“Affordability” has become the word of the month as American economic anxieties become a major point of political contention between Democrats and Republicans.

Socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani rode to victory in the New York City mayor’s race in part due to his promise to address the issue. Of course, he offered what socialists have been selling to the public for more than a century: free stuff, all paid for by the “rich,” the “billionaires,” or in Mamdani’s case, white neighborhoods in the city.

But talk is one thing, reality is another. Will the kind of government intervention Mamdani and others are promising deliver positive results for the American people?

So far, it hasn’t. President Donald Trump and those who seek to stem this socialist tide have a serious rebuttal to the idea that the Left can deliver.

At the highest level, it’s Trump’s work on foreign policy, on trade, and the implementation of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that may determine how much the U.S. economy revs up next year. Many Americans are nevertheless discontented with the way things are going. And that is a huge red flag for Trump and Republicans.

A lot depends on what happens to the economy on the macro, national scale, but it’s still awfully rich to hear Democrats suddenly embrace affordability as an issue given their abysmal record on it.

In fact, the huge gap between red states and blue states on affordability highlights the reality of the parties’ policies.

Even some figures on the Left acknowledge that Democrats have a huge problem on the issue.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria noted this problem for the Left on a recent episode of his show while commenting on the government shutdown that accomplished about as much as Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking phony “filibuster.”

He said the shutdown revealed that Democrats have promised big on so many programs, like Obamacare, but the results have been costly and ineffective.

“If America has an affordability crisis, it tends to be in places Democrats govern, like New York, Illinois, and California, which all feature high taxes, soaring housing costs, and stagnant outcomes in basic areas like education and infrastructure,” he said.

Zakaria pointed to New York City, where the incoming mayor-elect has promised a whole host of “free” programs at the public expense. The CNN anchor asked rhetorically, “What happened to the money already raised?”

In 2012, he said, “the city’s budget was about $65 billion. Today it is about $116 billion, an increase of more than 75% in just over a decade. Spending has soared while the subway deteriorates. Housing costs rise and public schools remain mediocre despite spending more than $36,000 per pupil last year, the highest in the nation among major school districts.”

For all the talk of an “abundance” agenda that’s going nowhere, the reality is that Democrat-run cities and states are where abundance is squandered and “affordability” is a slogan to sooth the conscience of the rich as the middle class shrinks and seeks greener pastures.

A study at UC Berkeley released in April noted that the significant gap in affordability between red and blue states has been consistent over the last 15 years. According to the study, “the average blue state was 13% more expensive, overall, than the average red state.”

The study pointed to the cost of housing being the biggest factor, but it’s clear that on a whole host of issues Democrat policies drive up prices.

There’s typically a wide gap on energy policies, with Democrats focusing on various green and “renewable” energy sources. While these government-subsidized industries have often enriched a few, for the most part they have been both cost prohibitive and insufficient for America’s growing energy needs.

“Over the past two decades, the divergence in electricity rates among U.S. states has grown increasingly stark,” noted a paper on electricity costs published by The Heritage Foundation in 2024.

The cost gap was mostly between red and blue states.

“A key factor driving these divergences is the adoption of renewable energy mandates, carbon emission–reduction goals, and cap-and-trade schemes, primarily in states with Democratic leadership. States that have required renewables, particularly wind and solar energy, to be used in electricity production often experience higher electricity costs due to the regulatory burdens placed on traditional energy sources, such as natural gas and coal.”

Even discounting the economic data, the evidence of the divide on affordability can be seen quite clearly on how Americans have been voting with their feet.

An analysis of IRS and census data by the organization Unleash Prosperity found that a “massive shift” in internal migration has been happening in America the last few decades.

“New York and California top the list of exodus states, having lost 1.7 million and 1.6 million people, respectively, over this decade,” read a Daily Signal report on this study. “Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, Virginia, and Connecticut round out the top 10 for negative migration.”

Americans are fleeing, mostly to lower-cost states like Texas and Florida according to the study.

What the Mamdanis of the world are promising is a doubling down on the policies that made so many blue states unaffordable for the average American. All they offer is a more aggressive platform of redistribution. But the underlying costs won’t go away. Those policies won’t make energy cheaper, they won’t drop prices at the gas pump, they won’t make homes Americans want to live in any more affordable.

So, if Trump and Republicans want to win over Americans, they need to demonstrate how they can make life more affordable for everyone, in part by doubling down on policies that already work.

If they can’t make that case then we may in fact get the socialist wave we fear in the near-term future.

The post Blue States vs. Red States on ‘Affordability’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The fate of the Donald Trump administration—and perhaps Republicans in Congress—is tethered to how Americans feel about the economy. And right now, it’s hard to find anyone who can say with confidence what the hell is going on.

Thursday offered a fresh reminder of the chaos. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “Stocks surrendered gains and closed sharply lower after a whirlwind day of trading that began after Nvidia posted strong results. The Nasdaq composite led indexes lower after being up on the day more than 2%. It closed 2.2% lower. Nvidia gave up an even bigger gain and finished the day down 3.2%.”

Why the reversal? Because investors suspect there is, in fact, an artificial intelligence bubble.

It’s not an unreasonable fear. History shows that every transformative technology—from automobiles to the internet—inspires waves of speculation. The presence of a bubble doesn’t mean the technology isn’t revolutionary; it simply means that early hype tends to sweep up both the winners and the doomed. For every Henry Ford, there were dozens of forgotten carmakers. The same was true of the dot-com era: Pets.com vanished, but the internet went on to reorganize modern life.

Artificial intelligence is inspiring the same mix of excitement and dread. Some companies may never produce the margins to justify today’s investment frenzy. OpenAI, though not publicly traded, sits at the center of countless partnerships with massive firms like Oracle and Nvidia. If it stumbles, the shock could reverberate across the market.

The numbers fueling today’s optimism are staggering. As The New York Times reported, “It would not be a stretch to describe this period of hyperactive growth in the tech industry as a historic moment. Nvidia, which makes computer chips that are essential to building artificial intelligence, said on Wednesday that its quarterly profit had jumped to nearly $32 billion, up 65% from a year earlier and 245% from the year before that. Just three weeks ago, Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to be worth $5 trillion.” That’s more than Germany’s entire economy.

But even this explosion of wealth comes with a caveat. Much of the demand for Nvidia’s chips doesn’t mean consumers want AI right now—it means companies are racing to build massive AI systems in the hope that demand will materialize later. To some insiders, it looks less like a revolution and more like a house of cards.

This is the central question: At what point will AI’s promised productivity gains begin to match the scale of the investment poured into it? Until there’s clarity, markets will continue to swing wildly—and so will public confidence.

Workers, meanwhile, face their own concerns. Even if AI succeeds, technological progress has always brought job dislocation. Old roles disappear, new industries emerge, and the economy ultimately becomes more productive. People enjoy better goods at lower costs and work fewer hours than their grandparents did. But the transition is rarely painless.

Both truths can coexist: The United States may be on the cusp of a remarkable economic transformation, and the anxiety surrounding it may be entirely justified.

For now, Americans are left watching markets fluctuate, industries reorganize, and fortunes rise and fall—all while wondering what exactly the future will bring.

And no government policy can fully soothe that uncertainty.

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

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Americans have a glum view of the economy, but that is not expected to affect their consumer spending as holiday shopping kicks off.  

According to a recent Fox News survey, 76% of Americans have a negative view of the economy. At the end of President Joe Biden’s term, this number was 70%. Yet, while Americans appear to be losing faith in the vitality of the U.S. economy, they don’t plan on slowing down their own holiday shopping habits. 

The International Council of Shopping Centers reports that between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, 235 million American adults are expected to spend $127 billion, for an average of $542 a person—a $13 increase from the average spent over the long holiday weekend last year.  

Millennials are projected to be the biggest spenders, with the International Council of Shopping Centers estimating the generation born between 1981 and 1996 will drop an average of $764 a person during the five-day shopping period.  

So, what’s the disconnect? Why do the same Americans who feel the economy is flailing appear to feel good enough about their personal bank account to go out and drop several hundred dollars in just a few days? Nicole Huyer, a senior research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, joins this week’s edition of “Problematic Women” to discuss.  

Also on today’s show, we discuss spending differences between men and women. Plus, will New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani actually be able to implement his socialist wish list in the Big Apple? And if he can, what will that mean not only for New York City’s economy, but the economic health of the nation?  

Catch the conversation on this week’s edition of “Problematic Women.”  

The post Shoppers Aren’t Buying Trump Economy Panic Narrative appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc have a fertile discussion on why blue states have a lower birth rate than red states.

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

SAMI WINC: The last symptom that we want to talk about today, Victor, is fertility. And we know that the university and the rhetoric in the United States is—

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Yes, and climate too.

WINC:   Yeah, because of climate, we don’t want to have children. 

HANSON: Didn’t [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] say that?

WINC: AOC said that the world was going to end in like 10 years or something.” I don’t know what it was. Who listens to her? 

HANSON: She said she wasn’t going to have kids and have more AOCs, and I thought, “Promises, promises.” [Editor’s Note: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said it is a “legitimate question” to ask if it’s OK to have children due to the climate crisis. She did not rule out having children of her own.]  That’s a problem. I’m not just being in jest. If you look at fertility in the 20 so-called blue states, it is about one point. We average everybody about 1.73. Just in 1999, we were 2.1. I’m talking about people who were born in the United States, the fertility rate. It was about 1.71. But in blue states, it’s about 1.4. And in red states, about 2.1. 

So what’s happening, all you people in Arizona, Florida, Wyoming, Utah, you’re having like two to three kids, and four million people a year are joining you. And you people in blue states, like where I am, we’re having about 1.4 kids and nobody’s coming here. Everybody’s leaving. Our congressional districts, we’re going to surrender unless we cheat like we’re trying to in California. And they’ve stopped Texas from trying to cheat for their conservatives. We’re going to lose all of our congressional districts, and our economies are going to be backward. But we’ve got to keep doing it. We’ve got to keep getting left, left, left, left. Climate, climate, climate. 

So, fertility is a big problem and Europe is worse. It’s not averaging 1.7. It’s averaging about 1.4. In some countries like Italy and Germany, I think it’s almost 1.2. And why is that? I have got to be very careful how I say that, but traditionally, declining fertility is commiserate not just with health. 

Childhood diseases killed most people. If you were in ancient Greece, a woman would have to be pregnant 10 times to deliver four births to have the three births be successful out of the four and to have two children survive puberty. Maybe 20 pregnancies later, but with the industrial revolution, modern sanitation, health care, that’s not true.

But usually it’s the emancipation of women that makes the fertility go down because they want to get in on the good life with men and have a say in things and child rearing for affluent people, men and women, but particularly women, because it puts more of a—I don’t want to use the word burden—but more responsibility to physically have children and to nurse them. It’s a drag, they think. That’s what they’re told in college.

If you went to college and you said, “Hi, I’m Suzy Smith. And I’m from Utah. And I just want to say in this class on American history that I’m here to do my patriotic part. I want to marry one of you guys in class. I want to get my B.A. in American Studies. And I plan on having three to four children and raise them up to be good old red-blooded patriotic Americans and law-abiding. And that’s my goal. And if I can do that, I made a wonderful contribution.”

I’m not mocking that. That is a noble thing to say, and that person will be demonized and told, “Get out of here.” If you said, “Hello, I’m Samantha Joan. You know, I’m just here because of the patriarchy. It’s so oppressive. And after six or seven boyfriends this year, I was so upset at them. They were just losers, and you know that my women’s studies professors have suggested that because Donald Trump is going to try to take abortion away from us, I have to be very careful. And I’m considering transitioning, but I haven’t decided Firyet.” That’s the alternative. It’s kind of like the difference between Karine Jean-Pierre at the podium and Karoline Leavitt, you know what I mean? It’s Miss Sunshine bouncy happy and has already had one baby and probably will have two more. 

WINC: And super smart and right on top of it and responsive to the press. 

HANSON: Yeah. To get serious for change, I mean I’m serious, but I was too mocking. It is the barometer of a healthy society. When Rome had its greatest problems in the first century AD and the third century AD and you look at the Italian birth rate, it really plummeted. And you can see glimpses in the description of women in Plautus and Terence, but especially, as I said, in first century BC and AD literature that there’s not an emphasis on the Italian agrarian model of kids and family and all that anymore. It’s just not, and the same thing happened in Greece. And I think all of us just think, wow. 

My grandmother was one of 11 children. My grandfather was one of three boys, my maternal. My paternal grandfather was one of four boys. I don’t know about my paternal grandmother, because she died before I was born, but I think she had four sisters. 

My parents had three of us. One child was lost, my sister, at an early age. And then my aunt and that family had two. Then my other family, my parents had my mom who had four deliveries, three survived to adulthood. And then her sister had two and her other sister was crippled and couldn’t have children. So that’s the story. Each generation gets smaller children. And then we say, “Well, we’re going to have immigration. That’ll keep up for two.” It would be energizing if it was, as I said, diverse and legal and integrated and assimilated and skilled. 

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

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President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will no longer consider documents signed by President Joe Biden with an autopen valid, and threatened Biden with “perjury” charges if he said he was aware of autopen signings.

“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United
States. The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him,” the president added.

Biden has previously rejected Trump’s accusations of the autopen being used without his awareness.

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” he said in a June statement.

Trump also wrote he was “cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.”

“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” the president added.

Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, praised Trump’s move, saying in a statement that “the Biden Autopen Presidency is one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.”

“Americans witnessed President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, conceal his condition, and take unauthorized executive actions using the autopen—actions that are now invalid,” the Kentucky Republican added in a statement.

In an October report, the House Oversight Committee examined whether Biden had appropriately used the autopen, drawing on interviews with former White House staffers.

The report found that “Biden allegedly made some executive decisions verbally, and without
documentation indicating that they came from the president himself or that he understood
the decisions completely,” and that “[s]enior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse.”

“The Biden White House’s process of ascertaining the president’s approval for decisions
and use of the autopen was inconsistent, poorly documented, and vulnerable to abuse,” stated the report.

The House Oversight Committee called on the Justice Department to further investigate “all of former President Biden’s executive actions, particularly clemency actions, to assess whether legal action must be taken to void any action that the former president did not, in fact, take himself.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, denounced the report and said Republicans had conducted a “sham investigation” in an October statement.

“Despite this sham investigation, every White House official testified President Biden fully executed his duties as President of the United States. The testimonies also make it clear the former President authorized every executive order, pardon, and use of the autopen,” said Garcia, D-Calif.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently announced she would resign in January, wrote in a X post, “If Autopen Pardons are repealed then prosecute [former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony] Fauci for crimes against humanity.”

The Oversight Project, which first surfaced the Biden White House’s autopen usage in a March report, praised the president’s decision in a X post.

The post Trump: Documents Signed by Biden Autopen ‘Terminated’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Stephanie Dilyard is lucky to be alive.

Yet last week, 7-Eleven fired the 25-year-old after she used her gun to save her own life. Private companies have every right to set rules for employee behavior, but many corporate policies that require workers to remain passive and comply with criminals’ demands rest on a deeply mistaken view of crime data.

“He threatened me,” Dilyard told Fox 25 in Oklahoma City. “[A]nd said he was gonna slice my head off, and that’s when I tried to call the police. He started throwing things at me, came behind the counter. I tried to run off, but he grabbed his hands around my neck, and pushed me out of the counter space, and that’s when I pulled out my gun and I shot him.”

“I had to choose between my job and my life,” she said. “And I will always choose my life because people depend on me. My kids need me here.”

She survived with wounds to her neck and hands–injuries that could have been far worse.

Her attacker, 59-year-old Kenneth Thompson, already had an outstanding felony warrant for a parole violation. For his latest crimes, prosecutors have charged him with assault and battery, threatening acts of violence, and attempting to pass a fake bill.

For more than two years, Dilyard worked the dangerous 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift alone. Despite those conditions, 7-Eleven insisted she use only “store items” to defend herself.

Unfortunately, while some in the media and many businesses may concede that passive behavior by store clerks might encourage more crime, they believe that passive behavior is still the safest course of action.

In Dilyard’s case, however, passive behavior likely would have gotten her killed. And while there is a kernel of truth behind the advice to remain passive when confronted by a criminal, the claim is highly misleading. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey shows that passive behavior appears slightly safer than all forms of active resistance combined–but that comparison lumps together very different actions.

For women, the most dangerous form of resistance is to fight with their fists, because doing so often triggers a violent physical reaction from the attacker. The next most dangerous choice is to run. Escaping is ideal when possible, but women generally run more slowly than men, and being tackled can produce serious injury. Other options such as using a baseball bat or a knife turn out not to be a lot better because women are at a disadvantage whenever they come into physical contact with a male attacker.

By contrast, the safest option for a woman confronted by a criminal is to have a gun. Women who rely on passive behavior are 2.5 times more likely to suffer serious injury than women who defend themselves with a firearm.

Criminals are almost always men, and when a man is attacking a woman there is on average a much larger strength difference than when a man is attacking another man. The presence of a gun represents a much bigger relative change in a woman’s ability to protect herself than it does for a man. Firearms act as a powerful equalizer between the sexes.

Murder rates fall when either men or women carry concealed handguns, but the reduction is especially large for women. Each additional woman with a concealed-carry permit lowers the female murder rate by roughly three to four times more than each additional male permit holder lowers the male murder rate. States that allowed women to carry concealed handguns on a nondiscretionary basis also experience about 25% fewer rapes than states that restrict or forbid concealed carry.

Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but the police can’t be there all the time. The police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

And that raises a real question: What should people do when they’re having to confront a criminal by themselves? As Dilyard learned the hard way, people ultimately must take responsibility for their own safety–and for women, carrying a gun is the safest option.

Fortunately, Dilyard’s children still have their mother.

Originally published by RealClearPolitics.

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

The post She Saved Her Life. 7-Eleven Fired Her appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—The Donald Trump administration announced it is raising prices for nonresidents visiting national parks, a move that worries some tourism advocates but could generate hundreds of millions in extra revenue each year.

Beginning Jan. 1, international tourists without an annual pass will have to pay a $100 surcharge to enter the 11 most visited national parks, on top of the parks’ standard entrance fees. The annual pass will cost foreign visitors $250, rather than the current $80 price that will stay the same for U.S. residents.

The extra revenue will directly go towards park maintenance and repairs. The U.S. National Park Service estimates that the park system collectively needs $22 billion to address overdue maintenance and repairs.

“President Trump’s leadership always puts American families first,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said. “These policies ensure that U.S. taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations.”

Out of the roughly 325.5 million visitors to national parks in 2023, about 14 million were international visitors, according to estimates from Property and Environment Research Center, which supports the new fees.

“This is a big win for everyone who loves America’s national parks. A $100 international visitor surcharge could generate $55 million annually at Yellowstone National Park alone, more than quadrupling that park’s revenue to address deteriorating trails, failing wastewater systems, and crumbling bridges,” Property and Environment Research Center CEO Brian Yablonski said.

Property and Environment Research Center has long advocated increased national park fees for nonresidents, pointing out that the practice is common abroad. 

A Property and Environment Research Center paper published in Dec. 2023 estimated that even a $40 surcharge for foreign visitors could raise an extra $528 million per year, more than doubling current annual revenue. 

The paper included all national parks, while the Trump administration’s $100 surcharge only applies to 11 parks. But with the new surcharge being more than double Property and Environment Research Center’s idea, plus the addition of the annual pass price hike for nonresidents, extra revenue could exceed the $528 million estimate.

Some conservationists worry the new fees will simply cause the number of foreign tourists to drop. 

While a $40 surcharge would only decrease international tourists by an estimated 3%, according to Property and Environment Research Center estimates, the tourism impact of a $100 surcharge on 11 of the most popular parks remains unknown.

Though the Department of Interior did not name the parks in the press release, National Park Service data shows the 11 most visited parks in 2024 include:

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Grand Canyon National Park

Zion National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Acadia National Park

Yosemite National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Joshua Tree National Park

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Glacier National Park

Olympic National Park

Originally published by The Center Square.

The post New Park Fee for Foreign Tourists Could Generate Hundreds of Millions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—Assaults against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are up 1,153% in 11 months, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

As ICE officers continue to arrest the most violent criminals nationwide, U.S. citizens have increasingly obstructed their efforts, including physically attacking them and threatening to kill them, according to multiple reports nationwide. The most recent death-threat-related arrests were of a Virginia high school assistant principal and his brother. 

Earlier this month, DHS and the Virginia Beach Police Department launched an investigation into brothers John Wilson Bennett and Mark Booth Bennett, after an off-duty Norfolk Virginia Police Department officer overheard them discussing plans to “kill police officers and ICE agents,” DHS said. 

The brothers are U.S. citizens and Virginia residents.

The officer claims he overheard Mark Bennett tell his brother that he was “planning to meet with likeminded individuals in Las Vegas to purchase firearms with explosive rounds to carry out the attacks,” DHS said.

He was arrested at the Norfolk International Airport, where he was booked on a flight and scheduled to depart to Las Vegas, DHS said. His brother, John Bennett, was arrested in Virginia Beach on the same day. John Bennett is the assistant principal of Kempsville High School in Virginia Beach. He is still employed by the school; his photo and contact information are still on the school website. He is reportedly on leave, according to local news reports.

Both were charged with a state crime of one count of conspiracy to commit malicious wounding.

“It’s chilling that a human being, much less a child educator, would plot to ambush and kill ICE law enforcement officers—offering such specifics as to getting a high caliber rifle that would pierce the law enforcements’ bullet proof vests. Thanks to Homeland Security Investigations and our partners, these men are behind bars,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. 

They weren’t behind bars for long and were released on a $25,000 bond, with GPS monitoring. They claimed they were “joking around” and the Las Vegas trip was preplanned to attend an F1 race, WAVY 10 News reported. Their next hearing is scheduled for Jan. 23.

Law enforcement took the claims seriously, as assaults against ICE officers up now by 1,153% in just 11 months.

From Jan. 21 through Nov. 21, 2025, 238 assaults were reported against ICE officers, up from 19 reported during the same time-period last year, DHS said. 

That’s an increase of 1,153%.

At the same time, the number of death threats made against ICE officers have increased by 8,000%, The Center Square reported. 

ICE and U.S. Custom and Border Protection and Border Patrol officers have also experienced a surge of targeted vehicular attacks. Vehicular attacks against CBP and Border Patrol agents are up 58%; attacks against ICE officers are up by 1,300%, The Center Square reported.

DHS blames Democrats for increased violence and threats of violence.

“After months of Democrat politicians comparing ICE to Nazis, the Gestapo, slave patrols, and even encouraging illegal aliens to resist arrest, our brave ICE law enforcement have been assaulted 238 times,” McLaughlin said. “Our law enforcement officers have had Molotov cocktails and rocks thrown at them, been shot at, had cars used as weapons against them, and been physically assaulted. Sanctuary politicians need to tone the rhetoric down before a law enforcement officer is killed. They should be thanking these brave law enforcement officers who risk their lives every single day to arrest pedophiles, rapists, murderers, gang members, and terrorists from our neighborhoods.”

Examples of assaults include hitting, spitting, kicking, biting, attempted strangulation, drive by shootings and cartel bounties, The Center Square reported.

Despite these threats, ICE officers are prioritizing arresting violent criminals, including those with removal orders from federal immigration judges. The overwhelming majority being arrested, 70%, have criminal convictions or pending charges, ICE says. The 70% figure excludes those wanted for violent crimes in other countries, including those with INTERPOL notices and human rights violators, among others, ICE says.

ICE is encouraging Americans to report suspicious criminal activity, threats against ICE officers and their family members, as well as doxxing, by calling 866-DHS-2-ICE or submitting a tip online. 

Originally published by The Center Square.

The post Assaults Against ICE Up 1,153% In 11 Months appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If shooting fish in a barrel is unfair, exposing Democrat failures is like shooting fish after they have been filleted. It would be more sporting if Democrats made it tougher to detect their blunders. Instead, they are so desperate to “get Trump” that they don’t spend five minutes to see if their flimsy arguments can withstand five seconds of scrutiny.

The so-called Seditious Six—two Democrat U.S. senators and four House members—released an instantly notorious video in which they urged American GIs to resist unlawful commands. “We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community,” the lawmakers said. “Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” they continued. “You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”

None of these six spent five minutes to craft an answer to the most obvious question: Which of President Donald Trump’s orders is illegal?

Margaret Brennan, host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” asked Congressman Jason Crow, D-Colo., on Sunday, “Specifically what” illegal commands have Trump made?

“Send troops into polling stations,” Crow squawked. “Kill terrorists’ families. Arrest and execute members of Congress.”

Wrong!

Trump has issued no such orders.

Fox News’ Martha MacCallum asked Crow on Nov. 19: “What specific order from the Commander-in-Chief, that we are asking our military to carry out, are you objecting to?”

“Martha,” Crow replied, “Donald Trump has made a series of very disturbing comments and suggestions that would violate U.S. law and put our military in a terrible position.”

Trump often thinks aloud. But musings are not mandates, and comments are not commands.

“Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders?” ABC’s “This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.

“To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal,” Slotnick conceded. Flailing miserably, Slotnick then blamed Hollywood: “If you look at popular culture—you watch, you know, ‘A Few Good Men’—like, we have plenty of examples since World War II, in Vietnam, where people were told to follow illegal orders and they did it, and they were prosecuted for it.”

So, the menace is not Trump. It’s a 33-year-old Tom Cruise film.

Since the Seditious Six cannot identify even one illegal national security order from Trump, they should find a new hobby.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, on Nov. 18 exhibited severe symptoms of Ready, Fire, Aim. “Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein,” she listed for her House colleagues. “As I had my team dig in very quickly: Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Bush, WinRed, McCain-Palin, Rick Lazio.”

Sounding cockier than ever, Crockett finally got those pesky Republicans!

Not so fast, Jasmine. Zeldin quickly resembled the Road Runner as Crockett recalled Wile E. Coyote, seconds after the cigar exploded in her mouth.

EPA Administrator Zeldin, a former Republican congressman, blasted her via X: “Yes Crockett, a physician named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (who is a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein) donated to a prior campaign of mine. NO FREAKIN RELATION YOU GENIUS!!!”

Rather than admit error and apologize, Crockett charged forward.

“I never said it was that Jeffrey Epstein,” she told CNN. “Unlike Republicans, I at least don’t go out and just tell lies.” She added with breathtaking chutzpah: “I wasn’t trying to mislead people.”

You heard it here first: Jasmine Crockett is a tax-cheating, bank-robbing, bomb-making, top-secret member of Hamas. And she never makes her bed.

Oh, I don’t mean the profane and reckless House member. I meant another Jasmine Crockett. I wasn’t trying to mislead people.

Crockett could have avoided this fiasco if she had spent five minutes on the Federal Election Commission’s website and noticed that these donations to Zeldin were dated Feb. 7, April 24, and Aug. 31, 2020. As luck would have it, the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein died on Aug. 10, 2019. Dead men tell no tales. And they don’t write checks, either.

During the 43-day Schumer Shutdown, Democrats soiled themselves by claiming that Trump’s most-desired goal was to build the new White House ballroom. House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York moaned, “The Trump administration just declared that erecting a ballroom is the President’s main priority. Meanwhile, the cost of living is way too high, and the Republican health care crisis threatens millions of Americans.”

The House Democratic Caucus complained: “So, Trump’s MAIN priority is a $300 MILLION ballroom? Not lowering costs. Not saving health care. Not reopening the government. Got it.” A Democrat National Committee press release stated, “Leavitt Admits Trump’s ‘Main Priority’ Is Building His $300 Million Gold Ballroom.”

Again, a five-minute review of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Oct. 23 briefing would have found her answering a journalist’s question about whether Trump envisioned, beyond the ballroom, “any other renovations” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Leavitt replied that Trump ponders “how to improve things here on the White House grounds.” But, for now, “the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.”

PolitiFact ruled Jeffries’ remarks False, determined that he “twists Leavitt’s words” and incorrectly presented “Trump’s top priorities for renovating” as “Trump’s top priority among every policy.”

At best, Democrats routinely blow off their homework. At worst, they recklessly disregard the truth and harbor actual malice toward Trump, Republican officials, and the 74 million Americans who elected them.

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

The post Five Minutes of Homework Would Spare Dems a Day of Grief appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Now that the longest government shutdown in history is over, it’s imperative that Washington lawmakers quickly prioritize pro-economic growth policies.

One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by recognizing that strong families are the backbone of a vibrant and prosperous economy.

After all, every American family wants the same thing: the chance to work hard, provide for their children, and leave the next generation better off than the last. That promise—the American Dream—has always been rooted in two pillars: the dynamism of the free market and the strength of the family. When those two forces work together, our country flourishes.

We’ve seen this in action. President Donald Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act simplified the tax code and lowered rates, freeing small businesses to hire, invest, and grow. 

Over time, the economy is expected to continue growing.

We are beginning to see positive signs that the economy is trending in the right direction. According to the latest figures, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.8% in the last quarter.

Of course, many families continue feeling squeezed.

The costs of child care, housing, and groceries are eating into paychecks. Many parents feel as if they are running faster only to stay in the same place. If we want a stronger economy tomorrow, we must strengthen families today. That means pairing the power of the free market with smart, pro-family policies.

One of the most effective tools we have is the Child Tax Credit. Properly designed, the credit serves two important purposes: it offsets the rising costs of raising children, and it encourages families to remain in the workforce by rewarding their work.

A stronger, fully work-linked Child Tax Credit would mean more money in parents’ pockets for essentials like child care and transportation—the very costs that often push families out of the labor force. In turn, our economy gains from higher workforce participation and a stronger middle class.

Some worry that expanding the credit would distort the market. The truth is the opposite: families are the foundation of the market. Raising children is not a private luxury—it’s a public good. Tomorrow’s innovators, workers, and taxpayers are being raised around dinner tables today. If we do not account for the actual costs parents shoulder, we undermine the very system we rely on for growth.

Beyond the Child Tax Credit, the path forward is clear: cut red tape that drives up family costs, ensure tax policy never penalizes marriage or child-rearing, and modernize workforce programs so parents can gain new skills without losing support. Each of these reforms strengthens families while reinforcing free-market principles.

Washington lawmakers will have to prioritize addressing these issues as the latest government shutdown agreement provides funding until January 2026. This means that policymakers do not have a long runway to introduce, debate, and negotiate a bill to prevent another government shutdown.

Lawmakers will naturally want to include their pet issue in these negotiations, but they would do well to remember that without strong families, the social fabric frays. Without a thriving workforce, the economy stagnates. But when free markets and families are both strong, America is unstoppable.

The Working Families Tax Cut Act proved that bold reform could revive opportunity. Now we need to take the next step. Expanding the Child Tax Credit, cutting unnecessary regulations, and aligning policy with the realities of family life will ensure the American Dream for future generations.

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

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—President Donald Trump announced late Thursday his administration will “permanently pause” migration from all “Third World Countries,” after two National Guardsmen were shot near the White House by an Afghan national, killing one of them.

West Virginia Army National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died Thursday from wounds sustained in Wednesday’s attack. She and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe were shot in the brutal attack allegedly carried out by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the country in September 2021 after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Wolfe remains in critical condition.

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

Trump added that he would end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens who “undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

Lakanwal — who had worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA — arrived in the U.S. in 2021 as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” which resettled Afghans who had assisted American forces. He applied for asylum in 2024, and the Trump administration granted it in April 2025, according to Reuters.

The suspect shouted “Allahu akbar!” before opening fire with a revolver, independent journalist Julio Rojas reported.

As of December 2024, over 180,000 Afghans had been resettled in the country since the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, according to the State Department.

“Hundreds of thousands of people poured into our Country totally unvetted and unchecked,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We will fix it, but will never forget what Crooked Joe Biden and his Thugs did to our Country!”

Following the shooting, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals” would be paused “indefinitely.”

USCIS also said Thursday it would conduct a full-scale reexamination of all green cards issued to people from 19 countries “of concern” at the president’s direction. The agency added in a subsequent statement that when vetting migrants from those countries, it will consider “negative, country specific factors,” including whether the country is able to “issue secure identity documents.”

The White House referred Daily Caller News Foundation to Trump’s Truth Social posts.

Originally published by Daily Caller News Foundation.

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case against President Donald Trump has officially come to an end.

Judge Scott McAfee agreed to dismiss the racketeering case on Wednesday after the prosecutor who inherited Willis’ troubled effort urged him to take it off “life support.”

“The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over,” Trump’s lead Georgia defense counsel Steve Sadow said in a statement. “This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.”

Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia (PACGA) Executive Director Peter Skanadlakis, who was tasked with finding Willis’ replacement after she was disqualified from prosecuting the case, took over on Nov. 14 after failing to find another attorney willing to do it.

“As a former elected official who ran as both a Democrat and a Republican and now is the Executive Director of a non-partisan agency, this decision is not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law,” Skanadlakis wrote Wednesday.

Skanadlakis explained the charges would be more appropriate for a federal case, like the one brought by special counsel Jack Smith, not a state case. Smith was forced to abandon his effort after Trump won the 2024 election.

“Overt acts such as arranging a phone call, issuing a public statement, tweeting to the public to watch the Georgia Senate subcommittee hearings, texting someone to attend those hearings, or answering a 63-minute phone call without providing the context of that conversation, just to name a few examples, are not acts I would consider sufficient to sustain a RICO case,” Skandalakis wrote.

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a ruling disqualifying Willis from the case in September.

Defense attorneys moved to disqualify Willis in January 2024 for awarding her romantic partner, Nathan Wade, a “lucrative” contract to work on the case, claiming she improperly benefited when he took her on cruises and vacations.

Willis falsely claimed she paid all the special prosecutors working on the case the same hourly rate, though contracts first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation showed she paid Wade a higher rate than the state’s top racketeering expert.

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation

The post Fani Willis’ Case Against Trump Is Officially Over appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The current American political landscape overflows with sharp conflict and disdainful rhetoric. The norm for American political discourse has alarmingly mutated from spirited good-faith debate into no-holds-barred, personal, and unproductive quarrels. We have seen this unfortunate transformation transpire on the floors of Congress, forums on social media platforms, and even dinner tables at Thanksgiving.

As political tension continues to escalate, it is critical to find common ground issues that can unite us and act as release valves for the deep political strains currently hampering American civic society. 

Defending religious liberty for all is a timely political issue that can help restore and repair the severed tapestry of American political life. A comprehensive defense of religious liberty fosters civic virtues such as charity, restraint, and a willingness to accommodate differing viewpoints. The survival of our constitutional order depends on these civic virtues.

In his book “American Covenant,” Yuval Levin discusses how the polity of republicanism requires a type of citizen for its sustainment. Republicanism offers its own “anthropology,” or the blueprint of the human person. Levin discusses how traits like selflessness, restraint, and accommodation mark the archetypal citizen needed to preserve a republican system of government.

As Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Citizens that succumb to selfishness and the desire to dominate political opponents will find it near impossible to properly function in a system of ordered representation and the checks, balances, and compromises necessary for diverse peoples to live together. 

The Founders also recognized both the necessity and rarity of civic virtues. James Madison argued in Federalist 51 that the reason why we need checks on governmental power is because men are not angels, neither are they naturally inclined to pursue such a status.

At the same time, the Founders acknowledged that the law is a teacher and can shape the character of its constituents. That recognition motivated the Founders to draft a constitution that could channel human fallibility toward a system of government that promotes liberty and justice for all through the structure of federalism, separation of powers, and protection of individual rights.

Among other virtue-encouraging constitutional provisions, few, if any, are more prominent than the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. Protecting our first freedom of religious liberty, the free exercise clause is also a pedagogical instrument for promoting the anthropology of republicanism. For religious citizens, it clarifies that firmly held beliefs and civic accommodation are not mutually exclusive, thus promoting both forbearance and religious formation. One can believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provide the only way for forgiveness of sins against God and restoration to fellowship with the Father, while still permitting those who disagree, such as Jews, Muslims, and others, to freely worship in their own ways, or to believe nothing at all.

Our constitutional system allows Americans of different religious backgrounds to accommodate each other while, at the same time, strengthening their own religious beliefs, convictions, and practices. The free exercise clause shows that religious convictions are not in a zero-sum game with civic accommodation. Citizens can and should exercise fervor in faith, which may manifest in evangelistic efforts, while maintaining charity in civic relations with those of different religious stripes. 

The free exercise clause provides wide latitude for Americans to hold and exercise religious beliefs. Subsequent statutes like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act reinforce this constitutional provision. This is because the government is not the proper institution to decide who is preaching truth and who is preaching heresy. As the Supreme Court declared in Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 728 (1871), “[t]he law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect.”

The court’s declaration is not a constitutional mandate for a bland moral relativism, neither for a religious lukewarmness that believes all religions are correct. Instead, the denominationally neutral phrasing of the free exercise clause promotes both robust assertions of absolute truth and the emergence of numerous religious systems in American society. 

Moreover, the free exercise clause and its statutory descendants invaluably protect an individual’s right of conscience and decisions to live out general religious convictions that emanate from the conscience. The experiences of the earliest American colonists demonstrate the need for protecting the religious liberty of all Americans because that is the antecedent to any and all exercises of freedom.

The protection of religious liberty necessarily extends to the protection of the individual conscience, or “inner voice,” and beliefs about ultimate questions. The basis for protecting the conscience is the biblical concept that all people are created in the Imago Dei and are thus entitled to liberty in exercising their reason when considering life’s biggest questions.

This is why the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom also affects areligious Americans. Even though they do not subscribe to any religion, areligious people also make decisions based on their conscience and contemplate deep questions about reality and human purpose. Were it not for the free exercise clause, the government would be able to mandate a specific religious viewpoint, and by extension, interfere in the inner conscience and place the intellectual freedom of all Americans at risk.  

When the government tries to dictate to citizens what to think, that threatens the whole constellation of constitutional liberties. If the government was allowed to control citizens’ thoughts, there is no defense against a snowballing infringement of external constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms, receive a trial by jury, or by protected from cruel and unusual punishment. That is why the First Amendment is first among equals.

When we prohibit the government from forcing beliefs onto citizens or censoring beliefs that conflict with the current prevailing orthodoxy, it sends the clear message that ordered liberty defines republicanism and requires a panoply of constitutional provisions to protect the individual and to safeguard this structure of government.

It is with gratitude that we reflect on the Founders’ decision to amplify this message by way of enshrining religious liberty with the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.  

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

The post The Importance of Religious Liberty and the Anthropology of Republicanism appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Department of Education may soon be closing shop, but that doesn’t mean the Trump administration’s attempt to course-correct higher education in America is finished.

Given that it is over a year since the American people elected President Donald Trump, it’s a good time to review how his administration has done on one of its most important tasks: cure elite institutions, higher education particularly, of the diversity, equity, and inclusion madness.

Given how central these programs have become to elite universities, it’s no surprise they haven’t abandoned them without a fight.

There is still a huge amount of work to be done.

But several departments in the Trump administration have been relentless in trying to remove this destructive and illegal doctrine from our schools. Here are some of the most important steps Trump has taken so far.

Executive Order on DEI

The perhaps biggest blow to DEI in higher education came at nearly the moment Trump entered office when he signed a flurry of executive orders, including “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” It essentially repealed President Joe Biden’s Day One executive order that transformed the federal government into the primary enforcer of the “Great Awokening.”

“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” the order read.

Mike Gonzalez at The Heritage Foundation called this and other similar orders the “policy equivalent of the Romans salting the Carthaginian fields after reducing their Mediterranean city-state enemy to ruins: Promoting racial preferences was after all the hallmark of the defeated and dispatched Biden administration.”

The Trump executive order drastically changed how federal departments would do business, but most importantly in terms of higher education, it opened up the possibly to review the vast array of grants handed out to higher education that promoted DEI.

DOGE and the Department of Education

It was through the executive orders on DEI that the Department of Government Efficiency began to review grants being distributed to colleges and universities with an eye toward removing those that promoted the now-illegal DEI.

This included $373 million at the Department of Education that had been funding 70 DEI training grants for teachers.

One grant, according to the New York Post, was reportedly funding teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets.”

While it’s certainly a huge and positive development that the Department of Education is shutting down, those keeping the light on inside have done an excellent job of continuing this work of removing bogus DEI grants.

In February they canceled “18 grants totaling $226 million that were awarded under the Comprehensive Centers Program.”

Among the things being funded by these grants was a “video instructing teachers to ‘flick that white man off your shoulder’ in order to resist the ‘settler patriarchy’ and the ‘white gaze.’”

Instead of just running on autopilot, the Department of Education actively went about cutting off the arms of their own DEI octopus.

Civil Rights Lawsuits

Another way of going after DEI in higher education came from civil rights law. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination “on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

It was through this that the Department of Education and Department of Justice threatened colleges and universities with lawsuits and withholding of funds if they did not stop programs that discriminated based on race.

For instance, the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent a so-called Dear Colleague letter to Harvard University, informing the school that the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard disallowing race-based affirmative action programs would be enforced.

The letter indicated that programs that “may appear neutral on their face” but in fact facilitate racial discrimination would be subject to scrutiny.

The Trump administration has used Title VI as a means to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in funds to universities it says are in violation of the law.

The State Department has recently jumped about this effort to remove DEI from higher education too. According to a report in The Guardian, the State Department released a memo on Nov. 17 seeking to exclude 38 universities from the Diplomacy Lab federal research program because they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices.”

Civil Rights Lawsuits, Title IX Edition

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, has aggressively applied Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to root out another major component of the DEI revolution. The Department of Education has also been launching investigations of Title IX violations.

DOJ has investigated schools from K-12 to university level for allowing men to infiltrate women’s sports and women’s spaces.

“Title IX exists to protect women and girls in education. It is perverse to allow males to compete against girls, invade their private spaces, and take their trophies,” Dhillon said in May. “This Division will aggressively defend women’s hard-fought rights to equal educational opportunities.”

The University of Pennsylvania made a deal with the Trump administration to keep federal funding by saying that it would no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports. UPenn had previously allowed Lia Thomas, a man, to compete in women’s swimming.

The school was also required to issue an apology to past female swimmers.

The post Here Are 4 Ways Trump Has Successfully Pressured Higher Ed to Abandon DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc explore the Left’s troubling and growing acceptance of political violence. 

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

SAMI WINC: Victor, I just wanted to get your reflections on how we’ve had two assassination attempts on Donald Trump [less than] two years ago. And most recently, in this last year Charlie Kirk, of course, was assassinated. Is this something that is growing and going to be common or is this an aberration and going to die off in our culture?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Well, the four most noticeable ones, that’s a pretty good pool to make a generalization. There was Tyler Robinson, who did kill Charlie Kirk. There was Luigi Mangione, who killed the United Healthcare executive. There was Ryan Routh, who tried to kill Trump. And there was Thomas Crooks, who hit Trump in the ear and killed another person and wounded two.

Is there a pattern? Yes. They’re all four people of the Left. They’re all four, not just people of the Left, but activists incited by particular left-wing dogmas. In the case of Tyler Robinson, he was into the trans movement, this weird, furry movement, and felt that Charlie Kirk was probably an obstacle to that. In the case of Crooks, he had gone from either isolated, crazy, conservative to hard Left, and he had bought into the idea that Donald Trump was an existential threat, and he hated him.  

If you look at Luigi Mangione, he was an overeducated nepo baby who believed that the health care [system] and the whole corporate world was unfair to poor people, and they weren’t getting health care. So, who’s going to take out one, the biggest, United Healthcare?

So he thought. That’s what he claimed.  

If you were Ryan Routh, he said so many crazy things, but he hated Trump because he thought he was going to cut off aid to Ukraine, everything.  

So now we have the idea that they are all trying to kill conservatives. By the way, there’s more of them than the opposite. If you count the eight or nine trans cases. Somebody just sent me something that was on the Libs of TikTok—I can’t assess the veracity of it. People who commit shootings of over four people based on their race or sexual orientation? The largest group shooting people were people who identified as trans or were in the trans movement of some way. I don’t know how you adjudicate all of those, whether you count Thomas Crook or you count Tyler Robinson who were somewhere there. Whether pronouns or furry animals or whatever crazy, kooky thing they are. But my point is this: That seems to be more common. And you go back to Stephen Scalise and other stuff.  

OK, why are they doing it now?

If you were an Old Testament person, you would say that they’re pretty convinced that nobody who shoots anybody goes to the death penalty, and very few get life in prison without parole. And there’s a good chance if you shoot somebody and you’re young enough, you’ll be out. Number one. 

Number two, the invective on social media—and that’s where they live, on social media—is all anti-Trump, anti-Trump, anti-corporate. It’s Left. There’s a huge left-wing. And the invective they’re using: Fascist, fascist, fascist, fascist, Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

In that environment, these people who are mentally ill or deranged or into some sex cult or into some left-wing bazaar are idolized. And they think if they shoot a conservative activist like Charlie Kirk or a health care executive, or Donald Trump, they’re going to be canonized, famous. They’re not going to be demonized. And the post-facto results show they’re absolutely correct. They’re making an opera out of Luigi Mangione in the Bay Area.

Tyler Robinson, people were already making fun of how Charlie Kirk died. They were reenacting, holding their neck. They had t-shirts with blood on their neck. They were crazy.  

As far as Trump, there were people almost immediately who said, “He missed.” They weren’t upset on the Left. So, to review. If the general jurisprudence is weaponized and in general, it’s therapeutic now and that people who shoot and kill … even Decarlos Brown that killed poor Iryna [Zarutska] on the North Carolina subway, I don’t think he’s going to get the death penalty. He’s been out so many times. And the guy who just tried to burn to death the girl on the [Chicago train].

So, the system sends a message to these four. You’re not going to really pay the ultimate price. And then it sends message number two that if you do do this, you’re going to be canonized as a political hero in some quarters. And number three, you’re going to be famous.

You add all of that up, and there’s a fourth. It’s going to be lax, the security, because these are not popular people. I don’t mean that conspiracy like some people are saying that Donald Trump was set up. I do believe that [under] the head of the Secret Service—Trump was not president—it was Joe Biden’s Secret Service, and she was fired—there was a general laxity that said, “That’s just Trump. Just go down to Pennsylvania and go through the motions, but don’t scour every building or if somebody comes in and he kind of lets off an alarm …” Yeah, that kind of attitude, which they didn’t have with Obama or Biden. And that was pretty much part of the idea. If you do it, there’s not going to be a lot of consequences, but you could get away with it.  

And if you’re at a university, and you’re walking around and Charlie Kirk is speaking and you just walk in broad daylight, you know, kind of limping around with an odd object or whatever you had to have, a gun, and then you go up on a roof, nobody says anything and you’re right. So laxity, laxity, laxity. Yeah, that explains it. Is it going to happen again? Absolutely.

WINC: Yeah. 

HANSON: Because if somebody gets shot tomorrow, if Donald Trump is assassinated tomorrow, two things will be much harder. He’s got a good Secret Service now, and he’s going to be much better protected. But if somebody gets close enough to try it, will that person to be canonized? Yes. Just look at those attacking the ICE people, trying to shoot ICE.

So, we have assassination chic right now.

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

The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Left’s ‘Assassination Chic’ and the Inevitability of Another Attack appeared first on The Daily Signal.

REUTERS—President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a National Guard member had died after being shot in an ambush by an Afghan national near the White House, an attack that drew accusations from his administration of Biden-era immigration vetting failures and prompted a sweeping review of asylum cases.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died of her wounds and her fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life,” Trump said, as investigators conducted what officials said was a terrorism investigation after Wednesday’s shooting.

The FBI searched multiple properties in a widening probe, including a home in Washington state linked to the suspect, who officials said was part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan before coming to the U.S. in 2021 under a resettlement program.

Agents seized numerous electronic devices from the residence of the suspect, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, including cellphones, laptops, and iPads, and interviewed his relatives, FBI Director Kash Patel told a news conference.

U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro said the suspect drove cross-country and then ambushed the Guard members while they were patrolling near the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

“I want to express the anguish and the horror of our entire nation that the terrorist attack yesterday in our nation’s capital, in which a savage monster gunned down two service members in the West Virginia National Guard, who were deployed as part of the DC Task Force,” Trump said in a Thanksgiving call for U.S. military service members.

Trump said the suspect’s “atrocity reminds us that we have no greater national security priority than ensuring that we have full control over the people that enter and remain in our country.”

War Secretary Pete Hegseth called Beckstrom an “American hero, at home with the LORD.”

Armed with a powerful revolver, a .357 Magnum, the gunman shot one member who fell and then shot again before firing multiple times at the second member. The gunman was wounded in an exchange of fire with Guard members before he was arrested. He was in hospital under heavy guard on Thursday, and Trump said he was in serious condition.

The alleged assailant, who lived in Washington state with his wife and five children, appeared to have acted alone, said Jeff Carroll, executive assistant chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.

(On the Reuters side, reporting by Leah Douglas, Jana Winter, Phil Stewart, Ted Hesson, Lucia Mutikani, Jasper Ward and Tim Reid; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Jeff Mason, Steve Gorman; Writing by Julia Harte, Rod Nickel and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Ross Colvin, Deepa Babington and Diane Craft. The Daily Signal’s Katrina Trinko also contributed.)

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In 2006, a few days before Christmas, doctors announced my wife had six months to live. She had, they said, a rare form of cancer that had spread to her lungs. There was really nothing that could be done. We had a one-year-old and I had been told my job was coming to an end the same day of the diagnosis. Thankfully, it was a misdiagnosis. Not only did I keep my job, but I kept my wife.

Ten years later, doctors informed my wife they suspected she had a genetic form of lung cancer. Had my wife not been misdiagnosed in 2006, they would not have known about her lung cancer in 2016. My wife has stage four lung cancer. It is genetic. There is no cure. Nine years ago, she was given two years to live. She is still here.

Thankfulness can be a very abstract concept. We are grateful for things. We are thankful for things. We thank people. Often our gratitude comes from random events, seeming accidents and happy coincidences. We don’t often think about a man upstairs guiding our lives, let alone history. Things happen. We are thankful for dodging bullets, unanswered prayers, answered prayers and the kindnesses of random strangers, family and friends.

As we become more successful in life, it is often harder to be thankful for small things. Small things loom large when we are small, starting our career before life explodes into family, debt, career, success and income. Then, many of the acts of kindness, gratitude and thankfulness shrink. A twenty-dollar bill is immeasurably larger and a great act of kindness to a struggling twenty-something than to a well-off forty-something. But it is still an act of kindness. The thankfulness just changes based on where one is in life.

Two months ago, my wife fell down the stairs on the way out to church. She broke her foot. She has been healing from the break only to get hospitalized with an illness. The week after she got out of the hospital, my father got put into the hospital. I am thankful for my sisters who live closer to my parents than me who could tend to them while I tend to my wife. I am thankful for the doctors and the offers of help. I am way more thankful as I get older for the prayers of others than when I was young.

“I’ll pray” is as much a Southernism as “bless your heart” and asking how someone is when you really are not interested in the answer. It is what you say, but it’s not necessarily what you mean. I say it when I mean it, and I am more appreciative as I get older when people really do it. This last month has been a whirlwind for family health, work, professional growth and setbacks. The friend’s casserole or the neighbor covering dinner is far less meaningful now than their heartfelt prayers.

Thankfully for all of them, the sacrifice of time to make room in prayers for other people than self is what I am more thankful for as I age.

We live in extraordinary and bizarre times. We have, right now, as you read this, a robot roaming Mars and a massive telescope in space beaming back incredible images of the edge of space. Online and on television, we have clowns performing for our attention, votes, support, opposition or clicks. Sorting through it all can generate anxiety and a desire to unplug from it all. Why tune in when it is more pleasant to tune out and not think about things? But thinking and engaging is a civic and necessary virtue.

When we do, we should at least consider the small things for which we are thankful, from the small acts of kindness to the random events that just happen. I am thankful for the surprises in life that make me appreciate life still with my wife. In these overwhelming and extraordinary times, do not fail to be thankful. There is still so much to be thankful for.

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is my new hero. Duffy is promoting a “civility” campaign that urges passengers to be polite and dress up rather than wear sweatpants and slippers when they fly. If everyone dresses better, everyone will behave better, Duffy offered.

It’s an idea that could bring smiles to the friendly skies around the Thanksgiving holiday.

During a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday, Duffy was wearing a suit and red tie. This was an outfit that answered the question: What would President Donald Trump wear?

The good news: Duffy did not propose a business-attire dress code that would be enforced on board.

Duffy ticked through the litany of air travel woes—long lines, brawls at baggage claim, flight delays and cancellations often due to bad weather—that have resulted in an uptick in incivility.

According to the Department of Transportation, there has been a 400% increase in outbursts on planes since 2019. Clearly, the flying public has been getting surly.

One in five flight attendants report experiencing physical incidents on the job.

There’s no law Congress can pass to make people behave more courteously, Duffy acknowledged, but maybe dressing up will encourage fliers to act more adult.

Duffy offered commonsense advice, which he noted most people already observe.

Don’t take your shoes off.

If you’re watching a movie, wear headphones.

Say please and thank you.

Because lines will be longer, “Come a little early.”

Passengers who give themselves more time are more likely to arrive at their destinations with a good attitude, Duffy added.

Confession time: I love to fly. I love going places. I love coming home.

I love people watching in airports. I love to see what people are wearing.

In the terminal, I eavesdrop shamelessly. It’s one of my favorite things about travel.

Sadly, too much of the chatter in airports these days is about how awful flying is, how irksome the airlines have become and how infuriating people find nightmarish cancellations and even minor delays.

And yet, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the percentage of Americans who fly keeps expanding.

In 1971, fewer than half of Americans had ever flown, and only 1 in 5 had flown in the last year. In 2023, fewer than half had flown in the last year, and while 85% of Americans had flown in their lifetimes.

It seems the more people fly, the less of an occasion flying becomes.

I don’t wear cocktail dresses when I fly, but I try to dress well and comfortably. Duffy’s crusade tells me that I can do better.

At the Newark presser, FAA administrator Bryan Bedford took pride when he said, “This week is our Super Bowl.“

(Not that passengers should act like they’re at the Super Bowl.)

The government, Bedford cautioned, will not hesitate to use its enforcement authority for those who break rules.

I’ve seen how that works. Many years ago when there was shuttle service between Washington, New York and Boston, I was on a flight that ended with a fellow passenger being walked off the plane in handcuffs. There was a $10 dispute, and he would not pay his full fare on the credit card trolley, which was the standard way to pay on that shuttle.

I can only imagine what his legal bills were. He probably didn’t realize that passengers don’t have the same rights on a plane that they enjoy on a sidewalk.

So there is one advantage to all those viral videos of air rage episodes: They end with the consequences.

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

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REUTERS—From battlefields in Afghanistan to a scenic home in the Pacific Northwest, Rahmanullah Lakanwal had followed a promising path before Wednesday, when U.S. authorities say he shot two National Guard soldiers blocks from the White House.

Lakanwal, 29, drove across the country from his home in the state of Washington, said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., at a news conference on Thursday. He lived in Bellingham, a coastal city near Canada’s border, with his wife and five children.

Pirro said he ambushed the two National Guardsmen on Wednesday as they patrolled near the White House. Armed with a powerful handgun, a .357 Magnum, he shot one Guardsman who fell, and then shot them again, before firing multiple times at the second Guardsman, Pirro added.

Lakanwal was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with other Guardsmen before he was arrested and taken to hospital, where he remains under heavy guard. The authorities have not given an update on his condition or a motive for the attack.

Pirro said Lakanwal faces three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and a charge of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.

He will also be charged with murder in the first degree if the Guardsmen, who are currently in critical condition, do not survive their injuries, she said.

Earlier on Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News the U.S. government plans to bring terrorism charges against Lakanwal and seek a sentence of life in prison “at a minimum.”

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era immigration program to resettle thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. during the war and feared reprisal from Taliban forces who seized control after the U.S. withdrawal. More than 70,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. under the program.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have confirmed that he worked with U.S. partner forces in Afghanistan, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.

Pirro and Patel blamed the Biden administration for improperly vetting Lakanwal.

According to a federal law enforcement dossier seen by Reuters, Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23, three months after Trump took office.

Lakanwal had no known criminal history, according to the dossier. He had no documented record of traveling in or out of the U.S. since his arrival in 2021, and he had imported a shipment of household goods from Afghanistan in February.

After working through Wednesday night, investigators seized cellphones, laptops, iPads, and other electronic devices from his house in Washington state, according to Patel.

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Nia Williams)

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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. I’d like to return to this often contentious subject in the news of why the United States supports Israel.

I must come clean. I am not a Christian Zionist. I feel I’m a Christian, but I have no special advocacy to support Israel because it’s a biblical home of the Jews and, by extension, the Judeo-Christian traditions of which I am a member.

And I can even confess, as a rural resident who grew up isolated on a farm, I don’t recall anybody being Jewish. And I had never met anybody Jewish until I was 18 years old, when I went to the University of California campus at Santa Cruz, and for the first time in my life I met somebody who said he was Jewish.

So, I don’t come to this issue with any particular hidden agenda, whether it’s Christian Zionists—that’s a new term that’s in use now—or as an advocate of Jewish Americans or Israelis. I do it for one reason. I support Israel for one reason: It is in the interest of my country, the United States.

Now, why would that be? I’ll give you one example. In 2012, ’13, and ’14, the United States embarked on a joint missile defense program with Poland and the Czech Republic in Eastern Europe. You know that because in 2012, that same year, then-President Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic right before his campaign that he was willing to be flexible on missile defense in Eastern Europe, i.e., give it up, if Russian President Vladimir Putin would give him space before his reelection. I.e., don’t invade Ukraine or don’t invade anybody, like you did in 2008 with Ossetia.

Both of them kept the bargain. Putin didn’t invade and for two years kept—and Obama was reelected and they removed missile defense.

But what was the missile defense for? It wasn’t to protect us, it couldn’t from Russia’s 7,000 nuclear-tipped missiles. It was designed to protect Europe from Iran. They were paranoid that, unlike us, they were in a range of new Iranian missiles, and Iran was considered hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon. So, it was in our interest.

Forget Israel, forget anything else in the Cold War vis-a-vis the prior Cold War between Russia and the United States. It was in NATO’s interest to protect the European continent from whom? Iran. And that made sense, didn’t it? Because Iran had killed almost, if not more, Americans than ISIS had or al-Qaeda had.

Al-Qaeda was responsible, via Osama bin Laden, for 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11, 2001. But Iranian Shia terrorists all over the globe had killed Americans. They killed Americans in Beirut in the Marine barracks in the embassy. They gave shaped charges to our enemies in Iraq and probably were responsible for over 2,000 American soldiers dying or being maimed.

So, they were existential enemies of America, and we had taken efforts well aside from Israel to protect our allies and ourself from Iranians and that theocratic, anti-American government.

There was another reason too. We tend to often favor democratic or consensual societies over their antithesis. That’s why all of the NATO governments now are consensual, our closest ally. That’s why Australia—we are a close ally in New Zealand. They are consensual. That’s why we are closer to Canada than we are to Mexico, because it’s more consensual. That’s why we are good friends now with Japan. It’s a consensual government in a way it was not during World War II. We’re a consensual government. We see a consensual government in South Korea. OK.

So, what is Israel? Israel is a consensual government. It’s surrounded by 500 million people of the Islamic world—Shia and Sunni, Iranian and Arab—that aren’t, they’re not consensual.

There’s only one government that is truly a free democratic government, and that’s Israel. So, it has affinities with the United States and interest with the United States that transcends anything to do with the 7 million Americans who are Jewish Americans. That’s just a given.

They are not directing American policy. They couldn’t unless Israel was democratic, consensual, Western, an outpost in a dangerous part of the world that has key resources for global prosperity with oil and, more importantly, is an enemy of our existential enemy that transcends any question of Israeli or Iranian animosity, and that’s the theocratic government of Iran that began its existence by taking Americans hostage and storming our embassy.

There’s another question as well as we have all sorts of quasi-allies, of course, that are not consensual, and we give them a lot of money. We give Jordan over a billion dollars. We give Egypt over $600 million. We give a country that can be very, very anti-American all sorts of help, fellow Turkish member Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in Ankara. And we don’t require any prior litmus test that they be constitutional or consensual, but nobody seems to object to all the money we give these countries or all the support.

So, why would you not object for us offering military assistance to Turkey that isn’t consensual, fully, and still illegally occupies Northern Cyprus, but you would object to military assistance to Israel that is consensual and shares exactly the same enemies as the United States does? And these enemies are prior to and not relevant to Israel’s particular enemies. We would not be friendly with the Iranians, regardless of Israel. They took our embassy and they killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans for reasons other than we support Israel.

In other words, it’s in our self-interest to stop Iran from posing an existential threat to Europe, ourselves, from killing American soldiers, and for trying to disrupt and unsettle the entire Middle East, where 40% of the world’s oil is from. And that is well aside from the fact that Israel, the so-called Holy Land, is the foundation, the home, the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That is a reason, but it’s not the only reason, it’s not even the primary reason, nor is the advocacy of Jewish Americans. The primary reason we support Israel: It’s in our cold, hard, self-interest.

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

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