Tropical Storm Isaias is forecast to track northeastward and quickly ramp up to a hurricane while over the central Gulf in the next several hours. Landfall along the central Gulf Coast is expected Friday night or Saturday morning as a strong Category 2 storm.  Residents in the FL panhandle, MS, LA and AL should pay […]

The post Tropical Storm Isaias Anticipated to Become Hurricane – Residents in FL Panhandle, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi Should Pay Attention appeared first on The Last Refuge.

In the highly contested Senate race in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins and her Democrat opponent Troy Jackson plan to go head-to-head in four debates. Unfortunately, voters in Virginia won’t have the luxury of getting many chances to hear from congressional candidates.

In fact, in many races, there will be no debate at all this election year.

In the highest-profile race, the bid for one of Virginia’s U.S. Senate seats, incumbent Democrat Mark Warner is seeking a fourth term against Republican challenger Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army major general. At least two proposed debates between the men were canceled after Warner’s side said it couldn’t agree to the schedule.

The canceled events include The People’s Debate, which was to be sponsored by AARP Virginia and held on Oct. 7 at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. AARP pulled the plug because it said Warner’s team “was unable to commit to participating in the event, citing an unsettled and expectedly busy official Senate calendar.”

The League of Women Voters of Virginia also decided to scrap its planned exchange “because [the group] didn’t hear from the Senator.” The incumbent’s team said that “Sen. Warner and his opponent shared a stage on Labor Day in Buena Vista, and Sen. Warner looks forward to continuing that conversation with Virginians across the Commonwealth,” but it won’t be at either of these planned forums.

Mizusawa’s side poked fun at Warner, saying the challenger “is ready, willing, and able to debate Warner, but for the first time in Warner’s political career, the Senator refuses to step to the podium.”

The 6th Congressional District

In Virginia’s 6th Congressional District, Democrat challenger Beth Macy challenged Republican Rep. Ben Cline to three debates. Cline’s team responded in August by announcing he had scheduled the events for Sept. 3 in Frederick County, Sept. 10 in Salem, and Oct. 5 in Harrisonburg.

“Rep. Cline’s team unilaterally decided on this ‘debate’ schedule (the whole schedule is candidate forums not debates, which was made very clear in the invitation) without consulting us at all,” Macy’s team told the Daily Signal at that time, adding that she was already booked on the first two proposed dates.

However, both sides seemed to have agreed to the Oct. 5 event at the Harrisonburg Rotary Club. Then, the organizers canceled that one because the host group said it was concerned that the event would endanger “the Club’s nonpartisan role in our community,” and that the decision was that of the Rotary Club and “not a reflection on either candidate or their willingness to participate.”

Macy told the Daily Signal she plans to attend a community conversation event on Oct. 14 in Clifton Forge, but Rep. Cline’s team said he is already booked at the Oysters with a fundraiser that day and doesn’t plan to attend. “Ben is talking straight to the voters in the final weeks of the campaign,” an adviser told the Daily News-Record.

Other Key Districts

There is no debate scheduled in the 5th Congressional District, where Democrat challenger Tom Perriello accepted invitations to debate, but incumbent Rep. John McGuire said he won’t participate until Perriello apologizes for allegedly lying about him on the trail. There are no head-to-head debates planned in the competitive 1st and 2nd districts, where Republican incumbents Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans are looking to hold off Democrat challengers Shannon Taylor and Elaine Luria.

In two other districts, organizers tried to move ahead with debates even though the Democrat incumbent wouldn’t take part. In the 7th District, the University of Mary Washington tried twice to schedule a debate that would have included Republican Doug Ollivant, independent Alaha Ahrar and Libertarian Taner Lopez, because Rep. Eugene Vindman had made it clear he would not take part. UMW canceled after Ollivant became unavailable.

In the 8th District, the League of Women Voters of the Fairfax area hosted a debate among Republican Tony Sabio, Libertarian Shelly Arnoldi and independent Tim Sharman, even though Democrat incumbent Rep. Don Beyer turned down an invitation to participate.

The air force of Oman evacuated the mostly Indian crew of a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker called On Peace on Wednesday after it was struck by a projectile and set ablaze while passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

The post Oman Rescues Mostly Indian Crew from Tanker Attacked in Strait of Hormuz appeared first on Breitbart.

The New York Fed has posted yet another paper which is widely being read as showing that tariffs have pushed up consumer prices. In reality, the paper shows no such thing.

The post Breitbart Business Digest: The Fed’s Tariff Math Doesn’t Add Up to Inflation appeared first on Breitbart.

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.

This is the first week of October, and the Iran war conflict, whatever term we want to call it, is coming to a denouement whether we like it or not. 

We’ve had seven months of conflict, but that’s the wrong word. We had 38 to 40 days of actual kinetic action and then on-and-off negotiations, all overshadowed by the tick, tick, tick, tick to the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 3, as well as the Israeli elections in late October, as well as elections all over Europe. 

So what I’m getting at is this conflict was always framed in political terms. Donald Trump did not have to try to force the issue during the midterms. He did because, remember, seven other presidents said Iran could not have a bomb.  

Information came to him after he tried to stop that in June of 2025 that, yes, they still could get a bomb, but, more worrisome, they also were developing missiles that could hit cities in Europe and would soon have intercontinental ability to the Western Hemisphere. 

So he decided to act. 

Where are we now? 

We’re in the last stage. We are bringing over a third carrier group, the USS Roosevelt. That means that we will have all of the resources of our land-based airplanes, jet fighters, and bombers, but we’ll have three large carriers. In other words, we’ll probably have 400 or 500, maybe 600, at our disposal. 

If the Israelis find out that this Dubai hijacking, and there is more information that’s coming out every moment, had anything to do with Iranian agents, then they will probably join in. 

And if we find out that the RAF-American joint base in Britain was the object of a terrorist attack by British subjects who were influenced, paid for, or trained by Iran, that will add a different dimension as well. 

But for now, Iran is desperate. 

How do we know that? Because we don’t have any news people in there. We don’t have any embedded troops, as I keep saying. We only have people calling out, and usually when they call out to their relatives or friends to assure them of the terrible conditions, the next thing they know, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is at their door. 

So you have to gauge it by the attitude of Iran. 

They’re doing two or three things right now. 

Number one, they wrote a letter—it’s 25 pages long. You should all read it—to the American people. But it isn’t really to the American people. It’s to half the American people. It’s to the Left. They have gleaned and absorbed the message from the Left in the Senate, in the House, and in popular culture that this is an illegal, immoral war that we’ve already lost. The Strait of Hormuz is hopelessly closed. And that has emboldened them. 

So they’re now saying, Why don’t you people take it to the next step and join us and vote in the midterms to get rid of this horrific, warmongering, evil Donald Trump regime? 

They feel… and they don’t understand American politics, obviously, because whatever happens in the midterms, the Democratic Party is not going to get 60 seats and get a veto-proof Congress. It’s not going to happen. 

So that’s not going to stop Donald Trump, but they think it is. 

The second thing they’ve done is that they have said, now we want to negotiate with Donald Trump. We want to negotiate, which means we’ve been at this seven months. They want another two, three, or four months while they try to figure out how they reclose the Straits of Hormuz. 

Third, they have threatened us with new weapons. We have new weapons. We have new ways of killing you. We’re going to unleash them. 

I don’t know if that was referring to the terrorist attacks in Britain and over Dubai, but we’ll see. 

What’s the actual status? 

For some reason, we only belatedly started to really crush Iran. I don’t know why we didn’t have a complete banking boycott, freezing of all assets, a secondary boycott of anybody who trades with Iran or enters financial transactions with them. We would also boycott them. I don’t know why we didn’t have a complete embargo on their airspace, but we didn’t. 

Now we do. 

They are getting no income, but 90% to 95% of other countries’ ships that want Gulf oil are now coming in. They can’t stop them. 

And now we’re going to have more assets. 

So one way or another, this regime is going to implode. It may implode after the midterms. It may implode in three or four months. 

There is only one thing that can save the Iranian theocratic terrorist regime. One thing. And that is if, for some reason, popular opinion, or the Trump administration, loses its nerve and they begin another monthlong cycle of negotiations, and they allow that regime certain exemptions, then all of this will be for naught. 

We are very, very close. The United States is very, very close to doing something that no one ever anticipated: so hurting, so injuring this terrorist, murderous regime that either the people will now go out in the streets and overthrow it, or it will be too weak to operate as a terrorist home base for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and terrorists worldwide, or Donald Trump, in frustration, will destroy the regime’s ability to make war for 20 years. 

He will hit dual-use targets, and then he will leave. 

But in any case, they only have one chance, and that is now to call off the United States military and the United States financial architects of this embargo and somehow squeeze or slither out of the noose that they put their head in. 

Let’s hope that does not happen. We stay the course, and I think very soon, in a year, a lot less than a year, or two years, that regime will either fall or be taken over by moderate elements, and the Middle East will look like a completely different place. 

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

Legislation to deny the Democratic Socialists of America party status has gained momentum in the House of Representatives.

If enacted, the effort from Reps. Rich McCormick and Clay Fuller of Georgia would mirror the Communist Control Act of 1954, signed into law by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by denying the DSA legal rights and privileges.

“The DSA has made clear that it wants to abolish and fundamentally change the 250-year American experiment of self-government,” Fuller told the Daily Signal. “The organization’s co-chair has confirmed support for abolishing institutions like the Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, abolishing ICE and our borders, defunding the Pentagon, and mass amnesty for illegal immigrants.”

Posting on X, Fuller wrote, “Proud to co-sponsor the Communist Control Act of 2026. The Communist Control Act of 1954 denied the Communist Party the rights of a normal political party. This bill applies those same rules to the DSA.”

“Communism has no place in the United States,” he added.

The legislation comes after a new poll revealed that 84% of Democrats under 29 have a favorable view of socialism, fueling the rise of DSA-aligned candidates across the country.

At least five new DSA members could be sworn in to Congress in January 2027. That number could increase if Michigan activist William Lawrence and Florida Rep. Angie Nixon were to win their respective House and Senate races.

Fuller’s legislation is not the first effort from Republican lawmakers to push back against the DSA. Earlier this year, other lawmakers considered introducing legislation to strip the organization of its nonprofit status.

In an interview with the Daily Signal in March, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., stated that he would look into the DSA’s trip to Cuba to determine whether the visit violated the rules of a nonprofit organization.

During the trip, the DSA pushed the communist regime’s narrative that America’s sanctions against Cuba are to blame for the widespread hunger and worsening conditions of the Cuban people.

Cuba’s government-controlled military wing, Grupo de Administración Empresarial (GAESA), has over $14 billion in the bank.

“These are [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani supporters going directly to the enemy of the United States,” Fine claimed. “I will see if the communist trip violates the rules of an organization’s nonprofit status, and if that is the case, I will absolutely consider bringing forth legislation to revoke its status.”

Similarly, Florida Republican state Rep. David Borrero told the Daily Signal at the time that he would consider introducing legislation in the state Legislature to revoke the DSA’s nonprofit status.

“Any organization that aims to send material aid to Cuba, which is a designated state sponsor of terrorism, in an effort to thwart U.S. diplomatic relations should be placed under great scrutiny and investigated,” Borrero said.

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

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants everyone to know that his administration is serious about fighting antisemitism.

Just don’t ask him to define it.

His new 33-page “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” released Sept. 29, is packed with programs, grants, and spending. Mamdani’s administration says it has increased annual hate-crime prevention funding from $3 million to $29 million and set aside another $1 million to improve security at synagogues and other houses of worship.

All of that is welcome.

But halfway through the report comes a section titled “Definitions,” and it is there that Mamdani sidesteps the central question.

The report acknowledges several definitions of antisemitism, including those of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Jerusalem Declaration. Yet it goes on to declare that New York City can combat antisemitism “without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.”

Think about that.

City Hall is rolling out an entire government strategy against antisemitism while deliberately refusing to define what it is fighting.

That refusal matters because the real debate over antisemitism today is not whether swastikas, synagogue attacks, or anti-Jewish slurs are hateful. Everyone knows they are.

The dispute is over increasingly common forms of Jew-hatred expressed through hostility toward Israel and Zionism.

Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. Neither is opposition to a particular Israeli government or policy.

But when Jews are harassed because they support Israel, when Jewish institutions are targeted over events in Gaza, when Zionists are told they are unwelcome in public spaces, or when Jews are held collectively responsible for Israel’s actions, the line between political criticism and antisemitism has plainly been crossed.

This is not an academic debate.

Jewish New Yorkers make up roughly one-tenth of the city’s population, yet anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 52.9% of all confirmed hate crimes during the first nine months of 2026.

Incredibly, Mamdani’s strategy never discusses Zionism or anti-Zionism, and Israel is absent from its substantive discussion of contemporary antisemitism.

That silence is especially striking given Mamdani’s own record. He began his mayoralty by revoking executive orders embracing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition and aimed at preventing city procurement and investment decisions from being used to advance boycotts of Israel.

He co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin and sponsored legislation in the New York State Assembly aimed at charities supporting Israeli settlement activity. As a candidate for mayor, he also declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

Seen against that record, the plan’s refusal to grapple with antisemitism expressed through anti-Zionism becomes even more significant. And no amount of new spending can make up for that omission. A city can devote millions of dollars to combating antisemitism while still refusing to recognize the forms of it that are politically inconvenient.

Mamdani himself unwittingly underscored the problem.

In a statement Wednesday marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, he acknowledged the Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped, only to add that “the suffering did not begin nor end that day.” He then proceeded to accuse Israel of “ongoing genocide,” “apartheid” and “war crimes.”

Even on the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani managed to turn the occasion into an indictment of the Jewish state.

And therein lies the gaping hole in Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy: It promises to fight Jew-hatred while refusing to confront the anti-Zionist hostility that increasingly serves as one of its primary vehicles. But the significance of Mamdani’s approach extends far beyond New York. Within the Democratic Socialists of America, where Mamdani is a member, his victory is already being held up as a model for what comes next.

Indeed, the organization called his election “the biggest Socialist electoral victory in the U.S. in a century.”

The movement’s position on Israel is hardly ambiguous. At its 2025 convention, delegates voted 675 to 524 to require DSA-endorsed candidates to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and refrain from affiliation with what it calls “Zionist lobby groups,” including AIPAC, J Street, and Democratic Majority for Israel.

Its rules also list statements that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” or that equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, among grounds that can trigger disciplinary proceedings.

So, the question raised by Mamdani’s plan is not merely how New York will deal with antisemitism.

It is what happens if this framework is copied by other cities and states.

A government that refuses to define antisemitism gives itself enormous discretion to decide which forms of Jew-hatred count and which do not. And when antisemitism expressed through anti-Zionist hostility is left unaddressed, hostility toward Jews can be condemned in theory while being tolerated in practice.

That is the danger of the Mamdani model. It offers politicians a way to say all the right things about fighting antisemitism, spend millions of dollars doing so, and still look away when Jews are targeted because of their connection to Israel or Zionism.

New York may be the first place to put it into practice. But if it spreads, politicians elsewhere will not need to excuse antisemitism.

They can simply decide that some of it is not antisemitism at all.

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

Last month, public school leaders from Fairfax County, Prince William County, and Richmond traveled to Aspen, Colorado. As members of the Aspen Institute and College Board’s Social Mobility Leadership Network, their districts are participating in a three-year program on expanding low-income students’ access to advanced coursework.

As I previously wrote in the Daily Signal, membership requires each district to sign a data-sharing agreement with the Aspen Institute and the College Board. The agreement covers advanced coursework participation data “disaggregated by race, ethnicity, income status, and other locally relevant student groups.”

Aspen is beautiful, and helping more students succeed in advanced coursework is a worthy goal. But these districts face a more basic problem: Many of their students are not performing at grade level.

Richmond Public Schools is a case in point. According to the Virginia Department of Education, nearly half of its students failed their Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in reading, math, and science in 2025-26.

Richmond Public Schools: SOL Failure Rates, 2025-26

Source: Virginia Department of Education

According to Richmond Public Schools’ website, Superintendent Jason Kamras “views public education as a means of promoting equity and justice for all children in the United States.”

By one measure, that mission is succeeding, but only in a perverse sense. Economically disadvantaged students, who make up 36.3% of Richmond’s student body, are failing at nearly the same rates as their peers. It is strange, then, that Kamras’ district would join an Aspen program to explore expanding advanced coursework when nearly half of the district’s students are not performing at grade level. Richmond is planning the summit while nearly half the district’s students are still stuck at base camp.

Fairfax County and Prince William County, the state’s two largest districts, have lower failure rates but significant problems of their own. According to the Virginia Department of Education, 20% to 29% of their students failed standardized tests in reading, math, and science. Among economically disadvantaged students, the failure rates are much higher, from 34% to 42%.

Fairfax and Prince William: SOL Failure Rates, 2025-26

Source: Virginia Department of Education. Economically disadvantaged students make up 30.1% of enrollment in Fairfax County and 32.3% in Prince William County.

Roughly two in five economically disadvantaged students in Fairfax and Prince William are failing to perform at grade level. That is a far more immediate problem than whether these students take advanced courses at the same rate as their peers. Yet no Aspen-style program, free trip included, is devoted to it.

Expanding access to advanced coursework is a worthy goal, but it comes after a more basic one: making sure students can read, write, and do math at grade level. Before district leaders fly to Aspen and agree to share data broken down by race, parents should ask whether their schools are getting the basics right. Until those numbers improve, trips like this one are a distraction from the work students need.

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