On Tuesday, term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine gave his last State of the State address, calling to mind his role as a “servant” to Ohioans. The Republican governor often brought up the well-being of children in his remarks, highlighting efforts to implement the science of reading in schools, banning cellphones in classrooms, and reaching the lowest infant mortality rate in 20 years. Planting Trees DeWine referenced planting trees and the accomplishments they symbolize. “We have planted the seeds, we are about to see the results,” the governor mentioned as he shared examples. In my first Inaugural Address, I talked about how my grandfather planted trees late in his life, knowing he would not live to see them grow big and tall. He planted them, nonetheless, because he believed in building a better world for generations to come.Over the last seven… pic.twitter.com/LAzsYNxvff— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) March 10, 2026 The governor touted a decrease in the number of children in the custody of the state, as well as increased graduation rates for foster youth and expanded access to mobile mental health services for children. In addition to his initiatives for children, DeWine highlighted other accomplishments, including balancing the budget and cutting taxes, increasing the state’s rainy day fund, a decrease in unintentional drug overdoses, securing more economic development, and investing in Ohio’s Appalachian counties. The Science of Reading Per a state mandate, future teachers are being trained exclusively in the science of reading. With Ohio having “the toughest law in the country,” DeWine touted how other states want to follow such a plan. DeWine brought up the science of reading first for a reason, crediting it with many success stories for students, including those with dyslexia. The governor announced further steps, directing the Department of Education and Workforce to create regional instructional implementation teams to help K-12 classrooms implement the method. There will also be coaches helping in poorly performing areas. Reading Initiatives and Dolly Parton Ohio first lady Fran DeWine “made it her mission” to get kids reading, the governor said, at the “most crucial time.” “Reading is the key to everything. So, it’s essential that children learn early about the importance of books and reading,” he stressed. It’s essential that children learn early about the importance of books and reading because reading is the key to everything! First Lady Fran DeWine has made it her mission to get books into the hands of Ohio’s youngest children by expanding @ImaginationOhio into every corner of… pic.twitter.com/sCbRf6R5pm— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) March 10, 2026 The Buckeye State holds a distinction as the only state where parents can enroll their children from birth in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. More than 37,000 Ohio newborns have been enrolled since the program began at hospitals last summer, according to the governor. Ohio children have the highest library enrollment in the country, with over 70% of households with children under the age of five receiving books. A Reprieve From ‘Excessive Screen Time’ DeWine also focused on the importance of children playing without the distraction of screens, lamenting that “excessive screen time is really a thief.” He also mentioned the state’s cellphone ban as an area of hope, urging schools to be “vigilant” in enforcing the law and in extending recess. DeWine called for parents to limit screen time, saying they have “a moral obligation” to do so. A child’s mental health is equally important to their physical health, and one of the most meaningful things we have done together is ban cell phones in our K-12 schools! But, what is happening to our young people today goes beyond phones in schools. It’s a larger issue about… pic.twitter.com/NfUpuqP6K9— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) March 10, 2026 Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel, who replaced now-Sen. Jon Husted, is credited with the “Team Tressel Fitness Challenge,” where over 390,000 students in 300 schools in Ohio participate. DeWine called on the state Legislature to make it more permanent. “It’s about confidence, encouragement, and learning what we can all accomplish together more than we could ever do alone,” DeWine said to describe the challenge. The Importance of Eye Exams and Glasses The governor referenced reading not only as an accomplishment, but also as a target for further growth. He noted only one in four students who need the full eye exam and glasses actually receive them. “No child should ever be scared to read because they can’t see the words on the page,” DeWine insisted, mentioning an example of a second-grade student who said she “felt very confused” and “was scared” before wearing glasses. He superintendents to make use of free help from the state. Hope for the Future DeWine said children create hope for the state. Because of a new governor’s merit scholarship, DeWine touted that 85% of Ohio’s top students are remaining in the state for college. The governor argued that this is “increasing the chances they will get a job in Ohio and stay in Ohio.” The post Mike DeWine Gives Last State of the State as Ohio’s Governor appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Polls show that the divide within the Make America Great Again movement over President Donald Trump’s operation in Iran may be exaggerated. An NBC poll showed that 90% of self-identified “MAGA Republicans” support Operation Epic Fury, with just 5% saying they disagree with the strikes. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans support the operation, while Republicans who don’t see themselves as part of the MAGA movement are split, with just with 54% supporting the strikes, according to the March 4 poll. “Killing terrorists and decimating the Iranian regime’s military capabilities is a good thing for America,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “President Trump is doing what many of his predecessors lacked the courage to do by neutralizing the real threat of the Iranian regime to keep the American people safe.” “Operation Epic Fury has been extraordinarily successful thus far and is moving forward ahead of schedule,” she added. CNN found that 77% of Republicans approve of the strikes. MAGA Republicans are more likely than non-MAGA Republicans by a 30-point margin to say they strongly approve of the decision to take military action, according to the March 2 poll. They are also more likely, by a 34-point margin, to say the operation will reduce the threat Iran poses to the U.S., and more likely by a 50-point margin to say they have a great deal of trust in Trump to make the right decisions about U.S. use of force in Iran. A YouGov poll published on March 2 found that 85% of MAGA Republicans support Trump’s effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans who identify with the MAGA movement, 65%, strongly approve of the attacks. This is compared to only 27% of non-MAGA Republicans. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the so-called MAGA divide at the March 6 press briefing, saying that “X is not real life,” and “there’s nothing more America First than taking out terrorists who have maimed or killed our own servicemen and women, who chant death to America, and who pose a threat to the homeland.” The post Polls Show ‘MAGA Split’ on Iran May Be Inflated appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It has been 12 days since the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, and President Donald Trump is demanding “unconditional surrender,” but the Iranian regime is “digging in” for a protracted conflict. “The Islamic regime is digging in for a war of attrition,” Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, told The Daily Signal Wednesday. The regime, now under the leadership of radical Islamic hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei, wants to survive with a “functioning security architecture, not even civil architecture,” Roman said. “They don’t care if they can feed their people. They just care if they have the weapons to be able to fend off or at least survive long enough to make the price for trying to take them out high enough” so that the U.S. and Israel stop the war, he added. While Iran might want to create a war of attrition, the Trump administration has repeatedly stressed it is not interested in a “forever war” scenario with Iran, and neither is Israel, according to Eylon Levy, former spokesman for the Israeli government. For 20 years, Israel had a “war of attrition with Hamas in Gaza,” he explained, and “that was a threat we tolerated until it exploded on Oct. 7.” He told The Daily Signal Israel is not interested in another “war of attrition” with Iran. Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took another 251 hostages during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. Iran still has the capability to launch drones, but the U.S. has eliminated a significant amount of Iran’s missile launchers, so while Iran can remain a “nuisance,” it is likely not “thinking strategically at all,” said Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump. “I think they are in utter disarray,” Coates, who now serves as vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, said of the Iranian regime. “The leadership is completely incapacitated,” she said. “It’s possible the new supreme leader doesn’t even know that he’s supreme leader, he’s so severely injured and nobody else would take the job.” The regime chose Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to be the new leader of Iran, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing Israeli intelligence that Khamenei was “lightly wounded” in the joint Israeli-U.S. strikes.  Despite the “disarray” the regime finds itself in today, it is still managing to extract a price on the U.S. and U.S. allies in the region. Drones Iran is firing fewer missiles and the regime has been weakened following more than 5,500 U.S. strikes, but Iran is inflicting a cost on the U.S. and Israel, Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst focused on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explained. Iran is firing “cheap” drones at Israel and U.S. allies in the region, and expensive Patriot missiles are being used to intercept these drones, which bears “a very heavy cost on us, and our allies,” Sayeh said. “So by launching all these cheaper materials against us and the U.S. intercepting [them] with more expensive equipment, that does create a war of attrition,” he said. Strait of Hormuz A central “cost” Iran has been able to leverage against the U.S. is the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they will not allow “export of a single liter of oil” through the passage. Oil topped $100 a barrel early this week, causing gas prices to jump above $3.50 a gallon, up from $3.20 a gallon a week ago. Oil prices came down after Trump indicated the war might be coming to an end, but on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Iran’s military command threatened that oil prices would rise to “$200 a barrel.” The Gulf Arab states targeted by Iran, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, “need to step up,” Roman said, and “mitigate any efforts by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and its navy to close off the Strait of Hormuz.” The U.S. has struck more than 60 Iranian ships since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28, according to U.S. Central Command. Iran’s threats to attack ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz “underscore the importance of America destroying the Iranian Navy,” Levy said. “A regime that is willing and eager to inflict such economic damage on the whole world cannot be allowed to possess the warships and speedboats with which they can hold the whole world to ransom,” Levy said. If Iran maintains the ability to “block the Strait of Hormuz whenever they want,” Levy argues, “they won’t hesitate to do it because they’re nuts, and that’s why Trump is saying this needs to end with unconditional surrender, and/or Iran not having an ability to wage war anymore.” Coates estimated that “Iran has weeks, not months” left before it is no longer able to continue the fight. The post Iran Might Want a ‘War of Attrition,’ but Can It Achieve It? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A House Republican cast aspersions at Democrats’ motives for downplaying the threat of radical Islamic terrorism even after recent attacks. A Senegalese immigrant wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt and an undershirt with the Iranian flag shot 16 people at a bar near Austin, Texas, last week, killing three. In New York City on Saturday, two men who authorities believe to have been inspired by ISIS threw homemade explosives at a crowd of “anti-Muslim” protesters. When asked about her concern about radical Islamic terror attacks, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told The Daily Signal that she is “concerned about the war in Iran.” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed the New York City attack with remarks focused on “anti-Muslim bigotry.” “In his faith, blasphemy of Islam is worthy of death,” Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal of Mamdani. “That’s what he believes. They’re unwilling to blast people in their own religion, Mamdani agrees with the terrorist. He would tell you they had it coming because they would criticize Islam.” Instead of calling out the two attackers in his initial social media post, Mamdani took aim at Jake Lang, the social media influencer responsible for organizing the Saturday demonstration. “Many Democrats have made it clear that their priorities are fighting America,” Fine continued. “These people aren’t America last—they’re America haters.” “How many Americans are going to have to get Allahu Akbar’d before we do something about it?” he asked. The Daily Signal reached out to Jayapal and Mamdani for comment on Fine’s remarks, but they did not respond by publication time. Victoria Coates, a national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, echoed Fine’s remarks. She told The Daily Signal that Democrats continue to “downplay” the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism because they care more about their woke progressive agenda than about the safety of the American people.” She criticized Democrats for refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which is experiencing a partial government shutdown. “In their narrative, the terrorists who are trying to kill us are actually the victims of the systemic racism on the Right,” Coates added. “Their ideology has blinded them to this growing danger, and they won’t even fund DHS to protect Americans from it.” Previously, Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal that elected officials need to take seriously the threat posed by “radical Islamic terrorists.” “We’ve got a lot of terrorists in our country,” Self said in response to the Austin shooting. “We know we have we know they’re here. These guys that get a wild hair, they’re dangerous, and they kill people.” On Monday, federal agents announced that they intercepted possible messages from the Iranian regime to pro-Iranian rebels who reside in the U.S. Mamdani’s remarks after the attempted terror attack in New York City and Jayapal’s comments after the Austin shooting were not isolated incidents of Democrats “downplaying” terrorism. Jayapal joined Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Sarah McBride, D-Del., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and 49 other Democrats last week in voting against a House resolution to brand Iran a state sponsor of terrorism. International human rights groups have accused the Iran regime of requiring full body coverings and genital mutilation surgeries on women, carrying out the mass execution of protesters, funding terrorist organizations like Hamas. The Daily Signal reached out to each of the Democrats who voted against the resolution, and none responded by publication time. They do not appear to have made any public statements or issued press releases explaining their opposition to the resolution. Congressional Democrats have attacked the new congressional Sharia Free America Caucus—which has increased its membership from 35 to nearly 50 members since the Austin shooting—as a “cynical political ploy.” The post ‘AMERICA HATERS’: Republican Slams Democrats For Unwillingness to Criticize Islam Amid New York, Texas Terror Attacks appeared first on The Daily Signal.

An upcoming referendum on whether to allow the Democrat majority in the Virginia legislature to redraw congressional maps may not be the end of the matter.  Voters in the commonwealth on April 21 will consider a state constitutional amendment to temporarily suspend the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission until after the 2030 Census, allowing for partisan gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.  The Democrat-controlled legislature is poised to approve a map that would shift the state from six Democrats and five Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to 10 Democrats and one Republican.  Four members of Congress from Virginia are challenging the redrawn maps.  But their challenge could be an uphill climb, since courts often give wide latitude to legislators on redistricting, said Daniel Ortiz, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.  “The U.S. Supreme Court in the not-too-distant past has turned down challenges from Democrats in Texas and Republicans in California over partisan gerrymandering,” Ortiz told The Daily Signal.  Unlike the Texas and California cases, where challengers cited federal law, the Virginia cases focus on state laws, Ortiz noted. That likely means the Virginia Supreme Court will have the final say.  The Virginia Supreme Court allowed the referendum to proceed earlier this month but declined to rule on the legality of the proposed maps until after the election.  This overturned a lower court ruling in a case brought by the Republican National Committee and two Virginia Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith, who sought to halt the referendum.  A Tazewell County Circuit Court judge ruled in January that the state legislature did not follow the law when it approved the referendum during a special session. The court’s injunction on the referendum was overturned, but the state’s high court could still decide the case on the merits. In a separate case, U.S. Reps. John McGuire and Rob Wittman filed a challenge in the Richmond City Circuit Court alleging the ballot question, which states the new map seeks to “restore fairness,” is deceptive and constitutes viewpoint discrimination.  “The Supreme Court will weigh in one way or another,” Ortiz said. “All the challenges are based on state laws, so it will likely stop there. That’s not to say a talented lawyer won’t try to argue that the map violates federal law, given the high stakes.” The post Why the Real Fight Over Virginia’s Partisan Map to Reshape Congress May Come After Referendum appeared first on The Daily Signal.