Much of President Donald Trump’s address to the nation about Chinese election interference cited newly declassified documents, but at several points he made claims on matters already known before the release of the new material. Contrary to speculation ahead of the speech, Trump did not outright assert that Chinese interference in the 2020 election determined the outcome in favor of Joe Biden. Rather, at several times in his address, Trump focused on what the Chinese government was capable of or had attempted to do in its effort to influence U.S. elections. 1. ‘Chinese Government Wanted the U.S. President to Lose’ Trump said, “The Chinese government wanted the U.S. president to lose the next election,” referring to the 2020 election. A 2020 U.S. intelligence report appears to support that claim. “We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win reelection,” an August 2020 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China.” 2. ‘Fought Like Hell’ What China wanted to accomplish and what China actually accomplished in previous elections might still be in dispute. Trump said that documents show China meddled in the 2018 midterm elections and then, in 2019, turned its attention to the 2020 election. Trump said, “Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China’s activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.” Trump also said, “They did not want — and they just didn’t want it. They fought like hell not to have it, Donald Trump to win, and for good reason.” This would seem to contradict a March 2021 joint report of the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, released during the early months of the Biden administration. According to the report, China considered trying to influence the presidential election but did not deploy an operation comparable to Russia’s meddling in 2016. It concluded that no evidence supported the claim that a foreign government manipulated any election results. However, Trump asserted several times that documents show entrenched federal employees, or the “deep state,” willingly suppressed information about Chinese election meddling from being presented to the president, Congress, and the public. 3. ‘220 Million U.S. Voter Files’ Trump asserted, “The People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” He cited newly declassified documents for his claim.  The number would encompass almost all registered voters in the United States. In 2024, there were 234.5 million individuals registered to vote across the U.S., according to the Election Assistance Commission. He added, “That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening.” Some state voter information is readily accessible, while other information requires special access. Various states have different rules about who can access voter registration data, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some states only make it available to campaigns or researchers for a fee. Voter names are generally widely available. Public information is frequently used by political campaigns, and while clearly vulnerable to foreign access, that is not an entirely new development. 4. ‘Revocation of Their Licenses’ Trump noted that the broadcast networks ABC and NBC declined to cover the primetime address and said that “fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.” “They use our public multi-billion dollar-in-value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing,” Trump said. “In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is, and they don’t want to reveal it.” NBC and ABC are networks of local affiliate TV stations that carry their programming. Therefore, the networks themselves do not hold broadcast licenses with the Federal Communications Commission. Importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the cases of Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969) and CBS v. FCC (1981) that there is not a First Amendment right to scarce public airwaves, recognizing the FCC’s authority to regulate broadcasters. However, even revoking the licenses of affiliate stations would involve a lengthy legal process with the FCC.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Two private companies currently dominate more than 90% of the proxy advisory market, controlling significant influence over corporate America, and Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, is demanding answers.  In a letter obtained by the Daily Signal to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Andrew N. Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Jackson points to specific examples of these companies advising with a leftist agenda in mind rather than investor returns.  “Two foreign-owned proxy advisory firms have used their 90% market share to impose radical diversity quotas and net-zero mandates on American companies,” Jackson told the Daily Signal.  “[Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.] and Glass Lewis have become socialist political activists, putting woke DEI and Green New Scam policies ahead of shareholder returns. Americans want capitalism, not corporate terrorism,” Jackson said.  DOJ FTC JACKSON LETTERDownload If an American holds stocks through a mutual fund, pension fund, or 401(k), Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. or Glass Lewis could be hired to analyze the shareholder proposals and recommend how votes should be cast.  This is not the first time ISS and Glass Lewis have been accused of imposing a leftist political agenda. On Dec. 11, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting American Investors From Foreign-Owned and Politically Motivated Proxy Advisors.”  The executive order directed federal agencies to review proxy-adviser regulations, examine potential antitrust concerns, and investigate whether the firms were advancing DEI and ESG activism. The president advised the agencies to take action if needed.  Now, Jackson is seeking an update on the investigation.  In the letter, Jackson writes that he is “concerned by Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (Glass Lewis) and their continued use of their more than 90 percent share of the proxy advisor market to conduct anticompetitive activities, imposing political agendas on American companies and colluding to oppose companies’ efforts to redomicile to the state of Texas.”  “Most recently, ISS and Glass Lewis each recommended that shareholders oppose ExxonMobil Corp.’s decision to move its legal domicile to Texas—the state where the company has been operationally headquartered since 1989.”  ExxonMobil shareholders just approved (71.3%) to leave New Jersey for Texas.Incorporated in NJ since 1882. After 144 years, it's over.One of the largest companies in the world had every option on the table. They didn't pick Delaware. They picked Texas.Glass Lewis said no.… https://t.co/O1noyZll5A— Leave Delaware (@LeaveDelaware) May 27, 2026 Jackson argues that Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis failed to disclose a potential conflict when recommending against ExxonMobil’s move to Texas. The firms are in a legal battle challenging the state of Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton. They recently sued the state over a Senate bill requiring the proxy-adviser law.  Jackson also wants to review the FTC’s and the Justice Department’s efforts to examine potential violations of federal antitrust laws by Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis. 

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition 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. Sami Winc: So Victor, the Left. Let’s talk about them. I know that you’re currently working on an article about the Left as middle class and representative of the middle class, or maybe not. And so I’ll go with that first, and then maybe we can look at some of the communist socialist questions with the Left.  Victor Davis Hanson: I think I’m going to title it “The Left-Wing Search for the Aborigine White Working-Class Male.” And just to preface it, as the Democratic Party in the post-JFK period went left, left, left, it started to lose the white working class.  For example, in 2024, those who were white, male or female, but did not have a college education were still 40% of the electorate. And they were overrepresented because they registered and voted with greater frequency than other groups. Of that group, [Donald] Trump won 66%. And what that means to the Democratic Party, and this has been going on, is they have no margin of error when they lose that great of a demographic.  So they have to pander, pander, pander to DEI. So the black, black, black, black, black, BLM, BLM, da, da, da, da, La Raza, La Raza, La Raza, open borders, open borders. And then that only further… that 66% used to be 52, 58. Each election it goes up. So they’re in a doom loop. So they’ve decided that they’ve got to come up with a Bill Clinton solution.  And that is, how do you win back 50%? They can’t. They’ll never get over 50%. And they’re losing them because of their agenda. They won’t change. We love illegal immigrants. We want open borders. We’re going to have a new demographic, a new Democratic majority. Demography is destiny. No cash bail. Trans, trans, trans, trans everywhere.  You know, abortion to the moment of birth. Green New Deal, Green New Deal, war on fossil fuels. All of those are 30-70 issues. So they don’t want to change the issues. They just won’t do it. And they know they have to. So they came up with another solution. It’s an old solution. Let’s find working white-class male candidates.  But there are none, really, that are genuine, that want that agenda or want to hang out with them. Remember, these people… they talk about oligarchs and billionaires. This is the party of oligarchs and billionaires. I’m talking about their donor class.  Who are their donor class that funds all this left-wing activity? It’s Melinda Gates, the bitter divorced wife who’s worth $100 billion. It’s Mackenzie… is that her name? Bezos, who was divorced, also embittered. She’s got $75 or $80 billion, and she’s a big left-wing donor.  And then there was Jeffrey Epstein. He was a big donor. There was, of course, Bill Gates. There were the Soros manifestations, all of their secret little funds. There was this nut in China, Neville Singham. There was our friend, my neighbor for a while at campus, [Samuel] Bankman-Fried. He was a big donor, the biggest in the midterms a few years ago. And then there’s Laurene Jobs, another widow.  And the money is all predictable. Either they inherited it from their husband in a divorce, or he died. That’s Laurene Jobs, or the divorces of the former Mrs. Gates and the former Mrs. Bezos. So they didn’t create the money themselves.  And when you look at Singham, or you look at Epstein or Bankman-Fried or Reid Hoffman, it’s not like they’re building rockets or Teslas, or they’re bringing products to your doorstep like Amazon. They’re all into finance, crypto, investment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a different type of wealth than farming, mining, construction, or invention.  So they’re a very wealthy party. And these new socialists that have joined it are very wealthy. Andrew Stiles, who’s a very effective writer for The Free Beacon, has a whole story today. He calls them “trust fund socialists.” He looks at all of them.  It’s [Zohran] Mamdani, who’s very wealthy. He has an estate. His family has an estate on Lake Victoria where he was married, with highly reinforced security, a two-acre estate, that settler-colonial family.  Sami Winc: Yeah. Do you think that’s where he’s going to abscond to as soon as he’s done every communist thing he can?  Victor Davis Hanson: His Indian Uganda community, as I keep saying, is 1% that controls 60% of the wealth, and no one says a word.  And then, when you look at Graham Platner, he went to prep school, Hotchkiss, subsidized by his parents.  And then you look at [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], upper-upper middle class, keeps talking about “eat the rich” and all this stuff.  So the socialist candidates, they’re either in graduate school or law school, or they got subsidies, or they’re recent immigrants that were subsidized. But they’re all well off. And the donors are the billionaire class.  And so they have a problem. The white working class looks at these people and says, “You’re wealthy. Mamdani, you sound like a spoiled brat. Platner, we don’t buy your shtick.”  So what the Left is doing is… and this is how they got in trouble. They had Morris Katz and this other guy that were their finders of fake middle-class candidates.  And that guy goes, “And then we looked at Platner, and he was the thing.”  Did you vet him?  Well, kind of.  I mean, they were incompetent. It’s not like they have James Carville or Mark Penn or Doug Schoen, the old guys that won the elections. These people are… or Mark Halperin. Those type of guys are experts. They’re professionals.  I don’t agree with Carville, but I give him his due. He’s smart. And so, I like Mark Penn. I like Mark Halperin. I like Doug Schoen. They’re all professionals.  But that’s not who they’re listening to. They’re listening to these little nepo babies, and they know nothing.  So now their solution is, well, if we’re all wealthy, and the wealthy class funds us, and we like wealthy socialists, and we never said a word about [Nancy] Pelosi cashing in, then we need fake working-class people because there are none that are genuine.  And then they think, well, you know, when we went Left, we couldn’t nominate a Democratic candidate from the North because they lost. So we had LBJ, a Southerner. He won.  And then we went to [Hubert] Humphrey. He was a northern liberal. He lost.  So then we thought, well, that was an outlier. We’ll get [George] McGovern, a North Dakota northern liberal. And he lost in ’72.  So then they said, we’re not going to do this anymore. We’ve got to go back to LBJ. “Hi, I’m Jimmy Carter.” So that worked.  And then he lost the second time to [Ronald] Reagan.  And then they said, well, he lost. We’re going to go to [Walter]Mondale. And he lost in ’84.  So then they said, well, we’ve got to have a… and they put in Mike Dukakis. And he lost.  And then guys like Schoen and Penn and all those guys said, “I told you. You can’t double down on left-wing extremism from a bunch of northern do-gooders. You need southern boys to do your bidding.”  And so they got Bill Clinton. And he won twice, with the help of Ross Perot, who took away a lot of the vote from George Bush and Bob Dole.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

In just four states, 250,000 noncitizens are registered to vote, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday as he announced new measures to bolster election security. The four states—California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada—did not cooperate with the Trump administration in its review of voter information, but the Department of Homeland Security obtained the information from publicly available data, Mullin said. The secretary said that in 23 states that have cooperated with the agency’s SAVE program, which helps determine voter eligibility, data show another 23,000 noncitizens and 400,000 dead people are registered to vote. He said that states will need to work with DHS on ensuring voter eligibility if they wish to receive federal election grants. “Every state should partner with us,” Mullin said. “If states want election grants, they should implement these security measures.” The annoucement follows a primetime address by President Donald Trump about the release of declassified documents showing evidence that China has been meddling in U.S. elections by hacking into voter registration databases and by other means. “President Trump gave DHS the tools and resources to secure elections,” Mullin said. “But we have to have states partner with us. If they choose not to than voters should hold them accountable.” The president said the declassified information shows China conducted a massive hacking of voter registration information that yielded access to 220 million U.S. voter files. Trump said the effort aimed to steal information about thousands of voters, and added that information from 2018 and 2019 shows that Chinese operatives wanted to harm him so he would be forced to resign or be defeated in his reelection bid. The president further claimed China paid U.S. journalists to write negative stories about him during his first term. Trump delivered his address as he is pushing Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote. The president, as he concluded his remarks, made a passionate plea for Congress to pass the legislation.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is calling out Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly mistreating a whistleblower through lawfare.  Sarah Wynn-Williams, Meta’s former global head of public policy, testified before Congress that the company worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist Party. Now, Congress is investigating and demanding answers.  “Meta’s efforts to destroy Ms. Wynn-Williams with lawfare are a matter of grave public concern,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg.  Hawley LetterDownload Hawley, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, heard Wynn-Williams’ testimony last year when she appeared before his subcommittee. More than a year later, she is still being silenced. Hawley is demanding information from Meta and Zuckerberg to further investigate the company’s alleged lawfare.  “Ms. Wynn-Williams raised serious questions about Meta’s dealings with the Chinese government, the harms Meta’s platforms pose to users, and Meta’s representations to Congress,” Hawley wrote, referring to last year’s hearing.  “She testified that Meta worked hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools to silence and censor CCP critics,” and assisted the Chinese government in developing artificial intelligence for its military and stealing intellectual property from Americans.  Big News — Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams will testify NEXT WEEK in public, under oath, before my judiciary subcommittee re: her explosive evidence of Facebook’s cooperation with the Communist regime in China, including FB’s plans to build censorship tools, punish…— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) April 2, 2025 Meta attempted to silence Wynn-Williams before the hearing, but once the claims were public, the company placed a gag order on her through private arbitration. She now cannot speak critically of Meta, even if her claims are true, and faces financial penalties.  “To this day, Meta continues to relentlessly pursue her in arbitration, attempting to bankrupt her and subjecting her and her family to constant stress,” Hawley wrote.  Hawley has given Meta until Aug. 14 to collect and provide the requested information so that his subcommittee can continue its investigation.  Hawley requested Meta’s legal bills and attorney fees to evaluate the financial investment it has made to keep Wynn-Williams silent. He asked for all motions, discovery materials, and the arbitration complaint to review how the company is handling the case. He also requested any documents showing Meta gathering information on Wynn-Williams and her family.  THIS IS HUGE – Former Meta Executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams blows the whistle on Mark Zuckerberg et al, exposing their nefarious and alleged treasonous business dealings with China and the CCP. pic.twitter.com/5NjcgTy4ih— Shaun Rickard (@ShaunRickard67) April 10, 2025 Hawley wants to know whether this is a standalone situation or whether Meta has a history of silencing employees. He also requested that the company provide documents related to every arbitration or lawsuit against any former or current Meta employee.  “My Senate Judiciary Subcommittee is investigating the allegations that you [Zuckerberg], Meta, and Meta executives made false or misleading statements to Congress and whether any person has acted to obstruct the Subcommittee’s inquiry into Meta’s business ventures in China, its dealings with the Chinese Communist Party, and Meta’s knowledge of the grave harms—including child sex abuse, addictiveness, and bullying—that emanate from its products,” Hawley concluded.  Meta did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.