Gov. Abigail Spanberger is currently considering whether to sign a bill to codify contraceptive access in Virginia, but for progressive policymakers in the state, the real battle for “reproductive rights” will take place this November.   This is when voters in the Commonwealth will decide whether to enshrine abortion on-demand into the state constitution with House Joint Resolution No. 1. Similar ballot measures in other states have struck down pro-life laws, such as Ohio’s law for proper disposal of fetal remains. But HJ1 is the most extreme of these ballot measures due to its vague legal wording.   Current Virginia law is already extremely permissive, allowing abortion all the way through the second trimester. In the third trimester, three doctors must certify that “the pregnancy is likely to result in the death of the woman or substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.”   The proposed amendment would change this rule to only need one physician (namely an abortion provider) to determine if it would protect the “life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.”   Voters might mistakenly think that terms like “physical and mental health” provide real guardrails. But they don’t. Physical and mental health are not defined in the proposal. That means an abortion provider could decide that almost anything counts as a threat to someone’s “mental health.” For example, a late?term abortion could be approved simply because the mother says having a baby would be too stressful. The legislature could have clearly defined those terms, but it didn’t.   That’s not the only way this measure is extreme. Virginia Democrats never use the word “woman” in the resolution. Their decision to use “pregnant individual” suggests someone other than women can become pregnant.   Democrats also voted down an amendment to the ballot measure that would allow protections for babies who are born alive after surviving botched abortion attempts.   They also rejected another amendment that would have kept parental consent and notification laws in place. Right now, minors need a parent’s permission to get a tattoo, go on a school field trip, and play sports. But if this amendment passes, a child could undergo a surgical abortion or take dangerous abortion drugs without their parent being told. It could even be facilitated by a school without a parent’s knowledge or consent.   If you think schools would never facilitate abortions behind the parents’ backs, then you should know that it has already happened in Fairfax County.   According to The Family Foundation, Fairfax County school officials arranged and paid for abortions using school resources for two minor students last fall without informing their parents.  If the amendment is ratified, similar situations wouldn’t just be allowed, they could become common across the Commonwealth.   There are even concerns that the amendment goes beyond abortion. Take sex-rejecting sterilization procedures, for example. Right now, minors need parental consent for these kinds of procedures. The Family Foundation has pointed out that since “fertility care” includes sterilization procedures, individuals could have a right to sterilization, puberty blockers, and sex-rejecting surgeries.   Will the Commonwealth be the first state in the country to remove parental consent for sex-rejecting surgeries for minors? Not even California and New York have gone that far.  Virginia Sen. Glen Sturtevant said this amendment would be “the most extreme” in the nation. Unlimited, taxpayer-funded sex-rejecting surgeries and abortion till birth with no parental consent is radical. It’s dangerous for women, children, and unborn babies.   Let’s hope that as more Virginians learn how extreme this resolution is, they’ll say “no” in November.  The post How Radical is the Virginia Abortion Amendment? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court held that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could detain an illegal alien without bond pending his removal proceedings after he was arrested in Minneapolis in 2025. In journeyman fashion, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the applicable immigration laws as written and applied common sense to reach its decision.   That law, 8 U.S.C. § 1225, a nearly three-decade-old statute, requires detention without bond for “an alien who is an applicant for admission if … an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.” This case could be a game-changer in the administration’s efforts to hold illegal aliens pending their removal hearings.   Joaquin Herrera Avila is a Mexican national. He was arrested last Aug. in Minneapolis and admitted he was in the country illegally. Avila had illegally entered the U.S. twice; once in 2006 and again in 2016. When he was caught in 2025, Avila was held without bond, and DHS initiated removal proceedings for lacking valid entry documentation.   Avila requested a bond redetermination before the immigration judge, who denied his request. Avila’s attorney then filed a habeas petition in federal district court seeking his immediate release or a bond hearing. Avila argued that since he was not “seeking admission” while in the U.S., the statute simply didn’t apply to him.   Avila’s argument goes like this: as long as an illegal alien in the U.S. just sits back and does nothing to adjust his status in the country, such as seek asylum, 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) did not apply to him.   The district court ruled in favor of Avila, claiming the statute did not apply because he had lived in the country for years without “seeking admission” to the U.S.   But the text of the statute itself, as the Eighth Circuit noted in its de novo review of the law, is unambiguous. You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it.   Section 1225(a)(1) is clear as a bell: “An alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or who arrives in the United States … shall be deemed for purposes of this chapter an applicant for admission.”   So, whether you actively apply for admission while you’re illegally in the country, or pull an Avila and do nothing, you’re still considered an “applicant for admission.” No further legal reasoning is required beyond the text of the statute itself.  Avila’s argument hinged on the concept that “seeking” requires an affirmative act occurring in the present tense. It was a creative argument but failed the sniff test with the appeals court.   Citing the Fifth Circuit case of Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, the Eighth Circuit noted that adopting this logic leads to strange conclusions, among them that an applicant who has already submitted an application is no longer seeking admission.   The Fifth Circuit concluded that “an applicant for admission to the United States is ‘seeking admission’ to the same, regardless of whether the person actively engages in further affirmative acts to gain admission.”   Under Avila’s reading, an alien who enters the country unlawfully and evades detection for years would be entitled to a bond hearing, whereas an alien who lawfully presents himself at a port of entry and seeks admission would not be entitled to a bond hearing.   Avila also argued that the Laken Riley Act, found at 8 U.S.C. § 1226, added an exception to the bond eligibility for people like him, but allows for detention without bond for aliens who commit certain offenses, including burglary, larceny, and theft. A plain reading of § 1225(b)(2)(A), Avila argued, would render the Act superfluous. The Eighth Circuit was unconvinced, for two reasons.  First, the reach of the Laken Riley Act is not wholly analogous. It applies not only to unadmitted aliens but also to those who were previously admitted and later lost their legal status, including immigrants who overstayed their visas.  Second, the Laken Riley Act eliminates the possibility of parole entirely for the aliens it covers. Its passage is best understood as a congressional effort to be “doubly sure” to deny parole to criminal offenders, not as evidence that § 1225 was ever limited to the border.  Finally, Avila argued that the majority’s decision ran counter to legislative history. But legislative history does not carry the same authority as the law itself. The Supreme Court has said as much repeatedly, and the Eighth Circuit was right to decline the invitation to cloud a clear statutory text with speculation about what Congress might have intended.  The dissent’s first sentence raised our eyebrows: “Except for a single DUI, for nearly 20 years, Joaquin Herrera Avila had been living a law-abiding life in the United States.”   Law abiding? Apparently the two times Avila entered the country illegally did not count. No doubt, that’s why the majority cited 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a) at the beginning of their opinion.   That statute makes it illegal to “enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers” and carries a term of imprisonment of up to six months for the first offense and up to two years for subsequent offenses.   One of the stronger points made by the dissent is this: five previous presidential administrations (including the first Trump administration) had applied the statute only to nationals arriving at the border, rendering the majority’s reading a “novel interpretation.” That novel interpretation likely stems from a memo issued on July 8, 2025, by the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement explaining that the agency had “revisited its legal position” by determining that the mandatory detention provisions of section 1225—not the discretionary detention provisions of section 1226—is the new policy of the administration.   Quoting from the 2001 Supreme Court decision in Zadyvdas v. Davis, the dissent wrote: “the distinction between an alien who has effected an entry into the U.S. and one who has never entered runs throughout immigration law [because] once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the U.S., including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.”   This issue has been litigated across the country in federal courts. As more circuit courts split on this issue, it’s only a matter of time before this issue finds its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The post Federal Appeals Court Holds That DHS Can Detain Illegal Alien Without Bond appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It’s amazing how much California does these days to roll into its stereotype as a dysfunctional, woke-ified political wasteland. On Tuesday, the University of Southern California canceled its scheduled gubernatorial debate after several top Democrats reportedly waged a pressure campaign to put a halt to it. The field is currently wide open with Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom being term limited out of office. One would think that would be a reason to give voters a chance to learn about the policies of the new candidates, a mix of Republicans and Democrats competing in the state’s “jungle” primary that lumps the parties together. Nope. You see, the leading candidates set to appear on stage had a BIG problem. They were all WHITE. None of the non-white candidates crossed the polling and fundraising thresholds set ahead of time by USC. “The ‘data-driven’ candidate viability framework produced a lineup of Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, as well as Democrats Tom Steyer, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell—all White candidates,” Fox News reported. “The same criteria, developed by a USC professor and defended by the university, ended up axing Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa, Betty Yee, and Tony Thurman, all Democratic Party minority candidates, due to lower polling and fundraising scores.” In modern California, democracy without DEI is canceled it seems. It’s rather amusing to read USC’s defense of its criteria for those who would be allowed on stage. You can feel the creeping panic through the words of whatever committee put the statement together. They knew they were going to be labeled racists for using a colorblind, nonbiased metric and getting undesirable diversity results. “We want to be clear that we categorically, unequivocally deny any allegations that the debate criteria was in any way biased in favor or against any candidate,” the USC statement read. “… The methodology was based on well-established metrics consistent with formulas widely used to set debate participation nationwide—a combination of polling and fundraising—and developed without regard to any particular candidate.” That’s the sound of technocrats naively pleading their case in a kangaroo court. Did they learn nothing from the COVID years? The real pandemic was racism. You are supposed to believe in science up and until the moment that “science” collides with leftwing cultural narratives, then it’s flushed down the toilet along with self-government, constitutional rights, or any of that other fluff Americans bitterly cling to. That’s the trick to staying on the right side of history and all that. Just a few days after defending their reasonable debate rubric, USC folded and said that they couldn’t come to an agreement with the Los Angeles TV station KABC set to air the event. “As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues,” they said in another statement according to NBC News. Incredible. This primary is now set up to be a indictment of the failed governing ethos of the Golden State. California voters have time and again overwhelmingly rejected affirmative action at the ballot box. Even in a state that practically defines the “Left Coast,” regular people don’t want race-based school admissions, quotas, and policies that fly in the face equality before the law. But the Left’s activist class and their ruling elites just can’t quit it, no matter what. So, they’re even willing to blow up the electoral process to ensure that something like a racial quota remains, even for an endeavor as narrow as running for governor. Competence isn’t really a criterion for high office in California these days, but blowing up a debate for DEI-related reasons is a little too on the nose for why so much in the state seems broken. DEI nonsense proves once again to be an un-American plaything for elites to play with in their manic scramble for power and recognition in institutions captured by the Left. The California gubernatorial race is so filled with Democratic Party aspirants that the two Republicans in the race have a real chance to emerge as the two winning candidates in the primary, despite the deep blue hue of most statewide elections. If that somehow holds it would be one of the more hilarious self owns in modern political history, but it’s a calamity the Left is pushing the party into. Despite Democrat success in running vanilla, often white candidates who campaign like centrists and vote like Mao, they just can’t escape the gravitational pull of the Left’s toxic, identitarian ideology. And so, they end up with what happened on Tuesday. The most absurd demands for DEI can never really be met, therefore a barely functioning political system grinds to a halt because too few people in power are willing to publicly question its fundamental premises. That’s the world under Democrat one-party rule and leftwing institutional dominance. The whole nation practically fell under that model during the Biden White House years. Now, it’s just playing out in places like California that provide a harbinger for the stupidity to come if we follow that model toward oblivion. The post California Primary Debate Collapses Under the Weight of DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is attempting to withhold funding from states that violate the Trump administration’s policies of dropping initiatives on gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, Democrat attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia are suing in federal court to restore what they say is a cumulative $74 billion for food stamps, fighting wildfires, and school nutrition. Democrat AGs have led numerous lawsuits to block actions by the Trump administration in the president’s second term. They claim that requiring compliance to certain administration policies for funding is a violation of the Spending Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act. The strings attached to federal funding didn’t come without warning. In December, the USDA issued new terms and conditions for federal funding. These cited President Donald Trump’s executive orders from January and February of 2025 that restricted federal funds to states promoting gender ideology, unlawful DEI initiatives, and biological males playing in female sports.  The lawsuit calls for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the USDA from imposing the funding conditions. The complaint says this would affect several federal programs: the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC program; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps; the Emergency Food Assistance Program; and the Volunteer Fire Capacity Program. “These federal grant programs are a lifeline for families across Massachusetts. I know that firsthand, as my own family relied on these programs when I was growing up,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a public statement. “They ensure that children have access to meals at school, families can cover basic necessities, seniors can stretch limited incomes, and rural communities have critical support,” Campbell continued. A USDA spokesperson told The Daily Signal the department does not comment on pending litigation. States joining Massachusetts and D.C. in the litigation are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.  The post USDA Blocks Funds to States Pushing DEI, Gender Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Republicans are turning to budget reconciliation to pass the SAVE America Act into law, but some doubt the process will result in the election integrity measures offered in the current version of the bill. “Theres a lot of support for a budget reconciliation bill,” Majority Leader Thune, R-S.D., told press this week. While the budget reconciliation process, the process that resulted in the One Big Beautiful Bill last year, circumvents the Senate’s 60 vote cloture rule, some Republicans doubt that the SAVE America Act would end up on President Donald Trump’s desk. The GOP strategy to pass the SAVE America Act has changed rapidly this week. NEW: @SenMullin tells @DailySignal the Trump administration wants to use reconciliation to fund ICE and, "most importantly," pass the SAVE America Act. "There's a framework that we can do through reconciliation, paying for-put some of the policies that cost money in, because… pic.twitter.com/73HC4B3Ndk— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) March 24, 2026 Over the weekend, Trump was pushing the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act using the talking filibuster, which would circumvent the Senate’s 60 vote cloture rule, before reopening the Department of Homeland Security. After a meeting with Republican Senators at the White House on Monday afternoon, however, Republicans have shifted to attempting to pass the SAVE America Act in a second reconciliation bill. But budget reconciliation has rules that could prevent the SAVE America Act from being included in the legislation. “I’m all for it, but I have not heard a single person make a cogent case that SAVE America Act is Byrd-able, that it will pass muster in the Senate,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said on “The Signal Sitdown.” Mosques popping up all over Red Texas?It's one of the top concerns for @RepBrandonGill's constituents, and Congress needs to get real about the Islamization of America. pic.twitter.com/wpLZNQVgg5— Bradley Devlin (@bradleydevlin) March 26, 2026 The Byrd Rule directs the Senate parliamentarian to block provisions unrelated to the budget from being a part of a reconciliation package. Conservatives are concerned that because the SAVE America Act’s provisions center around proof of citizenship to vote and implementing nationwide voter ID, it would not survive the parliamentarian’s “Byrd bath.” “If it is, great. But I do not think that we should be getting our voters and the American people’s hopes up that that’s going to work,” Gill said. “The purpose of all of this is not to message,” Gill continued. “It’s to get this on the President’s desk. And candidly, I don’t think reconciliation is the way to do that. I think that if it were, we likely would have done it in the first reconciliation bill, but we didn’t.” Senate Republicans claiming they will pass the SAVE America Act via budget reconciliation are gaslighting you.Enough failure theater — pass the bill! pic.twitter.com/gsqez8KeLw— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) March 25, 2026 The House Freedom Caucus also doubts that the SAVE America Act will survive reconciliation. “Senate Republicans claiming they will pass the SAVE America Act via budget reconciliation are gaslighting you,” the caucus posted on X. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, two members who have been pushing hard for this legislation to reach the president’s desk, agreed that this is not a viable option. Self went as far to say that anyone who says they can is “lying to you.”  The Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, previously put out a framework for a second reconciliation bill in January, focused on housing, healthcare, and energy. Pfluger suggests that reconciliation offers a path forward for these issues and for the SAVE America Act. “When 84 percent of Americans support requiring proof of citizenship to vote and the Left is still blocking it, that tells you everything you need to know about why reconciliation is the only path forward,” Pfluger told The Daily Signal.   The post Republicans Divided on Budget Reconciliation Gamble for SAVE America Act appeared first on The Daily Signal.