Minnesota fraud scandals may not be over, as a recent audit found that contracts handed to community groups in the aftermath of George Floyd's death may not have had proper oversight at all.

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FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., introduced a bill Tuesday aiming to prevent child welfare agencies from treating a parent’s refusal to “affirm” a child’s stated transgender identity as child abuse.

“The Left’s radical gender ideology is harming children with irreversible treatments and procedures, but in blue states, parents are being punished, and sometimes even separated from their children, for protecting their kids from this permanent damage,” Schmitt told the Daily Signal in a statement on the bill Tuesday.

“It is sickening that a state would impose ideological child-welfare policies to tear apart a family,” he added. “Parents know what’s best for their own families, and we need to defend their rights to protect their children.”

The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act takes its name from Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old girl who took her own life three years after the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took custody away from her mother, Abby. Her mother refused to “affirm” Yaeli’s transgender identity as male. The department had said that keeping Yaeli out of her mother’s home would decrease her chances of committing suicide.

The bill seeks to prevent states from removing children from their parents or otherwise penalizing families based on a parent’s refusal to support social or medical gender transition. For example, Oregon’s Department of Human Services concluded that Nicole Calaway, a Christian mom, had caused “mental injury” to her daughter by refusing to “affirm” her transgender identity.

The bill would prevent federally funded child welfare programs from treating affirmation of biological sex as abuse, conditioning federal child welfare spending on compliance with these protections. It would also create a private right of action, allowing parents to sue if state actors violate those protections.

“The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act would be an absolute game-changer for families,” Laura Hanford, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “They would finally have protection from being torn apart by gender activists in state child protection systems.”

Hanford warned that child protection systems have been captured by transgender ideology.

“It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’—loving parents are accused of abuse or neglect simply for affirming the reality of their child’s sex and trying to protect their vulnerable gender-confused child from toxic drugs or destructive surgeries,” she said. “Currently, these parents are at the mercy of social workers and judges who are trained to view them as abusive and can drag proceedings out for years, even when parents are cleared of spurious abuse charges.”

“Parents should never fear losing custody of their children because they recognize biological reality,” Chip Wyatt, government relations director at Heritage Action, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

“Senator Schmitt’s Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act addresses disturbing abuses of government power at the behest of gender ideologues,” Wyatt added. “Congress must protect parental rights and ensure federal taxpayer dollars don’t punish families for refusing to participate in sex-rejecting ideology.”

Hanford argued that the bill would not change a state’s ability to intervene in real cases of abuse. Instead, it “just takes off the table entirely the fictitious premise that it’s abuse to raise a girl as a girl or a boy as a boy.”

Former To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen is not at all happy with A24's "Primetime," director Lance Oppenheim’s drama starring Robert Pattinson as Hansen, depicting what went on behind the scenes on the popular TV show.

The post Chris Hansen Bashes Robert Pattinson’s ‘Primetime’: ‘Mean-Spirited, Untrue, and Unworthy of the Viewer’s Time’ appeared first on Breitbart.

The "nostalgic vision" of Britain involving countryside pubs and Labrador dogs is nothing more than a "far-right" fantasy, a government minister in the left-wing government proclaimed, sparking steep backlash.

The post British Countryside Pubs, Beer, and Dogs a ‘Far-Right’ Fantasy, Claims Labour Gov’t Minister appeared first on Breitbart.

President Donald Trump launched a user-friendly AI tool, America.gov, on Tuesday to make online government services much easier for citizens to navigate.

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Here’s a story the left-wing media and Democrats will ignore: America is building steel again, on a scale not seen in generations.

On Monday, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office that Mesabi Metallics will build a $15 billion steel mill in eastern Iowa. It will reportedly be the largest steel plant in American history, and in the president’s own words, this steel will be “mined, melted, and made right here in the USA.” The White House projects 1,750 permanent jobs, up to 6,000 construction jobs, and a whopping $95 billion boost to the U.S. economy in its first decade alone. Even better, the iron ore will come from Mesabi’s new mine in Minnesota, the first new iron ore mine in America in half a century.

These are some of the tangible benefits of reindustrializing America, but there is something deeper going on as well. Great countries make things. Strong and stable superpowers can produce for themselves the goods crucial to national security, such as steel, chips, and medicines.

As Trump put it, “Soon after my inauguration, I imposed powerful 50% tariffs on all foreign steel, and now, our steel industry is roaring back to life.”

For decades, the permanent political class in Washington let China dump cheap, subsidized steel into our markets. Predatory Chinese Communist Party trade practices hollowed out mill towns across the Rust Belt. Under Trump-Vance, though, those days are over, thank goodness.

Today, we correctly charge a premium to access the crown-jewel consumer market on earth, the United States. Couple those tariffs with the Working Families Tax Cut, which lets companies immediately write off new factory investment, and America is now one of the best places in the world to build.

Last month, I wrote about the quiet manufacturing boom unfolding in the heartland. The S&P Global flash manufacturing index just surged to 57 in September, the highest reading since May 2022. U.S. crude steel production has passed Japan’s for the first time since 1999. American mills now supply 84% of our own finished-steel market, and the industry has already added nearly 6,000 steel worker jobs. These are family-sustaining careers.

So, what does this mean for Iowans? For the Hawkeye State, this is a generational win, and it lands right in the middle of a key Senate race. Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee, is locked in a toss-up against radical Democrat Josh Turek, who leads by a mere half point in the RealClearPolling average.

“It is a game-changer for our state and, frankly, for the country,” Hinson said of the new steel mill. “With 1,700 jobs, I just think about the countless opportunities for Iowa families.”

But Iowa’s big win also points to Minnesota’s problems, as a state saddled with radical Democratic leadership. Mesabi’s mine sits on Minnesota’s Iron Range, which is worked by Minnesota miners. So why on earth would the company build its mill across the state line in Iowa?

Well, Minnesota state Sen. Rob Farnsworth, a Republican, nailed it: “This announcement comes as no surprise to those of us who have seen firsthand just how hard Minnesota government makes manufacturing and mining.”

That’s the devastating cost of one-party Democratic rule under Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. And while Minnesotans just watched 1,750 good-paying jobs head south, Flanagan is running for a promotion to the U.S. Senate on an extremist agenda of open borders, defunding ICE, raising taxes, and eliminating private health insurance.

Thankfully, Gopher State voters have a sane alternative in political outsider Michele Tafoya. My latest Minnesota poll shows a dead heat, with Flanagan at 40% and Tafoya at 38%, within the margin of error. The more Tafoya ties Flanagan and Walz to the economically illiterate policies that just sent the biggest steel mill in American history to Iowa, the better.

The manufacturing boom comes at a crucial time, not just for jobs, but for U.S. bond markets. The tremors these markets have endured since the start of the Iran War should concern every American. With $40 trillion in federal debt, we have little wiggle room to withstand higher interest rates. Moreover, both Main Street and giant corporations now face the hurdles of far higher financing costs, from auto loans to hyperscaler buildouts.

Since an entitlement pullback seems like a political impossibility, how can America make this stifling debt manageable? How can we get yields to head lower again? Well, big picture, onshoring will play a huge role. The more domestic production flourishes and the more foreign capital flows to America, the higher productivity will soar. That scenario means strong growth without spiking inflation, exactly the combination needed to start chipping away at our mountain of debt.

So, into the home stretch of campaign season, the lesson from the heartland is clear: America First policies build success. The world wants to invest in America, especially when prodded by smart trade rules. Now, it’s up to the voters of Iowa and Minnesota to choose reshoring, more family-sustaining jobs, and more Main Street prosperity.

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

Iconic actor James Woods is warning U.S. voters to remember the devastation Democrats bring ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as yet another migrant caravan is headed toward the U.S.-Mexican border.

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The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow the Bureau of Prisons to restrict sex-rejecting procedures for federal inmates, citing an exhaustive BOP report rejecting the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “unreliable” and based on “insufficient evidence.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court injunction Monday after the Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit let the injunction stand on Sept. 18.

A district court judge had ruled that the Bureau of Prisons had not adequately considered “its own experience providing gender-affirming care under its prior policy,” that the policy is “objectively unreasonable,” and that the policy is “pretextual and reverse engineered to implement” President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

Yet Sauer’s brief states that the Bureau of Prisons adopted the policy independent of the executive order after an exhaustive review, including a 3,200-page administrative record, explained in a 43-page memorandum. The review explained why the Trump administration rejected the authority of WPATH, the very authority that President Barack Obama’s administration had relied on to approve sex-rejecting procedures for inmates.

In developing the new policy, “BOP determined that sex-trait-modification surgeries, hormone interventions in general, and social accommodations could no longer be justified as treatment for gender dysphoria,” the brief notes.

The bureau repeatedly cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in U.S. v. Skrmetti (2025), the 6-3 decision allowing states to ban these procedures for minors. The bureau found that “those interventions did not reflect the latest scientific information, which had undermined BOP’s prior reliance on the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—an organization whose standards had recently been called into serious question by medical professionals.”

Independent of the medical debate, BOP also concluded that the interventions raised security and administration concerns. Access to such procedures would risk turning inmates who received them into “targets for attacks,” “raise fairness concerns,” and “breed resentment among other inmates.” Some interventions would enable inmates to “hide contraband” or “obfuscate or conceal” their identity. The new policy restricts “breast padding,” chest “binders,” makeup, and wigs.

As for the claim that BOP failed to consider its previous guidance, Sauer quoted at length from the BOP memorandum.

“WPATH openly engages in ideologically based political advocacy, systematically misrepresents evidence, and often bases its recommendations, no matter how impactful for the patient, on low-quality supporting evidence,” the memo noted.

The Department of Health and Human Services previously published a peer-reviewed report finding “extremely weak evidence” for any benefits from sex-rejecting procedures for minors.

Internal WPATH files revealed that WPATH members expressed concerns about minors’ inability to consent to interventions with potentially lifelong impacts.

In 2022, WPATH left age recommendations for specific treatments out of its Standards of Care for transgender medicine, following political pressure from then-Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine.

The new policy still offers mental-health treatment but will reject inmates’ requests to begin sex-rejecting medical procedures. If an inmate had previously been receiving hormones, however, BOP will develop a tapering plan for each inmate after considering appropriate factors.

Three anonymous inmates brought the case, Kingdom v. Trump, last year, represented by the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Washington, D.C., and the Transgender Law Center. The inmates claimed that the policy violates the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment, the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act.

The State Department announced visa restrictions on 27 individuals due to their actions undermining democratically elected governments.

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Sam Altman's OpenAI has canceled the planned release of its next-generation AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after internal testing turned up safety concerns the company could not resolve in time.

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