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: You know, you listen to the news accounts of the U.S. military maintaining control of the Persian Gulf. And you know, so I say, for example, they’ve stopped ships and a cargo ship with a bunch of Chinese missiles, et cetera. And then you hear the Left saying, oh, they’re committing war crimes by controlling this gulf. But in the undercurrent of all of that news coverage is that that’s what the Iranians were doing, even worse for years and years. And they weren’t just stopping something to stop military arms. They were hijacking and stealing. Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. They took British prisoners. They took hostages. Whenever they had a Democratic president, Obama or Biden, they were emboldened. It’s really disgusting to hear Ro Khanna this Democratic congressman saying that Obama was a great statesman, and they didn’t do—under Obama, they lifted sanctions, and that was where the first initial cash infusions came in. So they got all of this money. They were so embarrassed of what they were doing, they had to ship $400 million dollars, at night, in frozen assets. They unfroze their assets, then the Iran deal did not stop them from getting a bomb. It just delayed the trajectory. So Trump came in in 2017 and stopped it. Well, they didn’t even try to cheat because they thought he was crazy. After he killed Soleimani and Baghdadi and ISIS, Biden came in. The first thing he did is he removed the terrorist designation of the Houthis. He separated us from Israel. Hamas got that message. He did a deal with natural gas in Lebanon, and he empowered Hezbollah. And then with the Iranians, begged them to get back in the deal. When they didn’t do it, he rewarded their negativity by lifting sanctions, and that’s where that period of 21 to 24 is when they went up to 60% enrichment. So we had this congressman there who just gets on Maria Bartiromo, and he just starts lying. And he’s been really one of the more unfortunate spokesmen because, unlike a Chris Murphy or Tim Walz who are buffoons, he always starts this moral argument. Another thing I think everybody’s getting sick of is they say, this is fascism. Trump is a fascist. This is untoward—not that fascism is coming—they don’t define their terms. What do you mean by fascism? Did he cancel an election? No. Did he try to gerrymander? Well, not as well as the Democrats were doing. Did he use the government to go after his presidential rival? So is he going to have Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom in five separate civil or criminal trials like Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith? Going to do that? E. Jean Carroll? Maybe he’s going to try to get him off the ballot. Twenty-five red states, are they trying to get a Democratic leading candidate off the ballot? Did he raid Kamala Harris’ house? Did he raid Joe Biden’s house? They hadn’t done any of that. Did the attorney general say, I’m going to put Steve Bannon, I’m going to put Peter Navarro in jail for not honoring a congressional subpoena, but I’m Merrick Garland, I’m not going to honor it? He hasn’t done any of that. So they don’t define their terms because if you look at what they did during the Trump years—and I haven’t gotten into the two impeachments, which we’re learning now that Michael Atkinson, the inspector general, he, hand in glove with Adam Schiff and Eric Ciaramella and Vindman allowed that first impeachment to proceed. And remember, in the first impeachment, this is very important, there were 15 or 16 people in the National Security Council in that room, and they listened to that phone call with Zelensky. It had no problem whatsoever. Some of them were holdover Obama people. Only Vindman did. And Vindman didn’t even have the courage to become a whistleblower, so he called his pal Ciaramella. And then, based on hearsay. This is what I heard. And then Ciaramella was basically saying, I heard what he heard. And then he disguised his name and played the wounded fawn, so you couldn’t even talk about him. And then he lied, as did Vindman, when they went in to Adam Schiff and cooked up the whole process. And then each of those three people lied and said they had never colluded. The inspector general knew they did, and he did nothing and allowed it to go on. And that was the second—that was the first impeachment, and that followed the day after the Mueller collusion collapsed. As soon as that collapsed, they said, take a deep breath. Now we go into impeachment. And they ate up the entire 2018 and ’19 presidential term of Donald Trump. So this idea that Trump is a fascist and the war’s fascistic—it’s on the side of people who want to be free. But more importantly, that’s a subtext. The main thing is these people have been killing us for 47 years, blowing up the embassies, barracks, shooting diplomats, trying to kill the president, trying to kill the secretary of state. They’re a horrific regime. They’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They’re horrible. And they hijacked the Iranian illustrious Persian tradition. They’re an aberration, and they have no popular support. Everybody hates them. The Gulf hates them. Israel hates them. The Arabs hate them. The Europeans are too timid to express their hatred, but they are terrified of them and hate them. The Chinese don’t even like them. The Chinese are one of the greatest Islamic oppressors in the world. They have a million Muslims in camps, the Uyghurs. The Russians do not like Muslims. They leveled Grozny in the third Chechen war and killed 100,000 people, Muslim. So their alliance with Iran is Iran is a useful tool. A useful idiot. They say, this is what we want you to do. We want you to sell us sanctioned oil, we’ll buy it off the books. You got to give us a discount, and then we’ll give you credit for our weapons. And then when we get those weapons, try to destroy Israel and any pro-Western country. And intimidate the Gulf states. That’s what their strategy was. Sami Winc: So, Victor, I was wondering about this. So as we move forward, if we think about what Donald Trump needs to do, I think that warning the Iranians that they’re going to hit the bridges and the power plants, et cetera, just gets them out to, as you said, they don’t have any concern for people. And so they’ll just bring their women and children out to protect these things. My thought is— Victor Davis Hanson: They will but there’s hundreds of bridges in Iran. I know. So you just say, we’re going to hit the bridges, and are they going to get people to come out every single day from dawn to dusk? No. Sami Winc: No. Victor Davis Hanson: You don’t tell them. You just say, one bridge today, one power plant. I’m not going to tell you where they are. If they start shooting at tankers or if they send missiles at the Gulf States or Israel or our ships—our ships support, most importantly. And the point is that while everybody says the war’s going south, we’re losing, they’re going broke. And they’ve lost half a trillion dollars in a 50-year investment, essentially, in military, industrial, nuclear infrastructure and investment. It’s gone. They had over 12,000 targets. The Israeli-American air force. So they’re going broke, and the question is now, will they be able to delay, delay, delay before they give up their enrichment and any claims that they’re going to try to stop the blockade, or will the propaganda campaign in the United States so embolden them and be so successful that they can drag this out for months and then get the Democrats elected to cut off funds? I don’t see that happening, but that’s their deranged strategy. Sami Winc: Yes, it is deranged, and yeah, if I were Donald Trump, I would just say, you can—even dallying too much. Take a bridge out, take a power plant. Victor Davis Hanson: Donald Trump does not want—  Don’t let him dally. If you’re Donald Trump and you’re in the Oval Office, this is what’s happening: someone comes in, he says, I’m up for reelection. And we were a red state plus 10. But my polls show me, even. I was five ahead before this war. The Democratic propaganda is killing us. Another senator comes in: gas prices in my state are too high. When is this going to end? And the point is that he’s trying to do something for the next century. If he can destroy this regime or destroy its ability to cause havoc, there will be a regime change. Not now. Just like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once you destroy the edifice of communism, in that case, then the Soviet Union fell within two years, and Eastern Europe was free within six months. That will happen. So his view is that this is an existential moment because it’s going to change the entire Middle East. It already has. The Gulf states are now partners with Israel. And this is very interesting because if you look at the Democratic Party and the paleo-Right and Europe, they are more anti-Israel than are the Gulf states right now. No question about it. And this is ironic because a lot of the people who have been hammering Trump about the war on the Right, have financial ties with the Middle East. And they are telling them, what are you doing trying to call off Trump? He’s trying to eliminate this threat right across the Gulf from us, that for 47 years has threatened to destroy us. And for the first time we’ve had an American president that might just neuter them permanently. So be quiet. The whole thing is so misrepresented. And, you know, there was, I guess it was an MS—that’s what they call MSNBC now—I think it was an anchorwoman, and she was listening to some Democratic guests come on. And she finally said, so you are saying, as Jimmy Kimmel said, that you trust the Iranian government more than you do us. And you want to think, well, what do you trust, that they were telling the truth about nuclear enrichment? They just admitted they could make 11 bombs. Were they telling the truth about missile range? They said only 1,800 miles. It was going to go 2,500 miles all the way to Diego Garcia, if had it not been knocked down. So that’s what they do, is lie. But this Democratic Party—it’s not the Democratic Party at all. It’s something different. It’s something weird. I thought it was just a Socialist party, but it’s almost becoming an Islamist party, because of the intense antisemitism.

Virginia Democrats dealt Republicans a major defeat in the national redistricting war with a successful redistricting ballot measure on Tuesday, but the final battle may take place in Tallahassee, Florida. On Tuesday, over 51% of voters opted to support allowing Virginia’s Democrat-controlled Legislature to redraw the 11-seat congressional map to boot up to four of the state’s five Republicans from Congress. Should courts reaffirm the referendum’s result, it will likely offset any gains Republicans may have hoped for from a year of tit-for-tat redistricting that began with the Texas Legislature drawing five new Republican-friendly districts during the summer of 2025. To my eye, Dems have definitively taken the lead in the mid-decade redistricting battle for this cycle. Ds will likely gain 8-10 seats Rs will likely gain 4-8 seatsAnd it seems like an awfully big risk for FL to further redraw its map given the swings we’re seeing in… https://t.co/LejUpLJvEJ pic.twitter.com/zSqgWZYQvF— Adam Carlson (@admcrlsn) April 21, 2026 Democrats first retaliated with the passage of a constitutional ballot measure to allow California to redraw its congressional map. Later, Republicans in the Indiana state Senate shot down a Trump-backed redistricting plan, although maps were redrawn in North Carolina and Ohio to Republicans’ benefit. Now, Republicans may look to Florida to land another blow in the fight. In January, Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a special session of the Florida Legislature focused on redistricting to take place in April. The four-day session starts Tuesday, April 28. The governor has argued that since “Florida has experienced 10 years’ worth of population growth in, like, three,” its districts “are not fairly apportioned.” .@RepJeffries "Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. If they go down the road of a DeSantis 'dummymander', the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans." pic.twitter.com/3zFoRXRLvD— CSPAN (@cspan) April 22, 2026 Florida has 20 Republicans and eight Democrats in its House delegation. It last redistricted in 2022 under DeSantis. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who campaigned for the Virginia ballot measure, said after the Democrat victory that any retaliatory redistricting attempt in Florida would stretch Republicans’ voters too thin and boost Democrats’ chances. “If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats,” Jeffries said, vowing to “aggressively target” Republican incumbents. DeSantis fired back at Jeffries’ threats to target Florida seats in a press conference on Wednesday, saying, “Please, be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida to campaign. I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion.” Congressman Jeffries — come on down to Florida and make our day. pic.twitter.com/3yzk9R4vc5— Team DeSantis (@TeamDeSantis) April 22, 2026 He added, “There’s nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida than to see Jeffries … everywhere around this state. Voters will not like what they see.” A potential obstacle to pro-Republican redistricting in Florida is a state constitutional amendment blocking redistricting “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.”

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson served on the board of the Southern Poverty Law Center while the SPLC paid members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations. Benson, a Democrat running for governor, joined the organization’s board in 2014 and left in 2019, when the SPLC fired its co-founder, Morris Dees, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s, and today it maintains a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside Klan chapters. According to a Justice Department indictment filed Tuesday, the SPLC broke the law by paying $3 million to members of the Klan and other white nationalist groups while claiming to oppose “white supremacy” and by lying to banks about the shell companies it created to hide the funding. The SPLC has not denied making the payments, instead insisting that it paid “informants” for tips on potential violence. SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair said the program “saved lives.” While members of the Klan did firebomb the SPLC offices in 1983, there is no evidence of violent activity threatening the SPLC during the period covered by the indictment, namely 2014 to 2023. Jocelyn Benson Benson, who currently leads the polls in the Michigan Democrat gubernatorial primary by a healthy margin, has cited her history with the SPLC in interviews during the campaign, and she mentioned it in her 2025 memoir “The Purposeful Warrior: Standing Up for What’s Right When the Stakes Are High.” She worked as a volunteer researcher and undercover investigator at the SPLC right after college, and makes an annual trek to the SPLC’s home city of Montgomery, Alabama, according to a profile on The 19th News. She spoke with a reporter outside the center’s Civil Rights Memorial. Benson said she researched neo-Nazi and far-right groups at the center, posing as a freelance journalist to uncover the plans of white supremacist leaders and groups. After more than four years on the SPLC’s board in 2019, her name suddenly disappeared from the website. When PJ Media reached out for comment, the secretary of state’s official Twitter account responded. “Upon taking office as Michigan Secretary of State, Secretary Benson informed SPLC leadership that she would be stepping down from the board,” the account posted. “Her responsibilities in Michigan are her priority and focus.” Yet the SPLC leadership page for Benson had mentioned her role as Michigan’s secretary of state. Benson’s campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. Not to quibble, but why was she listed on the @splcenter leadership page yesterday? pic.twitter.com/sBRWH3oxth— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) March 26, 2019 Why Did Benson Leave? As I wrote in “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Benson left the SPLC amid resurfaced claims of racial discrimination and sexual harassment that trace back decades. Amid this scandal, the SPLC fired its co-founder, Morris Dees, and saw its longterm president, Richard Cohen, resign. The SPLC brought in Tina Tchen, former chief of staff to former first lady Michelle Obama, to investigate employees’ mistreatment claims, but the center never published a report on the scandal. Disgruntled employees went on to found a union, and after a series of layoffs in 2024, the union accused the SPLC of union-busting and asked for the resignation of SPLC President Margaret Huang. Huang resigned last year. Criticism The Republican Governors Association raised Benson’s history and demanded answers. “It’s time Jocelyn Benson starts answering questions about what she knew and if she played any part in this shocking scandal,” RGA Communications Director Kollin Crompton said in a statement Thursday.

Hundreds of companies use the software company Benevity to connect with nonprofits, allowing employees to donate their time and money, but Benevity’s platform blacklists conservative nonprofits, using as a resource the very same leftist group that now faces charges for hiding its secret payments to Ku Klux Klan members. The SPLC admitted to funding members of the Klan and other white nationalist groups, claiming that the funding was part of a program supporting “informants” who reported on “violent extremists” and “saved lives.” A Justice Department indictment, however, accuses the SPLC of directing “racist postings,” featuring as “extremists” on its website the same people it was paying, and even supporting an organizer of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The Daily Signal reached out to Benevity to see if the company would reconsider using the SPLC as a filter in light of the allegations. “Benevity is not directly affiliated with the SPLC,” the company’s spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Benevity clients have the option to use the list of nonprofit organizations included on the SPLC’s annual Hate Map to determine nonprofit eligibility within their programs. The use of this option is not a default setting and is at the sole discretion of clients.” According to its website, Benevity connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them. It says it has managed $16 billion in grants and 99 million employee volunteer hours. In 2023, more than 2.3 million people donated through the Benevity platform, representing $3.2 billion. “Benevity’s denial that it defaults to the SPLC filter is hard to square with its own history,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told The Daily Signal in response to the Benevity statement. “Former CEO Kelly Schmitt bragged about its use of the ‘hate list’ as recently as 2021.” Schmitt delivered a PowerPoint presentation explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.” Scott added, however, that “the real issue isn’t how the SPLC filter is used, it’s why this list is used at all.” Critics have said the SPLC trades on its history of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to smear conservatives. The center publishes a “hate map” that plots parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, conservative groups like Turning Point USA, and Christian groups like Focus on the Family alongside chapters of the Klan. In 2012, a convicted terrorist told the FBI he targeted a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, for a mass shooting. Four months after the SPLC added Turning Point USA to the “hate map” last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly murdered Turning Point Founder Charlie Kirk, aiming to silence his “hate.” According to 1792 Exchange, 252 companies using the Benevity platform exclude conservative groups by using the SPLC list as a screening tool. The list includes Adobe, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, McDonald’s, Netflix, PayPal, Salesforce, Starbucks, and many more. Scott argued that Benevity should reconsider after the DOJ indictment. “Given recent revelations about the SPLC itself funding hate groups, [Benevity] CEO Soraya Alexander should demonstrate clear leadership by removing the SPLC filter from Benevity’s platform entirely,” he said.

Picture a packed airport gate. Passengers languish as a delayed flight goes nowhere. The typically cheerful airline personnel are as bored and dejected as the travelers. Suddenly, the pilot announces departure in five minutes. The huddled masses jump for joy. After the flight crew boards, the gate agents direct two passengers onto the plane and then shut the doors. Enraged ticketholders watch as the nearly vacant aircraft rolls back, taxis, and climbs into the sky. Landbound travelers stare at each other in slack-jawed disbelief. Welcome to WTF Airlines. If you like this scenario, you will love Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s latest move. The South Dakota Republican used “reconciliation” to obviate a Democrat filibuster and provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol funds via simple majority. Thune did this because Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other sadistic Democrats have blocked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending for 10 weeks and counting. Rather than watch industrious public servants starve, President Donald J. Trump generated partial paychecks via executive order. Alas, those dollars are nearly tapped. Thune’s severely limited reconciliation squanders resources like a Boeing 777 carrying two passengers. Reconciliation is slow, complicated, and can be implemented only twice or thrice annually. A 777 with 362 empty seats, leaving a busy airport, is bad enough. But when an airport offers three departures annually, this becomes criminal. Thune’s empty jet landed in the House of Representatives. Republicans there should fill it with reconciliation-ready reforms. Under the rules, these must affect fiscal policy: taxes, spending, and deficits. These ideas should be buckled in before the House flies this back to the Senate for final passage.  The SAVE America Act deserves priority boarding. Audacious Democrats brazenly approved a referendum on Tuesday to gerrymander Virginia’s congressional seats from 6-5 Democrat/Republican to 10-1 Dem/GOP. (A judge on Wednesday ruled this initiative unconstitutional, triggering a litigation death match.)   While Democrats castrate Republicans in broad daylight, the Senate GOP is too polite, weak, and bashful to steer SAVE onto Trump’s desk. Rather than exhaust Democratopponentsover Easter, Thune sent everyone home presumably to hunt chocolate bunnies.  Pathetic. To satisfy the Senate parliamentarian, a House SAVE amendment must churn taxpayer dollars to achieve election integrity. SAVE should establish a Federal Electoral Hygiene Commission to implement this new law. This commission’s $1 billion budget could: -Help Americans without photo ID obtain it for free, to vote in federal elections. -Reimburse expenses for acquiring birth certificates—online or in person—to prove U.S. citizenship before registering to vote. -Fine each state $10 million daily for violating SAVE. Most governors would rather comply than incinerate $3.65 billion annually to shield crooked elections. -Help cooperative states offer photo IDs, furnish birth certificates, and purify voter rolls using fine revenue. These funds could help states transition from corrupt, mass mail-in ballots to more limited ballots for absent college students, shut-ins, and those away on Election Day. A new federal agency would be unfortunate. But its activities would influence the budget, a reconciliation requirement.  House Republicans should  add the simple question “Are you a citizen?” to the 2030 Census. Every Census checked citizenship from 1820 until 2010. That’s when President Barack Obama ditched this question. Resurrecting it is vital. Reconciliation should ban Census data on illegal aliens from reapportionment, assignment of Electoral College votes, and allocation of federal outlays. Democrats are desperate to impose their illegal-alien political base on legislative boundaries and annual budgets. Stopping such spending is reconciliation-friendly. GOP earplugs will muffle Democrat squeals. The House could finance SAVE-related spending via the Justice Department’s Assets Forfeiture Fund. It seizes $2 billion in average-annual revenue from drug lords and other crooks. This is earmarked for “law enforcement-related priorities.” Curbing vote fraud qualifies. Meanwhile, this measure should cut taxes, a reconciliation-ready activity. Such reductions must be immediate and retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026. Powerful incentives should tame Operation Epic Fury’s economic headwinds. Robust jobs and growth will buoy GOP midterm election prospects. “We should end the taxation of inflation in capital gains taxes,” Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist tells me.  The veteran supply-side activist adds: “Now, when you pay taxes on capital gains—because you sold a house, farm, business, or stock—some of that gain is an increase in the value of your home, businesses, or stock. Some is simply inflation. This reform would remove the ‘inflation gain’ and only tax real gains. This would cut most capital gains taxes in half. Or more.” Democrats will moan that this tax relief is just Republicans boosting the über-rich — never mind that Democrats’ brand-new heartthrob is Tom Steyer, a multibillionaire who cashed in on coal mines and private prisons.  Junking the inflation tax on capital gains benefits far more modest taxpayers. For tax year 2022, “IRS data show that 74% of households with capital-gains filings make less than $200,000,” Americans for Tax Reform reports.  “Tax cuts should be added” to reconciliation, says Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes. “Cut personal rates. The two big brackets are 22% and 24%; cut both to 15%. Eliminate the 12% bracket, which effectively brings it down to the 10% bracket. Cut each of the other brackets by three points; thus the 32% bracket would go down to 29%. As for the corporate rate, cut it to 15% for every business, not just manufacturing. Different rates for different kinds of businesses just fuel the lobbying industry.”  The incessant Schumer/Democrat shutdown of DHS during Operation Epic Fury is disgusting, vulgar, and treasonous. These fiends are aiding and comforting America’s enemy during wartime, exactly when this country is vulnerable to attack by organized pro-Iran elements, pro-ayatollah lone rats, or both. Reconciliation would short-circuit intransigent Democrats and pay diligent ICE and Border Patrol personnel. But limiting this unusual procedure to only that, with so many MAGA reforms in limbo, shoves “missed opportunity” to the breaking point. A Democrat reconciliation bill would be as tightly packed with policy ideas as the Boeing C-17 that whisked 823 Afghans out of Kabul during President Joe Biden’s calamitous withdrawal in August 2021. Congressional Republicans should think big. A reconciliation bill is a terrible thing to waste. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.