The House has passed a bill to repeal a provision in the government shutdown-ending continuing resolution that allowed lawmakers surveilled by the federal government to seek damages. The House passed the bill to repeal the funding bill provision that would permit U.S. senators to sue the government for “$500,000 or the amount of actual damages” if the government has subpoenaed or seized their data without notification by a vote of 426 to 0. Two hundred and sixteen Republicans and 210 Democrats voted to strip the provision from the stopgap measure. Only 7 members did not vote on the provision—three Republicans and four Democrats. The bill was voted on under suspension of the rules, which means the provision needed the support of two thirds of the chamber to pass. The provision was inserted into the continuing resolution in response to recent revelations about the “Arctic Frost” investigation related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The investigation, a part of special counsel Jack Smith’s own case against President Donald Trump related to the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the Capitol, ultimately led to eight Republican senators’ having their personal cell phones tolling data from Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021 handed over to the FBI without their knowledge. Tolling data is information about who a call is between, the duration of the call, and general location data. The phone call’s content is not included in tolling data.  Violations that would allow lawmakers to sue under the continuing resolution provision include “the seeking, maintaining, or obtaining of a nondisclosure order or judicial sealing order to prevent notification of a Senator, a Senate office, or the Office of the SAA” or “Senate data was acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed pursuant to a search, seizure, or demand information without notice being provided as required under subsection.” The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans are divided on how they will respond to the House’s effort to change the provision. “We had a good conversation about that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday upon emerging from a Senate GOP luncheon in which several senate Republicans reportedly voiced their opposition to putting the provision into the continuing resolution at the last moment. “There is a high level of interest in addressing the weaponization of the federal government,” Thune added. “We’ll see what the House does and then we’ll find out what our colleagues here in the Senate want to do.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., previously expressed dismay about the inclusion of the provision. “I think that was way out of line. I don’t think that was a smart thing … and the House is going to reverse—we are going to repeal that, and I’m going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing,” Johnson explained. Senators targeted by Arctic Frost have appeared split about pursuing legal action under the provision. “I do not want and I am not seeking damages for myself paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., stated in a comment previously reported by The Daily Signal. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he thought the provision was “a bad idea,” and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., expressed that he had “no plans” to sue. Others like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have expressed an interest in pursuing legal action for its deterrent effect. “It bothers the hell out of me and I’m going to sue, and I’m going to create opportunities for others to sue that weren’t in the Senate,” Graham explained to the press in Charleston. Meanwhile, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has considered suing without seeking monetary compensation if she gets a favorable judgement. “Senator Blackburn’s plan has always been to seek a declaratory judgment—not monetary damages—to prevent leftists from violating the constitutional rights of conservatives,” a Blackburn spokesperson explained to The Daily Signal. One legislative proposal that could be a substitute for the monetary claims provision that has been floated by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, would create stricter guidelines for nondisclosure orders. However, that bill does not rectify the surveillance of Republican senators that already occurred under the Biden administration. The post BREAKING: House Votes to Put Arctic Frost Lawsuit Provision on Ice appeared first on The Daily Signal.

No word in military lexicon evokes fear and dread like mutiny. Most often defined as the illegal transfer of a ship’s command from its lawful captain or master, mutiny can lead to the same punishment today as it did centuries ago when Fletcher Christian wrested command of HMAV Bounty from Capt. William Bligh: death.  This penalty is detailed in Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the document that governs how military personnel are required to behave. It reads, in part, that anyone disobeying lawful orders shall be punished as follows: “If the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.” Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice further reminds service members they may face court martial for failure to obey lawful orders, calling such disobedience a dereliction of duty.   These severe penalties are what make the video by a half-dozen congressional Democrats suggesting service members disobey so stunning. Contrary to some media reports, they did not expressly call for mutiny among those in uniform, but they came about as close to it as the law allows.   “You must refuse illegal orders,” said Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., in the 90-second video inciting servicemen and women to disobey. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Deluzio joined fellow former naval officer Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., in invoking illegal orders, though the elected officials merely said that “you can refuse illegal orders,” rather than requiring disobedience. This may be technically correct, but it’s abjectly corrupt.   We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025 The severity of punishment for disobeying orders might explain why nobody refused Barack Obama’s order to kill Anwar al-Awlaki. America was at war when Obama ordered the 2011 death of al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, so anyone in the chain of command refusing to carry out the drone strike that killed him could be subject to the death penalty. Al-Awlaki was thought to be aligned with al-Qaeda, but there was no trial for this U.S. citizen, no judge, no jury, no verdict, just a Hellfire missile strike in the desert of Yemen.    Such vagaries make this ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship’ video very dangerous, not only for the nation but for ordinary military personnel. It repeatedly suggests that people in uniform, who are trained in everything from small boat handling and computer repair, to engineering and command, interpret law. Whether it’s the captain of an aircraft carrier or the teenage bosun’s mate, none of them are steeped in interpreting the law. That’s what judges are for.   Deluzio, Slotkin, Kelly and the other Democrats featured in the video won’t spark a military uprising against the government like the world saw in Russia’s 1917 February Revolution. But the infusion of woke ideology into the military in recent years means there are some people in the chain of command who may take this video to heart and just start saying ”no” when given an order. That includes admirals and generals possibly acting in defiance of the commander in chief.   Most military officers have at least a cursory understanding of law and its relationship with military action; that’s part of the command structure. The video isn’t telling them anything they don’t already know, but it is replete with finely-crafted misinterpretations of the truth. Among other things, it claims, “This administration is pitting our uniformed military, and intelligence community professionals, against American citizens.” It’s an incendiary statement but means nothing more than some liberals disagree with what those in uniform have been ordered to do, like the war in Vietnam; some people are ideologically pitted against others.   The video’s six Democrats don’t specify any particular military action or orders that demand disobedience, but it’s a good bet they’re referring to the National Guard deployments to crime-ridden cities and the escalating American attacks on suspected drug boats in international waters. They may also be trying to lay a groundwork for derailing any military intervention in Venezuela. We don’t know because they won’t say, which is typical of leftist rhetoric.   The risks promoted by these politicians are staggering. Attorney David Sheldon, whose law firm specializes in military justice, advises service members, “All military orders are presumed lawful. The burden falls on the service member to establish that an order is manifestly unlawful.” This counsel is much wiser than what these lawmakers are advocating. They are engaged in the worst kind of manipulation, hoping for one man or woman to face court martial for dereliction of duty in pursuit of the Left’s newest cause celebre, and that person, depending on circumstances, faces a penalty up to and including death.   This attempt to foment mutiny among the ranks may not be illegal, but it is despicable.   We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post None Dare Call It Mutiny appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Daily Wire is releasing a new trailer for its forthcoming series, “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” which producer Dallas Sonnier celebrates as representing “the intersection of great art and Christian values.” The trailer highlights the character of Merlin (played by Tom Sharp), who in the telling of Stephen R. Lawhead is the son of the druid Taliesin and a princess of Atlantis, Charis. The television show follows Lawhead’s books in presenting Merlin as a Christian hero, bridging Britain’s druidic past with its budding Christian heritage. “Our Merlin in these books and in this series represents a man who is deeply dedicated to his faith, he cares more about his country and the future of mankind than he does for his own safety and security,” Sonnier told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “He’s willing to risk his entire life in order to make sure that God reigns sovereign over the land.” Sonnier celebrated Merlin’s rise as “a wonderfully powerful journey,” but noted that the main character is also “human and deeply flawed.” The series represents a blending of the artistic style of Medieval fantasy such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones” with a complex Christian message. “In my opinion, this is the first major series from a conservative media company that is competitive with anything that is coming out of mainstream Hollywood,” Sonnier said. “We certainly had a nice budget, but we did not have the budget of ‘Game of Thrones.'” He also emphasized that The Daily Wire produced the series independently from Hollywood, casting actors who had not previously been discovered. “To discover Tom Sharp off of a casting tape that was self-submitted without an agent, direct to us, and to find a future movie star out of nowhere is such a cool thing,” Sonnier recalled. The trailer shows Merlin (Sharp) as a mystical magician and warrior, slaying foes while helping to forge a united Britain. The seven-episode series premieres Jan. 22, with news episodes released Thursdays, exclusively on DailyWire+. The Daily Wire’s “All Access” members will be able to watch the first two episodes early—on Christmas Day. Lawhead’s “Pendragon Cycle” portrays Merlin as the son of the British bard Taliesin. Taliesin marries Charis, an exile princess from the lost kingdom of Atlantis. Lawhead’s version of Atlantis takes inspiration from the Minoan civilization on Crete, and The Daily Wire version has taken great pains to capture the strengths of the book series, especially filming arresting scenes of Charis dancing with bulls in Atlantis. Sonnier highlighted the “authenticity” of the show, including live filming with live bulls. “Several characters jump over live bulls—there is no CGI involved in the jumping of the bulls,” he noted. “Those are real humans jumping over real bulls.” The book series places the story of Merlin and King Arthur in the 500s and 600s A.D., with Christianity rising in pagan Britain. The show will lean in on the Christian elements of Arthurian myth, elements that Hollywood often overlooks or ignores. “This show is going to be very true to the books, very true to the message of the books,” Sonnier explained. “We do not undermine any of the Christian principles, this is a family-friendly show. I think the audience is really going to get a kick out of this.” “We had to make sure it was the best cinematography, the best writing, the best directing, the best acting—this is the beauty of the intersection of great art and Christian values,” he added. The post EXCLUSIVE: New Pendragon Cycle Trailer Pulls Back the Curtain on ‘Intersection of Great Art and Christian Values’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump promised to tackle the issues of crime and law and order in American cities. Early in his second term he deployed the National Guard to alleviate the problem in places like the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, and Memphis. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing on Wednesday examining how “Democrat-run cities and their soft-on-crime policies have enabled violent crime to rise unchecked” and explored “how the Trump-Vance Administration is restoring law and order in some of these cities through the deployment of the U.S. National Guard and federal law enforcement entities.” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., the committee chairman, stated the purpose of holding hearings on the crime issue.   “We need to restore the rule of law in America’s high crime cities,” Van Drew said. “And let’s be honest about something from the very start. Crime didn’t just rise and come about on its own. It happened because leaders chose to, leaders in the Democratic run cities have made political choices.” Democrats let crime explode in their cities and then acted shocked when the National Guard had to clean up their mess.Today, the @JudiciaryGOP Subcommittee on Oversight is exposing the real cost of their soft-on-crime policies. pic.twitter.com/0bEU28yGf9— Congressman Jeff Van Drew (@Congressman_JVD) November 19, 2025 He said that the choices made were to put “radical ideology before safety, politics before people, and criminals before the safety of the good people in our communities.” Van Drew noted that many cities have embraced soft on crime prosecutors, eliminated cash bail, and lowered penalties for repeat offenders. The New Jersey congressman pointed to Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to various cities as part of his promise to restore the rule of law in America. Hearing witnesses were asked to speak about the National Guard deployments and explain the next steps to improving safety in American cities. The committee ranking chair, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said that with the deployment of the National Guard and other actions, Trump has “used the full power of the federal government to attack Americans in cities across the country.” She said that Trump has made it more likely for Americans to suffer “militaristic operations” in their homes and other depredations at the hands of “rogue federal agents.” A Concentrated Problem Rafael A. Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book “Criminal (In)Justice,” spoke at the hearing about how criminality is concentrated in many cities and how this can mask a larger problem even when crime is generally going down. “We often talk about crime in nationwide, statewide, or even citywide terms,” Mangual said. “But whether a city’s crime rates are up or down, while important, can mask some important realities.” Mangual said that in his home city of New York, data from 2010, 2015, and 2020 showed that “approximately 50% of the city’s reported crime occurs on just 4% of the city’s streets.” That reality means that people living on streets with the higher crime can have a “radically different experience” than other residents, Mangual said. He noted that in Chicago’s 9th District the homicide rate was just “2.3 per 100,000,” while in the 6th District the rate was “73.4 per 100,000.” He said that for this reason, the crime problem still needs urgent attention even if aggregate crime has gone down because many city localities are still experiencing sky high rates. Mangual attributed much of the problem to the issue of repeat offenders. In Chicago the average homicide suspect has been arrested 12 times previously, and in Oakland both homicide suspects and victims have on average ten previous arrests, Mangual said. Mangual said that the reason there are so many repeat offenders who commit violent crimes is because “somewhere down the line policy makers made a choice. They made a choice to pursue decarceration for its own sake because they were convinced that doing so was the best way to serve justice.” These decisions can and must be reversed, Mangual said. In some cases, states and localities have made a significant pivot. He pointed to Tennessee where lawmakers “passed legislation to amend their state’s constitution so that judges there can have the right to detain dangerous criminal defendants in all cases.” They also passed a law to ensure that convicted criminals must serve the majority of their sentences before being released, he said. Mangual further recommended Congress pass a crime bill similar to the one from 1994, but “this time with a particular focus on police recruitment and retention funding the acquisition of force multiplying technologies, incentivizing data collection, and incentivizing the adoption of strong policies for habitual offenders.” An Erosion of Crime Fighting Success Paul Mauro, an attorney and former inspector for the NYPD, said that in the years following the 1994 crime bill a huge amount of progress was made in stopping crime in New York City. But the success it produced has “eroded,” Mauro said. He pointed to policies such as no cash bail, which have “coincided with visible disorder.” The former NYPD inspector said that disorderly conduct summonses, the “lynchpin of quality-of-life enforcement,” fell by 91% since 2015. Mauro said that police recruitment and retention are in crisis and while homicide is down in the Big Apple this year, “major felonies are up 16% since 2010 … and low-level recidivism is universal.” Worse, he said that the vast majority of crimes go unreported. Mauro noted that the use of the National Guard to help stop crime is often misunderstood by the public. In New York since 9/11, the National Guard has patrolled transit hubs “without incident” he said. These troops provide a deterrent to crime through “visibility,” Mauro added. When politicians “vilify” these crime fighters, that rhetoric is felt on the street, he said. “Is it any wonder that since 2019 assaults on NYPD officers ups up 63%,” he said, concluding that those who protect the safety of the public deserve “our support, not our scorn.” The post Trump’s Guard Deployments Lowered Crime, But Can More Be Done? Witnesses Describe How at House Hearing. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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. For most of my life, at least for the last 35 years, we have accepted the climate change orthodoxy. We used to be global warming, and then, when things were not always warming, but they were cooling, they changed the name to climate change to suggest that whatever the temperature extreme was, it was all due to carbon emissions caused by, in general, humans, but in particular, Westerners, who were polluting the planet with heat. That was the dominant narrative. I didn’t think in my lifetime that I would see an end to that dominance, even though there were inconsistencies. The planet is 4 billion years old. And man has only been here for 300,000 years. And we only have accurate record-keeping of temperature fluctuations for the last 150 years. And even within that period, we have cyclical changes between decades of abnormal temperatures, whether too hot or too cold. And before the Industrial Revolution, in some cases, by tree rings and ice in the Arctic sampling. There was always debate. But the dominant narrative said, “No, we have to radically change our economy and move away from fossil fuels to renewable,” and that was usually wind and solar. And then something’s happened lately. King Gustaf XVI, the hereditary monarch of, you know, figurines, as it is, not an actual person in power, in Sweden kind of mused openly the other day—he’s known as a rabid environmentalist. He said, why are you—basically, I’m not quoting him literally. He said, why are we ruining the economy of Europe by having exorbitant power cost, electricity cost, when we only contribute to 6% of global warming worldwide? Then Bill Gates shocked the world when he said he no longer believes that there is an impending climate change crisis. This was followed by a lot of other people who said, “Let’s take a different look at this.” And of course, the second tenure of President Donald Trump has people in it, in energy, interior, treasury, who were saying, “You know, we’re not gonna subsidize this anymore.” And this is collated with the disasters that were caused by global climate change worries or Armageddon, such as the high-speed rail program in California that was supposed to replace automobiles—$15 billion, $20 billion. Not one foot of track laid. The solar plant down in the desert of California that is being dismantled. Or the battery storage in Moss Landing, near Monterey, that has caught fire twice. I could go on. So, there was a lot of skepticism, both by individuals who were influential and by the general public, for good cause. What is causing this? Well, the first thing is, in reference to Bill Gates, is artificial intelligence. It’s going to require an unprecedented level of electrical generation. It takes huge amounts of electricity. We don’t have it. And we will not get it by subsidizing wind turbines and solar panels. Sam Altman, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, said, if the United States wants to achieve preeminence in the field—and this seems to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the Industrial Revolution—we’re gonna have to build 100 gigawatt, 1-gigawatt plant, that’s the size of a large nuclear reactor, a thousand megawatts. We’re gonna have to build, he says, a hundred per year or the equivalent of clean coal or natural gas. So, that influenced Bill Gates. That shook him up. That’s not compatible with his prior green idea that we’re gonna supplant fossil fuels. Another reason is geostrategic. People are starting to become aware that Russia is a bad actor and Iran is a bad actor. And they depend on oil exports and, therefore, the high price of oil to fuel their military ambitions. The United States became the largest producer of fossil fuels during the first Trump administration, then President Joe Biden, for all of his green rhetoric, pivoted in his third and fourth year, so he could win the election, and began pumping oil again. Donald Trump took that 12 million to 13 million barrels, has increased it to 14 million. And the price of world oil is going down. And that hurts Iran. And that hurts Russia. And that benefits our allies, like Europe and Japan, that would like more liquified natural gas shipped from the United States. And so, there were geostrategic reasons. Let’s be frank. Everybody has sort of seen what China’s doing. It’s playing the West. It talks a great game about global warming: “You guys, we all have to reduce our admissions.” And then what does it do? Two things. It subsidizes cheap export of solar panels and wind turbines, below the cost of production, to bankrupt competing industries in Europe and the United States to get the West hooked on solar and wind, even though it is a very expensive and unreliable source of electricity. Meanwhile, as we get hooked on Chinese exports, they build two to three coal or nuclear plants per month, affordable energy that will give them a competitive edge over the West. Then there’s the Third World that has been telling us for the last 20 years that we are culpable for global warming, even though the two greatest heat emission areas in the world are China and India. Nonetheless, governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia say: You people owe us because you started the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century. And you’ve been polluting the planet ever since. And you create all of your industries and your affluent lifestyles by burning fossil fuels. And therefore, you should pay us. Not we pay you, or we don’t have to cut back, we’re late to the game. And we should say to them, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We burned more fossil fuels in the past because we created the Industrial Revolution. And we do today. We provide you the cars, we provide you the industrial plants, we provide you the plastics. If you want us to stop, we won’t export it to you. And then, maybe we’ll pay reparations. And you can do your own industrialization. Don’t take stuff from us that requires fossil fuels that’s essential to your economies and then tell us that we have to pay an added tax on it because we’re warming up the planet, as if it’s only for our purposes as well as yours.” Then there’s the, I guess it would be—what would we call it? The hypocrisy. The people who have been the avatars of climate change never suffer the consequences of their own ideology. Former President Barack Obama said the planet would be inundated pretty soon if we didn’t address global climate change. Why would he buy a seaside estate at Martha’s Vineyard or one on the beach of Hawaii if he really did believe that the oceans would rise and flood his multimillion-dollar investment? Why would John Kerry fly all over the world on a private plane and then tell the rest of us that we’re flying too much commercial when his carbon imprint was a thousand times more than the individual American? Why would people on the California coast say, “We have to have wind and solar, and we have to get kilowattage up to 40 cents a kilowatt—the cost—because we want to use less fossil fuels”? And then the temperature from La Jolla to Berkeley is between, what, 65 and 75 year-round, where here in Bakersfield or Fresno or Sacramento it can be 105. And poor people can’t afford to run their air conditioners. Add it all up: the inconsistency of the global warming narrative, the self-interest in the people who promote it, and the logic that they have not presented, empirically, the evidence that would convince us that we have to radically transform our economies on the wishes of a few elites that do not have the evidence, but do have a lot of hypocrisy in the process. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Is the Era of ‘Climate Change Orthodoxy’ Dying? appeared first on The Daily Signal.