NewsGuard claims its fact-checking is “apolitical,” but PragerU accuses the organization of forcing a leftist narrative onto children. 

NewsGuard is an organization that claims to find reliable information for enterprises and consumers and now features an artificial intelligence tool that just became free to students. According to its website, the chatbot delivers “reliable responses to prompts” using information from “rigorously vetted” journalists. 

The organization uses a process that ranks informational websites on a 0-100 credibility scale. If a website scores below 60, users are advised to “proceed with caution” because of concerns about reliability. In 2021, PragerU was given a score of 57%. 

PragerU is a nonprofit organization that promotes conservative and American values through educational videos. PragerU CEO Marissa Streit argued that the low score given during COVID-19 was due to the organization’s criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lockdown policies. 

“It is clear NewsGuard chose to protect a small class of elite ‘experts,’ while punishing everyday Americans and organizations like PragerU for asking legitimate questions,” she said. 

Streit further explained that NewsGuard enforces “ideological conformity,” saying, “agree with preferred narratives, and receive approval. Challenge the approved experts, and be branded ‘untrustworthy.'” 

The New Threat 

NewsGuard AI was released for students on June 23, 2026, and is now free to access for students who attend a partnered school. PragerU warns parents that the tool is simply a new way to control the narrative. 

“They are asking teachers to use the NewsGuard tool to filter what kind of information should go into our children’s brains, into our children’s classrooms,” Streit said on X. 

Streit claims NewsGuard’s censorship of content for children in school is based on its biased credibility scale, saying, “They are going to be told that when they see content coming out of the Daily Wire, or of PragerU, it is labeled as misinformation.” 

PragerU argues that NewsGuard has already caused irreparable damage and that this tool is a new avenue, driven by censorship, to “control” discussion of every topic, including those taught to children. According to Streit, PragerU will “continue telling the truth regardless of who tries to silence” it. 

With food prices on the rise and Americans reassessing their monthly food budgets, the Senate Agriculture Committee is set to mark up the farm bill today. Packed with agriculture subsidies originating during the Great Depression, the farm bill has been informed by a belief that these subsidies “save the struggling family farm,” but the facts show this system has been one of the very things that have accelerated its decline.

Like many subsidy programs, the current system of crop insurance, commodity price and income support, and disaster assistance programs boost the profits of large operations while accelerating the decline of small, independent farms. Washington needs to reform the current subsidy program structure because it rewards consolidation instead of strengthening America’s food system.

With the current bill expiring on Sept. 30, lawmakers are moving quickly toward a final five-year package that will decide who is eligible and how the rules are applied to hundreds of billions of dollars in agricultural support. The question is not simply how much Washington spends on agriculture, but whether the next farm bill will continue to reward consolidation or begin correcting it.

For decades, the federal government has been distorting the market by favoring the nation’s largest agricultural operations while small, independent farms receive little to no support. According to the Environmental Working Group, about 69% of all farms receive no subsidy funding, while the top 10% of recipients have captured around 75%-79% of payments over decades. Washington tends to reward farms of scale, acreage, and commodity production rather than the small operations that are most vulnerable to hardships.  

These consequences are visible across rural America. While federal support has increased, the number of small farms has continued to decline. Department of Agriculture data shows that from 2017 to 2022, the number of family farms fell by nearly 159,000, while the number of large operations has continued to increase over decades. If subsidies are intended to provide a safety net for American agriculture, decades of consolidation raise a serious question about whether that support is reaching the farms most vulnerable to failure.

This concentration also carries national-security costs. The United States now imports roughly 50%-60% of its fruit and about one-third of its vegetables. Heavy reliance on foreign supply chains leaves the country more vulnerable to disruptions and weakens the self-sufficiency that food security requires.

In 2025, Congress used the reconciliation process to lock in major commodity-program changes through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While much of its impact has been positive for the agriculture industry, it does shine light on unprecedented effects. It continued the decades-long pattern of expanding policies that disproportionately benefit the largest operations. Two provisions in particular have accelerated the concentration of farmland.

First, the law added 30 million new “base acres,” the acreage the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses to determine eligibility for many commodity subsidy payments. Because larger farms already control more qualifying land, expanding the number of eligible base acres allows them to receive a greater share of federal support, widening the gap between large operations and smaller farms competing for the same land.

Second, the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” raised the individual payment cap on certain commodity programs from $125,000 to $155,000 (now adjusted for inflation) and allowed each owner of an LLC or S-corporation to claim that limit separately rather than splitting one limit across the entire business.

For a small, single-owner farm, that’s a modest $30,000 increase. For a large operation with multiple owners on paper, it can mean multiplying that cap several times over. Neither provision was designed to disadvantage independent farmers, but together they ensure the largest operations receive the greatest share of taxpayer support, regardless of need. 

While it was important for Congress to extend these programs to 2031 due to the lack of bipartisan support for a full five-year farm bill in 2024, it did so without any major reforms to the underlying subsidies.

Critics may argue that large farms simply produce what the market demands. If that’s true, why do they require billions of dollars in federal support?

Because this is no longer a free market. The American agriculture industry has not acted under normal laissez-faire economics in decades. Instead, Congress has put in place restricting guardrails to shape land values, production incentives, and investment decisions around federally favored commodities. Much of today’s subsidy structure reflects agricultural priorities established generations ago rather than modern consumer demand.

Federal support overwhelmingly favors commodity crops such as corn, wheat, and soy, encouraging their continued production regardless of changing dietary preferences. Many of these crops are ultimately processed into high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and other ingredients that dominate ultra-processed foods.

Meanwhile, independent and diversified farms that grow nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods receive far less federal support. Local and regional producers can harvest closer to peak quality and deliver food with shorter supply chains, advantages that industrial monocultures and long-distance imports often cannot match.

If we want a healthier and more resilient food system, we need a stronger foundation. Even if the bill moves forward in its current form, the underlying problems will remain: payment rules that favor complex multi-owner operations, base-acre expansions that further concentrate benefits, and a subsidy structure still tilted toward a handful of commodity crops.

It is time we start to examine how future legislation can realign support so that it reaches producers who are most vulnerable.

Washington’s agriculture subsidies have been misguided for decades, and Congress now has the chance to change that. The farm bill will set the trajectory of American agriculture for the next five years. If Congress fails to act now, the door may remain shut until 2031.

Family farms are the foundation of a healthy food supply and a healthy nation, and they deserve a farm bill that promotes and strengthens them.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The State Department is expanding its social media vetting requirement to include applicants for more types of visas, according to an internal memo obtained by the Daily Signal.

Last June, the State Department said student visa applicants with private social media accounts will be required to make their accounts public for screening. Social media vetting is already required for diplomatic and official visas; temporary workers and trainees; exchange visitors; international cultural exchange participants; religious workers; and witnesses, informants, and victims.

The new requirements will apply to foreign media representatives and qualified nationals from Mexico and Canada entering the United States for business as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as well as their dependents.

“The Department relies on every available source of information during visa screening and vetting to identify applicants who may be inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to national security or public safety,” the memo says. “We apply this rigorous vetting standard consistently across all visa applicants.”

All applicants are instructed to change the settings of their social media to be “public” or “open.” 

“Every visa adjudication is fundamentally a national security decision,” the memo says. “The United States remains vigilant throughout the visa issuance process to confirm that applicants do not intend to cause harm to Americans or threaten U.S. interests, and that each applicant can credibly demonstrate eligibility for the visa requested—including a genuine intent to abide by the terms of admission.”

“Receiving a U.S. visa remains a privilege granted at the government’s discretion, not an entitlement,” the memo adds.

The Senate committee investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci voted Thursday morning to advance a contempt of Congress citation against him.

Last week, Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding questions about the government’s response to COVID-19.

“All he had to do was tell the truth more than 100 times. Though he refused,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the committee chairman. “The chair ruled that Dr. Fauci’s assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege was unsupported in light of the pardon and the testimony he offered in his opening statement.”

The committee will send the referral to the Justice Department, which could use that contempt citation to prosecute Fauci.

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the committee’s ranking member, complained that the investigation of Fauci has been partisan.

“The chairman is now asking the committee to take a vote that could harm our ability to conduct future investigations, and disregards constitutional protections long recognized by the U.S. Senate without making a reliable case that there is a legal basis for holding Dr. Fauci in contempt,” Peters said.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Thursday defended the investigation against criticism from Democrat panel members, saying it has been transparent. He added that the President Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of Fauci for actions taken from 2014 to early 2025 means that Fauci would not have incriminated himself by answering panel members’ questions about the pandemic.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., stated on X after the vote that Fauci “MUST be held accountable.”

“When Congress sought answers, Fauci refused to answer. He misled Congress and the American people, cost countless lives and livelihoods, and was obsessed with protecting his own popularity rather than telling the truth,” Scott stated.

During his testimony last week, Fauci repeatedly said, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”

Ahead of the testimony, the committee had released excerpts of Fauci’s diary on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was stored on a government computer. In one of the entries, Fauci said that a wet market in Wuhan, China “was not the source, but the amplifier” of the virus.

During an opening statement before questions in the hearing last week, Fauci said the release of the dirary was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me.”

Fauci also accused Paul of a vendetta, saying, “The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’” 

On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., noted that three state attorneys general have said they would investigate Fauci. Blumenthal argued that Fauci had the reason to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights despite receiving the presidential pardon. The states of Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama announced plans to investigate Fauci following his Senate testimony.

Fauci, who retired at the end of 2022 after 38 years directing the NIAID, repeatedly has said the United States never funded gain-of-function research projects at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, suspected to be the source of COVID-19. He also has insisted that he never misled Congress on issues related to the origin of the virus.

Two allies of President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protest. Both served four months in federal prison.