White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that she is expecting a baby girl to be born in May. “My husband and I are thrilled to grow our family and can’t wait to watch our son become a big brother,” she wrote on Instagram. “My heart is overflowing with gratitude to God for the blessing of motherhood, which I truly believe is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth.” Leavitt and her husband Nicholas Riccio welcomed their first baby, Niko, in July 2024.  Leavitt thanked President Donald Trump and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, “for their support, and for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House.” “2026 is going to be a great year and I am so excited to be a girl mom!” she said.  Leavitt becomes the first U.S. press secretary in history to hold the post while expecting a baby.  An administration official told Fox News that Leavitt plans to remain in her White House position. View this post on Instagram A post shared by KAROLINE LEAVITT (@karolineleavitt) The post ‘GROW OUR FAMILY’: Karoline Leavitt Makes Major Announcement 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. It’s been a lot of attention to President Donald Trump’s rallies and his interactions with reporters, political reporters, impromptu press conferences. And the gist of it is that Donald Trump can say things that are cruel. It’s true. He can. No need to call Rep. Jasmine Crockett a low-IQ person or a reporter dumb or stupid or fatty. And I would call that crass crudity. And it’s something that Trump does and probably should not do, and people have probably reminded him of that. But there’s another type of crudity, I would call that crudity refined crudity. Crass crudity is openly overt, transparent, and condemned. But it’s also rhetorical. It doesn’t affect policies. It’s the ways one reacts to criticism in Trump’s case. But what is refined crudity? I wanna tell you, give you some examples, very different examples of what I would call refined crudity. The University of Southern California School of Journalism, the Annenberg center, gives a prize for the top journalist in the nation. This year they gave them to Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. That’s refined crudity. Rachel Maddow said almost every night that she was on the air, Russian collusion, Russian collusion, Russian collusion. And when that was exposed as a fraud, she went right into Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation. Jon Stewart is not a journalist. He may be entertaining, he’s funny, but he blows up and screams and yells about the lockdown. Does anybody really believe that these are even in the liberal tradition of Walter Cronkite, the eponymous prize for which it’s named, or Edwin R. Murrow? That’s crude. How did Claudine Gay ever become president of Harvard? That’s the flagship university in the world. Who appointed her? Why would you appoint somebody that had a very thin academic record, almost was denied tenure at Stanford University, came to Harvard, had no notable publications, and the publications that she did were under suspicion, and she was a known plagiarist? And then she got before the country in very refined tones and basically said that antisemitic acts, which were occurring with increasing frequency under her tenure, would be punished given the context she couldn’t identify. Can I give you another example of refined crudity? Refined crudity is allowing some 60 to 70 Somali immigrants to embezzle $1 billion from the people of Minnesota, and then have the attorney general, Keith Ellison, who lectures everybody about racism say what’s the big deal, they buy stuff? As if it’s OK to steal money just because you buy consumer products for yourself. Luxury cars, vacations, send money back home. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in reaction to the—I want more Somali immigrants. Not, we have to look at this community and we have to make sure they’re following the law. And I’m worried that 75% of them are on state, local, or federal assistance. That’s crude, what they did. That’s an insult to the people of Minnesota and to cloak it with this kind of enlightenment rhetoric or call people racist is even cruder. Then we get into the lawfare. You know what is really crude? For people like Alvin Bragg and Letitia James and Fani Willis and Jack Smith and E. Jean Carroll to use this law to try to destroy a political candidate. Doesn’t matter what Trump did, it doesn’t matter whether you like him or hate him, you can’t, in the United States, cook up 91 indictments and try to destroy a person with $500 million of aggregate funds and try them in blue precincts and hope to get juries that are prejudiced against him with judges that we know were biased. And this is in conjunction with raiding his home and going through his wife’s underwear drawer. And yes, Jamie Dimon, they did debank the Trump family members. They really did. You can say it was just normal, but I think no one believes that. And then this is in addition to sober and judicious and refined and sophisticated lawyers saying that Donald Trump should not be on the ballot in 25 states. The Supreme Court found that—that is refined crudity. You know what else is a refined crude thing to do? If you’re Mark Milley and you’re chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it is to diagnose, as if you’re a psychiatrist, your commander in chief as unhinged, to call up your Chinese counterpart and warn him that if you were to get an order from your own commander in chief and you felt, you, Mark Milley, in your, I don’t know, expert opinion as a psychiatrist felt was unhinged, you would first call the Communist Chinese. If you don’t think that is crude, how about calling in regional commanders and saying that I’m going to break the chain of command in my advisory role, and you’re not to do what the law says and report to the secretary of defense. If you get an order from him that’s transmitted from the commander in chief, you’re gonna go for me and I’m going to either approve it or reject it. What is that? That’s almost a coup. And finally, if you’re the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and as you leave office, do you really want to keep saying again and again that your former president of the United States is a fascist? Had he said that just a few months earlier, when Donald Trump was president, he would’ve been subject to a court-martial under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And finally, you know what is crude? For six elected representatives and senators to tell a 1.3 million-person active-duty military that they, in their considered opinion, should question very carefully every order. There’s literally millions of orders that are issued a day. But these people were telling our active military—at great danger to their own careers because that’s a very, very rare phenomenon that anybody objects and refuses to obey an order and is found to be judicious and proved right in that decision, almost never occurs. If it were to occur too frequently, we wouldn’t have a military. But to say all this under the guise of the Constitution and to have Mark Kelly get out and give these sober and judicious assessments of how lawful and proper all this is, when it was really a rank call for disruption in the military with one professed aim, and that was to attack Donald Trump. And you know what was even cruder, to finish? When asked, can you please identify one order that Trump or his subordinates have given that you think would qualify anybody in the active military to refuse, what did the “Seditious Six” say? No, I can’t. In other words, it was a cheap political stunt cloaked with elevated and lofty rhetoric about the Constitution, but yet another example of refined crudity. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Subtle Threat of Democrats’ Sophisticated Crudity appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With America’s 250th birthday as an independent nation coming up in 2026, the big debate on the Right this season about what it means to be an American couldn’t be more timely.  Vice President JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy—the 2024 presidential aspirant who hopes to be elected Ohio governor next year—have both weighed in.  The two extremes in the debate are the “creedal nationalists,” who emphasize America as an idea, and those who boast of being “heritage Americans” with lineages in this country stretching back generations or centuries. Aren’t long-established families—whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or fought in the Revolutionary War—more American than relative newcomers? Absolutely not, say those who insist America is about values, not bloodlines. For creedal nationalists, an American is defined by belief “in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream,” as Ramaswamy wrote in the New York Times Dec. 17. Ramaswamy’s forebears came from India: Does that make him less American than the descendants of 17th-century English settlers? The argument isn’t just about history; ‘about immigration today. Not only does creedal nationalism suppose the country has nothing to fear from immigration on any scale—as long as new arrivals accept the patriotic catechism—it also implies those who oppose large-scale immigration anyway are really un-American. Yet the creed means different things to different people, and anyone can pretend to believe anything. Defining a creed is difficult enough for a church—it often leads to schisms. So the temptation in politics is to make the creed as vague as possible, which translates into making it easy for anyone to qualify as an American. Ramaswamy specifies in his definition, “a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.” But other creedal nationalists commonly assert that noncitizens who embrace America’s values—or their own, typically liberal values—are better Americans than native citizens whose ideas are in conflict with the creed, or with the way liberals interpret the creed.  On the other hand, “heritage American” is a doubly damaging concept. It needlessly alienates newer Americans while mindlessly elevating older ones. Heather Cox Richardson, whose progressive Substack newsletter is a source of relentless liberal disinformation, is a “heritage American” with 18th-century roots. It’s a notorious fact that many Americans descended from Puritan forefathers are today enthusiastically and aggressively woke. Just look at the average “No Kings” rally—“heritage Americans” are in abundance, some looking old enough to have watched the Battle of Yorktown in person.Such “heritage American” institutions as Harvard University and the Episcopal Church certainly don’t hold much hope for conservatives. Being an American has never meant subscribing to one political party, but that’s the point—much of the “heritage” population and the institutions entrusted to its custody have come to align with a single ideological faction today, one that does not revere the America of old. At the most basic level, being an American simply means being a citizen, and all citizens are equal—not only as a point of law but as a foundational principle.  Vance was utterly clear about this in his interview last weekend with UnHerd’s Sohrab Ahmari: “Whether you got your citizenship an hour ago, or you got your citizenship or your family got citizenship 10 generations ago, we have to treat all Americans equally.” But Vance’s understanding of heritage bolsters the creed, rather than conflicting with it.  Taken on its own, the creed is abstract and open to endless debate. Yet regardless of how one understands the creed, an American—of any background, however recent or ancient in this land—should honor the patrimony handed down to us by our ancestors: Our American ancestors, the men and women who originally made this land great, not just our biological ancestors.  America’s heritage is something to which all citizens are heir, regardless of how recently they arrived. Honoring that heritage is a moral duty of good citizenship. That doesn’t mean overlooking the sins of America’s past or present—but it does mean expressing gratitude and loyalty to the memory of our national forefathers.  And that, in turn, means being careful about accepting too much immigration or demanding too little in terms of assimilation. The Americans who built this country bequeathed us not only a Constitution but a culture, which is more than a litany of abstract propositions.  “(I)f you overwhelm the country with too many new entrants, even if they believe the right things, even if they’re fundamentally good people, you do change the country in some profound way,” Vance warns.  Heritage Americans have all too often repudiated their heritage. Whenever immigrants and their descendants honor that heritage, they should be honored in turn as dutiful sons and daughters of America. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post JD Vance Gets America’s Creed and Heritage Right appeared first on The Daily Signal.

PALM BEACH, Florida, Dec 25 (Reuters) – The White House will unveil new details on President Donald Trump’s planned East Wing ballroom during a hearing early next month, according to a federal commission tasked with reviewing the project. The new ballroom, which Trump has said would cost $400 million and would dwarf the adjacent White House building, has been challenged in court by preservationists, while Democrat lawmakers have called it an abuse of power and are investigating which donors are supporting it. The National Capital Planning Commission, chartered by Congress to manage planning for Washington-area federal lands, said on its website that the White House will provide an “information presentation” on plans to rebuild the East Wing during a commission meeting on Jan. 8. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission, chaired by a White House aide and onetime personal lawyer to Trump, Will Scharf, has declined to review the demolition of the former East Wing, preparation activities at the site, or potential effects to historic properties, in what would mark the biggest change to the historic property in decades. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress, is suing to halt the construction, arguing that the proposed 90,000 square foot (8,360 square meter) ballroom would dwarf the rest of the White House, at 55,000 square feet. The judge in the case earlier this month declined to issue a temporary restraining order against work on the project, noting among other things that the size, scale and other specifications had not been finalized. Another hearing is scheduled for next month. The president, a one-time real estate developer, has taken a hands-on role in what he has described as sprucing up the White House and the U.S. capital city ahead of celebrations next year marking the Declaration of Independence‘s 250th anniversary. He has also proposed a new grand arch near Washington, while decorating the Oval Office extensively in gold leaf and installing plaques there offering his personal take on his predecessors’ legacies. The former East Wing was largely demolished in October, with comparatively little public notice or consultation. In a recent notice posted online, the planning commission said a formal review taking place this coming spring will consider topics including lines of sight, public space and landscapes. Members of the public will be allowed to submit comments or testify during the review, it said. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Edmund Klamann) The post White House to Present Plans for Trump’s East Wing Ballroom in January appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel told British viewers on Thursday that “tyranny is booming” under President Donald Trump’s leadership in the United States. Kimmel gave a four-minute speech to Britain’s Channel 4, a public broadcast network that traditionally picks a high-profile person to counter the monarch’s Christmas message, where he stated that fascism has flourished in the U.S. The late-night host blamed Trump for his three-day suspension for making false claims about the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “I honestly have no idea what’s going on over there. I do know what’s going on over here, though, and I can tell you that from a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year. Tyranny is booming over here,” Kimmel said. “You may have read in your colorful newspapers, my country’s president would like to shut me up because I don’t adore him in the way he likes to be adored.” “The American government made a threat against me and the company I work for and all of a sudden we’re off the air,” Kimmel continued.  ABC temporarily suspended his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” on Sept. 17 after Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting announced they would not air his show over his remarks about Kirk. Kimmel stated during a Sept. 15 episode that Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was a Trump supporter and that Trump responded to the assassination in the same manner that a child mourns a goldfish. Kimmel said that his suspension happened because Trump is silencing speech, despite there being no evidence that Trump had any involvement. He accused his administration of “figuratively and literally tearing down the structures of our democracy.” “And the reason I’m telling you this story is because maybe you’re thinking, ‘oh, a government silencing its critics is something that happens in places like Russia or North Korea or LA, not the UK.’ Well, that’s what we thought, and now we’ve got King Donny VIII calling for executions. It happens fast,” Kimmel said.  “You know, it’s funny, we Americans are very proud of not having a king. It’s kind of why we left. Earlier this year, tens of millions of us marched at protests called No Kings,” Kimmel added.  Kimmel also apologized to British viewers and assured them that not all Americans are like Trump. He urged the nation to give the U.S. three years to turn things around, which was an apparent reference to the 2028 presidential election. British citizens have been censored and arrested for speech and public prayer in recent years. Police in the United Kingdom have made over 30 arrests per day over offensive online posts, The Telegraph reported in September. More than a dozen British citizens were jailed in August 2024 for allegedly causing “unrest” on social media, while two citizens were sentenced to over a year in prison for stirring up “racial hatred” online, the BBC reported. Authorities also arrested a British army veteran in August 2022 for denouncing LGBTQ and transgender activists online, which authorities said caused someone “anxiety.” Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Jimmy Kimmel Spends His Christmas Bashing Trump’s America to Foreign Viewers appeared first on The Daily Signal.