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

Victor Davis Hanson: I’ve mentioned a couple of times that on the internet, there’s a whole genre on YouTube, I guess you would call it race wars now. It’s open. It’s just open. And we saw the WNBA. Did you see the hit on Sophie Cunningham by DiJonai? 

Jack Fowler: Well, yeah, we should get into that a little more deeply. But that immediately became a race issue. She was clotheslined by DiJonai Carrington. 

Hanson: What I didn’t understand was that here you had this player, and she was trying to stop a layup. And usually, when you want to commit a foul to stop somebody, you kind of run up behind them because they’re going to make the basket. And she did make the basket. You kind of grab their hips or something or push them a little bit, and then you incur a two-shot foul. It’s kind of an iffy thing to do because if they make the basket, they get one shot, and they can get a three-point play out of it. So you have to be very careful.

But what was strange about it was that she didn’t even make an attempt. She just went up and conked her with her elbow. I mean, conked her— 

Fowler: She clotheslined her.

Hanson: Yeah. That’s a good term. And so, my point is, what did she do afterward? They didn’t call a foul on her at first. Or they called a minor foul, and then they looked at it and said it was flagrant. And they suspended her from that game, and then she immediately, almost instantaneously, went on social media and said, “White privilege.” And I’m thinking, what does white privilege mean? You mean that you got a foul, and you’re so accustomed in the WNBA that if you’re black, you can do this and nobody will enforce it because you’re 65—you view people not as individuals but as collectives. And the league is 65% black and maybe 35% gay, and this is a little enclave that you feel is protected.

And then I thought, if you think it’s white privilege and you’re so angry, why would you culturally appropriate blond hair? She had a big blond wig. And I’m thinking, if Sophie Cunningham had had dreadlocks when she did that, they would call her a racist. So, what I’m getting at is that the whole thing is so imbalanced, and we all just don’t talk about it. Maybe it’s because half of the African American community is doing wonderfully in terms of purchasing power. They’re reaching parity, but half are not, and nobody wants to talk about that.

But when you look at this WNBA, when it was formed in 1997 until Caitlin Clark came in 2024, it had lost $20 million to $30 million a year, and more like $40 million some years.

It was a charity of the NBA.

It was a charity of the NBA, and the owners bought those cheap franchises. They bought them not for economic reasons, as we saw with the owners of the Seattle team. And what I’m getting at is that at every level, it is weaponized. You see owners weighing in and trying to harass two young girls who happened not to say anything about trans issues. They just said that we support Sophie. Then you see a coach deliberately wearing a trans jacket. Then you see players who are highly weaponized in racial and sexual-orientation terms.

And you say, the whole league is this way. And nobody knew about it because nobody cared about it. It was this little tiny eddy over here, off the river of American sports, a little side eddy. Everybody said, well, it’s women’s liberation, and we should have two basketball leagues. We know that the general public, women included, prefer to watch male basketball, but just to get them off our backs, we’ll give them $30 million or $40 million.

And they were taking buses or flying economy, and nobody said a word. Then all of a sudden, this Caitlin Clark sensation, who could hit 3-pointers from nearly half court, was amazing. She goes into this little enclave and is roughed up for being heterosexual and white. And then Sophie Cunningham, who unfortunately for the WNBA is absolutely stunning. She’s a blond, beautiful bombshell, tall, statuesque, et cetera. She protected Caitlin Clark, and suddenly you had two white people who were the objects of these flagrant fouls.

Even the referees were in the tank. They would never call it right. Even Sports Illustrated had a headline. Did you see it? Sophie Cunningham gets karma, karma, karma. In other words, she deserved that for honestly expressing an opinion about trans issues. And at some point–they don’t play in places like Florida. You can see why. The Florida attorney general already said that if they had played in Florida, he would have filed a felony assault charge for that foul on Cunningham.

They play mostly in blue areas or purple states. But it’s very funny how we have allowed a public—we’re so critical of sports. We had the whole Colin Kaepernick phenomenon, take a knee, and LeBron James lecturing us and all. Then we had this overtly racist and chauvinistic gay league, which was completely intolerant of anybody who did not fit that majority stereotype. Any minority who went in there and played well was an object of derision and attack in racist terms, and I’d say sexual orientation terms too, but reversed from the usual cause of victimhood.

And then, to top it off, Caitlin Clark, according to many economists, has brought in $1 billion in revenue, media endorsements, publicity, and all of them now are making $500,000 a year from almost nothing. They’re flying first class or on private jets. They’re all better off. And how do they look at that? They keep trying to injure this woman because they hate her more than the self-benefit.

So, where did they get that? Where did that idea come from?

And the idea, I should define it, is that you should look at people in racial terms, number one. And No. 2, if you act overtly racist, whether you say the N-word or you go after and try to hurt somebody, you will be protected if you can qualify as a victim on the Marxist binary of oppressed and oppressor.

We’re free to do anything we want as long as we’re a victim and we can prove it. That’s how sick the whole thing has become. What was in the mind of a coach who thought, “I’m going to go across there, and I’m going to harass these two young girls for having a ‘Support Sophie’ sign”? Co-owner of the team.

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

Democrats, activist groups, and medical associations have long cited the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care as the ultimate authority on a scientific “consensus” for sex-rejecting procedures, but WPATH just made an admission in court that threatens to undermine that exalted authority.

The Federal Trade Commission and four state attorneys general sued WPATH in June, alleging that the association engaged in deceptive practices by promoting “gender-affirming care” that causes harm to patients, particularly minors who cannot provide informed consent. Late last month, WPATH urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that the government was retaliating because it disagreed with the association’s protected speech.

The association defended its Standards of Care as “opinion” protected by the First Amendment on subjects considering “medical and scientific uncertainty” in a debate with more than one reasonable position. The group also cited a Supreme Court ruling that upheld state laws forbidding “gender-affirming care“—a decision WPATH itself has loudly condemned in the past.

Admitting WPATH’s ‘Opinion’

In its case against WPATH, the Federal Trade Commission presented “core deceptive statements” based on the eighth edition of WPATH’s Standards of Care, claiming that these statements mislead consumers into self-harm. The association claims that those statements “are non-actionable opinions about subjects on which there is ‘medical and scientific uncertainty.'”

The association claims that the statements are not the kind of claims that the FTC is designed to regulate. The motion cites appellate precedent stating that “a challenged statement must make a specific and measurable claim, capable of being proved false or of being reasonably interpreted as a statement of objective fact.”

Yet, if the newest edition of the standards of care is not “reasonably interpreted as a statement of objective fact,” that should undercut the medical groups—such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association—that treat the standards as gospel when it comes to transgender “care.”

‘Medical and Scientific Uncertainty’

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that states had the right to ban sex-rejecting procedures for minors in the case U.S. v. Skrmetti. WPATH loudly condemned the decision, calling it “a dangerous setback for transgender health and human rights in the United States.”

Yet WPATH repeatedly cited the Skrmetti decision in its motion to dismiss the FTC complaint.

“The Supreme Court has recently addressed the ‘medical and scientific uncertainty’ regarding transgender health care for minors and concluded that it ‘underscore[s] the need’ for states to have ‘legislative flexibility,'” the motion states, citing Skrmetti. “The FTC cannot erase that ‘flexibility’ by declaring deceptive certain statements about care that states not only permit but deem necessary.”

WPATH opposed state restrictions on sex-rejecting procedures when Republican legislatures enacted them. Now, citing Skrmetti, it is arguing that states do have the right to make their own laws on these procedures. Whatever the legal merits of this argument, it marks a significant rhetorical shift.

Acknowledging the Other Side

The transgender movement has been notorious for demonizing its opposition. Groups like the Human Rights Campaign have suggested that disagreement with transgender ideology contributes to suicide, and social media companies have silenced critics for similar reasons.

Now, the transgender movement’s sainted authority on medical issues is effectively admitting that there is more than one position on the issue—and telling a court that preserving open debate on transgender “health care” is a public good.

The FTC and state attorneys general “acknowledge that there are parties on both sides of this medical debate,” WPATH wrote in the filing. “WPATH is on one side of that debate and provides guidelines on how to best provide transgender health care. Others, such as Dr. Hilary Cass, fall on the other side of the debate and disagree with how to, or if one should, provide transgender health care to adolescents.”

The government agencies are “now improperly attempting to insert themselves into the middle of this medical debate and silence those with whom they disagree,” the association stated.

WPATH even begrudgingly admits the validity of the Department of Health and Human Services’ 400-page peer-reviewed report finding “extremely weak evidence” of any benefit for “gender-affirming care” for minors. “The federal government has thus already alerted doctors and the public to what it views as the problems with WPATH’s speech,” the association wrote. “That is the exact remedy the First Amendment envisions: ‘the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth.'”

Ramifications for WPATH

WPATH has presented cogent arguments here, but it remains to be seen whether the court will dismiss the case. Regardless, the transgender group may have significantly weakened its credibility.

Its argument may help it defeat the FTC lawsuit. Yet, in making that argument, the organization has weakened one of its most powerful rhetorical claims: that its Standards of Care represent an unquestionable scientific consensus.

Between falling birth rates, net out-migration, and the aftermath of COVID-19, California is running out of students.

According to a recent Public Policy Institute of California report, K-12 enrollment statewide has dropped 8% since 2015 and is expected to continue declining over the next decade.

Julien Lafortune, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, told the Daily Signal that the decline has been substantial.

“A decade ago, [California had] 6.2 million students. Now, this past year is just about 5.7 million students. That’s almost half a million fewer students in public K-12.”

Lafortune described the demographic shift as “almost like a cascade,” with each successive group of children entering California schools smaller than the one before it.

For California teachers, the enrollment decline is more than just a statistic.

One Southern California elementary school teacher who chose to remain anonymous told the Daily Signal that she was personally affected by the shift after being switched from kindergarten to a higher grade at the last minute due to low enrollment.

“From my perspective, I think part of what we’re seeing is that fewer young people are having children, especially with the cost of living and housing prices being so high. There also seems to be a shift in priorities among people in their 20s, where many are choosing to focus on themselves, travel, careers, and enjoying their 20s before starting a family. That eventually translates into fewer 5-year-olds entering elementary schools.”

The Southern California teacher also said she believes concerns among some parents about politics in the classroom have led them to consider alternatives, including homeschooling or moving out of state.

“Overall, I think the combination of fewer births and changing attitudes toward family and education is going to continue having a noticeable impact on elementary school enrollment,” the elementary school teacher said.

In another Public Policy Institute of California report, “Examining Trends in California’s Birth Rates,” Lafortune and his co-authors found that California’s fertility rate has fallen well below the level needed for a population to replace itself.

“The total fertility rate in California has dropped from 2.21 children per woman in 2007 to 1.48 in 2023, well below the replacement level of 2.1 necessary to keep a population from declining.”

Migration has also played a role. Nearly 10 million Californians have moved to other states since 2010, and California currently has the nation’s largest net domestic outflow.

The implications extend beyond California schools facing potential downsizing. A shrinking younger population could eventually mean fewer workers supporting a growing older population, potentially straining the state’s economy and contributing to labor shortages.

If California’s population continues to lag behind growth in other states, Lafortune said, the state could eventually lose congressional representation.

And Lafortune does not expect the trend to reverse anytime soon.

“A lot of this is slow-moving and continuous, and I think with the declines in birth rates that we’ve seen, it’s definitely not something that looks like it’s going to reverse.”

“This is kind of a new reality for a lot of school districts,” Lafortune said, “just managing the fact that … next year there’ll be even fewer kids.”

A conservative watchdog group called for a federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling upholding the conviction of Peter Navarro, one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers in both his first and second terms.

The Oversight Project filed an amicus brief late Tuesday in Navarro’s appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Navarro spent four months in prison on a contempt of Congress conviction stemming from his defiance of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack. Navarro, who pushed a plan to delay certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, argued he had executive privilege in his role as a presidential adviser, and a separate branch of government could not compel him to share documents and testify about his actions.

The Oversight Project filed an amicus brief late Tuesday in Navarro’s appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Navarro spent four months in prison on a contempt of Congress conviction for his defiance of a congressional subpoena. Navarro, who was subpoenaed to testify about his plan to delay certification of the 2020 election, argued he had executive privilege in his role as a presidential adviser.

In July, a three-judge panel of two Barack Obama appointees and one Joe Biden appointee on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed his conviction. Navarro then asked for a rehearing, and the Oversight Project supported his appeal.

“This case is about separation of powers and a huge ambiguity in a federal criminal statute weaponized during the Biden administration,” Oversight Project Director of Litigation Jeff Clark said in a statement.

The separation of powers argument contends that a presidential adviser should have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality from another branch of government for his counsel.

Navarro was arrested at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in June 2022 on the contempt of Congress charge, as he was leaving for a speaking engagement in Nashville. Clark noted that Navarro was imprisoned “without being able to present to the jury any defense based on his good-faith belief that President Trump had invoked executive privilege to protect the candid counsel he received from Dr. Navarro.”

“This court should grant rehearing en banc to address the exceptionally important issues we lay out,” Clark added.

After Trump disputed Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, Navarro wrote a report called “The Green Bay Sweep” that argued then-Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, could delay certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021, under the Electoral Count Act.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack subpoenaed Navarro for material related to his report. He responded to the committee that his advice to the president was protected.

The D.C. appeals court held that “privilege must be claimed by the President (current or former) or an official authorized by the President to claim it.”

The Oversight Project’s amicus brief, first shared with the Daily Signal, says, “This case presents a question of exceptional importance that the en banc Court alone can resolve: whether a citizen may be branded a federal criminal for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena when he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that his conduct was unlawful.”

Oversight Project President Mike Howell said, “Leave no MAGA behind,” referring to the defense of those who claimed they were targets of a politically weaponized justice system during the Biden administration.

“We will never forget what they did to our people and will do again if they get the chance,” Howell said.

The Los Angeles City Council has reversed course on a ballot measure that would have asked voters in the nation’s second-largest city to decide whether noncitizens may vote in city and school board elections. However, this news isn’t as simple as it might seem.

The motion’s author, Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, said that he authored the motion for noncitizen voting because groups that represent illegal aliens asked him to do so, but then he had second thoughts when his own black constituents pushed back.

Soto-Martinez said he hasn’t had a change of heart, but that “more work needed to be done before the issue is presented to voters.” Translation: He thinks he just has a PR problem.

Councilwoman Traci Park initially voted for the measure but changed her mind. “My concern here is that if this goes to the ballot, the voters won’t really know what they are voting for,” she said, “because we don’t really know either.”

The original motion passed 10-5—only to be reversed by a 14-0 vote. Was the unanimous change of heart the product of the realization that they hadn’t done their due diligence, or was it because they had been caught in the act by a suddenly attentive nation? Only the council members know for sure.

It is clear that the plan to let noncitizens vote legally in Los Angeles is not going away. This bad idea will be back, and with better marketing. The funny thing about bad ideas is that they tend to spread. How long will it be before the California Legislature decides to legalize noncitizen voting for state elections? 

Such a controversial idea has already been attempted legislatively in Connecticut and New York. While the Los Angeles ballot measure was pulled because of the fear that voters would not approve it in November, the California Legislature could legalize noncitizen voting for state elections on its own tomorrow, if it wanted to, without having to ask the voters for approval. 

What most people fail to realize is that noncitizen voting in California wouldn’t stay in California. The U.S. Constitution, in Article 1, Section 2 and the 17th Amendment, ties voter eligibility for congressional elections to voter eligibility in state legislative elections, and Congress affects everybody. If noncitizens are eligible to vote for the state legislature, they are also eligible to vote for members of Congress, and there isn’t a state or federal statute that can alter that fact. It’s in the Constitution and has been since 1789, which is how noncitizens were able to legally vote in local, state, and federal elections for the first half of our nation’s history. 

Only an amendment to the U.S. Constitution can insulate the rest of the country from one state deciding to legalize noncitizen voting.

House Joint Resolution 152, sponsored by Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., is that constitutional amendment. This resolution would amend the United States Constitution to specify that only American citizens may vote in elections for federal office. The amendment would ensure a uniform franchise nationwide, and it would prevent any single state from undermining our representative democracy by allowing noncitizens to vote for members of Congress or the president.

 Supporters of noncitizen voting believe that the noncitizens in our communities should be able to participate in the democratic process.

I am an immigrant. When I wanted to participate in the democratic process, I became a citizen. We should require citizenship as the bare minimum for participating in elections—especially federal ones.

At a time when our nation is celebrating its 250th birthday, I can’t think of a better way to mark this milestone than to pass an amendment for citizen-only voting. The amendment would strengthen our representative democracy, highlight the value of citizenship, and protect federal elections from the actions of one state. Congress should pass HJR 152 without delay.

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

Many politicians dedicate their entire lives to making it to the shining city of Washington, D.C. But that initial glow can fade. Representatives often realize they would rather return to their families and communities and serve in the towns and states they will always call home.

After 10 years in Congress, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., will be giving up his safe House seat in the hopes of serving his home state of Arizona, where the congressman is now the Republican nominee for governor.

In his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs, Biggs’ campaign has doubled down on the issues that animated Arizona Republicans in 2024: immigration, election integrity, and affordability. Following a series of losses in statewide races for Arizona Republicans, Biggs is hoping to buck the trend and spoke to the Daily Signal about his platform.

Arizona’s Election Integrity Concerns

As Republicans in Washington struggle to pass the SAVE America Act, an election integrity measure that would require voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote, Biggs wants Arizona to take election integrity matters into its own hands.

“We want to pass the Florida-style election integrity bill and get that signed very quickly,” Biggs told the Daily Signal.

The Florida SAVE Act, which Biggs calls the “gold standard” of election integrity, increases verification processes for U.S. citizenship, removes noncitizens from voter rolls, and requires the use of paper ballots to vote.

Biggs claimed Arizona has a reputation for insecure elections. Its current election laws, Biggs claims, create loopholes that allow noncitizens to register to vote in federal elections. If an individual attests to being a citizen but cannot provide proof of citizenship, Arizona registers the individual as a “federal-only” voter until the person can verify citizenship documents and vote a “full ballot” in all federal, state, and local elections.

And that’s if the system works properly. Two years ago, county election officials uncovered 98,000 individuals who could not prove their citizenship and were mistakenly given a “full ballot.” Yet Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled they could remain on the voter rolls.

“On that federal-only ballot, which impacts presidents, U.S. senators, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the [Arizona] Supreme Court said we have no jurisdiction over the date, time, and manner of that,” Biggs told the Daily Signal. “So that’s why the Save America Act is so critical for us, and I keep pitching it to my colleagues in D.C. They’re not listening, though.”

While in Washington, Biggs has introduced or co-sponsored major pieces of election integrity legislation. He is a co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act and also introduced the Voter Integrity Protection Act in 2025 to increase penalties for illegal immigrants who vote in federal elections.

Border Security Still Top of Mind

Biggs has also been a staunch advocate of border security and recognizes that secure borders are tied to secure elections.

Biggs currently serves as co-chair of the Congressional Border Security Caucus and has introduced multiple border security bills to “reverse the Biden-Harris regime’s disastrous open-border policies” that led to high levels of illegal immigration in the state.

In 2023, Phoenix’s illegal immigrant population reached 225,000, fueling concerns that noncitizens could be registering to vote if recent revelations in other states apply to Arizona. The Department of Homeland Security has identified more than 250,000 potential noncitizens who illegally registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

Biggs has cultivated strong relationships with border enforcement officials such as White House border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whom he plans to work with to enforce immigration laws in Arizona.

“The first thing that we’ll do is we will reinstitute and refund the Border Security Task Force,” Biggs told the Daily Signal. “That will actually get everybody back into the 287(g) Program.”

The Border Security Task Force targets transnational criminal organizations and includes the 287(g) Program, which allows local jails, task forces, and warrant service officers to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Biggs plans to focus these programs on parts of the Arizona-Mexico border that are still open and secure the final stretches that remain vulnerable.

Affordability in Arizona?

One of the main narratives shaping the 2026 midterms is the affordability of everyday goods, and that’s especially the case in the Grand Canyon State.

If elected governor, Biggs would inherit the 45th-worst state in affordability, according to the Common Sense Institute. The report shows that after taxes and necessary expenses, the average Arizonan has less than 20% of his or her gross income remaining. Home prices in the state have more than doubled in the past decade.

Biggs believes prices can be brought down by fighting state government corruption.

“We are going to DOGE the heck out of our state, clean it up, clean it up of corruption, clean it up of fraud,” Biggs told the Daily Signal. “We’re gonna prosecute fraudsters, and we’re gonna save the state untold billions of dollars.”

Though many Republicans are expecting to take hits on the issue of affordability, Biggs thinks he can flip the script on his Democrat opponent.

Hobbs’ financial management of the state has long come under attack from Republicans. Recently, Republicans criticized her original fiscal year 2027 budget for its reliance on “fantasy revenue” from unpredictable data center growth and $760 million in grants from the federal government that are not guaranteed.

Meanwhile, utility costs have risen by 27% under Hobbs, who has vetoed legislation designed to curb rising rates. For example, Hobbs vetoed House Bill 2113 in June that would have allowed taxpayers to use Arizona’s residential customer advocate when faced with a 100% or greater increase in utility rates. Hobbs has blamed rising costs on President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, both of which are national issues.

Hobbs’ campaign did not respond to two email requests for comment by the time of publication.

A Friend of Charlie Kirk

Biggs’ run for governor has drawn endorsements from major political figures such as Trump and Vice President JD Vance, yet one endorsement from a close friend stands out. The late Charlie Kirk, founder of Phoenix-based Turning Point USA, officially endorsed Biggs in May 2025 on an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

“We are fully endorsing my friend, Andy Biggs,” Kirk said. “We are behind you 100%, and we’re excited to make you the next governor of the state of Arizona.”

Biggs was one of the last people Kirk endorsed before his assassination, which shook the nation on Sept. 10, 2025.

Kirk had anticipated celebrating his friend’s win on election night.

“On election night in 2026, which feels like a long time away, but boy, it’s going to be here just like this, we are going to be celebrating that my friend Andy Biggs is the next governor,” Kirk told a crowd of Arizonans.

Biggs hopes to pay homage to his late friend by erecting a statue in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. He has introduced H.Res. 842 “to honor his enduring legacy of free expression, civic leadership, and unwavering commitment to the American principles of faith, family, and freedom.” If Congress fails to pass the bill, Biggs hopes to erect a statue of Kirk in Arizona.

“If Congress doesn’t place the statue that I’ve introduced legislation for, then I would love for that statue to go here in Arizona,” Biggs told the Daily Signal.

Incumbent Gov. Hobbs vetoed two pieces of legislation earlier this year that would have renamed a state highway after Kirk and created a specialty license plate in his honor because it would have inserted “politics into a function of government that should remain nonpartisan.”

Backed by Kirk and Turning Point Action, Biggs now enters the final three months of a gubernatorial race that could be a barometer for how swing states are feeling two years into the Trump presidency and two years away from another critical presidential election.

U.S. consumer prices increased slightly in July, potentially weakening the argument for an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve next month.

The consumer price index edged up 0.1% last month after dropping 0.4% in June, which was the first decline in six years, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Wednesday.

In the 12 months through July, the index advanced 3.4% after rising 3.5% in June. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the index gained 0.2% last month after being unchanged in June. The so-called core consumer price index increased 2.5% in the 12 months through July after climbing 2.6% in June. 

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the consume price index rebounding 0.1% and core inflation rising 0.2% over the month.

The U.S. central bank tracks the personal consumption expenditures price indexes for its 2% inflation target. 

The consumer price index report followed news last week of surprise job losses last month. Prior to the report, financial markets saw a roughly 46% chance of a rate hike at the Fed’s Sept. 15-16 policy meeting, CME’s FedWatch tool showed. 

Policymakers will still get August’s consumer price index and employment reports before that meeting. Economists expect the pace of consumer price increases to pick up in August, reflecting the recent increase in oil prices. Job growth is also expected to rebound as seasonal distortions fade.

The Fed last month left its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range. 

The United States’ position as a net oil exporter and the drawing down of petroleum inventories had cushioned the hit on the economy from the oil price shock sparked by the Middle East conflict, but some economists said that could not persist indefinitely. They also added that the U.S. and other nations would at some point need to replenish petroleum inventories, which would keep oil prices elevated.

President Donald Trump accused Iran of being “devious negotiators” in an interview released late on Monday and described some of his ​current options in the war—”just bop along” and let Tehran fail ‌economically or hit it “really, really hard.”

While July’s cooler inflation readings could further temper rate hike expectations, they would likely be of little comfort to consumers, with wages not keeping up with prices.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Chizu Nomiyama)

Democratic Socialists of America member and Wisconsin state legislator Francesca Hong has lost the Democrat nomination to be the state’s gubernatorial candidate.

In Tuesday night’s Wisconsin Democrat gubernatorial primary, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was declared the victor by the Associated Press early Wednesday morning at 3:34 a.m. EDT, capturing 39.8% of the vote to state Rep. Hong’s 39.4%.

“Now, David is focused on bringing people together, earning the support of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and anyone who believes Wisconsin is at its best when we work together and deliver results,” Garren Randolph, Crowley’s campaign manager, said in a statement.

The primary matchup was the latest test of whether centrist Democrats can maintain control of the party against a resurgent progressive wing. Crowley, backed by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, will face Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., on the ballot in November.

Crowley’s Race

Throughout the campaign, Crowley emphasized his experience as a state legislator and was considered the establishment candidate.

Crowley, who served in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 2017 to 2020 before working as a county executive, worked to pass Wisconsin Act 12, a piece of legislation that reformed state and local revenue sharing. As county executive, he signed the largest property tax cut in Milwaukee County history.

On the trail, Crowley focused on expanding childcare, backed electoral redistricting, and pushed for universal early childhood education.

Aside from the Evers endorsement, Crowley earned the support of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council. He also had the support of Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., whip of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Hong’s Battle

Leading up to the primary, Hong campaigned on a wide range of issues, such as universal childcare, gender-affirming care, increased rental regulations, and “taxing the rich.”

Hong has also called for fully abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and giving illegal aliens government-issued IDs, as well as in-state college tuition, and supported the idea of creating taxpayer-funded grocery stores while abolishing taxes imposed on unions.

Other policies Hong supports include abolishing life sentences for juveniles, legalizing marijuana, and enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.

On the campaign trail, Hong has received pushback on previous statements ranging from “defund the police” to her thoughts on Thanksgiving.

“I support defunding the police as a first step to abolishing them,” Hong previously wrote on X.

She has since disavowed those comments, saying that she’s “not running to defund the police,” and has campaigned on policies to increase public housing and health care and turn empty parking lots into public spaces as a solution to drive down the crime rate.

In November of 2020, Hong urged her followers on X not to “gather” on Thanksgiving, which she referred to as a “colonizer holiday.”

“Please DON’T gather for the colonizer holiday,” she wrote.

In February 2022, she wrote, “As if we weren’t invisible enough to those who don’t recognize the emotional & physical labor of service work, the worst of humanity comes out from folks ‘celebrating’ on another day capitalism tells you how to show love.”

Last week, however, Hong told Politico in an interview that she does not want to actually cancel Thanksgiving.

“I don’t want to cancel it,” Hong said. “I actually love it.”

Hong courted endorsements from the far left, with notable examples being Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and far-left social media influencer Hasan Piker.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Argentina has signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, joining a U.S.-led coalition of 40 countries that declare there is no international right to abortion.

Led by Javier Milei, Argentina is the first country to join the coalition while the United States is serving as secretariat. The U.S. assumed the position of secretariat in June, replacing Hungary.

“The United States is so grateful for the friendship we share with Argentina, and we are thrilled to welcome your nation as a signatory to the Geneva Consensus Declaration,” Bethany Kozma, director of Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said at the signing ceremony in Argentina.

The Geneva Consensus Declaration “seeks to expand health and thriving for women, and protect the sovereign right of nations to support health, life, and family through national policy and legislation.” 

The declaration was established under the first Trump administration with the U.S. as secretariat, but the Biden administration left the coalition of pro-life countries. The U.S. rejoined after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, and the departments of Health and Human Services and State jointly lead the administration’s effort with the HHS Office of Global Affairs housing the secretariat.

Kozma told the Daily Signal it’s “amazing” for the U.S. to once again lead the coalition and to celebrate Argentina’s membership.

“It will help families become stronger, safer, and more prosperous,” she said, “and we need to focus on families as a fundamental unit of society, and that is what’s going to help economies and countries thrive and succeed.”

While Kozma says many countries have pushed anti-family ideology, the Geneva Consensus Declaration seeks to acknowledge families as the building blocks of society.

“Other countries have been pushing, including the United States under the Biden administration, a far-left woke ideology that is anti-family, anti-religion,” she said. “Because of this woke, globalist idea of trying to invoke other countries’ ideologies on other countries, the GCD is a tool that we can use to bring countries together to stand up.”

She said the document would help increase declining birth rates and rid society of the demand for abortion.

“If you support the family, there’s no need for abortion,” she said, “and then you will have thriving societies.”

Kozma is hopeful more countries will join the coalition.

“I expect that countries will see Argentina is a leader in the Western Hemisphere,” she said, “and I hopeful that other countries will race to see who will be the next country to sign on.”

A new special committee tasked with instituting rules for Georgia’s next “system of election equipment” met Friday at the state Capitol to create a new voting tabulation method in time for the 2028 elections.

The task of the Election Equipment Specifications and Standards Committee comes following the Legislature’s prior direction to abolish the state’s QR code system for vote tabulation. While legislators previously faced a deadline to retire the QR codes last month, that deadline was extended to 2028, when the state will be required to tally votes using text that is readable to humans, not merely machines.

The meeting last week was primarily logistical in nature. Deidre Holden, the Paulding County Elections and Voter Registration director and a special committee member, told the Daily Signal that the meeting held on Friday “was to set dates for future meetings and go over committee rules.”

The purpose of the committee is “to prepare recommendations for specifications and standards for a uniform system,” she added.

State Sen. Max Burns, a Sylvania Republican, sponsored the legislation that established the committee. His bill, SB 3EX, was a result of the special session this summer.

When asked about testing voting equipment and software, state Rep. Victor Anderson, co-chair of the committee, told the Daily Signal that the members are “soliciting input from cybersecurity experts, auditing experts, accessibility experts, and many others in order to prepare recommended specifications and standards.”

Dr. Janice Johnston, a former member of the State Election Board, said the work is important for ensuring election integrity.

“According to reports from the intelligence community that President [Donald] Trump recently provided, voter registration databases have been compromised by foreign adversaries and local data breaches,” she told the Daily Signal.

Johnston said that hand-marked paper ballots “are voter verifiable, which is consistent with federal and state law in addition to being available for forensic audit.”

“Paper poll books would prevent realtime manipulation of electronic voter rolls or post-election manipulation of voter databases,” she added.

Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, said Friday’s presentation on the procurement process “was significant.”

“The committee is going to have to determine a method to ensure that the voting system produces the correct results,” he said.

Favorito added that publicly recorded hand counts are a good method for ensuring election integrity as “that eliminates so much cost and security risk.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is once again using a big corporation as an easy target in a scheme that will likely make New York City more unaffordable, not less.

On Monday, the socialist mayor announced the so-called Delivery Protection Act—which received significant union backing—that will allegedly be used to “rein in the power of corporate delivery giants like Amazon, hold them accountable for their exploitative business model and make New York City’s streets safer for workers, drivers and pedestrians.”

The policy will apparently create “a licensing system for certain last-mile warehouses and distribution facilities while establishing new safety, training and labor standards.”

Like so many other Mamdani policies, this one was announced with a slick video.

“If it looks like an Amazon delivery and drives like an Amazon delivery, then it’s an Amazon delivery, right? Not according to Amazon,” Mamdani wrote in his X post attached to the video. “Big companies like Amazon have built a vast network of subcontractors who deliver their packages while shielding them from accountability. It leaves our workers unprotected and our streets less safe. It’s time for a change.”

This isn’t the first time Mamdani has gone after Amazon.

Just last week he hit the online retailer and a host of other companies with a cease-and-desist order over selling e-bikes. Mamdani didn’t want to deal with the problem of rapidly increasing pedestrian deaths by holding reckless, lawbreaking e-bike riders accountable.

That would be unfair.

Instead, he went after those supposedly greedy businesses and made it just a bit harder for law abiding people in the city to get an e-bike.

Much like the e-bike idea, the crackdown on Amazon’s subcontractors—because that’s ultimately what this is—will likely hurt more people than it will help.

The New York Post has done a good job of explaining why squeezing out Amazon’s subcontractors is so misguided. The Post noted in April that in New York City, Amazon relies on “more than 40 subcontractors who employ some 5,000 workers to drive Amazon’s branded vans and e-bikes across the city.”

Those small businesses aren’t happy.

“I would be shutting my business down. I have no business,” Rudy Cazares, an Amazon delivery partner, said of the law in an interview with the New York Post on Monday.

Those small businesses are in deep trouble, not that Mamdani and friends seem to care. But it isn’t clear that this will provide much of a benefit to the workers who, in many cases, will simply be out of a job.

I’m not going to cry for Amazon here; the big megacorporation will almost certainly adapt.

An Amazon spokeswoman, Kelly Nantel, said to Business Insider that the legislation would make it less likely the company would stay committed to hiring local workers through their subcontractors.

“As written, this legislation would directly undermine that commitment—threatening the small businesses that deliver to customers, putting the jobs of more than 5,000 of their employees at risk and forcing us to consider relocating delivery operations outside of the city,” she said.

It’s not hard to figure out how that will hurt Amazon customers.

Deliveries will suddenly take longer and will be more expensive as the logistical machine Amazon built untangles and adapts to the suboptimal conditions. I’m guessing this will come as a bit of a shock to city dwellers.

As Manhattan Institute scholar Daniel Di Martino noted on X, there’ll be more than a few Mamdani voters who will get quite a shock on that front.

Sure, it would be great to improve pay and safety for workers in the city. But it likely won’t even do that, according to City Journal reporter Adam Louis Sebastian Lehodey.

“Neither Amazon Delivery Partners’ nor other companies’ work conditions are particularly egregious,” he wrote in May. “Besides creating pathways for delivery employees to become entrepreneurs in their own right, wages average $24 per hour, and all Delivery Partners are required to offer healthcare to employees.”

By forcing deliveries to come from outside New York City, workers will spend more time navigating the long roads in rather than the local neighborhoods. Is that really going to make them safer?

The bottom line is that the law’s benefits seem marginal at best, its downsides are negative in the aggregate and acute for many small businesses and their employees. That’s hardly another big win for the “affordability” that Mamdani promised.

In 2008, Fort Myers police officer Andrew Widman was shot in the face and killed on a downtown street. He was a husband and father of three, and he never had the chance to draw his weapon.

The man who killed him, Abel Arango, was an armed robber already ordered removed from the country. Cuba refused to take him back, and so, under the rule this bill is written to fix, he was released into the community that later buried Widman. That release did not hinge on anything Arango did in custody. It hinged on a decision made in Havana.

This is not a unique event. Look to San Francisco in 2012, where Binh Thai Luc murdered five members of one family in their home. He too had been ordered removed. Vietnam refused to issue travel documents, the clock ran out, and he was released.

Two cities, two refusing regimes, the same outcome. When a foreign government will not accept its own national, current American law does the releasing on its behalf.

That is the loophole in one sentence, and several U.S. senators are working to close it. The people attacking this fix never state the nature of the loophole plainly. They prefer to shout about supposed indefinite detention and wave around Zadvydas v. Davis, the 2001 case they clearly have not read.

The court did not order anyone released after six months. It read a reasonableness limit into a statute that was silent on prolonged custody, in order to avoid a constitutional question, and set six months as presumptively reasonable. After that, an alien wins release only by showing no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, and even then the government may rebut it.

The holding rested on statutory silence, and the court said plainly that clearer authority from Congress would change the analysis.

That clearer authority now has a name. The Keep Our Communities Safe Act of 2026, introduced in August by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and a dozen colleagues, is the latest version of a fix reformers have pressed for more than a decade.

Under current law, once the six-month Zadvydas clock runs out, a removable criminal alien whose home country will not take him back must generally be released, no matter what he did. The bill amends Sections 236 and 241 of the Immigration and Nationality Act so that release is no longer the automatic default. It lets the Department of Homeland Security hold a defined set of dangerous cases past six months—aggravated felons, perpetrators of violent crimes, national security threats, and those sabotaging their own removal—and it pairs that authority with individualized review and a requirement that the government justify the hold. It authorizes holding the worst of them while removal is worked out, not locking people away and forgetting them.

Look hard at who the current system rewards. The trigger for release is not the alien’s behavior. It is a foreign government’s refusal to cooperate. The more a regime stonewalls, the faster its nationals walk free onto American streets. Cuba, China, and Vietnam figured this out long ago. Refuse the paperwork, run out the clock, and the U.S. empties the cell for you. We built a machine that punishes cooperative countries and rewards the least cooperative regimes on earth, and the bill gets paid by people like Andrew Widman’s children.

None of this is inevitable. Congress built a tool for this problem into the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1952 and broadened it in 1996. Under INA 243(d), once the secretary of homeland security notifies the State Department that a country is refusing to take back its nationals, the State Department can halt visa issuance to that country’s nationals until it cooperates.

This tool has historically been used sparingly, but it works. After the government applied it in 2017, Sierra Leone moved off the recalcitrant list into the cooperative column. A regime that will ignore a deportation order still notices when its officials and elites can no longer get visas. Detention reform and visa sanctions are two halves of the same answer.

The due process objection collapses the moment you examine what the bill actually does. This is civil detention, not criminal punishment, and it is not the lifelong confinement some headlines claim.

Zadvydas faulted a statute that was silent, that set no standards for prolonged custody. This bill is the opposite of silence. It names the categories, builds in individualized review, and makes the government carry the burden. In Demore v. Kim, the Supreme Court upheld civil immigration detention during removal as regulatory rather than punitive, and in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, it held that the post-order statute carries no hidden requirement of a fresh bond hearing every few months.

So strip away the theater. Under the status quo, a violent offender’s release turns on the goodwill of the regime he fled. This bill takes that decision away from Havana and Hanoi and hands it back to the U.S.

If you believe Widman’s killer earned his freedom because Cuba said “no,” stand up and defend that out loud. Everyone else already understands why this loophole needs to be closed.

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

The Supreme Court in November will hear the case of a Catholic school excluded from Colorado’s universal preschool program over its views on LGBTQ issues.

On Tuesday, the high court released its calendar of arguments for November that includes the case of St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, scheduled for Nov. 3. The calendar also includes a case about whether an inmate can sue a prison official, an affirmative action lawsuit, and a death row case.

St. Mary’s Catholic Parish preschool in Littleton, Colorado, has argued its exclusion from the state’s universal preschool program violates the First Amendment’s protection against religious discrimination. The state requires schools to admit LGBTQ-identifying children and the children of LGBTQ-identifying parents.

A district court and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Colorado, citing the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith that the state’s rules were neutral and applied to every preschool without distinction. In the 1990 precedent, the Supreme Court allowed Oregon to exclude a Native American man from receiving unemployment benefits because he had consumed the hallucinogen peyote, which he claimed was part of his religious practice.

Congress then passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which requires strict scrutiny for laws restricting religious freedom.

The plaintiffs in the case are two Catholic parishes, two Catholic parents, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. The defendant is Lisa Roy, executive director of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood.

Plaintiffs are citing the 2012 case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the 2025 case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. In the first case, the Supreme Court upheld the freedom of churches to hire and fire ministers; in the second case, the court’s preliminary injunction allowed parents to opt their children out of reading explicit school books with gender and sexual content.

Plaintiffs also note that two federal appeals courts and two state supreme courts have ruled differently from the 10th Circuit on the same question.

The state has argued in its response that the parish seeks “an exemption from this law to allow them to receive public funding while turning away preschoolers because of their, or their parents’, gender identity or sexual orientation.”

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is recommending a performance-based funding model for Texas public universities and colleges that would prioritize measurable, student-focused outcomes.

According to the new funding plan, the formula would calculate funding based on measurable, student-focused outcomes “that align with Texas’ strategic plan for higher education and state and regional workforce needs.”

The board states that the performance-based funding plan would not replace the current model but would serve as an additional factor.

Thomas Lindsay, policy director for the Higher Education and Next Generation Texas initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told the Daily Signal that the new method is an improvement over the current system.

“A system that at least asks whether students finish something of real intellectual substance is better than one that ignores results entirely,” said Lindsay. “The core recommended model is a clear improvement in that direction—it rightly rewards completion and real student progress rather than mere enrollment.”

Another aspect of the funding plan includes 60% of new funding being tied to the number of students who earn a “credential of value,” which the board defines as a “a degree that leads to a return on investment for students because increased earnings exceed the cost of education.”

The board notes in its proposal that all bachelor’s degrees obtained at a public college meet the standard of the “credential of value” and that the “focus is on building career-ready proficiency that meets Texas’ workforce needs.”

Based on the board’s findings, high-demand occupations in the state include agricultural business and management, veterinary and animal health technologies and technicians, computer programming, and preschool, elementary, middle, secondary, and special education teachers. 

The other 40% of funding from the new plan would go toward students’ academic progression and persistence. Under the proposal, the board would track students who “reach the 30-, 60-, and 90-credit-hour milestones. The 30-hour milestone receives the highest funding rate due to higher initial investment in student success.”

Public universities would also be rewarded for keeping students enrolled from fall to fall, but that funding would be capped at 25% to discourage longer graduation timelines.

Lindsay says the Texas Public Policy Foundation “approves of incentives for actual completion over pure enrollment funding,” but said the proposal could be strengthened by pairing performance incentives with clearer expectations around civics education.

“Survey after survey demonstrates that even college graduates suffer from civic illiteracy—with one study showing that only 23% of native-born Texans, under the age of 45, can pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. In contrast, 90% of immigrants to this country pass the test the first time,” Lindsay said. “Our graduates cannot be expected to defend a country that they don’t even understand. And too many today lack that basic understanding.”

“So, ensuring that graduates leave with a solid grounding in the principles of self-government, the Constitution, and the American Founding would help elevate the model from primarily economic metrics toward the deeper civic and intellectual purposes of higher education,” Lindsay added.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s proposal will go before the Texas Legislature in January 2027, when lawmakers convene.

Murder rates, carjackings, and other crimes dropped significantly in the nation’s capital a year after President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops in the city, but crime stats still show a mixed picture.

Tuesday marks one year since Trump announced he would deploy National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., to combat crime as part of a larger initiative known as the “Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force.”

Homicides in the District fell by 41% in the first half of 2026 when compared with the first half of 2025, according to a Council on Criminal Justice report. Six other criminal offenses declined while two others rose in that time period, according to the organization’s recent report.

The most dramatic decline in crime was a 63% reduction in carjackings. Motor vehicle thefts fell by 54%. However, the report shows that aggravated assaults rose by 45%, while gun assaults increased by 13%.

The Council on Criminal Justice is a nonpartisan research organization. Former Republican U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, are on the organization’s board of trustees. Past board members have included Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, as well as former Obama administration Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

Seven of the eight criminal offenses were down in the first half of 2026 when compared with the first half of 2019. The steepest decline from seven years ago was a 59% decrease in sexual assault, followed by 43% fewer homicides, while larceny fell by 41%.

By contrast, motor vehicle theft was up by 14% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2019, according to the council.

The District of Columbia’s statistics show that, on Aug. 11, there was a 32% year-over-year decline in homicides from 2025 to 2026, and an overall 20% reduction in crime. However, the D.C. numbers show a 3% increase in overall violent crime when factoring in a 40% increase in assaults with a dangerous weapon.

National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., were deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service, granting them temporary law enforcement powers. They did not have authority to make arrests but could detain individuals for arrest by law enforcement officers.

More than 16,000 arrests were made since the Aug. 11, 2025, launch of the task force, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. That includes 35 homicide suspects apprehended, more than 100 known gang members, more than 3,200 narcotics arrests, and almost 2,000 illegal firearms seized. The Marshals Service also notes that 25 missing children were located and returned home.

“The true impact of the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful mission is written not only in statistics, but the impact on our community,” Brig. Gen. Leland D. Blanchard II, commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said in a public statement. “It is found in the courage of those who serve so that others could move through our nation’s capital with greater safety and peace.”

Last November, a gunman shot Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe of the West Virginia Air National Guard and Army National Guard Spc. Sarah Beckstrom in an ambush near the White House. Beckstrom died, while Wolfe is recovering.

“Sgt. Sarah Beckstrom gave the last full measure of devotion, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe endured a profound sacrifice in service to others,” Blanchard said. “Their courage will forever be part of this mission’s legacy. We honor them by carrying the work forward united in purpose, steadfast in service, and committed to protect the people of Washington, D.C.”

In a post on X, Attorney General Todd Blanche noted the arrests and said, “In just one year, D.C. is safer than it has been in years, and we’re not done yet.”

The administration first deployed about 800 National Guard members to D.C., a number that has expanded to about 4,700, NPR reported.

Critics of the deployment have pointed to Biden Justice Department statistics issued on Jan. 3, 2025, ahead of Trump taking office, which said D.C. crime was at a 30-year low.

“For one year, the people who live and work in D.C. have faced the unnerving presence of military troops on our streets, ordered there by our own country’s federal government,” Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, said in a public statement.

“We cannot let military deployment on the streets of the United States become normal or acceptable as a part of daily life here or anywhere else,” Hopkins added. “No state would tolerate a one-year deployment of National Guard troops or the expectation that it will continue for three more years.”

A federal judge ruled that Shenandoah County must once again change the names of two schools it had returned to their original names in 2024.

The schools had been named Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School until the names were changed in 2020 to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School.

After new school board members were elected two years ago, the board voted 5-1 to restore the original names, but it refused to publicly explain the motives behind the change. Four students and the Virginia NAACP sued the district, launching the federal case.

U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski wrote a 141-page decision that concluded that the 2024 change violated the rights black students have under the 14th Amendment as well as the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.

“The Confederate names were restored with complete awareness of their historic legacy and ongoing discriminatory impact. In the court’s view, the affirmative act of reinstating these vestiges of segregation is far more problematic than a passive failure to remove a long-standing name or symbol,” he wrote.

The judge took pains to write that his ruling is based on the unique history of Shenandoah County and that it therefore doesn’t apply to other schools in Virginia that are named for Confederates.

Education Week reported that as of March, there are 17 such schools in the Commonwealth. Urbanski specifically cited Virginia’s policy of Massive Resistance. It began in 1956 after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision desegregated schools. “From the voluminous record in this case, the court can readily trace the connection between the Confederate names and the de jure system of segregation,” he wrote.

For example, there was no high school for black students in the entire county until the 1960s. “They were required to take buses several miles and hours away in order to attend segregated high schools administered by neighboring school districts—experiencing higher barriers to participation in extracurricular activities and athletics than their White peers,” Urbanski wrote.

The judge noted that county leaders should be aware of the history, and he cited an email written by board member Dennis Barlow, who was elected in 2021. Barlow had written that “if there was a so-called ‘massive resistance’ movement, it was neither massive nor actively pursued. In any case, any resentment over the issue has evaporated long ago and is therefore now irrelevant.”

In fact, Massive Resistance was widespread. When federal courts attempted to force Virginia to integrate nine schools in 1958, Gov. James Lindsay Almond closed them, locking out some 13,000 students in Norfolk, Front Royal, and Charlottesville.

The school board is expected to appeal the decision.

“My understanding is that my client will take it as far as necessary, including seeking a writ at the U.S. Supreme Court,” attorney Jim Guynn told WMRA while the case was still under consideration. He added that if the judge is correct, then “every school in the United States that’s named after a Confederate general or someone else who makes people feel uncomfortable could be subject to court order to change the name.”

Beneath the cacophony of media noise, an important untold story emerges: A manufacturing boom is unfolding across America right now, and especially so in the geographic center of the country.

This developing boom represents an epochal shift because investments in factories and tangible production involve the stickiest kind of capital expenditures. The commitment to production involves a macro “bet” on a yearslong cycle, not a near-term wager on the latest fad or concerns about the price of gasoline next week.

As such, this mostly hidden story deserves to be studied and amplified, both for the economic benefits and also for the possible political windfall for candidates on the populist right.

But before considering the import of this shift, it’s important to look at the numbers, the verifiable on-the-ground data sets that prove this new reality. The most-watched gauge of productive activity, the ISM Manufacturing Index, just surged to a fresh four-year high. Specifically, that ISM reading stands at 55 now, well above the 50 mark, which signals expansion. It has been rising for seven months.

In addition, manufacturing employment is rising, similarly marking a new four-year record high. These jobs are high-paying, family-sustaining roles that make our whole society stronger, not part-time “hustles” or gig economy transitions.

Construction jobs related directly to factories and trade are soaring under President Donald Trump at 10 times the pace he inherited from former President Joe Biden. In the first quarter of 2025, when Trump took office, the U.S. only added 9,300 such construction jobs. So far in the third quarter of 2026, America has added 93,000 such construction positions and counting. Amazing progress!

How has this renaissance unfolded?

The answer is solid policy. First, the Trump administration insists on fair and reciprocal trade. Gone are the days of America tolerating abusive and predatory trade tactics, particularly China’s.

But even aside from our Chinese Communist Party opponents, allies and “friends” abused America economically as well. For instance, Western Europe massively subsidized exports to the U.S. through its VAT taxation system, making their goods far more affordable for Americans than U.S. goods sent across the Atlantic. Such non-tariff trade barriers have been smartly exposed and repelled by the new American approach to trade.

Today, the investment landscape in America makes it the best destination in the world for capital and resources. In fact, overseas capital now rushes to build and invest in the U.S. Last year, in 2025, international capital spent $232 billion in the U.S., a whopping 50% increase over the 2024 levels under Biden.

This torrid pace shows no signs of slowing down, either. Looking to the future, the Financial Times reports that foreign capital commitments hit a new record high of $321.4 billion in 2025. Moreover, the U.S. earned a record 23.6% share of all such pledges globally. The days of simply managing the constant offshoring of American production are over, thank goodness!

Both overseas and domestic business leaders recognize that investing domestically in the U.S. makes sense under a restrained regulatory environment that encourages innovation and allows America’s entrepreneurial spirit to thrive. That legal and compliance framework is also now bolstered by an aggressive energy agenda that unleashes the full potential of America’s resources to power industry well into the future with plentiful, reliable U.S. energy.

Put together, all these metrics point to the “America First” economic agenda keeping a core promise: to re-industrialize America. In recent decades, much economic power has been centralized in a small cadre of credentialed elites. Now Americans are seeing the opposite trend unfold.

Yes, America can and should dominate finance and service-sector businesses. But a strong country must also make things, especially the most critical products for a modern economy, like advanced semiconductors and breakthrough medicines.

America is welcoming a quiet but very real manufacturing renaissance. Admittedly, public economic sentiment remains skeptical right now, which is understandable after 5 years of untenable inflation. But these epochal trends in manufacturing suggest that recent pronounced blue-collar real wage gains, meaning pay adjusted for the cost of living, will only accelerate going forward.

Turning to electoral politics, the legacy media sadly has no interest in covering this huge story. Thus, it is incumbent on our movement and our candidates to broadcast the good news of a very real trend that points to far more Main Street prosperity ahead.

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

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed played a role in a walkout of a speaking event in 2007 that featured three former radical Islamic terrorists who converted to Christianity at the University of Michigan.

The event, titled “Terrorism: The World’s Greatest Threat,” was hosted by an affiliate chapter of the Young America’s Foundation and featured Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Annani, and Kamal Saleem, the Michigan Daily reported at the time. El-Sayed attended the university from 2003 to 2007, The College Fix noted.

Saleem said on his website that he was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Liberation Organization when he was age 7 and then trained to fight Israelis. After being sent to the United States to fulfill the mission of killing Jews and Americans, Saleem was treated by a Christian doctor following a vehicle accident. The experience motivated him to convert to Christianity and disavow his terrorist training.

Annani, who grew up in Lebanon, was raised to be a leader at his mosque but was caught up in Islamic rebel militias by age 13. In his teenage years, he secretly read passages of the Bible, specifically Matthew 11:28-30, in which Jesus invites weary and burdened people to rest in him, and he ceased fighting and converted.

After his conversion was revealed, Annani was held captive by other Islamic rebels, who shunned him after he refused to reconvert. He then entered the West as a Lebanese refugee.

Shoebat, on the other hand, is a Palestinian who claimed in his online biography that he was recruited by the PLO in the United States while attending Loop College in Illinois in 1978. “I was recruited at a hotel ‘terror conference,’” Shoebat wrote.

More than 20 minutes into the event, The College Fix reported, about a quarter of the audience left their seats, walked out in protest, and gathered at a different on-campus location to engage in a counter discussion, after attempting to prevent their peers from attending the event.

The walkout was organized by numerous student organizations at the university, including the Muslim Student Association, where El-Sayed served as vice president, The College Fix reported.

“[I am] elated at the success of the walkout,” El-Sayed said after the walkout, the Michigan Daily reported at the time. “We’ve done something good today, and we need to keep that going in the future.”

Similarly, other students who walked out of the event, such as Sirene Abou-Chakra, said at the time that “the main purpose of the protest is to really call out the fact that this program is generalizing an entire group of people and saying the actions of a few represent everyone.”

However, a student who attended the event until its conclusion told the Michigan Daily that the event’s purpose “was to educate the campus community about the dangers of Muslim extremism, not promote intolerance.”

El-Sayed faces Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., in November for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat.

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

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. We are in about 160 days now of the so-called Iran war, and we’re 84 days out from the midterm elections, Nov. 3. What’s going on?

The administration has given some indication all week that they are close to yet another deal. This is the seventh or eighth time they said a deal was at hand.

But this time, people like [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and [State Secretary] Marco Rubio confirmed [President] Donald Trump’s optimism. And the deal would be that there would be a cooling-off period of no kinetic activity, and they would open the straits, and then they would pledge to make a good-faith effort about the nuclear enrichment problem, etc.

In other words, we’ve seen all of these negotiations. I think there’s been eight iterations where they promise to either turn over their nuclear enrichment or tell us where it is, where it can be destroyed, or that they would ensure that the Strait of Hormuz was an international waterway, or that they would cut off their subsidies to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas, or they wouldn’t use their vestigial missile force to hit our allies in the Gulf.

And on every occasion, they’ve either denied that they said that, or they lied and said that we weren’t close to an agreement, or they’ve launched missiles at especially the [United Arab Emirates,] or they’ve tried to obstruct traffic. So, why are we doing this again and again now? And I can tell you why. Each side has a position.

The United States knows that this war, as we head in 85 days, 83, 84 days when you hear this, into the midterm elections, it’s not popular. People don’t really care about Iran anymore. Now that it’s been defanged, they were for the idea of neutralizing it, and it is pretty much neutralized. It has no military capability to wage a serious war. Its military-industrial nuclear complex has been neutralized. They’re just tired of it, and they’re tired of the disruption worldwide, and especially in the Strait of Hormuz that’s raised their gas prices due to speculation up to about $3.50 to $3.70, and in some states, $4 a gallon. They want it over with, and the Iranians know that. So the Iranians want to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, and then launch a missile, send some boats out to attack a tanker, to do something contrary to what they said.

Then we get angry, and we hit them, and then they get paranoid that they’re going to be hit hard, so they want to talk, talk, and we go through these cycles. And they feel that as we go through the cycles, we get closer and closer to the midterms, and therefore they have more leverage on Donald Trump. Maybe they can force the Democrats’ hand. In other words, the Democrats may win, they may cut off funds. It’s kind of a long shot. That’s their strategy.

And what is our strategy? Why does Donald Trump put up with it? He has a strategy too, that while they’re talk, talk, talking and they’re breaking their talk, they’re getting poorer. We did not lift the sanctions. We did not lift the embargo. We did not cancel their bank accounts. We have de-banked them, and they have a blockade around them every day. They’re losing $400 million to $500 million a day. They talk all they want, but the facts on the ground show that they’re going broke.

So, the Trump administration’s attitude is, as long as we’re not conducting a full-scale war, and the American people don’t think we’re at war, and as long as we’re negotiating, we’ll negotiate till hell freezes over.

And we don’t really care because we’re winning every single day. They are getting poorer and poorer to the point where they’re either going to implode, there’s going to be a revolution in the streets, or they’re going to collapse and agree to it.

Now, that strategy is pretty smart, but it depends, from the American point of view, on one important thing. As they get to the midterms and Iran sees that while it has increased the unpopularity of the war, and as it has raised the price of gas and it has created global uncertainty, it still has not been able to ensure that Donald Trump will lose the midterms.

So, they need some dramatic event to remind the American people they’re still at war and the price of gas will get higher and the Europeans and our Asian friends will be angrier at us.

What will that mean?

I would imagine that we will have a late October surprise. Right before the elections, they will try to do something dramatic. Empty their last missiles, hit the Gulf, attack Israel, try to go after a carrier. Anything that would remind the Americans that the war was not winding down, but with this last gasp, sort of like the German Battle of the Bulge, the Ardennes Offensive, where they marshaled all of their final resources and tried to stage a dramatic counteroffensive to remind the Allies they still could lose this war and they should negotiate, or something to that effect.

So, what does that leave us? I think the Trump administration should keep talking, keep all the sanctions and blockades, keep them on. But because Iran will probably do something dramatic, they should do something dramatic. In other words, if they have a list of targets, command and control, dual-use facilities, missile inventories and caches, and they think Pickaxe Mountain might be vulnerable, they could actually do some damage there, they should do it all and keep talking and get this dramatic element out of the way before the midterms so that Iran would be substantially reduced in its nuclear industrial military capability.

It already is, but try to preempt them and hit them very, very hard, and then keep talking. And then the American people will see they’re getting more and more desperate. But don’t be reactive because, trust us, they are going to try something dramatic to bring home the idea the war is not over, and they’re not defeated, and gas will go up.

But if you do something dramatic now and keep talking, you may hasten or accelerate the pace of negotiations, i.e., the pace at which Iran is losing and is going absolutely broke. And that could happen faster than we anticipate, and there’s at least an outside chance that they will be in a far, far weaker place by the midterm elections in 83 days than they are now.

Thank you very much. This is 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.

Foreign donors have poured over $130 million into U.S.-based climate activist nonprofits, according to a new database tracking over $5 billion in foreign funding.

“Our database makes it clear foreign cash is bankrolling much of the extremist climate activist movement in America,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told the Daily Signal. “Radical activist groups dedicated to undermining American energy dominance, like Energy Foundation China, Sierra Club, and League of Conservation Voters, are recipients of vast sums of foreign money.”

While the law prohibits foreign donations to political candidates, foreign donors can legally contribute to U.S. groups organized as tax-exempt entities under the IRS code. Many foreign foundations already disclose their funding to U.S.-based groups, but Americans for Public Trust claims that disclosure is inadequate.

The database, available at FollowForeignMoney.org, presents information from the annual reports of foreign foundations, involving 523 groups and 12,094 records. Most of the U.S. recipients of foreign funds advocate for causes on the Left. Americans for Public Trust filtered out traditional charitable causes, such as children’s hospitals and the Meals on Wheels Program, to focus on activism. It currently includes funding sources from Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

Foreign Funds for Climate Activism

The database shows more than $130 million in foreign funding going to climate activist groups based in the United States.

The Sierra Club, one of America’s oldest and largest environmental groups, began as a conservation-minded organization but has increasingly championed restrictions on traditional forms of energy, particularly fossil fuels. The Sierra Club received $50,000 from the Switzerland-based Berger Action Fund in 2014. It also received $1.8 million from the Swiss-based Wyss Foundation from 2004 to 2024. Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss citizen who now lives in the U.S., set up both foundations. The Sierra Club also received $600,000 from the Swiss-based Oak Foundation in 2009.

Environment America, another left-leaning climate activist nonprofit, received $1 million from the Oak Foundation in 2009. The foundation awarded the grant “to persuade the U.S. Congress and the president to pass a national cap on global warming pollution with a near-term cap of 35% by 2020 and long-term reductions of at least 80% by 2050.”

This grant appears to match the activist campaign supporting the American Clean Energy and Security Act, HR 2454, which failed in the Senate.

The League of Conservation Voters, another influential climate activist group, also received $28 million from Berger Action Fund from 2016 to 2024, according to the database. The league’s PAC, the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, received $400,050 from the Oak Foundation in 2010 and $3.2 million from the Wyss Foundation from 2002 to 2024.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of America’s largest climate activist groups, received $472,708 from the Oak Foundation in 2014.

Energy Foundation China, a U.S.-based nonprofit that funds climate change projects and focuses on China, received $85 million from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, based in the United Kingdom, from 2014 to 2024. The foundation received $14.4 million from the Oak Foundation between 2012 and 2023. It received $4 million from the U.K.-based Quadrature Climate Foundation in 2022.

A Defense of Climate Activism

Environment America Executive Director Lisa Frank defended climate activism when reached for comment.

“America is blessed with abundant solar and wind power that shows up for free and doesn’t pollute,” she told the Daily Signal. “On the other hand, coal, oil and gas dirty our air and water, harm our health and worsen climate change. As Americans suffer from heat waves, fires, and floods, it’s clear we need to act on climate.”

Criticism

Foreign funding does not necessarily change the priorities or goals of climate activist groups. Even so, it may raise questions about the forces assisting the climate activist movement.

Critics claim that China benefits from climate activism in the U.S., and have pointed to ties between climate groups and Chinese entities. Climate activists say they work with China because China emits a large percentage of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The conservative-leaning American Lands Council praised the Americans for Public Trust database.

“Americans for Public Trust has done a fantastic public service by amassing this database of foreign contributions to nonprofit groups,” American Lands Council Chairman Myron Ebell told the Daily Signal. “Climate and environmental groups have done tremendous damage to the economy by promoting policies that raise the price of energy.”

“This new database from Americans for Public Trust exposes what many of us have been warning about for years … namely, billions in foreign cash flooding U.S. nonprofits through gaping loopholes,” Craig Rucker, president of the free-market group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, told the Daily Signal.

“These groups work overtime to kneecap U.S. oil, gas, and reliable energy while foreign adversaries and competitors smile,” Rucker said. “Americans deserve to know who’s really paying for the green agenda.”

Sutherland, the leader behind the database, called for Congress to prevent foreign funding for American nonprofits.

“We must close the loopholes that allow this money to flow into our system and influence U.S. policy and politics,” she said.

The Daily Signal reached out to Energy Foundation China, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural Resources Defense Council for comment, but did not receive responses by publication time.