The McKinney City Council in Texas is facing criticism after the Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously voted to recommend a proposed mosque development for further consideration by the council. The McKinney Islamic Association already has a mosque on Eldorado Parkway, but members say they have outgrown the facility and plan to build a larger center to accommodate their growing congregation.  The proposed site is a 5-acre tract along Virginia Parkway near two residential neighborhoods and a high school. It would include a 37,000-square-foot facility that will include a mosque, educational spaces, a gymnasium, and meeting rooms. It will also be designed to accommodate 3,000 people.  The association submitted its project proposal to the City of McKinney’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which unanimously voted to forward it to the city council for final consideration. Some residents said they were unaware the proposal was under consideration. In 2024, the McKinney Islamic Association proposed a similar project but withdrew it following public opposition. Nearly two years later, the association submitted a revised proposal, prompting renewed criticism from some residents. During the July 21 City Council meeting, multiple residents spoke in opposition to the planned mosque. Several speakers expressed concerns about increased traffic congestion, public safety, and potential impacts on nearby property values. Others objected to the proposal because of concerns about the Islamic faith. “Before this council allows the McKinney Islamic Association to advance into construction, I am here to demand that you perform real due diligence not just on parking and traffic, but on the fundamental nature of what is being built in our community,” Ashley Louden, a U.S. Navy veteran, said. “You currently have imams in our area teaching their community that they are here to overthrow the U.S. government.” Another resident, who declined to identify himself during the meeting, urged the council to reject the proposal due to limited resources and infrastructure, as well as the potential for traffic issues related to religious observances. Other residents criticized what they described as a lack of public notification about the facility. “Transparency matters, and the people most affected should have had a fair chance to learn about it,” one resident said. After public comments concluded, Council Member Patrick Cloutier told attendees the council has limited authority over the proposal. Cloutier said the Islamic association purchased the property years ago and originally sought to build a 45,000-square-foot building, which would have required a zoning change. He said the group later reduced the size of the project to comply with the property’s existing zoning. “It was a couple years ago, after they bought it, that they fully anticipated they could build what they want here,” he said. “What they wanted was a 45,000 square foot building. That required a zoning change. That’s when you get the notice—when a zoning change is asked for.” Cloutier said the council cannot deny the project if it complies with the property’s existing planned development zoning. “They enjoy a 1997 very antiquated, planned development zoning. If they build to that zoning specifically, with no variations, this council and P and Z [Planning and Zoning] has not power to stop them,” Cloutier said. U.S. Rep. Keith Self, who represents McKinney, also weighed in on the proposed Islamic development in a post on X. “McKinney Residents—pay attention! The McKinney Planning and Zoning Commission just UNANIMOUSLY approved plans for a new mosque in your neighborhood,” said Self. “The McKinney City Council is meeting on this issue imminently.” The McKinney City Council is scheduled to consider the proposal during its Aug. 4 meeting.

Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham defended the policy of keeping men out of women’s sports and girls’ locker rooms this week, and the Left and media immediately screamed “Foul!” However, Cunningham characteristically refused to back down and on Wednesday night doubled down. The WNBA star, whose fierce, hysterical 22-second finger-point at Phoenix Mercury guard DeWanna Bonner last month turned her into a cultural phenomenon, insists she’s “not a very political person,” but protecting women’s sports is “common sense.” Yet, such “common sense” has been enough for Cunningham to be derisively labeled “MAGA Barbie.” The ruckus started when Cunningham, deep in a lengthy ESPN profile, declared she wanted to “protect young girls in the locker room” and “young girls in sports who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” It’s actually not a new position for the sharpshooting forward. In 2022, she shared a tweet from CBS Sports’ Josh Pate about former Penn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas that declared, “Female collegiate athletes deserve so much better than this.” That retweet alone had critics throwing elbows her way. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she told ESPN. Now Cunningham is far more famous, and the spotlight far more intense. The basketball player is getting shredded again on X and in media circles for her latest comments. She’s accused of “actively harming children by demonizing and marginalizing trans children,” and is facing calls for her to be suspended. Qwame Skinner at The Comeback wrote, “Hopefully, it doesn’t take a suspension for Cunningham to realize the damage that she is doing to an extremely small, extremely vulnerable community of people who are trying to live their best lives.” Former women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe took to “The View” Tuesday to perversely claim that keeping men from competing in women’s sports is actually an attack on women. Nay, “an attack on women in society.” However, many have come to Cunningham’s defense, including the White House. “The backlash she is receiving from Democrats and left-wing thinkers across the country is astonishing,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. “They are clearly very out of touch with the American public on this issue.” .@PressSec defends Sophie Cunningham for speaking out against men in women's sports: "Men should not be playing in women's sports…The backlash she is receiving from Democrats and left-wing thinkers across the country is astonishing. They are clearly very out of touch…" pic.twitter.com/Q7SqE7MAnJ— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 23, 2026 “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who’s been at the forefront of the fight to protect women’s sports and spaces, shared Cunningham’s Wednesday night remarks on X, adding three clapping emojis. https://t.co/kNvDyUmchW— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 23, 2026 Speaking to reporters before Indiana’s 123-88 win over the Connecticut Sun, Cunningham doubled down in defense of women’s sports. “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense,” Cunningham said. “And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. I stand on what I said.” Cunningham pointed to Title IX, the sex-equality law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. That 1972 law is credited with the explosion of girls’ and women’s sports in the United States. “That’s why you have Title IX. That’s why you have some of the greats in women’s sports,” Cunningham said. “If Title IX and women’s sports weren’t protected, then you wouldn’t hear about any type of women in sport. And so, I think in the future, it’s just really important to protect.” Cunningham rejected the notion that her comments could be seen as derogatory toward trans athletes, insisting she has “room to love everyone.” “But I’m also there to love biological women, and I think that there are rights that need to be protected,” Cunningham continued. “And, like I said, I’m gonna stand true to that. I’ll never falter in my beliefs in that. But I have never once stated that I hated the trans community.” Further, Cunningham, who plays Doc Holliday to superstar Caitlin Clark’s Wyatt Earp on the Fever, declared of criticism, “I don’t care.” “I know whatever I say, I’m going to get hate and I’m going to get love, and if I’m going to live by the love, I’m gonna die by the hate, and that’s just not who I am. I beat to my own drum.”

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it would enforce civil rights based on equal protection under federal law and no longer “sort people by race.” The HHS Office for Civil Rights announced a final rule updating its regulations to implement Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The department says the new rule aligns department policy strictly with the Civil Rights Act as well as Supreme Court precedent. “HHS will not pressure doctors, hospitals, universities, or state agencies to sort people by race to satisfy a statistic,” said Paula M. Stannard, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, in a public statement. “This rule restores common sense and true equality to Title VI enforcement.” “Civil rights laws protect Americans as individuals,” Stannard said. The agency explained it will continue to take enforcement action to combat intentional discrimination in health care based on race, color, and national origin. It will also continue to investigate complaints and conduct compliance reviews as evidence of discrimination. The new rule also conforms with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14281, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” issued in April 2025. Among other things, Trump’s order eliminated disparate-impact as grounds for a government agency to target an employer or organization for discrimination. Disparate-impact is a legal doctrine that, in lieu of a complaint or actual evidence of discrimination, a policy deemed to have a negative impact on a specific protected class could be construed as discrimination. The HHS Office for Civil Rights says it will continue to consider statistical disparities, along with other evidence, to evaluate whether intentional discrimination occurred in health care.

A blue state has been caught asleep at the switch of protecting voting integrity, but don’t count on them to fix things any time soon. In case you missed it, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill—a Democrat—admitted Tuesday that 6,600 noncitizens had been improperly registered to vote in her state since 2023. Of those, at least 400 voted in state elections. It should be noted that 6,600 people being illegally registered to vote is no small deal. Several assembly races in the state were decided by much smaller margins. Sherill blamed a “software error” in her state’s Motor Vehicle Commission computer system that somehow registered noncitizens to vote while giving them a state ID. The company that handles the software said that the fault isn’t theirs and that the voter registration process is entirely handled by the state. Whoever is at fault here, the buck ultimately stops, or at least it should stop, with New Jersey’s elected officials. And that’s where we get to the bigger part of this story. For years we’ve been told that noncitizen voting in American elections never, ever happens. It’s nothing but a conspiracy. Now that New Jersey got ahead of a Justice Department probe and fessed up to the fact that thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote and at least hundreds voted in previous elections, the media has switched to “Republicans pounce, no fair” mode. Yes, lots of seizing and pouncing and seizing some more. The worst part of this story is not the illegal voting, it’s that it boosts Republican arguments about election integrity. You know the drill, no surprises there. Democrats and the media have a strong, vested interest in dismissing stories about noncitizens voting. And let’s be honest, they aren’t too far away from going to the predictable end point of this debate by saying, “OK, so noncitizens are voting, but that’s a good thing!” But the country isn’t there yet, and they know it. And if one state “accidentally” registered a bunch of noncitizen voters it certainly raises suspicion that this kind of thing is happening elsewhere. That would especially be the case in states with “sanctuary” status for illegal aliens and an enormous noncitizen population. Now, if New Jersey and other states are acting in good faith, the revelation that many noncitizens really are voting should be a huge wakeup call. If they want to make sure their elections are sound and banish all thoughts that the system is crooked, they should go the route of Florida. After the 2000 presidential election where faulty voting machines in Florida threw the country into chaos, the Sunshine State took immediate and aggressive measures to address the failure and then some. They got rid of the questionable butterfly ballots, cleaned up voter rolls, and created strict mail-in voting requirements among many other reforms. They even passed their own version of the federal SAVE America Act this year that strengthened proof of citizenship voter verification requirements. The result has been a stunning turnaround in a few decades. Florida became a model for reform and now has a voting system that’s both safe and efficient. Of course, some on the Left have been furious about the changes but that’s their problem. That gets us back to today where the noncitizen voting “glitch” is now a massive cloud hanging over not just New Jersey, but other states with questionable voting systems. How many other “oopsies” are out there waiting until right before the DOJ closes in to be suddenly uncovered? As Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Signal’s Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell on Wednesday, what happened in New Jersey feels like the tip of an iceberg. KAROLINE LEAVITT: President Trump is “hell-bent” on removing noncitizens from the voter rolls in all 50 states.“ It is completely unacceptable to have noncitizens on American voter rolls voting in U.S. elections. [New Jersey’s governor] says it's 6,600. We suspect it's a heck… pic.twitter.com/b93a432f9U— Daily Signal (@DailySignal) July 23, 2026 You can be sure that the Democrats will try to wave this off as a one-time issue, but they can’t escape the reality that many states continue to do a poor job cleaning up their voter rolls and they are now on watch. And so far, places like California have shown little motivation to take steps to ensure that their elections are truly as safe and accurate as can be. That’s why it’s important that conservatives in Congress continue to push for the SAVE America Act or some kind of citizenship verification process and photo ID requirements. They can’t just let this issue go and hope for the best. The argument that Senate Democrats have made that noncitizen voting is “exceedingly rare” just doesn’t pass the smell test now. It’s happening, it’s corrosive, it’s seriously damaging the credibility of our elections, and far too many state leaders have no intention of fixing the problem. They need to be held to it.

Virginia’s need for plentiful, reliable energy is increasing every year. Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin developed an “all of the above” program during his administration to tap into any available source of power. That included promoting technologies such as a fusion plant in Chesterfield. While the technology hasn’t been proven commercially yet, it shows potential to be the power source of the future. In October, Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger plans to unveil the 2026 Virginia Energy Plan to describe energy trends, identify challenges and opportunities across the energy system, and identify strategies that span 10 years and fit “the 2045 net-zero carbon energy economy for all sectors.” This week, Spanberger rolled out one piece of her plan, a statewide “Switch Together” program, which will promote the use of solar panels on residential homes. “By using the power of the free market, leveraging the Commonwealth’s buying power, and cutting out middlemen, we are creating significant discounts for families and businesses,” the governor said in a news release. She said the program could save a family more than $6,000 on the installation of solar panels. Another potential project is a pumped storage hydroelectric plant under development in Wise County. Pumped storage uses gravity to generate electricity by moving water from one reservoir to another. Sandy Slayton is vice president of environmental for Rye Development, the company that is planning the facility. She told the Daily Signal how the project would work. “We have an upper reservoir and a lower reservoir, and when we need additional energy on the grid, we can release water from the upper reservoir,” she said. “It goes down through the penstock, and it spins the turbine like a regular old hydropower project and generates energy. When we want to store energy, we pump it up to the upper reservoir.” The actual amount of water in the two reservoirs remains the same, in the same way that the amount of sand in an hourglass remains the same even as it moves between bulbs. The water is simply moving from one reservoir to the other throughout the day, generating power at peak times by moving downhill, and using power at off-peak times to be moved back uphill. “Pumped storage is the world’s largest, most proven energy storage technology,” Slayton told the Daily Signal. “It’s been around for a really long time. It accounts for about 90% of stored energy on the grid globally.” The very first project Rye developed opened in 1929. It’s still in service. When it’s operational, the project would be able to generate 250 megawatts of electricity for 10 hours, or the water could be moved more quickly to generate 300 megawatts for eight hours. That’s enough to power tens of thousands of households simultaneously and would help balance out the grid even as the expected need for electricity in Virginia is increasing. That flexibility is crucial. “Storage is needed for load growth, aging fossil fuel plants, transmission constraints, and extreme weather, and it helps ensure that we have electricity available when people need it—and not just when it’s generated, which helps to balance the grid,” Slayton said. The project would also create at least 1,000 jobs over a five-year construction cycle, along with 20 operational jobs for the life of the project.” The property Rye is looking at once generated a different source of power: it’s a former coal mine. The company has experience working under these circumstances. “It’s modeled on our project in Bell County, Kentucky, which is also on a former coal mine site,” Slayton said. “That site in Kentucky has five coal seams running under the upper reservoir at different elevations, so we have gotten a lot of experience understanding what questions we need to ask to be able to develop on that type of that type of geology.” When the project is ready to generate electricity, it is designed to be able to hook up to the grid relatively easily, which is one reason Rye was interested in working on a project in Virginia. The proposal is still on the drawing board and wouldn’t be finished during the next few years. “It’s a long process,” Slayton said. “One of the things that’s good about it is this long process really makes sure that everybody comes to the table, and we get everything hammered out. We do want to be sure that we’ve thought through everything before we go into construction.”