The United States is “going to end up with a great deal” with Iran, President Donald Trump said in an interview Tuesday morning. “I think they have no choice,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve taken out their Navy, we’ve taken out their Air Force, we’ve taken out their leaders.“ Trump said he doesn’t plan to extend the current ceasefire’s Wednesday deadline, which would give Iran until Wednesday night to agree to a peace deal. “We’ve taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way, but these leaders are much more rational,” Trump said. “It is regime change, no matter what you want to call it, which is not something I said I was going to do, but I’ve done it indirectly.” Trump said the U.S. would resume bombing if Iran does not agree to a deal by the deadline. “I expect to be bombing because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with,” he said. “But we’re ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go. They are absolutely incredible.” Vice President JD Vance and other negotiators are expected to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, for a second round of negotiations Tuesday after the first set of talks was unsuccessful. Oil prices surged Monday, with Brent and WTI benchmarks rising by 5.6% and 6.9%, respectively after Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz again and the U.S. seized an Iranian cargo ship as part of its ports blockade. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor for about a fifth of the world’s oil supply, remained limited on Monday. The conflict is creating the worst energy crisis ever faced by the world, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. Reuters contributed to this report.

Two mothers who lost their sons and another whose daughter remains permanently injured will testify before Congress on Thursday about how these tragedies—each involving illegal aliens—could have been prevented through stricter enforcement of immigration law. This forum could be uncomfortable for House Democrats who oppose enforcing immigration laws, said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, which is holding the hearing. “People keep arguing the legal loopholes and technicalities. I want members of this committee who don’t believe in enforcement to look these mothers in the eyes,” Van Drew told The Daily Signal. “We are not going to have lawyers, not analysts, but real people.” Van Drew said illegal immigrants charged or convicted of serious crimes should be returned to their country of origin. Instead, many blue cities and states refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I hope that those colleagues on the other side of the aisle who don’t believe in detention or deportation of criminal illegal aliens—people who have been indicted or convicted of major crimes like drug distribution or rape—will see the toll of sanctuary policies,” Van Drew said. Van Drew pointed to Minnesota and California as among states with some of the worst sanctuary policies. He also included his own state of New Jersey, where he said state and local law enforcement is barred from assisting ICE. Jen Heiling—the mother of Brady Heiling, who was killed last July at age 19—is set to testify to the panel. Last July in Wisconsin, an illegal alien from Honduras was charged with two felony counts—vehicular homicide and impaired driving—after she allegedly struck a vehicle, killing 18-year-old Hallie Helgeson and severely injuring Heiling, who died from his injuries days later, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Also scheduled to testify is Patricia Fox, the mother of Carissa Aspnes, who was severely brain-damaged at age 22 in March 2025. Aspnes was riding on the back of a friend’s motorcycle, wearing a helmet and protective gear, when a car driven by an illegal alien from Venezuela crossed multiple lanes and struck the motorcycle, causing her brain damage, CBS News reported. The driver pleaded guilty and was deported last month. Also scheduled to testify to the House panel is Laura Wilkerson, the mother of Joshua Wilkerson, who was tortured and murdered in 2010 by an illegal alien who overstayed his visa for eight years. Wilkerson, 18, was from Pearland, Texas, and was killed by a 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Belize, who admitted to beating him to death, according to the Houston Chronicle. Van Drew said he is hopeful the hearing will help change the narrative, as most Democrats and much of the legacy media tend to focus on the plight of illegal aliens and ignore the victims of crime. Most members of Congress won’t experience the pain of losing a child, Van Drew said. But he said needless deaths are occurring because illegal aliens have often been arrested and released. “We only have three witnesses. We could have 30, or 300, or 3,000,” Van Drew said. “I don’t look forward to this hearing. Sometimes members of Congress, or others, will tell parents who lost a child, ‘I know how you feel.’ No, you don’t. I pray to God you never do.” He noted continuous news coverage of ICE, particularly after two fatal shootings in Minnesota earlier this year. “Cut it out and stop it,” he said of the anti-ICE criticism. “I want body cams for ICE agents—I’m good with that. But they should keep their masks because they and their families are being targeted. They should have a badge ID. There should be more training for how to handle sensitive areas like churches. But the basic fact is they are catching criminals. How can you say we don’t need that?” Deadly confrontations have occurred in sanctuary jurisdictions, Van Drew noted.

Sen. Thom Tillis praised President Donald Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, but he maintained that he will not support Warsh as long as Trump is investigating current chair Jerome Powell. “I look forward to supporting your nomination, and I look forward to this investigation being taken down,” the North Carolina Republican told Warsh on Tuesday as the nominee testified before the Senate Banking Committee. Tillis celebrated Warsh’s “impeccable” credentials. “I love your opening statement. I love your focus on the independence of the Fed,” Tillis said. “I love the idea of Fed independence with respect to achieving the dual mandate.” Though Tillis said Warsh is the perfect candidate, he said he is unwilling to vote for him during a criminal investigation into Powell’s construction of the Fed headquarters going over budget. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. opened the investigation in November at President Donald Trump’s bidding, reviewing whether Powell lied to a Senate committee about cost overruns. Federal prosecutors appeared last Tuesday at the construction site for the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, D.C. Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to succeed Powell, but Powell has said he won’t step down until after the current investigation is finished. Powell has also said he will remain as chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors until the Senate confirms a replacement. Tillis said that a construction project going over budget is not grounds for a criminal investigation. “There were a variety of reasons why this building went over budget,” Tillis said. “As a matter of fact, if we put everybody in prison in federal government that had had a budget go over, we’d have to reserve an area roughly the size of Texas for a penal colony because of the way government projects work.” “And the reality is, the overage of inflation-adjusted was about $730 million,” he added, “the majority of which seems to be legitimate.” He said the $2.5 billion construction project was “not acceptable, unfortunate, but legitimate.” Tillis said he has a problem with DOJ attorneys “thinking it would be cute to bring chair Powell under an investigation just a few months before the position was going to be open.” The senator “can’t go forward” with Warsh “until this bogus investigation is done with,” he said. “We have got to end this investigation,” he said. “Big DOJ didn’t know about it. The president didn’t know about it. Let’s get rid of this investigation so I can support your confirmation, Mr. Warsh.”

Marijuana is marketed and sold as medicine. Regular users claim any number of health benefits, from pain relief and increased sleep to anxiety relief. And users do giggle a lot, so they must be happy, right?  When the science is separated from the hype, though, it becomes clear that marijuana is actually an anti-medicine.   Most medicines have host of potential side effects, which pharmacies must list in fine print on packaging, and which prescribers are required to discuss with their patients. Usually, the side effects are tolerable or rare.  But marijuana is not benign for anyone. The “dispensaries”—a euphemism for pot shops—do not provide their customers with any list of potential side effects, even though some of these side effects impact 100% of users.  Medicine is not candy. Disguising marijuana with fruity and sweet flavors encourages addiction. No one puts their cholesterol medication in a gummy to make it more fun to treat disease.   Dosages of genuine medicine are never arbitrarily determined by the patient, yet marijuana “patients” are able to dose themselves. After all, the pot shops want to sell more.   These are some of the known side effects that come from THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and most occur no matter how the THC is consumed.  Impotence. Marijuana degrades both the quantity and the quality of sperm. Marijuana lowers testosterone and sex drive. Users even have fewer orgasms, according to a review by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.   Miscarriage risk. Fathers who use marijuana can cause their embryonic babies to be miscarried. Weekly use of marijuana doubles the rate of miscarriage, according to research by Boston University. To prevent this, potential fathers need to stop marijuana six months before any pregnancy, because marijuana lingers in the body’s stored fat. Women trying to get pregnant using IVF are startled when their embryos die after three days because of the father’s marijuana habit.  Birth defects. Mothers who use marijuana during pregnancy or lactation have babies with low-birth weight, smaller head circumference, and cognitive dysfunction. Like alcohol and tobacco, a mother who uses marijuana causes a lifetime injury to her baby, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Psychosis and schizophrenia. Between 30 and 50% of young people who use marijuana daily will develop psychosis or schizophrenia. These users—and their families—will suffer lifelong injury from their youthful experimentation, according to the Yale School of Medicine.  Cognitive decline. Marijuana use causes memory loss, according to Harvard Medical School. This is part of why marijuana use by the elderly is so damaging. Additionally, marijuana can interfere with other pharmaceuticals many elderly patients need. Yet, the over-60 age set is the fastest-growing group of users.  Lung damage and cancer risk. Smoking marijuana deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking tobacco, and marijuana has 33 cancer-causing chemicals, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.  Suicidal ideation. Thirty percent of the mass shooters who have died during their rampage have been heavy marijuana users. In their altered reality, they want to blow themselves up and take others with them. JAMA Psychiatry reports a strong association between cannabis use and suicide attempts in adolescents and young adults.  Toxins. Medicine is produced in controlled and sterile laboratories, according to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. But not marijuana. No FDA agent minds marijuana production. The contamination in plants—including pesticides, heavy metals, and cleaning agents—stay in the marijuana.  Impact on pain relief. When undergoing surgical procedures, marijuana users need much stronger anesthesia in order to be sedated. They also require much more pain medication in recovery, according to the National Institutes of Health.  Motor skills. Marijuana greatly affects motor skills, which poses a particular threat given how many people drive under the influence of the drug. A high driver is dangerous because THC is stored in fat, which makes the impact lasts much longer in the body than alcohol.  So much for the side effects of marijuana. But what about the supposed benefits for users? Perhaps they are so earth-shattering they make the side effects feel like a fair trade.  Insomnia. Pot shops advertise marijuana for insomnia, but it is only a superficial fix that does not cure insomnia. Sleeplessness is actually a withdrawal symptom of stopping marijuana. Regular users therefore think that marijuana helps them to sleep because they have such trouble sleeping when they stop. Users need to wait at least a month for the stored THC to clear their body, meaning that withdrawal symptoms can linger for a significant period of time.   Anxiety. Far from treating the problem, marijuana actually intensifies anxiety. Higher THC levels in a person’s body elevate anxiety by overstimulating the amygdala (the brain’s fear center), according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.  Weaning off opioids. The University of Sydney analyzed 54 randomly controlled trials from 1980-2025 in a study just published in The Lancet, which found no evidence that marijuana alleviates any mental condition, including opioid-use disorder.  Pain. In 2024, the American Society of Clinical Oncology said there is insufficient evidence to recommend marijuana for cancer pain.  But what about anecdotes of people who say they have been helped? They are rationalizing their recreational use under the guise of medicine.   These potheads are like the drunks who self-medicate with bourbon; everyone recognizes that the bourbon is not a genuine medicine that aids in their recovery. Addicted people are easing their withdrawal symptoms, not treating the underlying causes for their addiction.  America has a marijuana problem: 15% of Americans have used marijuana in the last month. There are now more daily pot smokers than daily drinkers.   Unfortunately, the marketing campaign to legalize and sell marijuana convinced Americans that marijuana is a harmless medicine.   Marijuana has been and should stay a Schedule 1 drug because it has no medical use, demonstrable side-effects, and a high potential for abuse.  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 State Department is enforcing President Donald Trump’s policy banning men from using women’s restrooms and other private spaces, according to a new memo obtained by The Daily Signal. The State Department issued a memo on Monday titled “Updates Regarding Biological Sex and Intimate Spaces, Including Restrooms,” which clarifies that the agency must abide by Trump’s executive order protecting sex-segregated private spaces. “The Administration affirms that there are two sexes—male and female—and that federal facilities should operate on this objective and longstanding basis to ensure consistency, privacy, and safety in shared spaces,” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesman Tommy Piggot told The Daily Signal. “In line with President Trump’s Executive Order this provides clear, uniform guidance to the department by grounding policy in biological sex as determined at birth.” “ACTION: Post must abide by the President’s directive in E.O. 14168, ensuring intimate spaces are designated by biological sex,” the memo reads. President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office directing agencies to designate private spaces by biological sex. Last summer, the Office of Personnel Management issued guidance that federal bathrooms, locker rooms, and lactation rooms must be designated by biological sex. On Feb. 26, 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that “under Title VII, federal agency employers may lawfully exclude men from the women’s bathroom, and women from the men’s bathroom.” The ruling reverses an Obama-era EEOC decision from 2015 which required federal agencies to allow employees who identify as transgender to use bathrooms in accord with their “gender identity,” rather than biological sex. “When it comes to bathrooms, male and female employees are not similarly situated,” EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said at the time. “Biology is not bigotry.” The new memo does not prohibit single-occupancy restrooms.