The cost of living has risen to unsustainable levels for millions of working Americans. Delivering immediate relief by lowering these costs and restoring affordability is essential. The first step is using budget reconciliation in the coming weeks to enact targeted spending reforms and structural changes that put money back in the pockets of families.

Few Americans realize that a little-known Federal Reserve Bank practice has already cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars—and Congress has the power to stop it.

For its first 95 years of existence, the Fed paid no interest to banks for balances held in reserve. Financial institutions were mandated by the reserve requirement ratio to hold a certain percentage of their deposits in reserve at the central bank to ensure liquidity and to control monetary supply. Banks could also park “excess” reserves at the Fed voluntarily beyond the minimum requirement.

In 2006, Congress authorized the Fed to pay interest on reserves, effective 2011. The global financial crisis accelerated its implementation to 2008. The policy was intended to influence short-term interest rates by encouraging banks to hold reserves rather than lend them overnight. In 2020, the Fed eliminated the required reserve ratio entirely, embracing an “ample reserves” floor system.

Since September 2022, elevated interest payments on reserves have forced the Fed into operating losses. These shortfalls are recorded as a “deferred asset” on the Fed’s balance sheet, currently totaling roughly $240 billion. The Fed must first repay this amount from its future profitable operations before resuming any remittances back to the U.S. Treasury.

As of early June 2026, banks hold just over $3 trillion in reserves at the Fed, approximately 12% of the $25.5 trillion in total commercial bank assets. Annual IOR payments have exploded since the central bank raised rates to combat inflation—$177 billion in fiscal year 2023, $186 billion in fiscal year 2024, and $148 billion in fiscal year 2025—representing the single largest Fed expense in recent years.

Cumulative interest payments since 2008 total $728 billion, with approximately 60% accruing under the Biden administration. The IOR framework is not monetary policy; it is a quiet transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street and foreign capitals.

The Foundation for Government Accountability projects that continued interest payments will cost taxpayers $1 trillion in foregone revenue to the Treasury over the next decade. Other independent analyses from the Andersen Institute similarly project cumulative IOR expenses approaching $1.3 trillion.

These payments disproportionately benefit the largest banks, which hold the bulk of the reserves. According to an oversight report from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., foreign or foreign-owned banks have received roughly 39% of payments since 2013—totaling $235 billion.

Under Chairman Jerome Powell’s mismanagement and persistent losses, the Fed has left taxpayers on the hook for lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury. This directly increases federal deficits and debt, as the government must borrow to replace the foregone revenue. What was once a reliable source of tens of billions annually in Treasury income has vanished.

The Federal Reserve’s IOR program functions as a hidden subsidy to banks, especially large domestic and foreign institutions. Eliminating interest on reserve balances would restore the central bank to profitability and redirect billions back to the U.S. Treasury for the benefit of American taxpayers.

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced the Fiscal Accountability for Interest on Reserves (FAIR) Act (S. 2499) in July 2025 to repeal the Fed’s authority to make these payments. A companion bill in the House, led by Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, would achieve the same goal.

The Federal Reserve Bank has been on welfare, courtesy of American taxpayers, for far too long. While families across America stretch their weekly paychecks to afford groceries, gas, and rent, the Fed has quietly funneled hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars straight into the coffers of the biggest banks—including foreign ones.

Congress must stop this hidden tax on Main Street and eliminate interest on reserves through budget reconciliation. Only then can the Federal Reserve return to profitability, remittances to the Treasury resume, federal deficits shrink, and the perverse incentives that discourage lending be removed.

California makes the strongest case for passing the SAVE America Act. The state has built one of the most permissive voting systems in the country, with lax safeguards and rules that defy common sense. It has multiplied the pathways for ballots to enter circulation and remain in the counting process while reducing the most important eligibility question to little more than an honor system: Is the voter an American citizen?

A recent federal case reveals how easily the state’s rules can be exploited before ballots are cast. Federal prosecutors last month charged Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, a longtime petition circulator, with paying individuals, including homeless people living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, to register to vote. She allegedly paid individuals to complete voter registration forms and, on several occasions, provided homeless individuals with her own former address.

Given that California automatically mails a vote-by-mail ballot to every active registered voter, ballots in some of those individuals’ names potentially could have been sent to an address where they did not live or collect mail. Furthermore, state laws allow a voter to authorize another person to return their ballot for them, and eligible voters who miss the registration deadline can conditionally register through Election Day at a county elections office, polling place, or vote center.

California law does require voter applicants to affirm under penalty of perjury that they are American citizens. However, when proof of identity or residency is required, the state accepts an unusually broad range of documents, including an employee or student identification card, a public housing identification card, a credit card, an insurance card, or even a gym membership card.

These documents may help establish that a person exists or lives in a community, but they do not prove that the person is a U.S. citizen. The debate over voter ID frequently focuses on whether a voter shows identification at the polls. California reveals why that question is not enough. An identification card not issued by the government may establish who a person is, but it does not answer whether they can vote in a federal election.

Every eligible American citizen, regardless of income, housing status, or access to paperwork, deserves a clear path to the ballot box. They should also be confident that federal elections are reserved for American citizens.

Ballot integrity begins with verifying the voter roll. That is why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act. The legislation requires proof of citizenship for registration to vote in federal elections while preserving an alternate process for eligible citizens who need help proving their eligibility, such as seniors, naturalized citizens, and women whose current names differ from their birth certificates.

Federal elections are reserved for American citizens, and proof of citizenship, not just any paperwork, should be required by law. As an immigrant who became an American citizen, I understand the significance of that distinction. Citizenship carries rights and responsibilities, with voting among its most sacred privileges.

California has spent years removing barriers to the ballot while leaving citizenship verification dependent on little more than an honor system. The Skid Row case exposed the risk before a ballot was ever cast. Congress should close that gap nationwide.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Daughters of the American Revolution currently allows men who identify as women to join, but the group will vote on a resolution to reverse that policy and formally define “woman,” the Daily Signal has learned.

“Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution will take an historic vote to define the word ‘woman’ on Friday, June 26, 2026, at Memorial Continental Hall in Washington, D.C.,” Laura McDonald, founder and president of Daughters Advocating for Restoration and a member of Daughters of the American Revolution since 2018, told the Daily Signal.

“Daughters all across the country have relentlessly pursued all avenues and have succeeded in their demand for this historic vote,” she added.

The Daughters of the American Revolution Resolution

The resolution, provided to the Daily Signal, argues that the bylaws, which state that eligibility only applies to women, “should be interpreted in accordance with the intention of the society at the time the bylaw was adopted.” There is no question that DAR’s founders in 1890 did not envision men identifying as women as eligible for membership.

In relevant part, the resolution states:

“Resolved, That in Article III, Section 1 of the Bylaws, the term ‘woman’ shall be understood to clearly mean a woman who was born female, and therefore, individuals who were born male shall not be eligible for membership; transgender women shall not be eligible for membership; and men who have their birth certificates changed from male to female shall not be eligible for membership.”

The DAR bylaws require the organization’s president general to call a special meeting at the request of at least 30 chapters in 10 states. At least 68 chapters in 27 states signed this resolution.

On April 21, DAR Recording Secretary General Colleen Rafferty Joyce signed a letter announcing that the society would vote on the resolution at the Continental Congress, held from June 24 to June 28.

The announcement frames the resolution as “restricting the interpretation of ‘woman’ in the National Bylaws based on sex assigned at birth,” echoing transgender activist language.

Vikki Grieshaber, regent of the Letitia Coxe Shelby chapter in La Mesa, California, confirmed to the Daily Signal that her chapter called for the special meeting.

“We requested the Call to a Special Meeting where we will vote on the bylaw amendment,” she said, confirming the date of June 26.

“The Letitia Coxe Shelby Chapter supports a bylaw change,” Grieshaber added. “We believe the term ‘woman’ refers to biological women only.”

“Our founders would never have anticipated men believing they are women would join a women’s only organization,” she explained. “The current membership application has us attest to the fact that we are biological women. We hope to restore our Society to what our founding daughters intended.”

The DAR did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Signal.

Sons Becoming Daughters?

Organizers of the DAR changed the organization’s bylaws in 2023, barring local chapters of the group from discriminating on the basis of gender, religion, or sexual orientation. The group’s president general said the new policy would require chapters to admit men who claimed to identify as women, so long as they changed their birth certificates. Many members reportedly resigned following the new policy.

A New Jersey chapter had reportedly accepted a transgender member in 2022, inspiring backlash.

The DAR’s transgender move is rather ironic. The women who founded the organization did so after the Sons of the American Revolution refused to admit women.

Recent polls have found Americans souring on transgender identity. A New York Times/Ipsos poll last year found that 79% of Americans say men should be barred from women’s sports. A majority of Americans also support banning experimental transgender medical procedures on children.

McDonald emphasized the importance of the vote and expressed confidence in victory, echoing the closing of the Declaration of Independence.

“We believe restoring and preserving the DAR for future generations is essential to winning the culture war,” she told the Daily Signal. “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we believe we will win.”

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters)—President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States would hit Iran “very hard tonight” and wanted eventually to take Iran’s oil infrastructure hub Kharg Island, after tit-for-tat strikes in the Gulf that have undermined a shaky ceasefire.

Iranian sources and Western officials said indirect U.S.-Iranian talks on a preliminary peace deal had intensified. But a worsening of hostilities this week has undermined prospects for a swift end to more than three months of war.

Trump threatened new strikes on Iran after the two sides traded air attacks on Thursday for the second successive day.

“The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump said in a social media post.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets,” he said, referring to Iran’s main oil hub.

Tehran did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest remarks, but Iran’s foreign ministry said earlier on Thursday that the ceasefire agreed in early April had been effectively rendered meaningless by the latest U.S. attacks.

The war has killed thousands of people, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, and pushed up global oil prices since the U.S. and Israel launched heavy airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

Talks on halting the conflict have stalled, but three Iranian sources and Western officials said indirect U.S.-Iranian talks were continuing, with some issues yet to be discussed in detail, including a mechanism for the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds.

“This war, from a military standpoint, is a dead end. The Americans could not achieve their goals by attacking Iran. There has been progress in negotiations,” said one of the Iranian sources.

Trump has repeatedly said a deal is close, but U.S. officials did not immediately comment on the latest status of the indirect negotiations.

Reflecting the view that military action had become part of the tense negotiations, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday: “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs, and we’re very good at it.”

Tit-for-Tat Strikes

Iran exports most of its oil via Kharg Island, with volumes usually amounting to 2 million barrels per day, or around 2% of global supply, and flowing mainly to China.

A move by the U.S. to capture the island would not have an immediate impact on oil shipments, however, since those flows have been suspended in recent weeks following the U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports.

The U.S. carried out attacks across Iran on Thursday, and Tehran fired at U.S. bases in the region following Monday’s downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. military said “military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites across Iran” had been targeted in about four hours of attacks in response to Tehran’s “unwarranted and continued aggression.” 

Iranian news agencies reported explosions in several cities and said five people were hurt.

Oil prices rose on Thursday after Trump made his comments about hitting Iran “very hard tonight” and taking control of its oil and gas infrastructure and markets.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched counterattacks on 18 U.S. military targets at airbases in Kuwait and Bahrain on Thursday, and on the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. It said it also targeted a U.S. airbase in Jordan for a second successive night. 

Bahrain’s interior ministry said an 11-year-old girl suffered minor injuries and homes were damaged in the town of Hamad and the capital, Manama, after debris fell from Iranian drones that were intercepted and destroyed.

Kuwait briefly closed its airspace because of an Iranian attack.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Toby Chopra)

Virginians should not be giggling over the issues that are dogging California’s primary results—we could be next.

All of the laws regarding mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are in Virginia’s law books, too.

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, now president of the Election Transparency Initiative, pointed this out in a visit with me on my radio show (recording attached).

Ken Cuccinelli: “They have ballot harvesting [in California] and by the way, so do we in Virginia. Yeah, I know, it’s horrible. You know, it’s legal in Virginia. [Former Gov. Glenn] Youngkin couldn’t get rid of it because he had a Democrat legislature.”

Joe Thomas: “Yes, so what do we do?”

Ken Cuccinelli: “Well, honestly, that’s a great question, unless we want to start trying to use the federal government to impose rules on states we can’t win, and I wouldn’t recommend that because the other side can do that too; some people say we should do it because they’re going to do it, and I’m not in that camp. I do think we should expose all this.”

So, let’s start with how we got here. During the COVID-19 years, the Northam administration wanted to protect state employees from “putting their lives on the line” by being exposed to the public, so we legislated a 45-day-long early voting period, removed any requirement for a reason to be issued a mail ballot, removed the requirement that you have a witness sign your absentee ballot (which was the last way anyone was caught committing voter fraud in the commonwealth), and allowed “volunteers” to go collect ballots at people’s homes.

The irony is that we didn’t mind putting the state employees of the VABC liquor store at risk by keeping them open every day, but not the election workers.

Aside from that, the obvious problem was violating Virginia’s electioneering protections, as there are no safeguards against partisan campaign staff “helping you vote” at your door. Virginia law requires a 40-foot area around the building used for voting to be free of electioneering, never mind standing right in front of a voter.

Did I mention that the last time someone was convicted of voter fraud in Virginia, it was a Louisa County senior living facility staffer who was caught appearing as the witness on all the residents’ absentee ballots?

COVID-19 was also used to move poll watchers away from the election officials tabulating the dropped-off and mailed-in ballots so they cannot see anything other than whether the officials are opening envelopes and sliding them into scanners.

Democracy works when citizens cast their secret ballots publicly. This is how to protect against coercion and prevent ineligible people from voting.

In California, ballot harvesting was being done on Skid Row among the homeless population because under California law, homeless people can register to vote even though they do not have a fixed residence.

In Virginia, we aren’t there yet.

To register to vote in Virginia, you need to show acceptable forms of identification, which include a current and valid photo ID or a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or government document that shows your name and address. Yes, lots of gray area. Then there is a court ruling this week.

Just Tuesday, a federal judge approved a consent decree requiring Virginia election officials to accept voter registration applications submitted by college students with incomplete address information. The agreement settles a lawsuit that was filed in October by the NAACP and a group called the Advancement Project against Virginia election officials because students’ applications didn’t include campus mailbox numbers.

The judge’s ruling was based on whether the address was necessary to determine what voting precinct they should be assigned to when it should have been about proving whether the student is actually a resident of the state—or any other, for that matter.

Votes are legal documents. It’s why you are supposed to sign when you cast one. However, in this day and age, we have gaslit the public into believing that casting a vote is a right that should not be interfered with—certainly not by anything as arcane as actually being a citizen of the community you are voting in.

Just ask the Republicans who oppose the “SAVE” Act.

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