As Congress struggles to pass the SAVE America Act, voters in states across the nation will decide this November on election procedures such as photo ID requirements, citizenship verification, and other election security matters. Two states feature ballot initiatives with both voter ID requirements and calls for some form of citizenship verification and voter list maintenance. California, the largest state in the nation, has Proposition 39. The battleground state of Arizona has Proposition 144. Also, voters in the swing states of Nevada, North Carolina, and the one-time battleground of Ohio will decide on voter ID in November. Voters in solidly red Oklahoma will consider adopting a voter ID requirement in an Aug. 25 election. Citizen-initiated voter ID ballot measures are pending in Colorado and Michigan. This week in California, Attorney General Rob Bonta changed the language of a voter ID ballot measure. The language submitted by supporters stated, “Establishes additional voter identification and citizenship verification requirements.” The attorney general’s office altered the language to read, “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.” “If California passes voter ID, it would be a huge win for three reasons. First, getting this initiative on the ballot in the first place shows that Californians are fed up with the election chaos forced on them year after year by far-left politicians who only seem interested in making a fundamentally broken system even worse,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Daily Signal. “Second, if this measure passes despite the blatant attempt by California’s attorney general to rig the ballot language and mislead the public into voting it down, it would prove just how commonsense voter ID is,” Snead said. “And third, a victory on this measure would finally bring the most basic protections to California’s elections—safeguards California politicians have actually tried to outlaw.” A Bonta spokesperson defended the language change. “When a measure qualifies for the ballot, the Attorney General’s office is required to issue a ballot title and summary and a condensed ballot title and summary,” Bonta’s spokesperson told the Daily Signal in an email. The spokesperson added, “It is not uncommon for the ballot title and summary to change from the circulating version—and this year, all nine voter-proposed initiatives had changes. Our office properly exercised its discretion to provide further clarity to voters about Prop. 39’s chief purpose and points for the ballot stage.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently determined that as many as 190,832 noncitizens were registered to vote in California. Another six states will decide on ballot measures related to citizenship requirements for voting. These states are Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Meanwhile, in Arizona, a proposed constitutional amendment states that only citizens may register to vote. Municipalities and counties in California, Maryland, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. This type of measure would prevent that local option. Voters have approved both state voter ID and citizenship requirements in recent years. From 2018 to 2025, voters have approved 15 state measures providing that only citizens could vote. None of the measures failed, according to Ballotpedia. “Citizenship verification has never lost at the ballot,” Ryan Byrne, Ballotpedia’s Ballots Team managing editor, told the Daily Signal. “I believe the lowest vote total it gained was in Kentucky, with 62%. The highest was in South Carolina with over 80%.” Voter ID laws—despite widespread support in most polls—have been less fortunate at the polls, as three out of 12 measures between 2004 and 2024 were defeated. Voters in Minnesota, Arizona, and Maine defeated the ballot measures, Byrne said. However, he added, this typically occurred when the measures added something beyond just ID. Notably, the Maine proposal in 2025 also had ballot drop box restrictions. He noted that historically, progressives have pushed citizen-initiated ballot initiatives for election procedures, but this year, about 70% of the ballot initiatives on election administration were introduced by conservatives. States are weighing other election-related matters as well. Virginia voters will consider a measure to automatically restore voting rights to felons upon release from prison. Massachusetts voters will consider a top-two primary system to replace the party primary system. This would be similar to California’s process, where the top two vote-getters in a primary—regardless of party affiliation—advance to the general election. The Bay State also has a measure to allow Election Day voter registration. Alaskans are also considering repealing their controversial ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to rank their top four preferred candidates. If no candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round of counting, one candidate is eliminated, and counting continues with the voter’s second or third option. California—in addition to its voter ID measure—is also considering measures to allow taxpayer-funded financing of state campaigns.

The ideological excesses of the American Left are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Political commentator Hasan Piker recently appeared in a Mao jacket—a conspicuous tribute to the Chinese dictator whose regime was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people—before addressing college students. Around the same time, Melat Kiros, a Democratic Socialists of America candidate in Colorado, declared that America would stop “exploiting the world” only after the country elects enough immigrants from the Global South. That is more than a campaign slogan. It reflects an ideology that seeks to replace America’s founding principles with an entirely different worldview. The philosophy has a name: third-worldism. At its core is the belief that Western civilization is uniquely oppressive and that America can only redeem itself by surrendering cultural and political authority to those viewed as its historical victims. Variations of this worldview have gained traction on college campuses, within the DSA and among activist movements across the country. Conservatives are right to challenge those ideas. But confronting a radical Left does not require creating a radical Right. That distinction became especially important this week after social media personality Andrew Tate—who has openly described himself as a pimp and faces allegations of rape and human trafficking—was arrested. Rather than welcoming the legal process, portions of the political Right responded with silence or outright defense of Tate, a reaction that should concern anyone who claims to value conservative principles. The Right will not defeat left-wing transgression by embracing its own version of transgression. It wins only by demonstrating moral seriousness, defending institutions worth preserving, and offering a coherent alternative rooted in responsibility rather than outrage. Americans should never feel obligated to apologize for Western civilization or for the principles that built the United States. A nation that refuses to defend itself is not displaying generosity; it is surrendering its future. At the same time, conservatives should recognize that victory is never guaranteed. The Left’s ideological excesses may appear politically self-destructive, but the Right is fully capable of squandering its own advantages. That happens when conservatives become consumed by conspiracy theories, excuse indefensible behavior simply because it comes from perceived allies, or discard the very ideals they claim to defend. The reaction to the Tate case illustrates that danger. A law-abiding citizen should have no objection to alleged sex traffickers facing arrest and prosecution under the rule of law. Yet a growing faction on the Right appears deeply invested in portraying Andrew and Tristan Tate as political martyrs rather than men facing longstanding allegations that have followed them for years. That instinct reflects a broader problem. Some reactionary conservatives have come to distrust virtually every institution in Western society, mirroring the same anti-institutional impulse that characterizes much of the modern Left. If every court, every law enforcement agency and every legal proceeding is presumed corrupt whenever it involves someone on “our side,” then principled conservatism gives way to tribalism. That attitude was on display in comments from Paul Ingrassia, acting general counsel for the General Services Administration, who emphasized that the presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of the American legal system. On that point, he is correct. Every defendant deserves due process, and guilt is determined in a court of law—not by public opinion. But due process does not require the public to ignore a person’s own statements or conduct. When someone publicly boasts about behavior that closely resembles the conduct underlying criminal allegations, citizens are not obligated to suspend their judgment entirely while a legal case proceeds. The presumption of innocence governs criminal conviction, not private opinion. Ingrassia also argued that politically motivated prosecutions threaten democratic society. That concern is legitimate in the abstract, but it is difficult to apply convincingly to defendants who have faced allegations involving sexual abuse and human trafficking for years, well before their recent prominence in American political discourse. Republicans and conservatives should resist the temptation to rally around every controversial figure simply because the Left dislikes them. Political coalitions built around grievance rather than principle eventually lose sight of what they are supposed to conserve. The greatest threat to conservatism is not simply the rise of the DSA or the spread of third-worldist ideology. It is the willingness of some on the Right to abandon their own standards in the belief that defeating the Left requires embracing anyone who opposes it. A movement that trades its principles for expediency may win attention in the short term, but it will struggle to win lasting political victories. Conservatism cannot preserve American ideals by discarding them in pursuit of the next cultural battle. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Seven members of the Little Sisters of the Poor left their order’s motherhouse in La Tour Saint-Joseph, France, on Aug. 28, 1868, and headed for the coast. Three days later, they boarded the Napoleon III steamship and began a trip across the Atlantic.  Two weeks later, they arrived in New York.  Then, a few days after that, they established their first American nursing home in Brooklyn.  “On September 20 they welcomed their first old pensioner, a woman eighty-two years of age,” says a history of the order published in 1902.  One of the sisters then wrote back to the motherhouse about how well received they were in this American city.  “The public appear delighted to see that the Little Sisters of the Poor are willing to work for the poor; that they ask no endowment; that they desire to trust in Providence and in the generosity of the public,” she said. “Neither the population of New York nor of Brooklyn seem to be roused on seeing the habit of the Little Sisters; I have not even seen the shadow of a hostile demonstration.”  Now, 158 years later, the government of the state of New York is taking a much different approach to the Little Sisters of the Poor and three other orders of Catholic nuns who care for the elderly and the ill. It is seeking to limit their religious liberty.  In February, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the euphemistically titled “Medical Aid in Dying Act,” which legalized assisted suicide in the state and mandated various levels of cooperation from health care providers.  “Our state will always stand firm in safeguarding New Yorkers’ freedoms and right to bodily autonomy, which includes the right for the terminally ill to peacefully and comfortably end their lives with dignity and compassion,” Hochul said in a statement when she signed the law.  “New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths—I firmly believe we made the right decision,” she said.  Hochul claimed this law had a viable religious exemption. Among the “guardrails” it included, her statement said, was “[a]llowing religiously-oriented home hospice providers to opt out of offering medical aid in dying” and providing that “no health care professional or religiously affiliated health facility would be forced to offer medical aid in dying.”  Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, adamantly opposed this law. “Governor Hochul’s decision to sign into law the assisted suicide bill is a tragedy and a grave moral failure,” he wrote. “In explaining her decision, the governor invoked personal liberty—the right of the individual to make determinations about the direction of his/her life. Sadly, this law facilitates abuse and manipulation of the elderly, the disabled, and those who suffer from mental or emotional illnesses.”  “Our Catholic institutions cannot and will not participate in physician-assisted suicide,” he wrote. “We will continue to proclaim the love of God for every individual person, created in His image, that endures every circumstance, and we will never abandon the sick and suffering to death. We will care for them until the end of their natural lives.”  Last week, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit against New York on behalf of Bishop Barre and four orders of Catholic nuns, namely the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict.   This lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, argues that despite the New York law’s narrow religious exemption, it would still require these religious institutions to cooperate in the process of assisted suicide in a way that violates their religious freedom and freedom of speech.  “New York … forces religious providers to participate fully in the informing, counseling, and qualifying stages of assisted suicide,” says Becket’s complaint.  “[I]ndividual physicians are exempt only from the very last step in the process of assisting in a patient’s suicide,” it says. “The MAID Act states only that they are not ‘under any duty, by law or contract, to participate in the provision of medication to a patient under this article.'”  “This narrow exemption means physicians are required to participate in the rest of the elaborate process of informing patients about their ability to commit suicide using lethal drugs or qualifying a patient to obtain those drugs,” says the complaint.  When a doctor declines for religious reasons to actually administer life-ending drugs to a patient, the doctor is still required by this New York law to participate in transferring the patient to a different health care facility.  “If a physician is ‘unable or unwilling to participate in the provision of medication to a patient,’ then the physician ‘shall transfer or arrange for the transfer, upon request, of a copy of the patient’s relevant medical records to the new health care provider,'” says the Becket complaint.  The law imposes the same requirements on religious health care institutions. “New York likewise forces religious healthcare facilities to participate fully in the informing, counseling and qualifying stages of assisted suicide,” says the complaint.  “If a patient in an objecting facility requests lethal drugs to commit suicide, the objecting facility ‘shall’ transfer the patient ‘promptly to another health care facility that is reasonably accessible under the circumstances and willing to permit the prescribing, dispensing, ordering and self-administering’ of lethal suicide drugs,” says the complaint.  The Becket complaint cited the Catholic teaching on euthanasia and assisted suicide as explained in “Dignitas Infinita,” a declaration issued by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.  “[H]elping the suicidal person to take his or her own life,” said this declaration by the Catholic Church, “is an objective offense against the dignity of the person asking for it, even if one would be thereby fulfilling the person’s wish: ‘We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide.’”  Requiring Catholic nuns or health care institutions to in any way facilitate assisted suicide violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. New York’s law should be struck down.  COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal. 

Amid celebrations of our nation’s 250th birthday, Gallup serves up a sobering portrait of general dissatisfaction with our nation’s core institutions.  “Confidence in U.S. institutions Remains Near All-Time Low,” reports Gallup.   Of 14 core institutions—banks, big business, labor, the presidency, Congress, schools, health care, etc.—only 27% say they have “a great deal/quite a lot of confidence,” one point above the all-time low for this average.  In 1979, the percentage expressing “a great deal/quite a lot of confidence” in these 14 core institutions stood at 48%.  One explanation is the double-edged sword of the growth of government. More government means more inefficiency. At the same time, the more government control grows, the harder it is to change and reform. More government, more interest groups, more lobbying to keep the status quo.   Let’s consider education.   Per Gallup, only 27% say they have high confidence in our public schools. The highest it’s been since 1993 was 41%.  Any marketplace in which three-quarters of consumers are unhappy with the product they’re getting would see intense activity by suppliers to change what they are delivering. That’s when the marketplace is free.  But when the market is dominated by government and unions, the best interests of the consumer—in the case of education, parents and children—do not rule. Powerful interest groups that profit from the status quo use money and power to block change.  When only 27% are satisfied with our public schools, how can we possibly understand that only 28 states have opted in to the new Education Freedom $1,700 federal tax credit to contribute to scholarship funds to help parents privately educate their children?  The answer is 25 of the 28 states that have opted in are Republican states. Democrats are subservient to the hundreds of millions of political contributions from the teachers’ unions and their agenda to indoctrinate our kids with progressive values.  The results—pathetic test scores—speak for themselves.  But now we can see what happens when governors really care about children and families, put learning as their priority, and let the marketplace work to give parents freedom to choose what they see as best for their kids.   Under the leadership of Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas set up its Education Freedom Accounts program, establishing a platform through which parents have available scholarship funding to use to choose where to send their children to school.   Data is now coming in for the program, now in its second year.   Per a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, students participating in the Education Freedom Account program “outperformed nearly 60% of students nationwide in math and English on standardized assessments.”  Further, per the report, there are almost 50,000 students now using these accounts and 81% of K-12 parents support the program—up 20 points from 2023.  The Education Freedom Accounts provided $6,684-$7,627 to each student for educational expenses.  Blue New York state has not opted in to the Education Freedom Tax Credit.  Investor Jeff Yass noted in the Wall Street Journal that, despite New York City spending $42,000 per student in its public schools, scores in math and reading are dismal.   Yass suggests to New York City socialist mayor Mamdani that the $42,000 be split in half, giving a scholarship voucher worth $21,000 for each child and the other $21,000 into a savings account in the child’s name. After 13 years, when the child graduates high school, there would be $300,000 accumulated—assuming a paltry 2% annual interest rate—for college.   We celebrate America’s 250th birthday with joy, even though a lot is not what it should or could be.   Freedom is precious and magnificent because it leaves the door perpetually open for renewal.   One party, Democrats, thinks that freedom is the problem.  Republicans know that freedom is the answer.  Young new Republican leaders such as Sanders are shining examples of the great potential ahead. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal. 

Speaker Mike Johnson pulled off another unlikely feat getting a divided Republican conference to pass a bill providing Iran war funding and supporting state voter ID requirements. This time, he had a hand from Vice President JD Vance, who worked the phones behind the scenes to get skeptical conservative members on board, sources familiar with the matter tell the Daily Signal.  Overcoming numerous divisions within the conference, House Republicans on Wednesday successfully passed a framework for reconciliation 3.0, which included $95 billion in spending for the Iran war and parts of the SAVE America Act.  The Senate’s process of reconciliation, used for certain budget-related items, bypasses the filibuster, requiring only a simple majority vote for passage instead of the usual 60 votes. Several fiscal hawks in the House raised concerns that the bill did not include pay-fors for the massive spending on the Iran war.  While conservatives were enthusiastic about passing parts of the SAVE America Act, they feared the provisions would offer only optional funding to states that agree to require voter ID and ban mail-in ballots, not changes to blue-state election policies.  However, Vance called several members and reassured them the White House was serious about passing the full SAVE America Act, not a watered-down, optional version, the senior House staffer told the Daily Signal.  Vance also held a private meeting with members on July 15 to answer their questions about the bill.  According to Main Street Caucus Chair Mike Flood, R-Neb., White House Office of Legislative Counsel Director James Braid was responsible for helping the House understand the vision behind the reconciliation push. Braid spoke at the Main Street member meeting last Monday. “The White House did their job, our leadership did their job, and the caucuses did their job,” he said.  Originally, the reconciliation 3.0 bill was supposed to fund the Iran war and cut wasteful spending to pay for it. However, Braid explained that this couldn’t pass the Senate, so the direction of the bill needed to be adjusted.  “We had to write a bill that would be tough to turn down in the Senate, and if we made it complicated,” Flood said, “I have no doubt that it would just lay on the Senate floor and go nowhere.” Flood doesn’t think the bill could have passed without the White House’s involvement. He says the House “couldn’t have had a better week.” “I don’t think this would have gotten off the ground in the House without the White House’s involvement,” he said. “Every time they choose to provide leadership on something this big, it makes the process work a lot better, especially when you’ve got 220 different ideas about how to approach it.” Now, President Donald Trump is urging the Senate to quickly complete the job. “I am asking that the Senate adopt a Budget Resolution, which can pass with a simple Majority, before leaving for the August recess,” Trump said on Truth Social Friday. “We are ready to work side-by-side with the Senate to get this done for the American People!”