In the wake of the latest alarming incident concerning the safety of our chief executive that has shaken the nation, President Donald J. Trump has a key opportunity to exercise a clear constitutional authority that has gone too long ignored. Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to convene both houses of Congress “on extraordinary Occasions.” That power exists for moments precisely like this one, when national security demands immediate action and legislative inertia threatens public safety. As I have previously recommended, President Trump should have immediately convened both houses and kept them in session until they completely funded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The president did not take that immediate step in that initial flurry of events on Saturday night. However, it is not too late. The Senate’s stonewalling continues unabated while the security of the nation remains at risk. President Trump should accordingly invoke this power now to force Congress to act. This is not a radical suggestion; it’s a return to first principles. The Framers deliberately modeled the president’s convening authority on the historic prerogative of English monarchs to summon Parliament during crises. Perhaps the first and most vivid precedent comes from 1295, when King Edward I faced grave military threats from France, Scotland, and Wales. National security and fiscal necessity compelled him to summon what became known as the (then-unicameral) Model Parliament to secure the funding and legislative support required to defend the realm. As Edward wrote in his writ of summons: “[I]nasmuch as a most righteous law of the emperors ordains that what touches all should be approved by all, so it evidently appears that common dangers should be met by remedies agreed upon in common.” Our own Constitution embeds this same logic. The Senate needs to act now for our homeland’s common good. In many instances in 2025-26, the Senate has operated in a state of suspended animation—holding pro forma sessions that allow lawmakers to claim they are “in session” while doing nothing of substance and yet blocking the president’s use of his clear Recess Appointments Clause power, which I have also advised the president to invoke. At all times, Congress (in particular the Senate) should be either in session to perform urgently needed work for the nation or it should be in recess where the president can pick up the slack by making recess appointments so that he can push his energetic executive branch forward. At the moment, however, the Senate often operates in a limbo zone where it does no work and yet denies the president the power to use recess appointments. The conjunction of those two things makes no sense. This is not governance; it is evasion. President Trump needs something dramatic to change the dynamic in the Senate, where a relative handful of holdouts have blocked full funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The recent security lapse left the president, his wife, and his Cabinet exposed. The Secret Service, charged with protecting the Nation’s highest officials, cannot operate effectively in an underfunded Department. By forcing Congress into real session, the president can break the logjam and compel lawmakers to confront their responsibilities. Critics would inevitably raise a familiar objection: the current impasse involves border and immigration funding, not Secret Service appropriations. This is a distinction without a difference. Money is often fungible inside agencies. DHS is a single Cabinet-level department encompassing Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, and more. Appropriations bills frequently allocate funds at the departmental level, leaving internal reallocations to agency leadership under statutory guidelines. A dollar denied for border security is a dollar that cannot be redirected to protective operations when emergencies arise—and vice versa. Full funding for the entire Department eliminates these shell games and ensures that no mission—whether securing the border or safeguarding the president—suffers because of artificial congressional silos. The stakes could not be higher. America watched in horror as a would-be assassin barreled past lax security. What if he had been wearing a suicide-bomb vest and had gotten into the banquet itself? The Secret Service’s own after-action reviews have repeatedly highlighted serious problems at the Secret Service. Yet Congress has treated these warnings as optional. Pro forma sessions allow Senators to return home for fundraisers and ribbon-cuttings while the executive branch is left to improvise protection with inadequate resources. President Trump’s convening power offers him and us a constitutional circuit breaker. He can still keep both chambers in Washington until a clean, comprehensive DHS funding bill reaches his desk—no poison pills, no partial measures, no excuses. Some will wring their hands about “separation of powers.” But the Constitution itself rejects the notion that the president must sit idly by while legislators hide behind procedural tricks. The same document that vests legislative power in Congress also equips the executive with tools to overcome legislative paralysis in emergencies. And it is the Senate’s aggrandizement of power to try to block recess appointments while not even being in session that is the true violation of the separation of powers. The Framers understood that extraordinary occasions—wars, economic collapses, security crises—require decisive leadership. They did not intend for the president to be a mere spectator when the nation’s safety is on the line. Nor is this merely about one agency. Full DHS funding is essential to border security, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and disaster response. Partial funding bills that pit one mission against another only empower those who prefer open borders and lax enforcement. If he demanded funding for all of DHS without exception, President Trump could signal that American sovereignty and the physical safety of our leaders are nonnegotiable. The American people are exhausted by dysfunction. They elected President Trump to restore order, secure the border, and protect the Nation. They did not elect him to preside over endless procedural theater while threats multiply. Even though the ideal moment to act was Saturday night, invoking Article II, Section 3 now would still demonstrate the very leadership the moment requires. He can still tell a grateful nation that the era of congressional evasion is over. Finally, beyond immediate funding, lasting security requires structural change at the White House itself. The White House ballroom must be built in order to avoid security incidents in the future. Modern protective operations demand expanded, purpose-built facilities that allow the Secret Service to control access, screen visitors, and manage events without compromising the historic residence. A single federal judge should not be allowed to try to block such efforts, especially when the objection rests on nothing more substantive than one woman who purports to have her architectural feelings hurt by the new ballroom’s aesthetics. Boo hoo. National security cannot be held hostage to subjective aesthetic complaints or to the whims of a single jurist, let alone both. The executive branch must be free to modernize White House infrastructure when the safety of the president and his family is at stake. History will judge whether President Trump seizes this constitutional tool while it can still have maximum impact. The precedent of English kings confronting national emergencies by summoning Parliament reminds us that Anglo-Saxon executives have always possessed the power—and the duty—to act when legislatures falter. When King Edward I summoned what became known as the Model Parliament in 1295 amid serious military threats from France, Scotland, and Wales, Parliament granted the funding and support needed to defend the realm. This decisive action proved that English monarchs have long recognized the necessity of convening the legislature when the realm faced existential threats. Today’s threat is no less real: determined enemies both within and without, coupled with a Congress seemingly content to sit on its hands. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, is looking to do something about deadly truck crashes involving foreigners. This week, Moreno sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, demanding answers regarding Modou Ngom, an illegal immigrant alleged to be responsible for a deadly incident earlier this month in Ohio. “I write today to bring your attention to an inexcusable failure of our immigration and commercial licensing systems, which led to the tragic death of an Ohio family,” Moreno said in his letter to the secretaries. He wrote in the letter that the “case is not an isolated administrative failure—it is a systemic breakdown with fatal consequences.” Ngom allegedly triggered a chain-reaction crash that killed three people, including a 1-year-old child on 1-71 in Delaware County. Others were seriously injured, and lawsuits against Ngom are being filed. According to Moreno, Ngom is “an illegal immigrant who entered the country unlawfully, falsified his identity, lied to immigration officials to achieve naturalization, fraudulently obtained a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), and established a trucking company on false pretenses.” “Simply put, he is a criminal and should never have been in the U.S. in the first place,” the letter states. Citing the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the senator pointed to a timeline going back to the 1990s, when Ngom first came to the country. Ngom’s Ohio’s driver’s license, obtained under a different name, was said to have been obtained in 2003. He obtained the CDL in 2007. Ngom became a naturalized citizen in the 2010s, using the name of Lamine Gaye, though he later went back to using Ngom. The letter also points to other safety violations. “When the federal government turns a blind eye and fails to police its own borders, it is innocent American families on Ohio roads who pay the ultimate price. It is no surprise to me that this man was not apprehended under the Biden Administration. Nonetheless, lessons must be learned from this preventable tragedy,” Moreno wrote in his letter, pointing to the previous administration’s relaxed immigration enforcement. His letter also applauded President Donald Trump’s handling of the immigration issue. Moreno said President Donald Trump has “taken historic steps to remove illegal aliens from our nation,” and that “when that responsibility is neglected, the consequences are measured in American lives.” Ngom was indicted on counts of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault, though the senator called for more to be done. Crashes by foreign drivers have also impacted other states. “The Department of Justice should bring all appropriate federal charges against Ngom, including, potentially, immigration fraud, false statements, and identity-document crimes. I also encourage the Department of State—if it is determined that Ngom procured U.S. citizenship through fraud or willful misrepresentation—to initiate denaturalization consistent with federal law,” Moreno wrote. The DOT put out a news release in February regarding a rule finalized by Duffy to “stop unqualified foreign drivers from obtaining licenses to drive commercial trucks and buses.”

Rep. Keith Self called for additional federal probes after a watchdog group raised legal and constitutional concerns about a proposed Muslim-centered development in his district. The Oversight Project, a watchdog group, alleges in a new report Thursday that the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC, is violating federal law in spearheading the development of “EPIC City,” a planned 400-acre community outside Dallas, Texas. The development near Josephine, Texas—also referred to as “The Meadow”—would include housing, a mosque, schools, and commercial businesses. “The Oversight Project’s bombshell report indicates that the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) is violating federal tax law, civil rights law, securities law, and housing law. If true, EPIC should have their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status revoked,” Self, a Texas Republican, said. The Justice Department dropped an earlier fair housing investigation into the community, and EPIC has repeatedly said it is in full compliance with the law. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a separate probe into possible housing discrimination. “In addition to the ongoing Housing and Urban Development (HUD) investigation, I am calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch additional probes into EPIC and its affiliates for violating federal law. The rule of law must be upheld,” Self said. But the Oversight Project report notes that the community “sold out within days of its original announcement in 2024.” Epic City ReportDownload The Oversight Project asserts its findings raise issues regarding EPIC’s tax-exempt status since a nonprofit created a for-profit entity known as Community Capital Partners, which functions as the project’s developer. “This explicit financial arrangement—where a nonprofit mosque (i.e., EPIC) has created a for-profit entity (i.e., ERP and/or CCP) that exists solely to funnel all of its profits back to the nonprofit mosque—raises serious constitutional, tax, and practical concerns, especially given that it is geared toward the development of a Sharia-compliant community in EPIC City,” the report says. “The Oversight Project’s legal analysis of this arrangement, consisting of a straightforward application of the relevant bodies of law to our examination of public records returns, finds that EPIC is likely in violation of its 501(c)(3) federal tax-exempt status,” the report continues. Community Capital Partners sold investment shares that were typically priced at $80,000 to individuals seeking to build homes in the community, according to the report. “The Oversight Project posed as a potential investor interested in purchasing a share of property in EPIC City,” the report says. “Marketing materials received through that outreach show EPIC City and CCP sold nearly 500 lots in EPIC City, generating approximately $40 million in capital. Other records show that during the relevant time period, EPIC exclusively marketed the development to Muslims. Thus, it is highly plausible that EPIC raised $40 million in capital by selling plots of land exclusively to Muslims.” The report goes on to assert that if this is going to be a town or governmental jurisdiction, it poses problems for the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. “All actions taken by EPIC to direct, manage, or operate EPIC City should therefore constitute state actions subject to constitutional constraints, including the fundamental public policies concerning religious establishment, exercise, and expression set forth in the First Amendment,” the report says. It further states the project could violate the Texas Fair Housing Act and the federal Fair Housing Act, which ban discrimination based on religion, among other factors. The report notes that developers later “scrubbed its public website and changed the advertising language to claim it will be an inclusive community.” The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division opened a probe last year at the urging of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in June that the DOJ closed its investigation, and “CCP has affirmed that all will be welcome in any future development, and that you plan to revise and develop marketing materials to reinforce that message consistent with your obligations under the Fair Housing Act.” At the state level, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed two lawsuits. The December 2025 suit alleges violations of state securities laws tied to the sale of investment shares. A February action challenges the legality of a municipal utility district created to support the development. A Collin County, Texas, court issued a temporary restraining order on March 19, followed by a temporary injunction on March 30, barring the would-be EPIC Municipal Utility District from taking any further action. Amid the flurry of state and federal probes, Dan Cogdell, an attorney for EPIC City, told the Associated Press his clients have “done nothing illegal and we will cooperate fully with all investigations—regardless of how misguided and unnecessary they are.” Cogdell added allegations “are not only completely without merit and totally misleading but they are dangerous as well.” He said, “These folks are US Citizens, law abiding and Texans.”

In a victory for the Democratic party’s left flank, Maine Democrat Gov. Janet Mills has dropped out of the state’s Senate race, effectively ceding the party’s nomination to Graham Platner to take on Republican incumbent Susan Collins. The 78-year-old governor’s departure, which she says is due to lack of campaign funds, comes after months of trailing Platner in polls and fundraising totals. Maine is an important target for Democrats, who must net an additional four seats in order to gain control of the Senate. “I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills wrote in a Thursday morning statement.  My statement suspending my candidacy for the U.S. Senate: pic.twitter.com/IDs58EfatC— Janet Mills (@JanetMillsforME) April 30, 2026 Mills did not endorse Platner in the statement. In a late March poll from Emerson College, Mills trailed Platner by a 27-point margin, 55% to 28%, with 13% undecided. Before her announcement, Mills’ campaign had cut digital ad buys. Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer, has plenty of baggage, as his opponents have called attention to his past online posts saying that women should “act like an adult” to avoid rape and ridiculing rural white voters and black people. Platner has asked voters to look past his online history, saying, “I’m asking you not to judge me for the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago.” The signs about Janet Mills dropping out from the #MESen race were definitely there – if you knew where to look https://t.co/qZ0CW8JFh7— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) April 30, 2026 Platner has branded himself as an anti-establishment Democrat, blasting Senate Democrats for acceding to Republicans in previous shutdown fights. An ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., he has also accused Israel of committing “genocide” and supported populist proposals such as “Medicare for All.” His campaign has employed strategist Morris Katz, who assisted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign. He will face off against a resilient opponent in Collins, a moderate Republican from a prominent political family seeking a sixth term. In 2020, Collins defeated her Democrat opponent by over eight points despite having trailed in every public poll. Collins said in a statement Thursday, “I’m sure this was a difficult decision for Governor Mills, and I thank her for her decades of service to the people of Maine.” The Daily Signal reached out to Platner’s campaign for comment, but did not hear back by publication time.

Most Americans were glad to get another Tax Day behind them this month. It’s galling to hand over a third of everything you earned last year to government to waste, fraud, and abuse. Consider the raw numbers. Last year the federal government took just over $5 trillion. States and localities took another $2.5 trillion. Out of a total personal income of just $26 trillion, that’s one in three. For perspective, you work for the Feds Monday, you work for your state and locality Tuesday, and you don’t get to put anything in your pocket until hump day. For perspective, a third is roughly 20 times more than the British were trying to tax in the Boston Tea Party. Free at last. Notably, we don’t have tea parties anymore. Partly because they don’t make Americans like they used to, but also because that lost third is hidden: The devil’s brew of income tax withholding, employer taxes that come out of salaries, embedded taxes where the trucker bought diesel, Publix paid property tax, but it’s not listed on the bananas. So where did it go wrong, and how do we make it right? The original sin, of course, was the income tax, passed right before World War I. Indeed, it’s a big reason we had a world war—governments didn’t used to be able to afford them. It was originally billed as a tax on the rich, with a top rate of 7% starting around $15 million in today’s dollars. Perhaps you’ll recognize the sales pitch—billionaires will pay just a few percent, and all will be well. Of course, “tax the rich” was bait as it ratcheted up the rates and ratcheted down who pays, so today the income tax hits everybody over $15,000 and takes a quarter of everything we earn. This does not include the billions of hours Americans spend trying to figure out their taxes under threat of imprisonment if you get it wrong—which is, at least, slightly less painful than a root canal. So what would it take to get rid of federal income tax? It’s actually very easy—Congress could literally pass a bill tomorrow. After all, the 16th amendment allows an income tax; it does not require one. Congress won’t do it. It exists to pillage. But what would happen if the income tax were eliminated? The federal government would lose about $2.5 trillion of funding. They’d have to slash foreign aid, Treasury bailouts for bankers, welfare for the able-bodied, grants to left-wing rioters, overseas wars (one Iran per generation, pace yourself). Even the tax-funded gender reassignment surgeries for inmates and illegal aliens—they’ll have to get Guatemala to pay. In concrete terms, the federal government would shrink to half what it was between the 1920s and the 1950s, back before the welfare industrial complex and the fraud industrial complex it built. In return, you keep the nearly $1,500 a month the median family pays in taxes. But more important, every American would benefit from an enormous boost to economic growth and wages that could triple that to $4,500 a month per family. The reason is that, just like cigarette taxes reduce smoking, income taxes reduce income. They discourage work, entrepreneurship, job creation, and business expansion. And the more productive somebody is, the worse they’re hit. Why would a neurosurgeon work weekends, or a successful rib joint franchise for that matter, if most of it’s going to taxes? President Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed repealing the entire income tax—the first President in history to do so. Polls show overwhelming support for abolishing the IRS and replacing it with a sales tax—including 70% of Republicans and most Democrats. Sadly, Congress has more fun pillaging the republic, even if their voters want to throw the entire tax code into Boston Harbor.