Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, joined his Democratic colleagues on Monday in introducing legislation that would establish a “state-run visa pipeline with a built-in legalization component” for illegal aliens, which critics categorized as a “de facto amnesty” bill that rewards those who broke American immigration laws. “I’ve heard time and again from small business owners, farmers, and ranchers across Utah how difficult it has become to hire enough workers to meet growing market demands,” Curtis, who switched to the Republican Party in 2009 after running as a Democrat in a Utah state Senate race in 2000, said in a press release. “Our legislation would help fill the gap by creating a pilot program allowing states to sponsor visas tailored to their unique economies, without sacrificing rigorous federal vetting or accountability,” Curtis, the former chairman of the Utah County Democratic Party, said. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., added that “states understand their own economic needs best, but federal rules currently determine who can live and work here.” “Our bipartisan bill would let Arizona and other states choose the visas they need to fill labor gaps and strengthen their local economies,” the Arizona Democrat continued. Curtis and Kelly did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment. What the Bill Actually Does Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal that, if enacted, the bill would create a fourth pathway for migrants to obtain visas. The former Department of Homeland Security acting deputy chief of staff under President Donald Trump’s first administration explained that current U.S. law provides three pathways to obtain a visa: asylum, work, and family. The bill aims to create a fourth pathway, sponsored by individual states. Aside from creating a fourth bucket for visa applications, the visa, under the provisions of this legislation, could be applied to a worker’s wife and kids, Ries, who also served as an immigration policy director at DHS during the administration of former President George W. Bush, added. As stated by Ries, this would “extend the temporary stay and create a pathway to legalization.” The bill would also allow states to classify the new visa holders as residents. The minimum requirement for a visa holder to qualify as a resident under this bill is 14 days, Ries continued. Ries went on to explain that this bill is being pushed at the federal level because states can create their own immigration laws only if they align with federal law. Enacting this law at the federal level would allow individual states to draft a memorandum of understanding between state and federal law enforcement, protecting the migrants covered by the new state-sponsored visa. “As it is, we’re seeing that our immigration system has been too generous, and everything we offer gets defrauded,” Ries concluded. “We need to eliminate the fraud, get these programs. This is a pick-and-choose buffet for aliens. This would grow the buffet.” Ries believes the reason for Curtis’s legislative push is to help American employers continue outsourcing jobs to migrants who accept below-average pay. Follow the Money? A Daily Signal analysis of OpenSecrets records showed that Curtis has received large sums of money from labor PACs in the 2025-26 campaign cycle alone. Scott Mechkowski added that this is “a pattern, not a one-time vote” from Curtis, who is looking to “line up with who backs him.” Ries told the Daily Signal that those same PACs “probably wrote” the legislation Curtis is now pushing. Cortes expanded on that claim and said that the senator’s record of pushing for amnesty and mass migration tells voters what they need to know about his stance on illegal immigration. “Curtis wants credit for being tough on the border, but his record tells a different story,” he continued. “In 2022, he signed on as an original cosponsor of the Dignity Act and publicly bragged about it, praising the bill for ensuring employers have access to reliable foreign workers. It lines up with who backs him.” Conservative Hurdle Although the legislation was introduced by a Republican, the bill, if it is referred to a committee and voted on, would receive pushback from conservatives who are committed to the promise of mass deportations. In a statement, Scott Mechkowski, visiting fellow for deportation studies at the Oversight Project, told the Daily Signal that this bill is just “amnesty by another name” and creates an incentive for future illegal aliens to enter the United States. “I spent twenty-four years enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act, and I know exactly what these bills do on the ground,” Mechkowski wrote. “They reward the people who broke our laws, and they promise the next wave that waiting pays off. His allies can call it earned status or workforce reform all they want.” Steve Cortes, founder of the League of American Workers and a longtime political strategist, expanded on the claim and told the Daily Signal that “once a migrant is in America ‘legally,’ no other state can restrict them.” Cortes called this a “total back door to mass migration again.” “Like the Biden era, cause of course, the blue state will just go wild with their own allowances,” Cortes continued. Effectively, critics of this legislation have said the bill aims to give states that don’t enforce immigration laws the ability to engineer a “de facto amnesty.” “This would allow states that are weak on immigration (which is most of them) to engineer a de facto amnesty,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X.

Another day, another example that the Left’s pathological hatred of America permeates the entire socialist movement. Far-Left darling Francesca Hong, a leading candidate to win the Democrat primary in the Wisconsin governor’s race, made some news this week for a series of unearthed X posts. One, in particular, stood out. Hong, who is a member of the Democratic Socialist of America, posted on X in 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns and at the height of Great Awokening fervor, “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx [sic] and women, so be it.” That kind of garbage was all over social media at the time. But the tide against such raw and blatant anti-Americanism has turned somewhat and the DSA insurgents at least feel compelled to hem and haw about the times they said the quiet part out loud. Hong’s apology tour didn’t exactly go to plan, though. In a CNN interview on Monday she was asked by interviewer Kaitlan Collins, “Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?” CNN: “Do you still believe Thanksgiving should be canceled?”Francesca Hong: “I'm a chef, one of the first meals I made for the community was a Thanksgiving meal. But Thanksgiving is also an incredibly painful time for many people in our communities.” pic.twitter.com/R4PVClfGu2— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 4, 2026 To this very easy question that should have obviously just been a “no” for anyone running for office in this country, she went with a long-winded politician response. “I’m a chef, and one of the first meals that I made that was for the community when I was 16 [years old] was a Thanksgiving meal,” Hong said. “I always think my hospitality background in owning a restaurant for seven, eight years, that bringing folks around the table to share conversation and build community is always a good thing. But…” And now we get to the real answer. “ … But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve.” So, her answer essentially remains “yes.” Hong isn’t just a Thanksgiving hater. It appears that the socialist gubernatorial candidate doesn’t actually like any of our holidays. Hong has said that she felt “slightly attacked” when an IT person working on her computer changed the background to a snow and Christmas theme. She said she hated working at her failed restaurant on Valentine’s Day and grumbled about Halloween, saying she’d demand that costumed people leave her business. Oh, there appears to be one exception to her holiday hating: May Day, of course. She couldn’t forget to celebrate that old-fashioned holiday, refashioned and worn like a skinsuit by generations of socialists and communists. May Day is about worker power, and so is this campaign. Tomorrow, we're showing up alongside the people who are organizing to make better possible. See you out there! ⁠ pic.twitter.com/UlK0G1hQl8— Francesca Hong For Governor (@FrancescaHongWI) April 30, 2026 It seems that Hong’s seemingly unrepentant anti-Thanksgiving nonsense is making even a few Democrats squirm, if only because this makes her victory in Wisconsin a bit less likely. Here’s Democrat strategist David Axelrod saying as much. It's answers like these than cause many to think if this chef wins the gubernatorial primary in WI, Ds may be cooked. pic.twitter.com/ys5nyB3tsa— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 4, 2026 But I’d say this whole thing is much bigger than just a single governor’s race. There are a few very important takeaways from Hong’s anti-Thanksgiving insanity that are essential to understand going forward. First, peak woke isn’t dead, it’s just pushed a bit under the surface, lurking under more universally palatable slogans like “affordability.” That Hong and other Democrats are now less comfortable outright saying crazy things like “abolish prisons” and “end Thanksgiving,” has a lot to do with the fact that their power is a lot less certain than they once assumed. Don’t think for a second that this stuff won’t come raging back if the socialists take over. And that get us to the second, larger takeaway is that the hate against Thanksgiving, traditional American holidays, and religion is what moves the modern-day leftists who join DSA and similar groups more than any of their other policy goals. Sure, the DSA platform is bonkers. They are explicit about wanting to eviscerate our constitutional system in their effort to replace it with a “totally not authoritarian, just trust us” style “democracy” that gives them absolute power. What is most essential to their ideology is obliterating American and Western culture. They know that demolishing our traditions, shattering what’s left of our national cohesion, and teaching the average American to wallow in resentment clear the path toward their ultimate goals. Their cultural aims are the rotten apple set in a broken frame of wretched governance and so are intrinsically bound together. Hong and other leftists can’t abandon their cultural goals even if they’d like to put a pause on talking about them until the political winds shift fully in their favor. Don’t assume that the goals have shifted though. They really do wish that the America we know and love had been snuffed out in 1621, or 1776, or any year thereafter. Never forget that.

One-third of Californians were living at or near the poverty line in 2024, according to a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California. The report found that 13.6 million residents were at or near poverty, with the highest poverty rates concentrated in Los Angeles County. Of those, roughly 6.7 million were living below the California Poverty Measure. For the average family of four, the California Poverty Measure set the poverty threshold at $46,200 a year. That threshold is an estimate of the income needed to afford basic necessities such as housing, food, clothing, and utilities. Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for governor, is pointing to the findings as evidence of California’s affordability crisis. In response, he’s promoting a proposal to eliminate state income taxes on the first $150,000 Californians earn. NEW REPORT: 1 in 3 Californians living in poverty.How dare Newsom and Becerra brag about being the “4th largest economy in the world” as working people struggle to live!We need to put more money in people’s pockets. And it starts with taking less out…your first $150k tax… pic.twitter.com/gCnq0GF7Ia— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) August 3, 2026 The Daily Signal spoke with Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in business and economics at the Pacific Research Institute, about whether policies aimed at boosting economic growth could help reduce poverty. While he did not comment specifically on Hilton’s proposal, Winegarden said lower tax rates generally encourage work, investment, and economic growth. “Looking at the report, it is a bit higher than the census estimates of poverty that include income support payments,” he said. “But the census numbers are high, nearly 20%. So, the idea that poverty is a real problem is correct. Plus, the PPIC [Public Policy Institute of California] report is slightly updated, and likely things have gotten worse.” “If poverty is a problem, the question is how to resolve it. History demonstrates that sustained robust growth is the best way to alleviate poverty. In California this requires regulatory reforms that will reduce costs for consumers and businesses,” Winegarden added. The PPIC report also found that about 2.5 million additional Californians would have fallen into poverty in 2024 without safety net programs such as CalFresh, California’s food assistance program. While Hilton has proposed tax relief as one way to address California’s affordability crisis, other policy experts argue that the state must also lower the underlying cost of living. Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, said California should prioritize infrastructure spending over expanding social programs, arguing that investments in roads, water, energy, and housing would create jobs while reducing everyday costs. According to the Hoover Institution, California devoted roughly 20% of its state budget to infrastructure in the 1960s, compared with an estimated 2% to 3% today. “You used to have this huge slice of government budgets that went to infrastructure. Nowadays, that’s a small slice, and everything is going to social programs,” Ring said. “If you used the money for infrastructure, you’d create jobs, you’d lower the cost of living, you’d make it easier for people to live independently, and you wouldn’t need all those social programs.” Ring argued that California has created a cycle in which policies increase the cost of living while making more residents dependent on government assistance. “They make it harder and harder to run a business. They make it harder and harder to create value and earn wealth. At the same time, that increases the cost of living, which makes it more and more necessary to give people benefits.” Whether through tax relief, infrastructure investment, or other policy proposals, the PPIC report makes one thing clear: Californians are looking for solutions to an affordability crisis that will be front and center in November’s gubernatorial election. 

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.   We’re hearing more and more every day about Iran and [Donald] Trump as the midterms now are only about 90 days away.  There’s kind of a narrative that is emerging, left and right, that we are bogged down. I’ve heard the word Vietnam evoked. Donald Trump may have contributed to that because, although in that 150 days, we’ve been operating in the Gulf, we’ve only bombed Iran about 50 or so days, and we’ve been discussing it for 100 days.  So the narrative has emerged that Donald Trump promises to hit them hard, they back down, and they say they want talks. They do not want talks. They want to delay, delay, delay, delay. Donald Trump then sporadically hits them. They come back to the table.  We have no idea who we’re dealing with because the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard seems to be playing the bad cop, and the moderate elected—“moderate elected”–officials, seem to put a happy face on things, and they either have no power or authority, or they’re in league with the hardcore to give them time and run out the clock.  So what are the relative pressures? Everybody’s getting very angry over this on, off, on, off, on, and we’re concentrating too much on what Donald Trump says.  We know what each side is doing. Donald Trump has 90 days before the midterms. If he should lose the midterms, his team is convinced, A, that there will be an impeachment circus for the next two years, and B, anybody around him will be hauled before Senate and House committees.  But mostly in the House because I don’t think the Republicans will lose the Senate.  And they will be inquired into, they will be researched, they will be berated, and it will cost them a fortune, and that will be a circus.  And so, Donald Trump doesn’t want that. To avoid that, he has to have gas getting near $3 a gallon, the world price around $65 a barrel, the Strait of Hormuz open, and all that requires him either to have a new Iranian government or a debilitated Iranian government or a negotiated settlement.  What is Iran trying to do? Iran is trying to talk, hit the Gulf, close the Strait, talk, repeat, wash, rinse, spin, wash, rinse, spin, drag it out, see Donald Trump lose the House, have the House Left and its new Islamicist socialist base cut off funds for [the Iran conflict], and then wait out the clock and get a democratic socialist type of president that would follow the Obama regimen and pretty much appease them and let them do what they want.  So what’s going on? What’s the big picture? I think we’re missing what’s actually happening every day.  There is still an embargo on Iran. No tankers can come in with merchandise, food, material goods, industrial goods, and no Iranian oil is getting out. We have bombed now most of the rail links that go into the former Soviet Union and on into Russia and on into China.  So they are not getting imports, and they are not exporting. They may have some airlift capacity in regional airports where China or Russia are sending in material, but it won’t be much.  But more importantly, they are debanked. Assets are frozen. The economic embargo continues. They are losing in revenue about $500 million per day, and that loss is geometrically increasing, not just arithmetically.  In other words, as you start to damage their infrastructure, their bridges, and we have, their roads, and you start to inflict enormous damage on the military, and they draw scarce resources from the domestic economy to fix it, the people are getting more anguished and poorer and poorer, and the country is getting worse and worse.  We don’t see that because of what? We don’t see that because there’s no ground troops. It’s not embedded. We don’t know what’s going on.  So while the Left keeps saying to all of us that time is running out for Donald Trump, we’re in a Vietnam quagmire, the war is lost, we need to just look at not what the Left says, not what the right says, not even what Donald Trump says, not what Iran says.  Just look dispassionately and disinterestedly at two things. What is the actual state of affairs in Iran?  We have tragically lost 18 soldiers and probably spent $40 billion. But at that cost in blood and treasure, we have debilitated, neutered, deindustrialized, and pretty much destroyed the military, industrial, and nuclear complex industry of the largest state, in terms of economics and population and area, if you combine all those factors together, in the Middle East, and the bully, and the most anti-American.  And so, while the Left thinks time is running out, the actual data show us that Iran is running out of time.  And I don’t know who will win this standoff, but Iran has less resources and less wherewithal to withstand this python-like squeezing of it than we do in inflicting it. We can do this forever.  One final asterisk or footnote. Things have changed somewhat. Donald Trump and the Republicans don’t think the midterms are lost.  If they thought the midterms were lost, then they would accelerate the bombing probably and say, “We have nothing left to lose. Let’s end the Iranian threat now.”  But they don’t think it’s lost because of what?  They have outraised—they, the Republicans—have a $400 million war chest that they will spread very generously throughout these 435 House races and the Senate races. The Democrats only have about a fourth of that.  Redistricting, whether due to red-state legislatures that are in the majority or from Supreme Court rulings on racial gerrymandering, might give them another five to nine seats they otherwise would not pick up. That’s important.  More importantly still, we don’t know what Iran is going to be like. If there is some kind of negotiation or if the Strait should remain open or if the price of oil falls, people’s anguish might turn to satisfaction that it’s sort of like the Venezuela or the Panama denouement. They worked, and they will forget the cost and look at the result.  That could happen even before the midterms.  But most importantly, finally, this is not a Democratic Party that is running candidates for office.  There’s two things going on.  Number one, a socialist-esque, communist-esque, Islamicist core base movement has captured the Democratic Party. It’s not just Zohran Mamdani. It’s not just Ilhan Omar. It’s not just Rashida Tlaib. It’s not just [Darializa Avila] Chevalier. It’s not just Milat Kiros.  I could go on and on. It’s not just Hasan Piker.  These are the frontline soldiers. But it’s the fear of them that makes milquetoast Democrats go left in fear they’re going to be primaried.  And the point of all of this is the publicity is not good for the Democrats. They either have to disown these crazy people or keep mum about it and quiet about it or endorse them.  So when Gavin Newsom says capitalism doesn’t work either, he’s a mainstream Democrat in the left-wing sense of the Democrat these days. When he says that, that means that almost every single Democrat is terrified of the socialists and will ape and mimic them to survive politically.  And that is going to filter down to the American people. And they do not want to hear that message, and they will not like that message.  And so here in the 11th hour of the midterms, when things look the most bleak, the Democratic Party has thrown, given, extended a life raft to Donald Trump.  And two things then in finishing: Look at what’s happening on the ground in Iran. Who’s getting worse off every day, not what people say. And look at the midterms, not from what people say, but the actual conditions that are in flux right now.  And we don’t know what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the Republicans are either going to be stuck in Iran or not, and they will not necessarily be stuck with losing the House. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Despite objections from two trustees, the Midlothian Independent School District in Texas voted to keep a gender-neutral dress code that Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison says was created by a diversity, equity, and inclusion council established in 2020. Documents Harrison provided to the Daily Signal show that, in 2020, the diversity council for the district recommended adopting a gender-neutral dress code that eliminated separate standards for boys and girls and sought to protect students’ “emotional well-being.” The meeting about revising the dress code was discussed on Facebook and listed in the Midlothian ISD board’s July 20, 2020, agenda. As seen in the Midlothian ISD document below from 2020, recommendations for a gender-neutral dress code aimed to “no longer separate girls/boys” and “celebrate diversity.” Six years later, at the board of trustees July 20, 2026, meeting, one trustee, Ed Harrison, the father of Rep. Brian Harrison, questioned whether the policy would prevent “a boy from wearing a dress to school.” The interaction was captured in a video segment of the meeting posted on X. In the video, Krista Tipton, the district’s student services administrator, told Ed Harrison the dress code does not explicitly prohibit biological males from wearing dresses. Instead, the policy addresses dress and skirt length without distinguishing between male and female students. Ed Harrison also referenced an incident in neighboring Red Oak ISD involving an English teacher who identifies as a transgender woman. He said the teacher wore dresses to school and asked students to address him as ‘Ma’am’ and ‘Miss.’ He also cited an instance of a boy wearing a dress at school. Following Ed Harrison’s comments, board Secretary John Knight questioned whether the concerns were important and urged the board to approve the policy for another year without changes.  “What I would say is, I’m on those campuses quite often. Between visiting my own kids, mentoring others’ kids, and attending sporting events, I don’t see offensive dress,” Knight said. Knight then made a motion to approve the policy. “Out of respect to administration, and the people that deal with it each day … I’m going to make a motion to approve as requested,” he said. The board, at the same July 20, 2026, meeting, then approved the dress code in a 3-2-1 vote. Trustees John Knight, Gary Vineyard, and Ryan Timm voted in favor, and Ed Harrison and Jessica Ward voted against. Trustee Brandi Vess abstained. Brian Harrison said the vote showed the lasting influence of the district’s former DEI initiative. “The liberal majority on the MISD school board are trying to make up other reasons for why this is there: ‘Oh, it’s about the teachers,’ ‘Oh, it’s about the harassment,’” Harrison said. “No, it’s an objective fact [that] this [MISD dress code policy] was the product of a DEI committee.” Brian Harrison argued the vote reflects a broader trend in Republican-controlled areas where “liberals have taken over” many local governments. “Liberals control governments for three main reasons: We have open primaries, off-cycle elections—which means nobody runs—and we have this pretense of non-partisanship,” he said. He added that “people who are committed leftists” campaign in nonpartisan, off-cycle elections and are elected by relatively few voters. Ed Harrison also told the Daily Signal he was surprised to learn how the current policy has been developed.  “Over the last year, I have been shocked as I came to understand the dreadful implications of the MISD dress code and that, before I was elected, it was written by an ISD-commissioned DEI committee,” he said. “MISD taxpayers should not be forced to fund transgenderism.” “The current policy puts teachers and administrators at risk by unfairly shifting the burden to them. We must have standards, and boys should not be allowed to wear dresses at school,” Ed Harrison continued. “Public schools are for education, not liberal indoctrination.”