A teacher at the Michigan synagogue and preschool attacked by an Islamic terrorist in May stated that she would not be voting for Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, despite being a lifelong Democrat, because of his apparent lack of regard for the Jewish community.

After the attack took place, which began after a heavily armed Hezbollah-aligned terrorist rammed his car into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, El-Sayed justified the attack by stating that “hurt people hurt people.”

The attacker’s family members, who were also identified as Hezbollah fighters, were killed in Lebanon by an Israeli strike prior to the attack.

“Abdul El-Sayed stands for everything that I believe in, everything, except that he does not support the Jewish community,” Elise Otis, the teacher at Temple Israel, said. That is a big point for me. I have children, and God willing, will have grandchildren one day, and nieces and nephews, but he doesn’t support them, so I can’t support him.”

“I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel safe with him,” Otis added.

El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Months after El-Sayed’s comments about the attack, the candidate said that his “comments might have been misconstrued.”

“To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention. We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright,” he added.

Despite his apology, national Jewish organizations have continued to raise awareness over their skepticism of El-Sayed.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that focuses on combatting the defamation of Jewish people, accused El-Sayed of “peddling in antisemitic tropes” in a statement in August.

“Throughout the campaign, ADL has called out nominee Abdul El-Sayed for peddling in antisemitic tropes … or for campaigning with notorious bigot Hasan Piker,” Greenblatt said in a video statement. “Campaign trail rhetoric and actions send clear signals about what a person believes and what a political party thinks is permissible.”

“We are not going to stop, and we will keep calling on political leaders and candidates from both parties to reject antisemitism and to commit to combating it whenever and wherever it occurs,” he added.

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 think we should entitle our short video today “Tribalism: Tribalism Doesn’t Work.”

And what do I mean by that? The ancient prejudice that people would identify largely with people who resemble them, whether that’s in terms of religion or gender or sexual orientation or superficial appearance, and that they would have cliques or cohorts or tribes, does not work in a consensual society in which all groups vote for an elected government. 

And when we see this in Rwanda or we saw it in Iraq or we see it in Lebanon or we see it in some places in large democracies like Indonesia or the caste system in India or racial tensions in Brazil, it does not work.  

So what’s going on right now?  

Well, if you look at the nature of the United States right now, we are seeing one tribal group pitted against the other, and they’re jockeying for political power. 

They’re jockeying for share of government expenditures. They’re jockeying for everything, admissions to college, and it’s accentuated by our establishment, whether it’s racial quotas or uneven application of the law based on a person’s race or superficial appearance.  

Just take a couple examples. 

As I speak right now, the black community in Detroit is galvanizing against the Arab immigrant community. Apparently, there was an incident in which an African American woman was surrounded by Arab men, and words were exchanged, and her purse was stolen, and she was intimidated and called for help. And the result of that is long-simmering anger against the Arab immigrant community, the Muslim community in particular, because they are on the front line of 7-Eleven-type stores, gas stations, small stop-and-go markets in which many of the majority population of African Americans in Detroit use, and there has been tension. 

Now that tension is boiling up to abject violence. At York College, in an off-campus home, a group of African American girls were walking by. Words were exchanged with the people residing in the house, and before we knew it, there was a swarm that went up on the porch, grabbed two or three of the white girls, beat them to a pulp, knocked them unconscious. 

Part of what the problem is social media. Now, for the first time in recorded history, you can take any event, film it without context or commentary, and put it on YouTube or TikTok or X. And so what’s happening is all over the seven billion-person planet, but particularly in Western countries, when they see, when the public sees an incident, they capture it and they post it. 

And the more that they can do this and the more clicks, perhaps they can get advertising revenue. So there’s incentives. That said, the government since 1965, though, has accentuated not unity but diversity, and now we’re bearing or suffering through the effects of those policies. Again, as I’d mentioned earlier, part of the problem also is that the Obama administration did something that was not noticed at the time. 

It was unheralded, but it was probably the most divisive thing, act, protocol, attitude, ideology we’ve seen in recent history. They took the old affirmative action binary of 89, 90, 88% white so-called versus 9, 10, 11% black, and we framed that in the context of slavery, Jim Crow, reparatory admissions, affirmative action, and there was an economic element to it. 

People said, “Well, the black community is on a per capita basis less affluent because of the white community, and that’s because of the discrimination of the past.” The Obama people came in and said, “Well,” and now I’m extrapolating, “that constituency that has claims against the majority is a lot larger than 10 or 11%. 

“We’re going to include anybody, Indian immigrants from Mumbai, aristocratic children of professionals in Chile that have an accent on their name, members of the Middle East.”  

And now I’m just going to give you some names. Hassan Piker, a multimillionaire family, drives a $200,000 Porsche. Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan immigrant who’s very, very wealthy. 

Ro Khanna, his in-laws are worth probably a quarter of a billion dollars. I could go on and on and on.  

Barack Obama, who is now a multimillionaire, many times over.  

Under this new binary, it doesn’t matter your class status. There’s many ethnicities that are much more affluent on a per capita basis than so-called white people, but you’re a victim. 

And that skewed everything because the whole basis of reparatory attitudes was not just skin color or demonstrable prejudice. It was you didn’t really have to cite the prejudice because you could look at the income inequality.  

And even though we had institutionalized a quality of opportunity, there were calls for an equality of result because of the disequilibrium between income. 

But now what’s the problem is we have generations coming up, two, three generations that have never seen Jim Crow, have never seen racism. They’ve seen only the reaction to it and things like affirmative action and DEI and programs to aid people who are not white.  

In other words, when Obama really said that people who step foot in the United States for one minute who are not white, people who come from wealthy families from Asia, people who do very well in the black community. They’re all victims of whites.  

And yet you see that there’s 45, 50 million impoverished whites among the majority population. It doesn’t really, it doesn’t jibe. It doesn’t compute. And when you add other elements to it, such as the data on interracial crime or the data on hate crimes, that the so-called white majority in rare, rare, let’s be honest, they’re not common, but in about 7% to 8% of all crimes, they are interracial. 

And in that 7%, African Americans who, take one group, are far more likely at six to 10 times the ratio to assault, murder, steal from whites than whites black. And the same ratio, the same inequality occurs with Hispanics and whites. And the same inequality happens with blacks and Hispanics and Asians. 

 So what I’m getting at is the government says that there are oppressed groups that need reparatory action. 

The public says, “Well, when I look at hate crimes, the people who are supposedly victims are overrepresented as victimizers. When I look at rare interracial crimes, the people who are supposed victims are overrepresented as victimizers. When I look at income inequality, I see six, seven, eight, nine, 10 groups, whether Arab Americans or immigrants from India or Japanese Americans, you name it, who have more per capita income than the supposed oppressor class.” 

And when you then give up on the melting pot, acculturation, assimilation, integration, and you educate a whole generation of youth to be infatuated with, obsessed with superficial appearance, and it doesn’t jibe into this demonstrable inequality in terms of real victimhood or crime or income necessarily, then you get this anger. 

And the anger now is not just white versus non-white. It’s breaking out everywhere, and social media and the internet is the fuel that accelerates this pathology.  

We all know what the medicine is. The medicine is to forget racial chauvinism and to renounce tribalism and to judge and associate and talk with people as if their race is incidental and not essential to who we are, to who they are. 

The problem is, in finishing, that our government thinks the medicine for that disease of tribalism is worse than the disease itself.

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

Students for Life of America, a leading pro-life advocacy group, released a letter Thursday announcing its intent to sue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over alleged Endangered Species Act violations tied to pharmaceutical waste from the chemical abortion pill mifepristone.

In July, the group announced a peer-reviewed study published in Issues in Law & Medicine, a journal of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (JAHM), that found significant levels of mifepristone in all but one of nine sampling classes of water collected in three U.S. cities, including in some tap water. After months of pressing the FDA over those contaminants, the group is taking another step by putting the agency on formal notice that it intends to sue.

“FDA is thus in violation of Section 7 of the ESA for failing to engage in consultation with the Services in connection with approving mifepristone and issuing REMS for it,” the letter states. “SFLA, its affiliates, and its members enjoy recreating, observing, and studying endangered species impacted by this decision and have plans to continue doing so in the future.”

“By failing to follow the substantive and procedural requirements of the ESA, FDA has injured and continues to injure SFLA, its affiliates, and their members. Per this notice, the ESA gives FDA 60 days to resolve these violations. If it does not do so, we will pursue litigation,” the letter adds.

The letter, sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, and acting Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Michael Davis, says the organization is seeking to prevent the “dumping of mifepristone into the waterways of the United States and the inevitable harm that has occurred and will continue to occur for endangered species.”

According to the study published earlier this year, researchers tested water from Austin, Texas; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Carbondale, Illinois; including household taps. The study found significant levels of anti-progesterone activity consistent with mifepristone in eight of nine sampling classes, with concentrations reaching 0.041 micrograms per liter, and concluded conventional treatment did not reliably remove the contaminant.

Students for Life America’s letter says animals listed under the Endangered Species Act, including freshwater mussels such as the Balcones spike, Texas fawnsfoot, fatmucket, and pimpleback, are “uniquely vulnerable to such exposures, given their particular susceptibility to chemical pollution from wastewater effluent.”

“Anyone who has paid attention to the scope of the impact of the Endangered Species Act can tell you that ignoring risks to species at risk of extinction is not acceptable. We wish that risk to preborn babies and their mothers matter as much. But as a matter of law, we don’t have to show harm to endangered species, we need to show risk,” Kristi Hamrick, Students for Life America’s vice president of media and policy, told the Daily Signal.

“Studies in other countries show risk. A peer reviewed US study shows the presence of mifepristone and mifepristone equivalents, an endocrine blocker, which carries risk for endangered species,” Hamrick added. “A short letter from the FDA claiming that the law does not apply will not cut it, legally or practically. The ESA is a serious law and we have serious concerns.” 

The group is giving the FDA 60 days to pull mifepristone from the market and begin Endangered Species Act review. The letter says more than 50 tons of blood and placental tissue contaminated with mifepristone are expelled into U.S. waterways each year. 

“The FDA has 60 days to pull the drug from the market and begin real evaluation. Their own forms show that compliance with the ESA is a regular checkpoint,” Hamrick told the Daily Signal. “As a result of federal policy, more than 50 tons of chemically tainted blood and placenta tissue, along with human remains and waste, go into our waterway each year. Hospitals and outpatient medical facilities can’t flush pathological medical waste.”

The pro-life group says endangered or threatened species exist in all 50 states and that a progesterone blocker may affect more than 1,500 protected species. The group said it named some of those species in the notice and circulated a broader list to state attorneys general. 

“In each of the 50 states, there are endangered species. We named some in the Notice of Intent to Sue, but we have circulated to attorneys general the broader list,” Hamrick said. 

“You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water. And you don’t have to be pro-life to want endangered species to be protected.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is introducing legislation to end commercial birth tourism in the United States, a move that could cut off a pipeline that foreign nationals use to gain citizenship for their children.

After President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birth tourism was struck down by the Supreme Court, Scott is taking a different approach.

The Birth Tourism Elimination Act seeks to prohibit foreign nationals from using temporary travel visas to give birth inside the country for the purpose of obtaining citizenship for their children. It will also target companies that assist and charge foreign nationals seeking help facilitating their travel.

“American citizenship is not for sale, and foreign nationals have no right to buy citizenship for their children,” Scott said in a statement provided to the Daily Signal. 

“The birth tourism industry has disrespected what it means to be an American by selling and profiting from the freedoms and values that men and women across our country died for,” he continued. “We are blessed to live in the greatest nation on God’s green Earth, and my bill makes it clear that our temporary travel programs cannot be exploited for the purpose of obtaining American citizenship.” 

Following the Supreme Court’s July ruling against Trump’s executive order restricting automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to foreign nationals, Scott announced he would introduce legislation to “end the ‘birth tourism’ industry once and for all.” 

The Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are granted citizenship and are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at birth. Instead of challenging who qualifies for birthright citizenship, Scott’s new legislation codifies the State Department’s 2020 restriction on using B visas for birth tourism and targets the commercial operations that facilitate it.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, roughly 25,000 children are born in the United States each year to foreign nationals and receive U.S. citizenship at birth.

You Win USA Vacation Services Corp. is just one example of a company that assists foreign families, primarily Chinese citizens, charging them tens of thousands of dollars to organize their travel and birth in the United States. According to the Department of Justice, in 2019, the organization was charged with assisting more than 500 Chinese births and collecting $3 million in international wire transfers from China over two years. 

Border czar Tom Homan agrees that this is not a new problem, calling it a “national security threat.” 

“Birth tourism has been a problem for the three decades that I’ve been enforcing immigration law, especially from Russia and China, where hundreds of thousands of their nationals come to this country just to give birth,” Homan said on Fox News ahead of the July Supreme Court hearing. 

The United Nations is bloated, duplicative, and inefficient, according to UN Ambassador Mike Waltz. But despite its flaws, he thinks the organization is worth saving.

“You need one place in the world where everybody can come and talk, and at least talk,” he told the Daily Signal in a phone call from the 2026 United Nations General Assembly in New York City. “I’ve learned as a diplomat, especially in some of these war-torn environments with 1000-year-old animosities, just getting both sides in the room is often a huge first step.”

Waltz has seen the benefit of the UN in action with the war between Ukraine and Russia.

“At the beginning of the president’s term, there was no one talking from either side,” he said. “Now we’ve had multiple rounds of pulling them together, and we’ll see. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we can get both [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and [Vladimir] Putin at least in the same room to begin a conversation, so the president’s willing to engage anyone anywhere to try to craft a deal for peace, and for all of its flaws, the UN is a key place to do that.”

The same is true with the Iran conflict, he said. President Donald Trump said U.S. and Iranian officials held talks on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly amid the two countries’ more than six-month-long war.

“It’s the only place where you get 150 prime ministers, presidents, world leaders, finance ministers all here at the same time, and the interesting thing about it is, you can have those conversations even with our adversaries,” he said. “We’ll see how it unfolds.”

“It’s notable that it was the first contact since the ceasefire with Iran, since they violated it by attacking international shipping and fell apart,” he said. “But it was a good kind of reengagement. I’ll let the president decide where it goes next.”

The UN also helps with burden sharing, part of America First foreign policy, Waltz said. A UN force has gone into Gaza, preventing the U.S. from having to send troops. UN troops are taking care of gangs in Haiti to prevent that instability from spreading.

“We are a generous nation,” he said. “We do help out people in need in situations like earthquakes and tsunamis and famines, and there’s a role for that as well.”

Waltz has been working to reduce the UN budget, slashing $1 billion in the past six months.

“The UN’s done nothing but grow for 80 years,” he said. “We’ve seen a tripling of their budget in the last 25 years. I would argue strongly we haven’t seen a tripling of peace break out around the world.”

The U.S. is trying to return the UN to the basics.

“We came in here determined to reform and and drive efficiencies,” Waltz said, “and we’ve by all accounts, achieved some historic success.”

As the UN searches for a new secretary general, Waltz said he wants the role to be filled by someone who takes after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“We need that same kind of leadership for the UN,” he said, “so we’re looking for the right leader from anywhere in the world, man, woman. Really, we’re focused on merit, and to get this organization really involved in ending wars, bringing peace, and helping President Trump in that regard on the world stage.”

Many more cost-saving reforms are to come at the UN, Waltz said.

“The average UN civil servant makes 120% of what an American civil servant makes,” he said. “The main UN locations around the world are in some of the most expensive cities in the world: New York, Geneva, and Vienna. Yet the focus of a lot of the UN’s work is in some of the most difficult and developing and war-torn places in the world.”

“Let’s get people out to where they’re needed, not in these plush cities in the United States and Europe,” he said.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL — The Daily Signal has obtained the death threats made against an outspoken House Freedom Caucus member and his kids that have landed the perpetrator with an almost 10-year sentence in federal prison.

The man behind the threats, 26-year-old Edwin Guerrero, was also hit with a $15,000 fine, United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe announced.

“This pro-Hamas individual said he was going to kill me, my children, and make me watch as he killed them. I’m incredibly grateful that now he’s experiencing his own 9/11,” Fine told the Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. “The judge sentenced him to 9 years and 11 months in prison, one month shy of the maximum.”

Fine, who expressed his gratitude for the justice system for taking this matter seriously, thanked the judge and Kehoe for wanting to “send a message” to those who wish to inflict harm on someone for their race or ethnicity, as well as elected officials and children.

“Threats of intimidation or harm against public officials or anyone for their political or religious beliefs will not be tolerated,” Kehoe said in a statement shared with the Daily Signal. “We will take such acts seriously and prosecute these offenders to the fullest extent of the law.”

During his interview with the Daily Signal, Fine also he’s experienced this level of antisemitic threats before since being elected.

“It’s unfortunately not the first of these I’ve received since becoming an elected official 10 years ago,” Fine stated. “It was horrible. First, they publicly made the threat on X.”

“This is more than I or the prosecution asked for; the judge clearly wanted to send a message. He got a hate crime enhancement given the Jew-hatred he espoused in his threats,” the representative continued.

In the last few years, Jewish advocacy groups in the United States have noted a historic 360% rise in antisemitic attacks across the country.

Fine attributed the homegrown rise of Jew-hatred attacks to the “fetishizing” of radical Islam, terrorist networks such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, by American politicians and Western media, who he claimed sympathize with these terrorist networks.

Texas guarded the border for years to defend its citizens, even when the federal government refused. Now, the state is finally vindicated, and Washington, D.C., is beginning to repay its debt.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced last week that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has approved $7.5 billion from the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to reimburse Texas for securing the border. This is one step to make up for the federal government’s failure to do that job.

After then-President Joe Biden opened the southern border after taking office in 2021, Abbott launched “Operation Lone Star,” a massive effort to crack down on illegal immigration and transnational crime. Border Czar Tom Homan, who also worked for former President Barack Obama’s administration, blamed Biden for intentionally opening the border.

“Joe Biden is the first president in my lifetime to ever come into office and intentionally unsecure the border,” Homan said. “And don’t think for a second that he didn’t do so purposefully and with total understanding of what would happen.”

The tension came to a head in a January 2024 standoff, when Texas stood down the federal government—simply to defend the border. The Texas Military Department and Department of Public Safety seized federal land in Eagle Pass, blocking illegal entry and enforcing the law. Despite the fact the Constitution tasks the federal government with ensuring the people’s security and defending against invasion, the Biden administration let hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens pour into the country—and even threatened Texas for defending its people.

“President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants,” Abbott said. “I have already declared an invasion … to invoke Texas’ constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land.”

All in all, “Operation Lone Star” cost Texas more than $11 billion.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne, a Republican from North Texas, told the Daily Signal the state never should have needed to spend this money in the first place.

“Texas was the front line for the Biden border invasion, which flooded tens of millions of illegal immigrants and criminals into our country,” she said. “The Lone Star State fought courageously to slow this tsunami of illegal immigration.”

Van Duyne blamed Texas’ sacrifice on “Biden’s illegal actions” and “dangerous open border policies.” She said Texas Republicans in Congress worked diligently to include a federal reimbursement for the state’s border security costs.

“We are grateful to the President and the Administration for not only locking down our borders, enforcing our laws, empowering [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection], but for compensating our state for these billions of dollars we should not have needed to spend in the first place,” Van Duyne said.

Abbott repeatedly demanded reimbursement, including a January 2025 request for more than $11.1 billion. Texas congressional Republicans then pushed for federal reimbursement legislation. Congress ultimately created a $13.5 billion pool for state and local border-security and immigration-enforcement expenses.

Now, DHS’ $7.5 billion reimbursement will replenish a significant portion of Texas’ resources. However, it does not erase the billions already spent or fully cover the cost.

Operation Lone Star also netted criminals that could have infiltrated the rest of the country, by apprehending more than 507,200 illegal immigrants and making more than 41,500 criminal arrests, including more than 36,900 felonies. Texas also seized more than 471 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl.

Opponents of “gender transition” surgeries on minors applauded a Justice Department settlement with at least six major hospitals to stop the practice.

The Department of Justice has announced settlements with six hospitals, the New York Times reported, to stop doing the surgeries and hormone treatments for minors.

“The Department of Justice has done incredible work in driving healthcare providers to end experimental transgender treatments on minors,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer of Do No Harm said in a statement Wednesday. “Nearly two dozen systematic reviews have found no credible evidence supporting these interventions. Meanwhile, the known or expected harms are significant, including infertility, cardiovascular disease, and surgical complications, among others.”

Texas Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Mount Sinai Health System, and most recently, New York University Langone Hospital, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital reached separate agreements with the DOJ, the Times reported.

As part of the individual agreements, several of the hospitals will even provide free medical care to former patients who wish to detransition. Although the hospitals agreed to stop the procedures and pay certain federal fines, they admitted to no wrongdoing.

“No child should be exposed to so-called ‘gender-affirming’ care and the irreversible effects that many of these interventions can have,” Miceli added.

The group Consumers’ Research has been critical of federal and state tax dollars going to nonprofit hospitals that push gender ideology.

“Nonprofit hospitals that embrace a radical political agenda over their core mission of patient care must be held accountable,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, said in a statement Wednesday.

He praised the Justice Department’s investigation of the hospitals and added, “These woke hospitals need to be held responsible for putting politics over patients.”

However, Eliel Cruz, co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement, told The Associated Press, “It’s a really dangerous precedent when the federal government is allowed to politicize any one group of people’s care and end it.”

An outspoken member of the House Freedom Caucus has called on President Donald Trump’s administration to remove a photojournalist from the United States after he publicly admitted in an online video interview that the conditions of his work were dictated by Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip.

The journalist, Motaz Azaiza, who has been championed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also admitted to witnessing the Israeli hostages of the Oct. 7 massacre being beaten and paraded in the streets of Gaza, but refused to take photos of the incident.

“People got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed,” Azaiza told the “Taqarrab” podcast over the weekend. “But I did not publish those videos.”

“Why? Because I did not want to ruin the lives of the people who were filmed,” the photographer continued. “I understood that Israel would use those videos to identify every person who was there and eliminate them.”

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Signal, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., said that Azaiza “needs to be deported.”

Fine added that Azaiza needs to be detained by the Department of Homeland Security and have his visa revoked by the secretary of state.

The DHS and the State Department did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Fine, during the phone interview, said it’s unfortunate that the American people will never see a retraction from the mainstream media outlets or politicians who have previously championed Azaiza because of their newfound support of Islam.

“They fetishize Islam, the Left has fetishized Islam,” Fine said about the legacy media that championed the photojournalist for his work pushing Hamas propaganda. “They have adopted the view of mainstream Islam that you cannot engage in blasphemy, you cannot criticize Islam. They have adopted Sharia, [and] they are operating as Sharia-compliant entities.”

One example Fine highlighted was the shooting that took place in Arizona earlier this month, where two “Gays for Gaza” activists were killed by an Islamic radical outside of a gay nightclub. The perpetrator, 44-year-old Gambian-born Ousman Ceesay, had a list of other gay bars and nightclubs that he planned to attack.

“I know the media lost their mind over this,” Fine said, adding that they failed to cover the incident because it did not fit their narrative.

CNN and The New York Times did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Previously, Fine told the Daily Signal that he “feels bad” for the LGBTQ+ community because they have “been replaced by Islam” in the list of groups the Left chooses to fetishize.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division dismissed more than 50 desegregation cases that sat on court dockets for more than half a century.

“In this administration, we are ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts because the effort does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today,” said Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon. “In some cases, school districts have been under federal control for more than 60 years.”

“Now these local school districts can redirect taxpayer dollars back to benefiting students,” she added, “instead of funding onerous and outdated consent decrees.”

As of the start of the Trump administration, about 150 school districts were still under desegregation court orders, most of which were in the South.

Court orders have been dismissed in Tuscumbia, Alabama; St. Clair County, Alabama; Tarrant, Alabama; Rankin County, Mississippi; and Dyersburg, Tennessee.

The DOJ is doing a case-by-case review of pending desegregation cases. Cases still on the docket in federal courts were filed in the 1960s and ’70s.

After concluding that a school district has achieved unitary status, the DOJ will seek dismissal of the case.

“It’s been more than 50 years since desegregation happened, and in every school district in the South that we’ve worked with, it’s clear that black students are welcome in every school and that administrators and the community make sure of it,” a DOJ official told the Daily Signal. “It also seems to us that many southerners are tired of being called racist by the media because of things that happened more than 50 years ago.”

Most districts under court orders are in rural Southern towns, and complying with the court orders has entailed responding to several dozen statistical questions from the DOJ Civil Rights Division every few years and filing court motions whenever they want to change their school feeder patterns or build a new high school.

This costs those districts an average of about a few thousand dollars a year on average.

But in a minority of districts, like Huntsville and Jefferson County, Alabama, the cost has been up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and millions of dollars in other investments.

Schools have had to write extremely detailed statistical reports and adopt woke policies, a DOJ official said.

For example, schools have been forced to selectively hire and recruit black teachers without openly acknowledging it, adopt non-merit-based criteria for identifying students as gifted, change school discipline protocol by not suspending misbehaving students, build new race-based magnet schools, scrap high school construction plans, block student transfers between schools or between school districts unless they are “majority to minority,” and more, according to the official.

DOJ civil rights lawyers even asked about the races of bus drivers and scrutinized high school yearbooks to determine the race of students participating in extracurriculars and selected for homecoming royalty, the official said.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has decided that enforcing labor law is no longer enough. City Hall now wants to get into the business of helping workers organize, too.

Earlier this month, Mamdani created the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power, which his administration describes as the first office of its kind in the country. Its mission is not merely to tell workers what the law says or where to file a complaint. City Hall says it will use its “resources and convening power” to help workers become “informed, connected, and organized.”

That sounds less like a traditional government office and more like a union organizing hub with a city seal on the door.

The concern is not that workers are organizing. They have every right to do so. The question is whether the same government helping them organize can also credibly investigate employers and enforce workplace laws involving those same disputes.

Mamdani’s executive order makes the overlap clear. The new office is supervised by the deputy mayor for economic justice. The order also directs agencies with labor-enforcement responsibilities to share information about workplace violations.

Picture a restaurant owner whose employees are in the middle of an organizing drive. One arm of City Hall is expressly charged with helping workers get “connected and organized.” Another arm of the same government may investigate that restaurant for workplace violations.

Perhaps both offices will behave flawlessly and independently. But why put City Hall in a position where it must prove that its enforcers are not influenced by its organizers?

In the NFL, a referee can explain the rules and call the fouls. Once he starts helping one side draw up the plays, his role has changed.

And employers are not the only ones with reason to care about that distinction. Workers themselves do not all necessarily want the same outcome.

The National Labor Relations Act protects employees who want to organize, but it also protects those who choose not to: The National Labor Relations Board explicitly says workers may decline to participate in union organizing and may campaign against unionization.

So consider a worker who contacts Mamdani’s Office of Worker Power and says, “I don’t want a union.”

Would that worker be referred to an organization that helps employees oppose unionization? Would the office explain that worker’s right to campaign against it? Would it devote the same time and resources to protecting that choice?

Those are fair questions for an office whose public mission emphasizes helping workers to “build power.”

Government unquestionably has a role in enforcing wage laws, punishing retaliation, protecting workers from discrimination, and making sure employers obey the rules. None of that requires the government to stand aside when workers are mistreated.

But enforcing someone’s legal right to organize is different from using public resources to help him organize.

Mamdani’s supporters would presumably respond to such criticism by asserting that employers already have lawyers, money, and institutional resources, while workers often do not. From that perspective, City Hall is helping rebalance the relationship.

That is a policy argument worth debating, particularly since New York’s experiment may not remain a New York story for long.

Other mayors and governors will be watching. If the model catches on, the underlying principle could extend beyond just union organizing.

A city might decide, for example, that tenants need government help organizing against landlords. Another mayor may choose to create an office to help gig workers organize against technology platforms. Once government begins using public resources to assist one side in private disputes, the boundaries inevitably become blurred.

Government must be clear about the line between protecting legal rights and advocating for a particular outcome. New York City is now blurring that line on labor policy, and other cities and states will be watching.

Because once government is both enforcing the rules and helping one side organize, one question becomes difficult to avoid: Who referees the referee?

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

A Trump-appointed judge imposed a temporary restraining order on the White House to restore press credentials for reporters at CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in an order Thursday morning.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of the District of Columbia found that President Donald Trump’s administration likely violated the due process rights of the reporters largely because they did not receive notice before the credentials were revoked.

The question before the court was not a First Amendment matter, but rather whether news outlets that already had a pass could lose it without due process, largely because they did not receive notice beforehand.

“This Temporary Restraining Order shall remain in effect for fourteen days, and the Court will set a schedule for expedited briefing on a motion for a preliminary injunction during that time. The Court will then be able to consider such a motion with additional time and on a fuller record,” the judge wrote.

Trump announced in a Sept. 18 Truth Social post that he was “banning” the three news outlets from the White House for “FAKE NEWS” and what he called “FICTION and LIES.”

Kelly later wrote, “It is further ordered that Defendants (except for President Trump) and their agents, representatives, and all persons or entities acting in concert with them shall immediately return, reinstate, and restore the White House ‘hard pass’ press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO that were revoked on or about September 18, 2026, until further Order of the Court or the expiration of this Temporary Restraining Order.”

Kelly also ruled in November 2018 that the White House did not provide due process in revoking then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s White House pass.

During the Biden administration, the White House purged 442 White House hard passes under new press credential rules. The purge was aimed at Cameroonian journalist Simon Ateba.

Ateba sued to restore his pass. In that case, D.C. District Judge John Bates ruled in favor of the Biden White House, finding that the administration’s rules were uniform and constitutional. Primarily, the rule applied to news outlets that did not have press passes for Capitol Hill, which at the time included the Daily Signal.

As Americans grow increasingly concerned about privately owned surveillance cameras, powered by artificial intelligence, spreading across the country by the thousands, senators are investigating whether they want to act. While the cameras were initially meant to provide safety, there are concerns from both parties that surveillance has surpassed safety.

“This hearing is about a simple thing. It’s trying to get to the bottom of what is going on with the expanding surveillance network that appears to be going coast-to-coast in this country,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism, said.

“I have in mind the hundreds of thousands of individual cameras all linked to the cloud, all powered by AI that seem to be spreading all across the country,” Hawley said, opening the subcommittee’s Wednesday hearing.

“The question is: Where are all of these images going? Who’s using them? What are the privacy protections for them? How do we make sure that this kind of surveillance is consistent with the Constitution of the United States?” he continued.

The Big Name in the Game: Flock

There are roughly 120,000 Flock Safety cameras operating throughout the country in every state except Alaska. They take over 20 billion images every month and are stored in and accessible through the cloud. This doesn’t account for the other major companies with similar operations: Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada. Hawley invited the CEOs of each of these companies to testify before his subcommittee to explain their operations, but they all declined to appear.

The Flock CEO, Garrett Langley, did respond to Hawley’s request via a letter and answered some of the senators’ questions.

“If they feel like if they want to correct the record on something, great. We’d love to hear from them,” Hawley told reporters after the hearing. “I appreciate the Flock CEO responding to my inquiries in part. But the truth is … he gave us only a few pieces of documentation, all stuff that’s already public. I really think that we need to know more, and I think the public deserves to know,” he continued.

“They are refusing to be accountable,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters when asked about the CEOs refusing to appear.

“I think there’s overwhelming evidence that we need more accountability; we need safeguards, including possibly a warrant requirement for the use of these kinds of surveillance systems,” he continued.

A Bipartisan Solution Might Be Possible

A big point during the hearing was the difference between traditional license plate readers, used by law enforcement for years, and the AI-powered surveillance cameras that can be accessed by the public.

“There’s a big difference between traditional law enforcement tools like license plate readers and what this is,” Hawley told the Daily Signal.

“In Missouri, we’ve been using license plate readers forever. Our cops do it. I think that’s very valuable. But that’s really different than the technology we’re talking about today, and I think that’s something that I’ve only recently come to appreciate, and I bet most folks are just getting up to speed on. Citizens know, though. They know when they’re being tracked. They don’t want to be tracked and treated like criminals,” he continued.

There are voters who are onboard with the cameras being used for safety to target criminals and track child predators, but they might not understand the risks that come with such surveillance.

One of the hearing witnesses, Lindsey Isaacs, was wrongfully accused of murder based solely on unsubstantiated Flock camera footage. Isaacs spent 13 days in jail, including 86 hours in solitary confinement, before being released.

Both parties have concerns about surveillance. Conservatives are concerned about their constitutional right to liberty. Democrats fear it could be used to target women crossing state lines to receive an abortion or help immigration officers track illegal immigrants.

“I think there are some clear potential solutions that would have bipartisan support,” Blumenthal told the Daily Signal.

“I think there’s a need for bipartisan cooperation here, and I think there are some clear solutions, for example, setting time periods for data retention. Prohibiting or safeguarding against a national database. There are some guidelines where I know Sen. Hawley and I have common ground, and I think other Republicans and Democrats would too,” he concluded.

By the summer of 2001, “The system was blinking red” from threats related to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. These included known planning and training for hijacking airplanes. That is the testimony that then-CIA Director George Tenet told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission preserved Tenet’s statement in its final report.

Twenty-five years after the 9/11 U.S. terrorist attacks, we must once again recognize the red warning signs of threats to our republic, from without and within. We also need to see how these threats relate, like red dots that we must connect.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the U.S. failed to connect the dots prior to 9/11. This time, the dots are red and green—Marxist and Islamist. The tactics are different, but the plotters have revealed them. Americans who want to preserve our republic just have to be willing to look, listen, and act.

Red dot No. 1 is the Chinese Communist Party. Led by General Secretary Xi Jinping, the CCP has deployed dozens of tactics to weaken the U.S. from the inside to gain its own global dominance.

Examples of this behavior include: cybersecurity attacks; spy balloons; political espionage; Chinese police operations in U.S. cities; Confucius Institutes on our college campuses; purchasing U.S. property, including agricultural land near U.S. military bases and other critical infrastructure; sending pre-cursor ingredients to Mexico to produce fentanyl; military espionage; intellectual property theft; importing agroterrorism weapons into the U.S.; exploiting birthplace U.S. citizenship; dumping cheap Chinese technology into our markets that consistently come with connection to Beijing via the internet; and addicting America’s youth to TikTok propaganda while providing very different content to Chinese youth in China.

All of these tactics are in addition to the artificial intelligence, economic, energy, international organization, maritime, and military investments and influence that the CCP has waged around the world to bring other nations closer to China and away from the U.S.   

The second red dot is green. It represents the subtle, initially nonviolent spread of political Islam through Western institutions. We can call this process Islamification. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, foretold the steps over two decades ago.

CIA contractor psychologist James Mitchell interrogated Mohammed after his 2003 capture and recounted their conversations in his 2016 book, “Enhanced Interrogation.” Mohammed told Mitchell that no more catastrophic attacks were needed. The more practical path, he explained, was immigration combined with higher birth rates among Muslims.

Mohammed prophesied that jihadi-minded individuals would enter the U.S., use the welfare system, spread their message, and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” for protection. They would gradually increase acceptance of Sharia. Once strong enough, they would rise up and impose it by force from within. Mohammed’s reported punchline was “Eventually, America will expose her neck to us for slaughter.”

It is hard not to recall another prophetic utterance from Sept. 9, 2025, when Charlie Kirk warned on X the day before his assassination, “Islam is the sword the Left is using to slit the throat of America.”

We have indeed witnessed an explosion in the number of Muslim immigrants—and their political power—in the U.S. and Western European countries over the past 25 years.

In the U.S., the net increase of aliens from the Muslim world doubled from 1.7 million in 2001 to 3.4 million in 2024, according to the Center for immigration Studies. We have likewise seen Muslim enclaves form in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas, where assimilation to support American principles is not just lacking, but is actually being spurned. An increasing number of politicians from those enclaves are winning political races as they express their opposition to the American principles and systems from which they generously benefited. Examples include Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani; Dearborn, Michigan, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud; and Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Tlaib stated at the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit that “as an American, this city taught me … that the political structures that I have to work in, that we all are surrounded by, was built on slavery and genocide and rape and oppression.”

In 2020, Omar said, “We must recognize that these systems of oppression are linked. As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality. So we cannot stop at [the criminal justice system]. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

In Texas, Muslim enclaves are seeking to grow into Muslim-only cities, application of Islamic law, Sharia courts, Muslim-only prayer rooms in schools, and more.  

Just as Mohammed warned about welfare use, billions of dollars in welfare fraud have been exposed in Somali Muslim communities in Minnesota and Maine, among other states and nationalities. But anyone who raises concerns about this is immediately labeled “Islamophobic.” We are supposed to remain quiet and just accept what is happening as it undermines what makes our country America. Just keep exposing our neck.

No. We have now witnessed enough of these foretold tactics by Mohammed and other Islamic leaders. It is time to halt and reverse them.

The third red dot represents those who seek to achieve a “New World Order” and the downfall of the U.S. as a superpower. They are the elite globalists and international organizations. The most powerful actors sit at the intersection of these globalist institutions.

George Soros and his Open Society Foundations have funded civil society groups, media, legal initiatives, and political movements in dozens of countries for decades. In the U.S., he has funded politicians and prosecutors who have carried out open border and pro-crime policies, resulting in weakened American sovereignty and increased civil disorder.

In a 2016 leaked memo focusing on Open Society Foundations’ International Migration Initiative, Open Society Foundations staff telegraphed the weaponization of mass migration to the U.S. They wrote that Europe’s refugee crisis should be accepted by immigration policymakers as a “new normal” and that “the current refugee crisis is creating space to reconsider the governance of migration and the international refugee regime.” They added, “The refugee crisis is opening new opportunities” for “coordination and collaboration” with other wealthy donors.

The Open Society Foundations memo is consistent with the global migration goals of the International Organization for Migration, which ties its mass migration agenda to each of the 17 goals in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The International Organization for Migration wrote in its 2018 Guide for Practitioners that “facilitating, not restricting, migration is the priority.”  

Another entity in this global cabal is the World Economic Forum, which works with the U.N. toward the Sustainable Development Goals. This week at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, the World Economic Forum is hosting Sustainable Development Impact Meetings. The World Economic Forum’s webpage states that the global organization “Connect[s] leaders to make sense of global challenges and move the world forward together.” World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab touts in his World Economic Forum bio that he introduced ideas such as corporate global citizenship and stakeholder capitalism (as opposed to the legal U.S. framework of shareholder capitalism).

It is no coincidence, then, that after Schwab stepped down as World Economic Forum chair, he was followed by Larry Fink as World Economic Forum co-chair. Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock who leveraged the company’s multitrillion-dollar global portfolio to compel companies to comply with an aggressive climate change and diversity agenda in their operations. Of note, BlackRock has extensive operations in China. The Chinese Communist Party even invited BlackRock to be the first foreign company to sell mutual fund investments to Chinese investors. Also of note, Fink serves on the Advisory Board of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

The final anti-American dot to identify is also red, namely domestic socialists, who, lest we forget, are also Marxists. While the radical Left has been marching through and capturing American institutions for decades, nowhere have they been more successful than in our public schools. Socialist indoctrination in our schools has taken hold to the point that two generations of young Americans now support socialism and view America and capitalism as racist, oppressive regimes that must be replaced.

The Democratic Socialists of America, which includes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Tlaib, and Mamdani—and to which Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pledges support even if not an official member—is having its moment, running more political candidates in state and federal elections and winning.

And while Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claims he is not a democratic socialist, his policy positions of “Medicare for All,” a wealth tax, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others align with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom endorsed El-Sayed.

These few named political allies are just one example of the red-green (Marxist-Islamist) alliance that has taken root in the U.S. According to Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, the groups in these allied components share a common enemy in the U.S., the West, and Western institutions, even if their long-term visions differ. Members in these groups routinely express hatred for America and seek to tear down our institutions and sow violence to fundamentally transform America.

A key takeaway from the 9/11 Commission was the need to connect the dots that threaten the U.S. But to connect the dots, we must first identify them. Currently, those dots are the CCP, the agents of Islamification, globalist elites, and socialists. For an easy memory tool: CIGS seek to tear down America, its institutions, sovereignty, safety, capitalist economy, and constitutional form of government.

Those who love America—its freedoms, principles, economic opportunities, people, place, and culture—and who wish to preserve it must first identify our nation’s enemies. Only then can we work to defeat them and save our great nation.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Daily Signal has learned that two outspoken conservative senators introduced legislation Thursday to block potential child predators from obtaining U.S. visas.

The Strengthened Checks for Reliable Evaluation of Entrants Nationwide (SCREEN) Act, introduced by Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Ted Budd, R-N.C., would help keep foreign child predators from obtaining visas and gaining access to American children by granting the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department access to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database when vetting visa applicants.

The senators introduced the legislation after they found recent reports that foreign workers hired by major cruise lines under C-1/D visas were found guilty of possessing Child Sexual Abuse Material.

“The greatest country in the history of the world should have 100% certainty that we aren’t letting child predators come here on work visas,” Scott wrote in a press release exclusively obtained by the Daily Signal. “It’s inexcusable that we have let bureaucracy fail our children and put them in danger. It’s time to fix that.”

Scott continued, adding that the interagency coordination this legislation would create is “vital to both our national security and the safety of American children,” which the United States needs “more of.”

In the same press release, Budd added that those who “prey on children represent the very worst of society,” and that he is “proud” to join Scott “to ensure that State and DHS have access to critical NCMEC data to identify travelers and visa applicants in possession of illicit material exploiting children and prevent these criminals from entering the United States.”

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., introduced a companion version of the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“The criminals who exploit innocent children online cannot be allowed to hide behind our borders or take advantage of gaps in our screening systems,” the congressman said, adding that the bill gives the proper agencies “critical information” to “help identify dangerous predators before they can enter or remain in our communities.”

“I’m proud to join with my colleagues like Sen. Budd and Rep. Gimenez to fix this glaring oversight and keep American kids safe from these despicable people,” Scott concluded.

The bill now awaits referral by House and Senate leadership to a committee.

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

Jack Fowler: Douglas Murray’s a friend, a great writer. He’s written this essay for The Free Press, “The 9/11 Failure That Still Haunts America,” and here’s one paragraph from it, Victor: 

“Like many people, I used to spend considerable amounts of time following the progress of the dozens of al-Qaeda detainees originally held in an American military prison in Guantanamo Bay. The first of them was brought into what was then called Camp X-Ray in 2002. The first images released of these, of the prisoners shackled and in orange jumpsuits caused a significant backlash in public opinion as audiences recoiled at their sometimes harsh treatment. But the U.S. could have quickly overcome any unease about these detentions if the terrorists had swiftly faced the full force of American justice. The families of their victims were promised that they would live to see that resolution. But after 25 years and five presidential administrations in Washington, most of the accused are still unbelievably in the pretrial phase.” 

I don’t see what there is to argue with that— 

Victor Davis Hanson: Disappointment. 

Jack Fowler: Disappointment, it’s a weak word, but what are your thoughts, Victor? 

Hanson: Well, we know in the left-wing mind, it’s unhinged. There’s something wrong with it. So, the same mental tendencies that make you want to identify with Lindsay, the same sympathies you have for Lindsay Clancy. And when you say things like she’s already suffered enough because she’s not going to have the comfort of her children anymore, think of that statement.  

That same tendency applies to the American legal system. No matter how horrific, and we’re talking about Luigi Mangione, people like Tyler Robinson, who blew the neck off of Charlie Kirk, the people who tried to kill Donald Trump, that same attitude of the Left is deeply ingrained.  

And so, when they see people who murdered 3,000 people, their little brains go: victim? Check. Nonwhite? Check. Middle East Muslims? Check. They are victims? Check. I will get notoriety. I will get virtue signaling. I will square my moral circle and feel good about myself. I’m gonna use the full weight of the American legal system to subvert it and delay justice and wait, wait until a whole generation comes of age that wasn’t even alive when 9/11. They have no memory of it. They don’t know the feelings, the passions, the trauma, and I’m going to be famous and get him off and I’m gonna feel so good about myself that I’m morally superior. And that’s what you have. 

They don’t ever think about what they—and remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to do, he wanted to get a lot of airlines. Was it 11 in the Philippines? Blow them up. He wanted to kill a lot more people. And they had a big—  

Fowler: Over the Pacific, right?  

Hanson: They had a big argument over the Capitol or the White House, and they were very angry they didn’t have five planes. And they finally, I think Bin Laden said the Capitol dome would do more damage than the White House. And that that had not been stopped over Pennsylvania. They could have killed a lot more people than 3,000. 

And so, that tendency to feel so good about yourself when you defend, like it’s when [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani handed that honorific pen through Jessica Tisch, and she’s the police commissioner, the NYPD overseer, and she’s Jewish, and he said, would you hand this? OK, little servant, ha ha ha, little NYPD representative, ha ha, which I said was basically a criminal organization years ago and should be defunded, and which I said I’m going to arrest the president, the prime minister, president of Israel when he comes, ha ha. Would you hand that over to my chief legal counsel, who, by the way, defended the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 killers?  

And that’s what Douglas Murray is talking about. How did we get to this place? After 9/11. I thought we were going to remember it forever. And I don’t understand that. 

There have been some shocking, in a related development, I don’t know if you saw these clips that some filmmakers have left out, have started to publish some of the 9/11 incidents. Excuse me, the October 7th. And they are horrific, with people shot, kicked, beheaded, etc.  

And we forget all of that October 7th, that you take away October 7th, 12,000 people brutally murdered, raped, decapitated, mutilated, children destroyed, tortured. Two hundred forty-something hostages taken, 40 Americans, most of them killed. You take that away, and there wouldn’t be… Gaza would be fine today.  

There wasn’t any Jews in Gaza. There will never be any Jews in Gaza. They didn’t want to go in there. They didn’t want anything to do with Gaza. They put, they supplied the fuel and the power and the water and the sewage for Gaza, but they didn’t want it. They begged the Egyptians to take it. They begged the Jordanians to take—nobody wanted it.  

And we wouldn’t have had any of this problem had they not decided to go kill Jews, and they would have killed a lot more if it had not been for about two or three hundred, very heroic people within the kibbutz and within the [Israel Defense Forces] that came there and fought them off. 

Fowler: Right.  

Hanson: And they don’t get that. 

Well, you know, and by the way, when they say genocide, genocide, genocide, they don’t really talk about October 8th. Three weeks before the Israelis went in, and they did not want to go in there, three weeks before that, they were talking about how wonderful October 7th was.  

And when Israel—and I asked somebody at Stanford once when I was walking by this, I said, “What would you have done if somebody had done this and gone in and killed 12,000 and butchered in a time of peace?” And I said, “Would you have asked for the perpetrators?” Yes. I said, “Israel did. Would you ask for  extraditions?” Yes. Turn over the perpetrators. “Would you ask for trials of these people?” Yes. “Would you go to the U.N.?” Yes. Well, they did all of that. And the Gazans were so celebratory in their bloodlust. They were so happy. 

And by the way, when they talk about the poor collateral damage, nobody wants civilians, but they never break down how many people were in Hamas or were supporters or were aiding and abetting Hamas or cheering them on or were used as human shields.  

And they never ask two questions. What would you do if that happened to your country and you had to go, deal with the perpetrators who refuse to give back hostages and refuse to turn over the culpable people? 

Well, I know what we would do. I remember World War II. I can tell you what we did over Japan and what we did over Germany. I can tell you what we did in Fallujah. I flew right over Fallujah in a helicopter. I went to Taji. I went to a lot of those cities in Iraq twice. And we went into those cities. 

And I don’t think that the U.S. Marines, heroic as they are and as humane as they are, ever even thought in their wildest imagination they were going to get the phones of all of the al-Qaeda and sons of Saddam terrorists in those buildings who had them booby-trapped waiting for them, and text to them a message and said, “We’re coming. Would you please get out in 10 minutes?” And that’s what the IDF did on so many occasions. 

So, it really gets numbing that the majority of the country, and you mentioned that poll, Jack, where Israel has almost no supporters. It’s got like 35% of the population. 

Fowler: Yeah. Well, Victor, these videos you mentioned are so powerful and disgusting, but to the made-up mind of the ideologue, I just don’t, I don’t know that there’s anything you can show them, any hard evidence, that they will say is a lie.  

And you and I were talking yesterday about a conspiracy theory related to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Here he is, he’s murdered right in front of you. You see it, you know? He’s shot, but yet people have these— 

I investigated. I investigated. I went online when a person told me this, explained this conspiracy theory, and I didn’t know there’s a lot of podcasters. I don’t know if Tucker’s one of them, but they do believe that his security detail were Mossad agents, and Tyler Robinson either had nothing to do with it, even though we have him on tape, even though he admitted to his trans lover that he had killed Charlie Kirk, and even though his parents had admitted it, and even though we know the gun he used came from his grandfather’s arsenal.  

We know all of that, but they still believe that Mossad, packed … I guess the one I saw the most, they packed a microphone with explosives, and then they had someone shoot it, and the fragments, carotid artery of Charlie’s was hit by shrapnel, and then this other guy was a dupe they either hired or they just shot in the air or something. 

Hanson: To take the mental effort to craft that entire conspiracy is such that you have to be filled with a lot of hate of Jews and Israel, and to come up with such an elaborate conspiracy when all of the facts say otherwise, and they’re out there in the public domain. 

Fowler: As Pontius Pilate once said, “What is truth?” And a lot of people don’t care what the truth is because it disrupts the narrative. 

Hanson: Quid verum. Yeah, quid veritas est? 

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

Burbidge, who leads the Diocese of Arlington, announced on the latest episode of his “Walk Humbly” podcast that he is asking Catholics throughout October to fast on Fridays as part of a monthlong effort focused on defeating what he has described as dangerous ballot initiatives.

October is recognized by the Catholic Church as Respect Life Month, an annual observance dedicated to protecting unborn life and supporting those affected by abortion. Fridays also hold special significance in Catholic tradition as days of prayer and penance commemorating Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.

Campaign Targets Ballot Amendments

Burbidge has emerged as one of the leading opponents of the ballot questions through the Diocese of Arlington’s “Catholics Vote No” campaign.

Question 1 would amend Virginia’s constitution to expand abortion access throughout pregnancy and eliminate the need for parental consent, while Question 2 would replace the current constitutional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman with language guaranteeing the right of two adults to marry regardless of sex. Supporters say the amendments would protect abortion rights and same-sex marriage in Virginia.

>>> A RARE MOVE BY A VIRGINIA BISHOP AHEAD OF ELECTION DAY

Earlier this month, Burbidge took the unprecedented step of directing priests in all 70 parishes across the diocese to read a letter during Masses on Sept. 12-13 urging Catholics to vote against the amendments. It was the first time in his decade as bishop that he had asked priests to read such a letter during their homily.

“There’s just so much at stake, and we have to be a unified voice,” Burbidge said on his podcast. “I’m so grateful to my brother priests who are rallying around with one voice and echoing that voice to their parishioners, explaining what is at stake and how essential it is that they allow their voice to be heard and their vote to count.”

Letter Draws Praise and Criticism

Across Northern Virginia, parishioners heard Burbidge warn that the amendments threaten both unborn life and the traditional definition of marriage. The effort built upon an earlier joint letter from Burbidge and Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout that described the abortion amendment as “extreme, dangerous, radical, and horrific.”

>>> CATHOLIC BISHOPS SOUND ALARM AHEAD OF NOVEMBER VOTE

On his latest podcast, Burbidge said the response to his letter and accompanying video message has been overwhelmingly positive. On X, the video has more than 825,000 impressions.

“Many have said this is the first time they were learning about these proposed amendments,” he said. “Sometimes we think we get it out there, but repetition is the best teacher, and we can’t tire of getting this message out.”

The bishop acknowledged, however, that the campaign has also generated criticism. He said some Catholics intentionally attended Mass outside the Diocese of Arlington during the Sept. 12-13 weekend rather than hear the letter read in their parishes.

“We expect that,” Burbidge said. “We expect that there’s going to be opposition, and sometimes the opposition is just based on a lack of information, a lack of clear understanding.”

He also referenced negative reactions shared by his nephew from social media, noting that family members are often the first to bring criticism to his attention.

Rather than responding defensively, Burbidge said priests have reached out to concerned parishioners and invited them to discuss the issues in person.

“Let’s have a conversation,” he said, describing the approach taken by Catholic priests. “Don’t be afraid to engage those who may disagree as well. But we also always do so respectfully. We always tell the truth. We don’t compromise that.”

Final Push Before Election Day

Last week, Burbidge led a holy hour at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington dedicated to prayer about the constitutional amendments.

The bishop is also encouraging Virginians to cast ballots early.

“We can’t allow anything to stop us from casting our vote,” Burbidge said. “Why not get out early and vote? It encourages others to do so.”

He expressed hope that young adults and college students will become engaged in the effort.

“We have to get the vote out,” Burbidge said. “That includes our young adults, our students eligible to vote on college campuses, and people of every age.”

Burbidge said he remains optimistic that Virginia voters can reject the amendments.

“I have hope here that with the grace of God and with our continued efforts, that Virginia could pull off something miraculous here and defeat these dangerous amendments,” he said.

Early voting began Sept. 18 and will continue through Election Day on Nov. 3. Virginia voters will decide all three constitutional amendments after they received approval in two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly, as required under state law.

Today, the beloved American Catholic evangelist and TV host Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) gets one step closer to becoming a saint. He will be beatified in St. Louis this afternoon, the penultimate stage in the journey toward Catholic sainthood (also known as canonization).

Sheen, who was a great theologian and philosopher in addition to his other talents, lived a life defined by unparalleled energy and deep commitment to prayer. He spent every moment working for the glory of God. He displayed this in everything from his commitment to study and the countless retreats he offered to his world travels preaching and raising money for the poor. This was a man who loved God and was motivated to proclaim His truth and goodness.

But what does it mean to say that Sheen has been “beatified”?

When the Catholic Church beatifies someone, it means, first, that rigorous investigation has shown the person to have lived a good and holy life, and that the person has been responsible for one miracle.

Sheen’s miracle was the unexplained recovery of a young boy, James Fulton Engstrom, who was born without a heartbeat. The boy’s mother prayed fervently, asking Fulton Sheen to beg God to heal her son. Sixty-one minutes later, the boy’s heart began to beat, and he had no medical ailments.

In order to be declared a saint, the Vatican will need to verify a second miracle attributed to Sheen’s intercession.

Over the course of his life, Sheen provided millions of people with words of guidance in public preaching and writing. These can guide us in growing closer to God as well.

“Prayer,” Sheen said, “begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language.”

The archbishop famously made a daily commitment to one hour of prayer each day in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. At the end of each retreat or conference he gave, he would mention this commitment to all those present in hopes that they, too, would make similar vows. Countless people took inspiration from this, and their lives were changed.

The secret to Sheen’s energetic existence was not adherence to any kind of fad. It was not following a hip diet or self-help guru. Instead, his energy was rooted in a daily commitment to prayer and silence. It was here that he was inspired to powerfully preach. It was here that he was given the strength to go above and beyond in serving God and the Church. Without a consistent prayer life, we can too easily become devoted to things that are not of God.

Sheen wrote: “If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.”

Daily prayer orients our lives toward the only One who can fulfill us. Too often, without a commitment to prayer, we can convince ourselves that we are the center of the universe—that our wishes and desires are more important than anyone else’s. It is easy to place our worth in passing things such as comfort and attention, but worshiping God means being obedient to His commands, even when doing so is painful.

The more that we pray and place God at the center of our lives, the more that we become like Sheen and experience the love of God as he did.

“God does not love us because we are valuable,” he said. “We are valuable because God loves us.”

We are not special or unique because of what we have accomplished. Our value comes from the fact that we belong to God. He made us, and His Son gave His life for us. The cross of Jesus Christ reveals what every single human being’s life is “worth.” We are now worth the life of the Son of God. God died for us, even though it was our sin and selfishness that did the killing. Despite all of this, He was beaten and put to death for you and for me.

It was this love that Sheen experienced each day in prayer, and it was this unfathomable love that he sought to communicate to a hurting world. On (and after) Sheen’s beatification day, may we accept his challenge to pray more consistently, and may we be energized to bring others into contact with the heart of God as well.

Holiness requires it.

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

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China sent a letter to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, urging them to discuss with Chinese leader Xi Jinping the release of worshippers and American citizens who remain imprisoned in China.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., penned the letter after he held two hearings in late September on the detainees, including media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, Christian worshippers, Uyghur Muslims activists, Falun Gong, and American citizens detained for minor crimes.

“They are people—sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters—whose families have spent years waiting and pleading for their loved ones to come home,” the letter, exclusively obtained by the Daily Signal, reads. “I respectfully ask that you raise the following cases directly with President Xi and press for their release, including through medical or humanitarian transfer where appropriate.”

“At this critical moment, I ask that you make the freedom and humanitarian treatment of these individuals a priority in your discussions with Beijing,” the letter adds. “Several of these prisoners face serious medical conditions that warrant immediate consideration for medical or humanitarian release or transfer.”

During the first summit between the second Trump administration and the Chinese Communist Party earlier this year, Trump raised the issue of releasing Pastor Ezra Jin, who was imprisoned for operating a non-state-approved church in China, which eventually led to his release from a Chinese prison.

In his letter to the president and the secretary of state, Smith urged them “to bring that same commitment directly to the table with President Xi.”

Among the prisoners are eight leaders of Zion Church, who were originally imprisoned with Jin, as well as three Light of Zion Church leaders—Pastor Gao Quanfu, Pang Yu, and Tang Bingyi—who are still in confinement after refusing to register their house churches and submit to Communist Party monitoring.

Lai, who has already served six years of his 20-year sentence for running a non-state-sponsored media outlet, now faces serious health concerns and has just received notice that his eldest daughter is undergoing cancer treatment in the United Kingdom.

The two American prisoners detained in China, Dawn Michelle Hunt and Nelson Wells Jr., have been imprisoned for more than a decade, “following procedures that raise serious due process concerns,” the letter adds.

Trump and Xi first met later Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, before continuing meetings at the White House.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger quietly issued an executive order over the summer that changed the way state agency regulations are developed and reviewed by the executive branch. The action was required by June 30 but went under the radar because it was announced with only a vague news release.

The new executive order eliminates the Office of Regulatory Management, which was created by former Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2022. The goal of that department was “to make his state’s regulatory regime more efficient, less burdensome, and, above all, accountable to the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” as Benjamin Paris wrote for The Heritage Foundation that year.

Spanberger’s policy “directs agencies to evaluate regulations individually, on a case-by-case basis,” Christopher Newport University economist Rik Chakraborti told the Daily Signal. “Agencies are supposed to consider whether a regulation is legally authorized, necessary, understandable, supported by evidence and designed to achieve its objective cost-effectively. Existing regulations must also be reviewed periodically to determine whether they should be retained, amended or repealed.”

When Youngkin took office, he set a goal of slashing regulations by 25%. Three years later, his office announced that it had trimmed 26.8% of regulatory requirements in the commonwealth.

Chakraborti reviewed and compared both approaches at the request of the Daily Signal.

“The more difficult question is whether the number of requirements eliminated accurately measures the policy’s real benefits,” the economist said about Youngkin’s policy. “The administration also did not release—or I could not find—enough detailed information for the public to independently verify all of its claimed savings.”

With that said, Chakraborti added that “Youngkin’s system had useful features that should not be entirely discarded, in my view, including centralized oversight, regulatory planning, permitting reform and greater attention to compliance costs.”

He expects the new tack to have pluses and minuses as well. “Gov. Spanberger’s approach has the advantage of avoiding an arbitrary quota that may encourage agencies to eliminate requirements simply because they are easy to count. However, eliminating the central regulatory office and its analytical framework could weaken accountability unless the Department of Planning and Budget has access to, and makes use of, sufficient expertise, independence, and resources to perform rigorous reviews.”

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Signal. However, Libby Wiet, Spanberger’s communications director, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the current administration “has heard from agencies and others who look to regulations for direction on how the last administration’s regulatory policies made it harder for state agencies to update their regulations and guidance documents meaningfully.”

Chakraborti recommended blending the policies of both administrations, as well as enacting laws instead of executive orders, which can change every four years as administrations change. “The General Assembly could establish a permanent, professionally staffed regulatory-review office; require transparent cost-benefit analysis; publish the specific requirements added, changed or removed; track permitting times; and require retrospective evaluation of whether major regulations actually worked.”

He told the Daily Signal that the goal “should be creating a stable process that survives changes in administration and consistently asks three questions: What problem is the regulation trying to solve? Do its total benefits justify its total costs? And is there a more effective or less burdensome way to achieve the same result?”

Codification into law “would provide greater continuity than governing through executive orders while preserving the flexibility needed to respond to new economic, environmental, and technological challenges,” the Christopher Newport economist said. Lawmakers may take up the idea when they return to session in January. Chakraborti plans to post a fuller look at the regulatory changes on EconAF, his Substack page.