Squabbles between Capitol Hill and the White House over war powers are nothing new, but recent Democrat-backed efforts to restrict President Donald Trump’s military authority have been gaining traction, as Congress challenges Trump’s actions in the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe. Now, Democrats in the Senate are preparing a vote on whether or not the administration can use force against Cuba. Since the Department of Justice unveiled charges against 94-year-old former Cuban president Raúl Castro, multiple Cabinet-level officials have been ramping up pressure on the island nation. “This isn’t a show indictment,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday of Castro, who is facing murder charges for the fatal downing of two planes carrying American citizens in 1996. “There was a warrant issued for his arrest, so we expect that he will show up here [in America] by his own will or by another way.” The prosecution of Castro is reminiscent of the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug trafficking charges, which the administration used as justification for the arrest of the head of state in a military operation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also indicated the administration is dead serious about Cuba. Asked about the possibility of striking Cuba to induce regime change, Rubio told reporters Thursday the United States prefers a “negotiated diplomatic settlement” in Cuba, but that “the president always has the option to do whatever it takes to support and protect the national security of the United States.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio (@SecRubio): "The future of Cuba belongs to the people of Cuba is terms of how they're governed, what the system looks like and so forth, but the national security threat, that's 100% something we're going to focus on because that's about America." pic.twitter.com/olxFJ9Eay3— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2026 In the same conversation, Rubio argued Cuba is “a national security threat to the United States” due to Russian and Chinese weapons and “intelligence presence” in the country. On Thursday, Democrat Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam Schiff of California, and Ruben Gallego of Arizona introduced a resolution that would block hostilities against Cuba.  War Powers Resolution Momentum While the Cuba war powers legislation is unlikely to gather a veto-proof level of support, recent war powers resolutions have been gaining traction in Congress. Expedited procedures in the House and Senate allow the minority to bypass leadership and force votes on war powers resolutions. On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a resolution to deprive the president of his power to use force against Iran. The resolution advanced by a 50-47 vote, with four Republican senators voting in favor: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine. In the House, where an Iran war powers resolution failed in a tie last month, leadership sent the chamber into recess a day early on Thursday, canceling a planned war powers vote. If the House’s concurrent resolution disapproving of the Iran war had come to the floor and succeeded, it would likely not be binding on the president due to a Supreme Court precedent blocking unilateral legislative vetoes on presidential action. However, it would be a public defeat for the Republican administration’s military agenda in Congress. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued leadership punted on the vote because it would have succeeded. “We had the votes to pass it today. Every Democrat was on board, [and] we had the sufficient number of Republicans on board,” Meeks told reporters. House Foreign Affairs Top Democrat Gregory Meeks after GOP leaders pulled the scheduled floor vote on his Iran war powers resolution: “We had a vote because of this president’s war of choice that was going to pass. We had the votes without question & they knew it, and as a result… pic.twitter.com/naF9Mrrs1I— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) May 22, 2026 The administration is also facing some Capitol Hill pushback on its troop movements in Europe, as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., have both publicly criticized troop withdrawals from Germany. Rogers told Punchbowl News in a recent interview that he is seeking legislative “guardrails” to prevent European troop withdrawals going forward. The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—an annual defense policy bill—included provisions intended to block the executive branch from withdrawing forces from Europe without congressional approval.

Legislation that would bar illegal immigrants and non-English speakers from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses is advancing in the U.S. House after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy renewed his push for the measure this week. “Dalilah’s Law would have revoked this illegal trucker’s license,” Duffy wrote on X, responding to reports that an illegal immigrant truck driver was arrested in connection with a hit-and-run that injured two people near Sacramento, California. “Congress must pass Dalilah’s Law NOW.” Testifying earlier this week before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Duffy said he is committed to restoring “integrity and safety” to the trucking industry while improving job prospects for American drivers. “It was the policy of the last administration to allow for unqualified foreign drivers to get behind the wheel of a truck,” he said, criticizing the administration of former President Joe Biden. “Those days are over.” “We’ve also knocked more than 20,000 drivers out of service for failing to meet basic requirements like reading our road signs or being able to communicate with law enforcement,” Duffy added. “These changes aren’t just keeping you and your family safe on the road—they have the added benefits of boosting wages of hardworking American truckers.” The bill, introduced by Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., has been referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and could soon advance to a committee vote before heading to the House floor. Houchin’s legislation is named after Dalilah Coleman, who was 5 years old when she was severely injured in a crash involving an illegal immigrant truck driver who allegedly ran a stop sign. President Donald Trump highlighted Coleman and her family during his January State of the Union address as he urged Congress to act on the proposal. “Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump said. “That’s why tonight I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.” In the Senate, the companion measure is being led by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a close ally of the president. If enacted, the legislation would prohibit issuing CDLs to individuals who are not U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or holders of certain work visas. It would also require states to permanently disqualify individuals who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents from operating commercial vehicles. “If you can’t speak English or read a road sign, you have no business driving a truck in the United States of America. This is common sense, this is basic public safety, and this is why I’m leading The Dalilah Law,” Banks said in a statement to the Daily Signal. Democrats have opposed the bill, arguing that it “demonizes” illegal immigrants. Banks, speaking on the Daily Signal’s “Tony Kinnett Cast,” said differing state policies have contributed to safety concerns. “When you have Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, or blue states like California or New York, [where] they hand out truck driving licenses to illegals like candy, of course you’re going to see them behind the wheel of a semi and tragically killing people,” Banks said. Banks added that Coleman continues to recover but faces lasting effects from the crash. “She will never be the same—she’s recovered physically, but she will never be the same,” he said.

Are investors in “passive” index funds being misled about how shares held in those funds are being voted? After providing some relevant background below, I argue that failing to properly disclose the active voting of passive fund shares could violate consumer protection provisions, anti-fraud provisions, or other related provisions covering deceptive practices. When it comes to asset managers, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard are often referred to as the “Big Three,” and it has been reported that together “they are the largest shareholders in 88% of S&P 500 companies.” A large part of this immense control of corporate America stems from shares held in “passive” funds that millions of Americans invest in. Passive funds are generally designed to track the results of a given index such as the S&P 500. Given that no active management is involved, such funds typically charge lower fees. At least part of the theory behind passive funds is that they provide great diversification to unsophisticated investors while allowing them to piggyback on the capital allocation-growth magic of free markets. Putting aside for a moment concerns about the viability of free-market capital allocation if everyone is invested in index funds, one puzzling feature of passive funds is that their proxy voting is often anything but passive. In fact, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, has stated that using the voting power of BlackRock’s funds to force corporations to bend the knee to his woke vision of corporate utopia is a core feature of his role. This is particularly disturbing when people think they’re signing up for passive investments, when in reality their money is being leveraged by woke stewardship teams to undermine investors’ values without their consent. And given the entire model’s efficiency rationale, one should likely assume those woke stewardship teams replace company-specific expertise with top-down ideology. Now, some may argue that we are post-woke when it comes to corporate governance, pointing to articles with headlines like: “How BlackRock Abandoned Social And Environmental Engagement.” But there are very real reasons to be concerned that asset managers like Fink are just waiting for the political winds to change. So those concerned with keeping corporations focused on the bottom line and free from ideological capture by leftist neo-racists and neo-Marxists should continue to stay vigilant. And we have certainly seen some positive movement on that front, including President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, “Protecting American Investors From Foreign-Owned and Politically Motivated Proxy Advisers,” which among other things addresses related concerns about proxy advisers by calling for “action to enhance transparency concerning the use of proxy advisers, particularly regarding ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ and ‘environmental, social, and governance’ investment practices.”  But what about those asset managers and their very active proxy voting schemes? A couple of proposals for improvement involve increased mirror or pass-through voting. In mirror voting, the asset manager may retain control of 10% of the passive fund’s votes, while the rest mirrors the votes of investors writ large such that if “other investors support a proposal or a director by 75%, then the votes over the cap [are] voted 75 to 25 as well.” Meanwhile, pass-through voting allows the true owners of the fund to select a voting benchmark to reflect their voting preferences. Certainly, attempts could be made to force asset managers to vote all shares held in passive funds via mirror voting, pass-through voting, or some other similar mechanism. Even if that happens, myriad related issues remain unresolved. First, to the extent pass-through voting is understood to mean offering clients voting choice options, the scope of options becomes critical. Second, to the extent pass-through voting places direct responsibility for discrete proxy votes on clients, the reality of rational ignorance means many proxies will go unvoted. Third, promoting alternative voting structures potentially lets asset managers off the hook in terms of whether they should be subject to fiduciary duties in connection with their voting decisions and the extent to which any such duties have been breached. Fourth, focusing on voting may obscure the engagement elephant in the room. Even with some asset managers promoting “dual-track” engagement options, concerns remain about the extent to which the new options boil down to left and far left, though this may also raise issues of false advertising. Finally, there is some uncertainty about which voting agendas fill any gap left open by asset managers reducing their active voting. Having said all that, we should likely all be concerned about the consequences of failing to hold asset managers sufficiently accountable when it comes to proxy voting past, present, and future—and making sure related disclosures don’t mislead is one way to improve accountability. A recent settlement by Vanguard of a suit brought against it, BlackRock, and State Street by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton can certainly be viewed as a strong step in the right direction, but another route to accountability could be to make it a form of false advertising for asset managers to offer “passive” or “index” funds wherein the shares are actively voted by the asset manager without prominent and full disclosure of the asset managers use of the funds voting power. Such an approach could allow investors to make more fully informed decisions while reducing the undue influence of woke asset managers without excessive regulation.

A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies. Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous—once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so “murderous,” that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed—you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it. And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals walking free, more public cynicism, and more people tempted to believe that vigilantism is the only remaining form of accountability. Consider the case of Luigi Mangione, accused in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A New York judge ruled this week that while the murder weapon will be admissible at trial, several other pieces of evidence seized during Mangione’s arrest will be suppressed. The admissible items include a gun, a 3D-printed silencer, and a red notebook reportedly filled with incriminating writing. But the judge excluded other evidence found in Mangione’s backpack: his phone, passport, gun magazine, wallet, and a computer chip. The rationale is the kind of procedural hair-splitting that leaves normal Americans wondering whether the system has lost its mind. The defense argued that the backpack was searched unconstitutionally because it had been moved away from Mangione’s immediate reach before officers searched it. The judge agreed. What makes it stranger is that the search occurred in Pennsylvania—inside a McDonald’s—yet the judge ruled that New York law governs suppression issues because Mangione is being tried in New York. In other words, a police officer in Pennsylvania is apparently expected to know the intricate procedural rules of New York criminal law while making an arrest in real time. This is not a recipe for justice. If Mangione was caught in California, would cops there be expected to know New York law to properly do their job? These kinds of rulings are the downstream consequence of decades of doctrine that has steadily shifted the criminal justice system away from protecting the public and toward protecting defendants. Mapp v. Ohio established the exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches. The practical result is simple: When the police make a mistake, the public pays the price. The deeper problem in the Mangione case, however, is cultural. Mangione has loud supporters, and they are not operating in a vacuum. They are the product of a long-running ideological campaign—largely from the political Left—that frames American institutions not as flawed systems in need of reform but as evil systems maintained by evil people. This worldview has been building for years. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 was a turning point. Instead of focusing anger on government policy, bailouts, and political corruption, activists targeted “Wall Street” itself—the private sector, the idea of profit, and the legitimacy of business power. Today, this mentality is embedded in the rhetoric of politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who recently argued that government should use its power to lower prices and make life more affordable. The underlying assumption is always the same: If people are suffering, the private sector must be guilty, and government must be the savior. That ideological reflex produces what activists now call “social murder”—the claim that private-sector actors are morally responsible for deaths caused by imperfect systems. Under this logic, a CEO operating legally within a flawed health care structure is the moral equivalent of a killer. Outside Mangione’s proceedings, self-described “Mangionistas” reportedly proclaimed that Thompson’s children were “better off without him” and compared Thompson to Osama bin Laden. One even praised the idea of “heroic violence.” This is moral psychosis. Bin Laden orchestrated mass murder. Thompson ran an insurance company. To equate the two is not just wrong—it is the kind of rhetoric that turns political disagreement into justification for assassination. When a culture begins to rationalize murder as justice, it will get more murder. If you want more political violence in the U.S., keep telling people that political opponents are not merely mistaken but murderous—and that killing them is “heroic.” COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Road trips are quintessentially American. What’s more America than a family packing into an SUV and driving hundreds of miles across state borders, eating homemade sandwiches and entertaining children with endless games of “I Spy,” just to see beautiful views and a couple of major landmarks? Family road trips from our home in southern Michigan to New Hampshire, Alabama, northern Michigan, and Yellowstone National Park formed strong childhood memories and made me love my country. If we couldn’t swing a long trek to a National Park, we tried to see some part of America—even if it was just a state park on Lake Michigan. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s efforts to encourage similar “tourism and travel” by filming “The Great American Road Trip” with his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy and their nine children is a great promotion of American tourism and this classic summer pastime. Road tripping captures part of our national character. The same independence and desire to see the limits of America that drove the pioneers to follow the Oregon Trail are what stir Americans today to take Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.  Yet Democrat Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Patty Murray of Washington lambasted Duffy for this project in a recent hearing regarding the 2027 Department of Transportation Budget Request. Both alleged the trip’s funding raised ethical concerns, with Gillibrand saying the road trip “doesn’t smell right” because the nonprofit that funded the trip received donations from companies such as Toyota and Boeing, implying that Duffy would favor those organizations for sponsoring his family’s “vacation.” It’s unjust of the senators to assume there is some behind-the-scenes understanding between Duffy and these companies, as if Boeing will get unsafe aircraft designs approved by the DOT because they earned Duffy’s favor by contributing to a nonprofit that funded his America 250 project. They’re questioning why Toyota and Shell would promote American road trips, as if there must be a deeper reason why a car and a gasoline company would encourage Americans to travel this summer. It seems doubtful that Toyota tried to buy Duffy’s favor. They want Americans to buy their cars.Specifically, they’ve donated to a nonprofit to advertise for them not only by encouraging car trips, but by showing a family traveling in a Toyota vehicle. Presenting traveling by car as part of our American identity is the oldest trick in the book for car advertisements. Chevrolet released their iconic “Baseball Hot Dogs Apple Pie” ad in 1974, promoting its vehicles as classic Americana culture. This summer, Toyota’s doing the same. Duffy stated in an X post on May 9 that “career ethics and budget officials” reviewed and approved his participation in filming “The Great American Road Trip.” He’s been charged with promoting travel in America and celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, plus he and his wife met because they were both stars on reality TV shows. Why wouldn’t he promote American tourism with a TV series on YouTube, the most popular online platform? Murray also claimed that the trip is “incredibly out of touch” with the high gas prices that are a burden for many Americans, citing the national average cost for a gallon of gas at $4.50. Gas prices are high now, but when Duffy and The Great American Road Trip Inc. launched this campaign in September, gas prices were at a national average of $3.17, $1.33 cheaper than the average when the senators grilled Duffy. It will cost more to take a road trip this summer than Duffy could have anticipated when he and his family filmed their trip. But for many families, sacrificing morning Starbucks runs and delaying the purchase of a new TV to bring their children to hike the Adirondacks or marvel at the stone faces carved into Mount Rushmore is worth it.  Duffy’s project calls Americans to celebrate our nation’s culture in the summer of America’s semiquincentennial and revel in the land our forefathers fought for us to have.