby Pulido leading Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz in the latest public polling.

The redrawn district now stretches from the Rio Grande Valley into parts of Coastal Bend and South Texas, including communities such as Edinburg, Weslaco, and Alice.

De La Cruz, who has represented the district since 2023, is seeking reelection against Pulido, a Tejano singer and small-business owner who has faced scrutiny over his association with longtime friend and former bandmate Frankie Caballero, a convicted sex offender.

Pulido’s campaign presents him as a centrist focused on issues including the economy, health care, education, and immigration. On his campaign website, Pulido says the border should be secured “without destroying families and our local economy in the process.” He also supports establishing “more vetting hubs in Central America” and creating what he describes as a “more fair and reasonable path to legalization” for immigrants who want to come to the United States to contribute.

On education, Pulido says he opposes school vouchers, arguing that they drain “money from our classrooms and send it to private schools.” He also calls for increased funding for public schools.

Pulido has also faced controversy during his campaign over his past comments and relationship with Caballero.

In July, The Daily Caller reported that Pulido had previously said that molesting kids is “not necessarily rape.” The comments resurfaced after reports that Pulido had brought Caballero to perform at a benefit concert at a Texas middle school in 2016. Caballero is a convicted child sex offender. 

In an unearthed post on X, Pulido wrote, “Child molestation is abhorrent. But is not necessarily rape or murder, what you said. My point, and Geraldo’s point, is they have been unfairly demonized. It’s like if I said that whites shouldn’t be able to buy guns because most mass shooters are white.” 

A month before The Daily Caller report, The New York Post reported that Pulido had bragged about getting Caballero out of jail, who then went on to sexually assault an 8-year-old girl. Pulido’s campaign has disputed aspects of the report, saying he did not post bail for Caballero or directly facilitate his release and that Pulido was not aware of the full extent of Caballero’s criminal history. 

Pulido did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. 

De La Cruz, who is seeking a third term in Congress, is campaigning on border security, agriculture, energy, and the economy. Her campaign platform calls for reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, ending catch and release, supporting Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents, and reimbursing farmers and ranchers for confirmed damages caused by illegal immigrant traffic. She also calls for making energy more affordable and produced in the United States. 

During her first term in Congress, De La Cruz supported multiple Republican-backed bills including The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act and voted to impeach then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Nicholas Mayorkas. She has continued to support legislation backed by President Donald Trump during the 119th Congress, including the SAVE Act and the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” 

The newly drawn district voted for Trump by about 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, while De La Cruz won reelection to the previous version of the district by about 14 points. 

However, public polling this year has shown a closer contest. The latest publicly available poll, conducted Aug. 18-22 by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University among 700 likely voters, showed Pulido with 50% support and De La Cruz with 45%. Other 2026 public polls have also shown Pulido leading by smaller margins. 

The Cook Political Report changed its rating for the race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” on Sept. 25. Cook noted that while the district’s 2024 presidential vote favored Trump by 18 points, public and private polling has shown the race either tied or with Pulido ahead. 

Election Day is Nov. 3, 2026. 

The Ten Commandments, the deep state, detention of illegal immigrants, and more Second Amendment questions could be on the Supreme Court’s docket early next year, as justices gather this week to determine what cases make the cut.

Justices first met Monday for what is called a “long conference” to sift through cases submitted over the summer and decide whether to hear oral arguments.

The high court hears arguments in only about 1% of the cases that are filed each term. The court is expected to release an order list no later than next Monday, when the first oral arguments of the 2026-2027 term begin.

Here are five big topics the high court is considering taking up.

1. Commandments and the Classroom

One of the big cases comes out of Texas, where justices will consider hearing arguments on whether the state can require the display of the Ten Commandments in schools.

“It’s just the text of the Ten Commandments with no commentary, but challengers say it is a constitutional violation,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held in the case of Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District that the law did not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

“The high court could decide when and whether the Ten Commandments can be displayed,” Smith said. “There were a number of rulings during the Warren Court based on a misguided view of the Establishment Clause. So, this is ripe for review.”

2. Deep State Cases

In the last session, the court overturned the Humphrey’s Executor precedent in a major step allowing the Trump administration to rein in the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, in the case of Wilcox v. Trump, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Gwynne Wilcox, who sued to overturn her removal from the National Labor Relations Board.

This is part of a continuing legal battle over presidential control of the federal bureaucracy, and whether boards and commissions can be independent of the executive branch. In the previous case, the high court upheld Trump’s authority to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

“I would think the FTC case in the Humphrey’s Executor case would take care of this question,” Smith said.

He said the justices might issue a grant, vacate, and remand decision, which would send the case back to the appeals court noting existing Supreme Court precedent.

The trend has moved toward recognizing the power of an elected president to run the executive branch, said Paul Kamenar, chief counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group, which has flagged concerns about an unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

“There are still a lot of loose threads on presidential power, but the direction has been for the president to fire at will,” Kamenar told the Daily Signal. “The exception was the Federal Reserve in the Lisa Cook case. The court seems to lean toward a unitary executive and presidential power. The exception with the Fed is logical. Board members are presidential appointees. But the Fed is not taxpayer-funded, and it is not really engaged in executive branch action.”

Another case that could determine the president’s control over the executive branch is U.S. v. Jackson. The court could consider whether someone appointed first assistant after a vacancy becomes acting U.S. attorney, or if the attorney general can delegate the office’s duties.

The dispute arose in Nevada after the resignation of U.S. Attorney Jason Frierson. The Trump administration designated Sigal Chattah as acting U.S. attorney. However, defendants in a case sued, claiming Chattah could not supervise the prosecutions. The U.S. 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s disqualification in August.

This could be a more complicated matter, Kamenar said. The NLPC has litigated over the appointment of what’s known as an “inferior officer,” or a non-Senate-confirmed appointee in a prosecutorial role.

He noted the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 has limits on who can be appointed to an acting role, which is generally the first assistant, another Senate-confirmed official, or a senior agency employee.

“That is a difficult legal issue. Presidents can appoint and fire any U.S. attorney, but appointment of acting officials gets into the Vacancies Act,” Kamenar said

3. Election Integrity

A Hawaii law presents another potential opportunity for the court to weigh in on election integrity in Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Nago. The case could determine if states must provide access to voter-registration records under the National Voter Registration Act. It could affect how much access election-integrity organizations have to state voter-registration information.

The National Voter Registration Act requires states to maintain voter lists to ensure that people who have moved away from a jurisdiction or have died are no longer listed.

The plaintiffs requested a copy of the statewide voter roll in April of 2023. Hawaii has argued the requests should go to individual counties. The state denied access under a Hawaii law that does not allow access to the voter roll unless it is for an election or government purpose. PILF contends this conflicts with the NVRA.

PILF is an election watchdog group. Other groups that filed amicus briefs in the case were the Honest Elections Project, the Center for Election Confidence, and Judicial Watch.

4. Illegal Immigration

On the immigration front, the case of Kenneth Genalo, Director of the New York Field Office of ICE, et al. v. District of Columbia deals with detention and bond hearings. The question is about how long the federal government can detain certain illegal immigrants with criminal histories while their removal proceedings are pending.

The high court granted review of a similar case out of New York, but Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned the suspect, making it a moot case, and it was removed from the docket. The case could establish a nationwide constitutional rule for prolonged detention of certain noncitizens during removal proceedings.

“If an individual can’t be held, it would interfere with the president’s immigration enforcement,” Smith said. “This matter would have been decided in another case, but Gov. Hochul intervened.”

5. More Second Amendment Challenges

Several Second Amendment cases are under consideration. This includes Novotny v. Moore over Maryland’s restrictions on carrying firearms in numerous public places. The U.S. 4th Circuit upheld the Maryland gun restrictions. The court will consider the question of whether states can prohibit otherwise lawful gun carrying in certain locations.

Similarly, the case of Duncan v. Bonta out of California challenges California’s ban on high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The U.S. 9th Circuit upheld California’s law. However, the U.S. 3rd Circuit struck down New Jersey’s similar ban. Given the circuit split, the Supreme Court is far more likely to take a case. Washington state has a similar law.

Kamenar, of the NLPC, anticipates that if the Supreme Court takes these or other gun rights cases, it will continue its existing trend.

“The court is looking more favorably on the Second Amendment,” Kamenar said. “Last session in a case involving purchase of a firearm by someone using marijuana, the court decided there is really no connection with violent crime.

William Lawrence, a Democrat candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, who once begged leftist streamer Hasan Piker for an appearance on his show, called the nuclear-family home an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society” in a now-deleted X post.

“Biggest W of my late 20s was finding a long-term stable co-op house. F— isolation and the nuclear family domicile,” the 36-year-old wrote.

Lawrence, who started the green-energy activist organization the Sunrise Movement, added in a different, now-deleted post that the “hetero-patriarchal nuclear family” is a “MATERIAL foundation of wealth accumulation” since inheritance was concentrated through male family lines, adding that “Queer families create MATERIAL conditions for solidarity and wealth sharing.”

In other posts, Lawrence added that he wants to “envision a world of free and open migration, and a world beyond the nation-state and capitalism. He also called America a “s— hole country” and advocated for “destroying the American way of life” and to “redistribute all the land and all the money” to make up for America’s “evil deeds,” in his podcast in 2024.

A self-described leftist activist, Lawrence has expressed his rage with more moderate Democrats, adding that “it’s time for the Dem civil war to rage.”

Not only did Lawrence call to abolish the Senate, but he also wrote a song lyric after former Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance to the Left’s’ climate agenda titled “Our generation says f— you for everything.”

“So long, thanks for the memories, our generation says f— you for everything, from these ashes we will rebuild, hurry up and die so that we can get started,” the song lyric reads.

In 2020, after then-Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., criticized the left’s “defund the police” chant, Lawrence dismissed her comments as a “tantrum” and warned that “timid Dems” like Spanberger could “leave the Party” if they could not accept the activist Left.

In a different post, he urged progressives to go “scorched earth” on the rest of the Democratic Party if they failed to enact former President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda.

DSA & Sunrise Movement

Although Lawrence allowed his Democratic Socialists of America membership to lapse earlier this year, the Sunrise Movement, the leftist activist organization that Lawrence co-founded in 2015 and that originally focused on pushing the Green New Deal agenda, regularly partners with DSA and other leftist chapters to protest conservative policies.

As reported by The College Fix, the Sunrise Movement has been active on college campuses in student-led protests against President Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The College Fix noted that at Rutgers University, for example, Sunrise Movement partnered up with groups such as the American Association of University Professors, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, and the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University in producing a toolkit that instructs students to “create a crisis for university admin through an escalating campaign.”

Another College Fix article noted that the Sunrise Movement organized protests at Georgetown University and Howard University, which chanted “from Palestine to Mexico, all these laws have got to go,” in an effort to organize students against the president’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., is now at a record low crime rate since the National Guard deployment.

According to its website, the organization now aims to “radically transform our school system to face the climate crisis and make sure all students have the right to a safe and good education—no matter their zip code or the color of their skin.”

Lawrence faces incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., on Nov. 3rd.

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

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., introduced a bill Tuesday aiming to prevent child welfare agencies from treating a parent’s refusal to “affirm” a child’s stated transgender identity as child abuse.

“The Left’s radical gender ideology is harming children with irreversible treatments and procedures, but in blue states, parents are being punished, and sometimes even separated from their children, for protecting their kids from this permanent damage,” Schmitt told the Daily Signal in a statement on the bill Tuesday.

“It is sickening that a state would impose ideological child-welfare policies to tear apart a family,” he added. “Parents know what’s best for their own families, and we need to defend their rights to protect their children.”

The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act takes its name from Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old girl who took her own life three years after the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took custody away from her mother, Abby. Her mother refused to “affirm” Yaeli’s transgender identity as male. The department had said that keeping Yaeli out of her mother’s home would decrease her chances of committing suicide.

The bill seeks to prevent states from removing children from their parents or otherwise penalizing families based on a parent’s refusal to support social or medical gender transition. For example, Oregon’s Department of Human Services concluded that Nicole Calaway, a Christian mom, had caused “mental injury” to her daughter by refusing to “affirm” her transgender identity.

The bill would prevent federally funded child welfare programs from treating affirmation of biological sex as abuse, conditioning federal child welfare spending on compliance with these protections. It would also create a private right of action, allowing parents to sue if state actors violate those protections.

“The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act would be an absolute game-changer for families,” Laura Hanford, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “They would finally have protection from being torn apart by gender activists in state child protection systems.”

Hanford warned that child protection systems have been captured by transgender ideology.

“It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’—loving parents are accused of abuse or neglect simply for affirming the reality of their child’s sex and trying to protect their vulnerable gender-confused child from toxic drugs or destructive surgeries,” she said. “Currently, these parents are at the mercy of social workers and judges who are trained to view them as abusive and can drag proceedings out for years, even when parents are cleared of spurious abuse charges.”

“Parents should never fear losing custody of their children because they recognize biological reality,” Chip Wyatt, government relations director at Heritage Action, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

“Senator Schmitt’s Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act addresses disturbing abuses of government power at the behest of gender ideologues,” Wyatt added. “Congress must protect parental rights and ensure federal taxpayer dollars don’t punish families for refusing to participate in sex-rejecting ideology.”

Hanford argued that the bill would not change a state’s ability to intervene in real cases of abuse. Instead, it “just takes off the table entirely the fictitious premise that it’s abuse to raise a girl as a girl or a boy as a boy.”

Here’s a story the left-wing media and Democrats will ignore: America is building steel again, on a scale not seen in generations.

On Monday, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office that Mesabi Metallics will build a $15 billion steel mill in eastern Iowa. It will reportedly be the largest steel plant in American history, and in the president’s own words, this steel will be “mined, melted, and made right here in the USA.” The White House projects 1,750 permanent jobs, up to 6,000 construction jobs, and a whopping $95 billion boost to the U.S. economy in its first decade alone. Even better, the iron ore will come from Mesabi’s new mine in Minnesota, the first new iron ore mine in America in half a century.

These are some of the tangible benefits of reindustrializing America, but there is something deeper going on as well. Great countries make things. Strong and stable superpowers can produce for themselves the goods crucial to national security, such as steel, chips, and medicines.

As Trump put it, “Soon after my inauguration, I imposed powerful 50% tariffs on all foreign steel, and now, our steel industry is roaring back to life.”

For decades, the permanent political class in Washington let China dump cheap, subsidized steel into our markets. Predatory Chinese Communist Party trade practices hollowed out mill towns across the Rust Belt. Under Trump-Vance, though, those days are over, thank goodness.

Today, we correctly charge a premium to access the crown-jewel consumer market on earth, the United States. Couple those tariffs with the Working Families Tax Cut, which lets companies immediately write off new factory investment, and America is now one of the best places in the world to build.

Last month, I wrote about the quiet manufacturing boom unfolding in the heartland. The S&P Global flash manufacturing index just surged to 57 in September, the highest reading since May 2022. U.S. crude steel production has passed Japan’s for the first time since 1999. American mills now supply 84% of our own finished-steel market, and the industry has already added nearly 6,000 steel worker jobs. These are family-sustaining careers.

So, what does this mean for Iowans? For the Hawkeye State, this is a generational win, and it lands right in the middle of a key Senate race. Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee, is locked in a toss-up against radical Democrat Josh Turek, who leads by a mere half point in the RealClearPolling average.

“It is a game-changer for our state and, frankly, for the country,” Hinson said of the new steel mill. “With 1,700 jobs, I just think about the countless opportunities for Iowa families.”

But Iowa’s big win also points to Minnesota’s problems, as a state saddled with radical Democratic leadership. Mesabi’s mine sits on Minnesota’s Iron Range, which is worked by Minnesota miners. So why on earth would the company build its mill across the state line in Iowa?

Well, Minnesota state Sen. Rob Farnsworth, a Republican, nailed it: “This announcement comes as no surprise to those of us who have seen firsthand just how hard Minnesota government makes manufacturing and mining.”

That’s the devastating cost of one-party Democratic rule under Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. And while Minnesotans just watched 1,750 good-paying jobs head south, Flanagan is running for a promotion to the U.S. Senate on an extremist agenda of open borders, defunding ICE, raising taxes, and eliminating private health insurance.

Thankfully, Gopher State voters have a sane alternative in political outsider Michele Tafoya. My latest Minnesota poll shows a dead heat, with Flanagan at 40% and Tafoya at 38%, within the margin of error. The more Tafoya ties Flanagan and Walz to the economically illiterate policies that just sent the biggest steel mill in American history to Iowa, the better.

The manufacturing boom comes at a crucial time, not just for jobs, but for U.S. bond markets. The tremors these markets have endured since the start of the Iran War should concern every American. With $40 trillion in federal debt, we have little wiggle room to withstand higher interest rates. Moreover, both Main Street and giant corporations now face the hurdles of far higher financing costs, from auto loans to hyperscaler buildouts.

Since an entitlement pullback seems like a political impossibility, how can America make this stifling debt manageable? How can we get yields to head lower again? Well, big picture, onshoring will play a huge role. The more domestic production flourishes and the more foreign capital flows to America, the higher productivity will soar. That scenario means strong growth without spiking inflation, exactly the combination needed to start chipping away at our mountain of debt.

So, into the home stretch of campaign season, the lesson from the heartland is clear: America First policies build success. The world wants to invest in America, especially when prodded by smart trade rules. Now, it’s up to the voters of Iowa and Minnesota to choose reshoring, more family-sustaining jobs, and more Main Street prosperity.

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

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow the Bureau of Prisons to restrict sex-rejecting procedures for federal inmates, citing an exhaustive BOP report rejecting the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “unreliable” and based on “insufficient evidence.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court injunction Monday after the Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit let the injunction stand on Sept. 18.

A district court judge had ruled that the Bureau of Prisons had not adequately considered “its own experience providing gender-affirming care under its prior policy,” that the policy is “objectively unreasonable,” and that the policy is “pretextual and reverse engineered to implement” President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Yet Sauer’s brief states that the Bureau of Prisons adopted the policy independent of the executive order after an exhaustive review, including a 3,200-page administrative record, explained in a 43-page memorandum. The review explained why the Trump administration rejected the authority of WPATH, the very authority that President Barack Obama’s administration had relied on to approve sex-rejecting procedures for inmates.

In developing the new policy, “BOP determined that sex-trait-modification surgeries, hormone interventions in general, and social accommodations could no longer be justified as treatment for gender dysphoria,” the brief notes.

The bureau repeatedly cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in U.S. v. Skrmetti (2025), the 6-3 decision allowing states to ban these procedures for minors. The bureau found that “those interventions did not reflect the latest scientific information, which had undermined BOP’s prior reliance on the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—an organization whose standards had recently been called into serious question by medical professionals.”

Independent of the medical debate, BOP also concluded that the interventions raised security and administration concerns. Access to such procedures would risk turning inmates who received them into “targets for attacks,” “raise fairness concerns,” and “breed resentment among other inmates.” Some interventions would enable inmates to “hide contraband” or “obfuscate or conceal” their identity. The new policy restricts “breast padding,” chest “binders,” makeup, and wigs.

As for the claim that BOP failed to consider its previous guidance, Sauer quoted at length from the BOP memorandum.

“WPATH openly engages in ideologically based political advocacy, systematically misrepresents evidence, and often bases its recommendations, no matter how impactful for the patient, on low-quality supporting evidence,” the memo noted.

The Department of Health and Human Services previously published a peer-reviewed report finding “extremely weak evidence” for any benefits from sex-rejecting procedures for minors.

Internal WPATH files revealed that WPATH members expressed concerns about minors’ inability to consent to interventions with potentially lifelong impacts.

In 2022, WPATH left age recommendations for specific treatments out of its Standards of Care for transgender medicine, following political pressure from then-Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine.

The new policy still offers mental-health treatment but will reject inmates’ requests to begin sex-rejecting medical procedures. If an inmate had previously been receiving hormones, however, BOP will develop a tapering plan for each inmate after considering appropriate factors.

Three anonymous inmates brought the case, Kingdom v. Trump, last year, represented by the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Washington, D.C., and the Transgender Law Center. The inmates claimed that the policy violates the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment, the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Vice President JD Vance said he and President Donald Trump have “aggressively” considered how to pass the SAVE America Act, the White House’s voter ID legislation.

Vance told the Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese that he and the president have considered every option for how to take over the Senate floor and pass the bill.

“The problem is that we have a number of Republican senators who vote more with Democrats than they do with their own party, and that is the issue,” he said. “If you could get 51 GOP senators, or, frankly, 50 senators plus a vice president to stick together, we could fire the parliamentarian. We could get rid of the filibuster. We could pass SAVE America Act and a bunch of amazing stuff too.”

In the interview, Vance said that while he could assume the role of Senate chair, that is not where the bottleneck lies.

“The problem is that you have four or five Republicans, and we all know who they are, who are going to stand with Democrats,” he said.

Vance said he and Trump have “war-gamed this to every detail,” but they decided assuming the chair wouldn’t fix the problem at hand.

“We have obsessively thought through how do you get SAVE America passed, and how do you how do you blow up the filibuster? So, you have 47 Democratic senators,” he said. “If I overrule the parliamentarian, they need four because if they get to 50, I break the tie and we win. Forty-seven Democrats plus four Republicans: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Tom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski.”

“They overrule the vice president. You have a fun little ceremonial battle that you lose,” he said.

Vance said the White House wants to win the battle, which entails replacing “mediocre Republican senators with good Republican senators.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will sign a “very powerful” executive order on “superintelligence.”

“This kind of innovation in government is just a preview of what is possible with superintelligence or SI, and that’s the official name in the United States,” he said. “I’ll be signing a very powerful executive order. I spoke to President Xi; he loves it, and because when you say artificial intelligence, it’s artificial.”

“This isn’t; this is extreme intelligence,” he continued. “It’s superior intelligence. It’s supreme, also intelligence, but the word ‘super’ is the best word of all, and it’s the simplest.”

Trump spoke while unveiling a new website that uses artificial intelligence to make it easier for U.S. citizens to access federal services.

The website, America.gov, will make sure “the federal government no longer stands in your way, and it stands only at your service,” Trump said.

Trump said the creation of the new website was so complicated that the administration has been working on it since almost day one.

“We’re making it dramatically easier and faster, and more convenient to get what you need exactly when you need it,” he said.

Trump said this will make it easier for married women to change their names without navigating “a stressful bureaucratic process that took months and months and even years to complete.”

“Very soon, all she’ll have to do is ask America.gov, and it’ll fill out the forms, track the progress, and send her a new social security card, passport, and insurance card in the mail. It’ll arrive almost instantly,” he said.

“Whether you’re a scout leader who wants to reserve a campsite at a national park, a senior citizen trying to choose a Medicare plan, or an American veteran trying to get the benefits that you’ve earned and so justly deserve, America.gov will be there to help and to help you accurately and quickly,” he said. “And with this, nobody can any longer complain about providing proof of citizenship or voter ID.”

The first part of the website launched Tuesday, but Trump said it will continue to evolve in months ahead.

“I will sign a historic executive order directing every federal government agency to make all of their public-facing services integrate directly with America.gov as soon as possible,” he said.

In the “toss-up” special election race for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, former Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown’s record is coming back to haunt him when it comes to transgender procedures for minors.

Before he was defeated by now Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno in 2024, Brown had served for three terms in the U.S. Senate. Although his campaign fought back against ads on the issue of transgender procedures for minors and athletes in 2024, he still lost, and history may be repeating itself as he seeks a comeback.

A recent ad from the Senate Leadership Fund features a 23-year-old detransitioner, Soren Aldaco, speaking about her experiences and how she was “groomed by strangers online at 11.”

Doctors told her family she was transgender at 15, and she had hormone injections and then surgery, which she said was “without [her] parents’ consent.”

Aldaco began the ad by declaring that “Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids.” She later adds, “I was a kid. I was confused. Sherrod Brown isn’t. He knows the consequences. Ohio’s kids deserve better. So did I.”

The Daily Signal reached out to the Brown campaign for comment about the ad but did not hear back in time for publication.

The ad is backed by close to $10 million, with Senate Leadership Fund investing $79 million in Ohio.

“Children should never have to endure the trauma that far-Left politicians like Sherrod Brown have inflicted. Ohioans are sick and tired of Democrats caving to the demands of extremists and will once again reject Brown this November,” Senate Leadership Fund Communications Director Chris Gustafson said in a statement.

The group created a website, sherrodbrownoh.com, to highlight “Brown’s 50-year record of caving to extremists and the far-left,” highlighting his role as a career politician and how he voted with then-President Joe Biden 97% of the time. Referenced issues include higher taxes, open borders, and sex changes for kids.

A press release for the ad on Monday spoke to Brown’s previous time in office and how Senate Leadership Fund is looking to retire him for good, noting that the latest ad is part of a campaign to “permanently retire 50-year career politician Sherrod Brown.”

This ad comes not long after another one by the group highlighting Brown’s record and falling in line with other liberals on this same issue. The ad also features former Vice President Kamala Harris as well as Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

In addition to pointing out how “permanent” the surgeries are, with “devastating consequences,” the ad claims that “the extremists demand it, Sherrod Brown complies,” and that while he’s had “50 years in politics,” he’s “more extreme than ever.”

The group similarly targeted Brown in 2024 for his record on the issue. Brown, along with former Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who lost to now-Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy in that same cycle, was also referenced in an editorial from The Wall Street Journal in October 2024.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., exposed his Democrat opponent on Monday night’s congressional debate stage as not being a resident of the district she seeks to represent.

Lawler added that his opponent, Cait Conley, a Virginia resident, does “no-show” jobs for artificial intelligence and Big Tech companies.

“She moved up here to run for Congress,” Lawler stated. “She doesn’t pay taxes here, she doesn’t own a home here, she’ll move back to Virginia as quickly as she got here when she loses in November.”

During the debate, Lawler repeatedly said that his opponent lied on stage when she tried to draw a close connection between him and President Donald Trump.

For instance, Conley accused him of “voting 100% of the time” with Trump and being loyal only to the Republican Party. Lawler, who was ranked as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, rebuked Conley’s voting-record claim as a lie.

He noted that he is endorsed by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and that he is “best friends” with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J. He later questioned Conley’s ability to do bipartisan work since she describes Republicans as “the greatest threat to America.”

Lawler continued, asking Conley multiple times throughout the debate to condemn the alleged antisemitism raised by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, which she refused to do.

Mamdani did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Lawler also highlighted a piece of legislation he introduced alongside Gottheimer that condemned controversial political commentators such as Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker.

Conley pivoted and blamed Lawler for the rise in utility prices in the district, which has become a burden for consumers.

However, Lawler rebutted the claim, adding that utility prices have not gone up because of his voting record in Congress, but because the state’s green energy policies have cut off supply.

“New York state has cut off supply, we’ve shut down nuclear power, we’ve banned natural gas extraction, we’ve blocked pipelines,” Lawler said. “We’ve required all-electric construction.”

Lawler continued, firing back at his opponent for overlooking the fact that the increase in utility rates could be a consequence of the Democrat governor’s agenda.

“Of course, utility rates are going to go up 58% in six years under [Gov.] Kathy Hochul and her PSC [Public Service Commission] that she appointed and approved. Every single rate hike has been approved by Albany, not Washington.”

Conley and Hochul did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The general election between Lawler and Conley is scheduled for Nov. 3.

Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from an environmental case set to be argued on Monday before the Supreme Court, months after left-leaning groups accused him of a potential conflict.

In the case of Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, the question before the court involves the use of state tort laws to sue oil and gas companies for their alleged role in climate change.

“I am writing to inform the parties that Justice Alito has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case,” Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, wrote to the parties in the case on Monday. It did not provide a reason.

The case involves the Boulder, Colorado, area, but similar lawsuits were filed in states across the country.

This comes after left-leaning advocacy groups in May called for the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito’s investments in oil and gas companies. The groups in the letter included MoveOn, the Center for Progressive Reform, the Alliance for Justice, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Free Speech For People.

“We write to you to express our deep concerns about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s inconsistent history of recusals from cases from which he should be compelled to recuse under long-standing federal law, given his substantial holdings in individual oil and gas companies and other personal ties,” the May 12 letter says.

The Supreme Court’s code of conduct that was issued in November 2023 requires justices to recuse themselves from “a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

The city and county of Boulder, Colorado, sued Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, alleging that fossil fuel emissions contributed to climate change and caused injuries to residents. Earlier in litigation, a member of the legal team representing Boulder described the effort as “an indirect carbon tax.”

Justices will consider whether federal law prohibits claims under state law seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse gas emissions. Justices will also determine whether federal courts have the authority to hear such cases

America is about to find out what happens when a municipal government stops merely measuring racial disparities and instead begins organizing its decisions around them.

New York City’s Racial Equity Plan, released Sept. 1 by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, is the first citywide racial-equity framework in the Big Apple’s history. It implements a 2022 voter-approved Charter amendment requiring citywide and agency-specific racial-equity blueprints.

Under the plan, 45 agencies will examine racial outcomes across housing, employment, contracting, health, public safety, and other areas of government, touching everything from budgeting and staffing to service delivery and land use.

They will break data down by race and ethnicity, identify disparities, and use that information in shaping policies and allocating resources. Among the plan’s recurring themes are “budget reallocation” and “targeted investment,” along with directing government attention toward historically underserved communities.

As noble as all this might sound to some, the danger is that if this model spreads beyond New York, more governments could move from policing racial discrimination to trying to engineer racial outcomes, with unequal results being used as an excuse for government intervention.

To be sure, there is an obvious reason for officials to collect racial data. If a city agency is discriminating against black applicants, Latino contractors, Asian employees, or anyone else because of race, officials should know about it and put a stop to it.

But New York is going an enormous step further and making racial outcomes a measure of whether government itself is succeeding.

A key civil-rights principle has always been that government should treat people equally without regard to race. But Mamdani’s approach says that when racial groups experience different outcomes, government should try to narrow the gap.

A system designed to combat racial discrimination can therefore end up making race a permanent consideration in government itself.

That approach sits uneasily with the direction the Supreme Court has taken on race.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the 2023 ruling that struck down race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Chief Justice John Roberts quoted an earlier Supreme Court ruling saying that the “core purpose” of the Equal Protection Clause is “doing away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.”

Then he put it plainly in his own words: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

In 2007, in a case involving race-conscious public-school assignments, Roberts wrote the line that perhaps best captures his vision: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

New York’s plan does not mean that every policy adopted under it will discriminate on the basis of race or violate the Constitution. Collecting racial statistics is not the same as giving someone a benefit because of race. Nor is directing resources toward a poor neighborhood necessarily a racial classification.

But the real test comes when the numbers do not line up.

Suppose one racial group receives fewer city contracts, earns less money, or uses a particular government service less frequently than another. What happens next?

The plan says agencies should measure disparities, determine where government can make a difference, change policies that are not producing equitable outcomes, and use the core levers of government—including budgets, staffing, services, and contracting—to pursue those goals.

Here is the problem: A disparity is not proof of discrimination.

Income, education, age, immigration patterns, geography, occupation, family circumstances, and many other factors can produce different outcomes among groups. Even the city’s own plan acknowledges that racial inequities can result from complex and longstanding conditions that cannot be changed by a single agency or policy.

Once reducing disparity becomes an official measure of success, however, the pressure will be to make the numbers move. A statistical gap can begin to look like a problem that government must correct even before its causes are fully understood.

And that raises a question the plan never really answers: How much racial parity is enough?

If one group receives 10% fewer contracts, is government obliged to intervene? What about 5%? If income, hiring, or housing outcomes remain unequal after one policy change, does that justify another?

When equal outcomes become the benchmark, there is no obvious stopping point.

And that is precisely the irony that lies at the heart of New York’s experiment: A policy intended to make race matter less could end up requiring government to sort, measure, and govern people based on the criteria of race.

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

The Senate has overwhelmingly passed a bill that aims to “protect, save, and preserve college sports in America.”

The Protect College Sports Act, championed by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, would place regulations on name, image, and likeness deals, known as NIL, sets limits on athlete transfers, and ensure only college-age athletes are competing in college sports. If it becomes law, it will affect more than 500,000 college athletes playing collegiate sports in America every year

The bill passed the Senate late Monday night in a 77-22 vote. Of the 22 no votes, 19 were Democrats, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Sens. Bernie Sander, I-Vt., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky. also voted no.

Under the current NIL and transfer rules for college athletes, Cruz has described college sports as “chaos” and “the wild west.”

“Today is a monumental day for college athletics,” Cruz said upon passage of the bill. “The United States Senate voted to protect the hundreds of thousands of student athletes currently competing in college sports, the millions who will follow in their footsteps, and every college sports fan who wants to preserve this great American tradition for generations to come.”

“After years of discussions and months of intense deliberations, we achieved what many said was impossible and succeeded in getting the Protect College Sports Act through the Senate with a huge bipartisan vote,” Cruz continued.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune celebrated the passage of the bill and congratulated Cruz.

“I’m proud that the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act, which will restore stability in college athletics and ensure South Dakota’s colleges and universities can continue to provide pivotal student-athlete experiences on our campuses,” Thune wrote on social media after it passed.

“By addressing some of the largest issues in college sports today, this bill will ensure the same opportunities that were available for student-athletes like my dad and my daughter will be available for the next generation,” he said.

Previously, the Republican led bill faced conservative opposition because of language that critics claimed did not adequately keep men out of women’s sports. Senators fixed that language to protect women’s sports before Monday night’s vote.

The bill will now be sent to the House, though lawmakers of the lower chamber are not scheduled to return to Washington until after the November election. It is expected to face challenges in the House from the Congressional Black Caucus, which has announced opposition to the bill.

“I am proud of our success, and I trust the House of Representatives will remain focused on bringing stability to college sports by delivering the Protect College Sports Act to President Trump’s desk without delay,” Cruz concluded.

The bill has received support from 32 collegiate athletic conferences and more than 380 colleges and universities across the country. It has received support from the White House, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. It also has four Republican and four Democratic sponsors, including bipartisan support from the Senate Commerce Committee.

Republicans are targeting Texas’ newly drawn 35th Congressional District after redistricting shifted it in a more Republican direction.

The district includes much of the south and northeast sides of San Antonio, along with parts of Bexar, Guadalupe, Wilson, and Karnes counties.

Incumbent Democrat Greg Casar has been moved out of the district following redistricting, leaving the seat open. Casar is running in the neighboring 37th Congressional District.

Residents of the 35th District will choose between Republican Carlos De La Cruz, an Air Force veteran and brother of Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, and Democrat Johnny Garcia, a public information officer for Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.

De La Cruz has focused his campaign on border security, saying he is the “only candidate who has been deployed to the southern border.” His plans include strengthening border security by funding immigration enforcement and increasing border infrastructure, technology, and personnel.

He also has emphasized supporting parental rights, law enforcement, and veterans, barring transgender women from competing in women’s sports, and supporting a ban on members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

De La Cruz has been endorsed by President Donald Trump, Republican U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill, and the National Border Patrol Council. 

His Democrat challenger, Garcia, has branded himself as an “old-school” or “law-and-order” Democrat, who has said that “[former President Joe] Biden failed us on the border.” His border security plan includes a pathway to citizenship and a work visa based on economic needs. His campaign also says he believes Immigration and Customs Enforcement should focus on criminals. 

Garcia has also advocated for strengthening the Affordable Care Act, an Obama-era law that has been riddled with problems, including fraud and skyrocketing premiums. 

Garcia’s other plans, if elected to Congress, include opposing large data-center developments and supporting restrictions on members of Congress trading individual stocks. 

Before the congressional redistricting, the 35th district leaned heavily Democrat, with Casar winning 67% of the vote in the 2024 congressional race. Under the new boundaries, Trump would have carried the district with 54.6% of the vote in the 2024 presidential election. 

A poll conducted Aug. 27-31 by Normington Petts and sponsored by the House Majority PAC found De La Cruz and Garcia effectively tied among 500 likely voters. De La Cruz received 45% support, while Garcia received 44%. The poll had a reported margin of error of 4.4 percentage points. 

De La Cruz and Garcia did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. 

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. 

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A new Senate report highlights startling amounts of health care fraud, including a payment of almost $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to Russian fraudsters and hundreds of millions to others.

The report, which points to some of the most egregious cases out of a total of more than half a trillion in fraud, highlights more than $21 billion in bogus claims billed to the federal government. Of that, more than $3.1 billion in taxpayer money was actually paid out to these fraudsters.

“While some Americans will be fortunate enough to earn a few million dollars over a lifetime, Washington is literally making these scammers instant billionaires off the backs of the working class,” the report says. “Yet, you never hear socialists ranting about this unfair redistribution of wealth.”

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, shared the report with the Daily Signal.

“Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders famously stated, ‘billionaires shouldn’t exist,’ and wants to tax them away, while government grift and graft is making billionaires out of riffraff,” the report says. “In fact, the $500 billion the Democrats’ proposed ‘billionaire tax’ would bring in isn’t even enough to pay the total cost of the $523 billion the government gives away to fraudsters every year.”

The report notes that fraudsters are getting away with more than $1.4 billion per day, citing a 2024 Government Accountability Office study.

“While Iowans are juggling rising health care costs, billion-dollar bandits are building criminal empires by stealing from government health care programs and using the proceeds to bankroll their mansions, luxury cars, and lavish lifestyles. Democrat socialists push higher taxes and socialized medicine, while turning a blind eye to the billions in fraud,” Ernst told the Daily Signal in a statement. “I’m calling out their twisted agenda that leave taxpayers footing the bill. Let’s put these scammers in the slammer and pass my Protecting American Taxpayers Act.”

The report says that more than $100 billion is “bilked every year from Medicare and Medicaid.” It says more than $100 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits was paid to scammers over three years, between 2020 and 2023, while $1 billion is ripped off annually from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

The report references what the Justice Department called “Operation Gold Rush,” a fraud case that involved 11 individuals charged with being members of a transnational criminal organization based in Russia that allegedly orchestrated a multibillion-dollar health care fraud. They submitted requests for reimbursement to Medicare for over $10.6 billion using the stolen identities of thousands of doctors and more than a million senior citizens, and managed to get $941 million.

The report also cites Herbert Kimble, charged with billing Medicare more than $1.2 billion for body braces pushed on hundreds of thousands of seniors by foreign call centers. Of that billing, more than $200 million was paid. Kimble was arrested in the Philippines days after making the FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudster” list.

“When the socialists demand, ‘Medicare for All,’ apparently, they really mean it, even if that includes Russian mobsters and the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters,” the report says.

The report identified Brett Blackman, CEO of a health care software company, who was convicted for billing federal programs over $1 billion for unneeded equipment, with more than $450 million paid. He was convicted in May.

Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King were convicted of submitting $1 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare; TRICARE, a health care program for U.S. service members; and CHAMPVA, a health care program for spouses and children of permanently disabled veterans, and other health care programs for unnecessary wound grafts. About $615 million of the bogus claims were paid.

Brian Rowan, a wound care sales executive, is charged in connection with a $1.2 billion scheme in which about $614 million was paid.

President Donald Trump and his administration are working to lower Medicare costs by ending a double-billing process targeting seniors. The rule, set to take effect in January, is expected to significantly reduce Medicare costs by changing the way physicians charge patients for same-day exams and services.

Currently, doctors can charge Medicare recipients twice for exams during same-day services. The exam fee is called an “evaluation and management fee” and can cost more than $235.

For example, during a Medicare recipient’s standard dermatology exam, the doctor can charge the recipient twice for an exam of a mole if the removal service is performed on the same day. This is a common form of Medicare double billing among health care providers.

In a recent audit by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the Inspector General found that 42% of Medicare beneficiaries were double billed for intravitreal injections during eye exams, a recurring procedure. The same-day exam and procedure allowed the claims to bypass the system designed to prevent improper payments.

California and Florida are the top two states, with roughly 10 million Medicare beneficiaries combined, to benefit from this rule change. It is expected to take effect in January, just after the midterm election.

The proposed rule was announced in July and was open for public comment through mid-September. Now, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is evaluating the public comments and will soon announce the finalized rule.

The proposed rule suggested cutting the initial exam fee to 50% from 100% and keeping the final exam and procedure fee at the standard 100% charge. While the Trump administration has supported the rule change, Medicare providers and beneficiary associations have opposed the rule, claiming it would cause “fragmented care and reduced access for patients.”

The American Hospital Association sent a letter to Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS administrator, opposing the change on behalf of its 5,000 member hospitals.

“While we appreciate CMS’ commitment to reducing inappropriate duplication in payment under the PFS, we oppose its proposal to reduce payment by 50% when a separately identifiable office/outpatient (O/O) evaluation and management (E/M) visit is furnished on the same day as a global procedure,” the letter read.

“At a time when the Administration has prioritized improving efficiency and care coordination in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare, this proposal would result in more fragmented care and reduced access for patients,” the letter concluded.

CMS did not immediately respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.