By having its kangaroo court in Hong Kong convict media magnate Jimmy Lai of trumped-up national security charges, China has reminded the world it’s still a communist dictatorship where human dignity, let alone human rights, have no place in the regime’s considerations. On Jimmy Lai, Trump says he asked China's Xi to consider his release. "He's an older man, and he's not well, so I did put that request out." pic.twitter.com/v7gbfJMpC5— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 15, 2025 Taiwan, take heed: China’s communist leaders would also destroy your island and take away your freedom. China destroyed Hong Kong, even though it promised the former colonial power, Britain, and the world, it would respect its separate system for 50 years after Britain handed the city to Beijing in 1997. The conviction of Lai under the national security law that Red China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 is a sham. President Trump should work to reverse this verdict through diplomatic channels and next time he meets China’s dictator Xi Jinping, in an encounter expected to take place next year. The U.S., in fact, is directly implicated in the case. The 800-page verdict by three judges selected by China’s satrapy in Hong Kong said that Lai had extended a “constant invitation” to the U.S. government to bring down the Chinese government. Lai denied all charges. Indeed, after the law took effect, Lai even stopped calling for sanctions on China to make it comply with its promises to Britain. But the verdict said Lai persisted in his supposed collusion, “continuing though in a less explicit way.” After the verdict, China‘s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office rubbed salt in the wound by calling Lai a “running dog” and a “lackey,” of outside forces. This showed once again, by using language straight out of the Cultural Revolution, that shiny new buildings may litter Shanghai, and the roads of China’s cities may now be cluttered with cars, not bicycles, but China’s leadership today continues to be Maoist. “For a long time, Lai opposed China at every turn, colluded with foreign and external forces, and committed all manner of wrongdoing against Hong Kong and the country,” said the statement. Lai’s 30-year-old son Sebastien told reporters in London that “In the 800-page verdict they have there is essentially nothing, nothing that incriminates him. This is a perfect example of how the national security law has been molded and weaponized against someone who essentially said stuff that they didn’t like.” “This verdict proves that the authorities still fear our father, even in his weakened state, for what he represents,” said Lai’s daughter Claire in a statement. “We stand by his innocence and condemn this miscarriage of justice.” Jimmy is a Roman Catholic, a kind, generous, intensely intelligent man who is a democrat to the core. He used his Apple Daily newspaper to print the truth even after 1997. I know he was warned repeatedly by those close to him to flee Hong Kong. He refused because he is also the most courageous man I know. And I do know him. Jimmy has been a friend for three decades. I used to visit his house in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula often when I was in Hong Kong with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, enjoy his generosity, and especially the Cantonese cuisine of his personal chef. Sebastien, then a young child, used to run around mischievously while the adults talked. That is what I treasured and miss the most: our long talks about politics, philosophy, and devotion to God. He once said to me, “liberty is like oxygen, you take it for granted until someone takes it away. Then you do everything you can to regain it.”  I can tell you that Jimmy is an extraordinary person, well worth trying to save. Lai Chee-ying washed up on the British colony as a stow away from his native Canton in 1959, when he was only 12. From nothing, he built a business empire. He first started in the garment industry, with the Giordano clothing retailer he founded. China then forced him to get rid of it. He also founded Next Magazine, in 1990, which later became Next Media, parent company to Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s best-selling newspaper. Apple refused to buckle to China’s communists.  They continued to print the truth, which is why this good man—a diabetic who just turned 78—is in solitary confinement, his fingernails reportedly changing color and falling off, as his health rapidly deteriorates. Think about that next time China’s propagandists, and its running dogs right here in this country, in sports, the entertainment industry, and media, try to tell you that China is a normal country. The post Free Jimmy Lai appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently, the Trump administration, as most administrations do at the beginning of their four-year term, issued a National Security Strategy—I guess we would call it a white paper—outlining the approach of the administration to foreign affairs and the protection of the security in the United States. It’s written in a different style than past reports, different than the first term. And it has a lot of emphasis, as most do, on sections of the world. But what has caused the most controversy are two things. Abroad, the report tells Europe that it’s experiencing “civilizational erasure,” and gives advice to the Europeans about what they must do to correct that, but in a manner of brotherly love or help, which the Europeans, of course, will see as condescending and interference into their internal affairs, except they want us to do it in the NATO part of the equation, but not the EU part. And that’s caused a lot of controversy. The other is, the critics feel that it’s not critical enough of Russia and China. But if you read it very carefully, the whole point of its Pacific discussion is to bolster the alliances of Japan and South Korea, and to warn China to keep away from Taiwan and Australia. And then, when we get to the economic domestic aspects of the National Security Strategy, it’s all aimed at China. It’s all aimed at China. It just says that we cannot be a successful, dominant power in the world, and we don’t want any other power to be dominant. And by inference, that’s Russia and China. But on matters of trade, under matters of natural resources, under matters of the South China Sea, it’s aimed at China. And it does say explicitly that the old paradigm that previous, both Republican and Democratic, presidencies had adhered to, namely, the more money you invest from us and put it over there in China, and the more that you import their products here, even though you’re dealing with an asymmetrical trade system—and I think the report uses the word that it’s free but not fair—don’t kid yourself. That ensuing prosperity will not create a huge consumer class who desires freedom and liberty and then will become a force for the democratization of China. That’s not gonna happen. Instead, that foreign exchange extravaganza will be put into the largest ship-building—and I mean military ship-building—the largest aircraft production, and the largest small arms and major arms industry in such a short time that we’ve ever seen. And that’s what China’s doing. And that is outlined. The other controversy is: Why didn’t the National Security Strategy be more condemning of Russian President Vladimir Putin? It says that the Europeans have promised to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on military matters and have promised to increase that to 5%, which would be extraordinary. And of course, the paper says that they should and they must be watched to keep their promises, but it doesn’t really condemn Vladimir Putin in the strongest of terms. Basically, it is saying that the Ukraine war must come to an end. But why is that controversial? It’s the largest war on the European continent since World War II. The dead now exceed Stalingrad. The Ukrainian military’s average age is approaching the late 30s, maybe even 40s. Ukraine has probably lost 300,000 dead, wounded, and killed. The Russians are probably at 1.3 million. So, the inference of the strategic assessment is that war should end before Ukraine is overwhelmed, unless the Europeans suddenly get religion and they wanna spend 5% immediately, and they want to pour sophisticated weapons systems, without restrictions, into Ukraine. But I don’t think the assessment sees correctly that that’s gonna happen. So, it’s pretty common sense. Do you wanna have an ongoing, bleeding Stalingrad or Verdun or Somme right on the borders of Europe? The other subtext is, they want some type—the people, the authors, it’s pretty clear by inference that they would like Russia to be strategically calculated as a foil to China and vice versa. That’s getting back to Henry Kissinger’s we’re gonna be no better friend, no worse enemy to China than it is to Russia, than to Russia, than it is to China. A triangular type of strategic relationship that does not allow those two powers—one with 6,000 to 7,000 nuclear weapons and a huge amount of oil, the other with 1.4 billion people and probably the largest conventional military, other than our own, in the world—to combine, strategically, along with their subsidiaries like North Korea and Iraq. Finally, two things, very quickly. It puts a lot of emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine, the new Monroe Doctrine. And it basically says, why have we allowed Panama to be colonized—the Panama Canal—by the Chinese? Why do we have Russians and Chinese and Iranians involved in narco-terrorism, in the case of Venezuela, maybe Colombia, maybe some other South American illiberal, totalitarian governments? Why are we allowing the Chinese to assemble products in Mexico to evade our tariffs, when Mexico is supposedly a friend, hand in glove is helping the Chinese cheat on tariffs when they’re running $171 billion trade surplus with us, $63 billion in remittances? Probably $20 billion in additional cartel revenues from human trafficking and fentanyl. And then, of course, the main concern of the strategic assessment in the Western Hemisphere is, they’re killing 75,000 Americans a year. A year. And it’s not just a bunch of people who it’s their own fault, why are they taking drugs? It’s a lot of these drugs that are fentanyl and dangerous opiates are laced to look like prescription drugs and, you know, recreational drugs. So, if you have a daughter or son who goes to a party and someone says, “Take a Valium,” that could be fentanyl and kill them. And that’s by intent, on the part of the Chinese. So, it wants to rectify the presence of China, stop the narco-terrorism that’s sponsored by or occurs with the help of Russia and China. And in that matter, it’s a new Monroe Doctrine. And then, finally, very quickly, it says we can’t do any of this if we don’t have a fast-growing economy with plenty of affordable energy that is not dependent on rare earth and other precious minerals and resources being imported by our enemies. And we need a low inflationary, high GDP economy, and we’re going to do that by deregulation, tax reductions, measured reciprocal tariffs, and, of course, much more oil and gas. And the result of that, they feel, will be that the United States, being much more careful not to intervene explicitly—it says in the assessment not to intervene on the ground and get into a Middle East war. And that’s a reaction to $1.3 trillion spent in Iraq, another trillion-plus spent in Afghanistan 20 years later to the most illiberal government in the world, with some of its expatriates shooting and killing Americans here in the United States. And in the hands of the Taliban was what the Afghan misadventure ended up as, as we saw under the Biden administration in 2021, that terrible August. And finally, the Iraqi misadventure, we don’t know how that will end up. It’s probably better than Saddam Hussein. But the question is, we lost a lot of wonderful Americans, we spent a lot of money, and we don’t wanna repeat that. So, it’s not Fortress America in isolation. It’s Fortress America, much better to help its friends and hurt its enemies and be the dominant power in the world today. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s New National Security Strategy Holds China’s Feet to the Fire appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump has declared fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.   “With this historic executive order I will sign today, we’re formerly classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is,” the president said at the White House Monday. “No bomb does what this is doing,” Trump added.   BREAKING: President Trump just declared FENTANYL a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION.This critical step unleashes every tool to combat the cartels & foreign networks responsible for flooding communities with this deadly substance—the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18-45. pic.twitter.com/C9YXC53kzK— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 15, 2025 Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is highly lethal. Even a small amount equivalent to a few crystals of salt can be enough to kill a grown adult. Today, fentanyl remains the leading cause of death for Americans between the age of 18-45.   In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, drug overdose deaths, primarily driven by fentanyl, spiked to as high as 100,000 or more a year. In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 48,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid—mainly, fentanyl—poisonings and overdoses.  The fentanyl crisis has played a significant role in the policymaking conversations related to securing the U.S. southern border. It has become a common practice of drug cartels to lace other drugs with fentanyl, meaning consumers of the drug often do not know what they are ingesting, which has led to the tragic spike in fentanyl poisonings.   The precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl flow out of China to South and Central America before making their way into the U.S. through ports or land borders. In November, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that China had agreed to take action to stop the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals out of China.   “These substances are now banned, and they will no longer be utilized by the Mexican drug trafficking organizations or any other [drug trafficking organizations] around the world to make this drug,” the FBI director said, calling the agreement a “historic achievement.”    Customs and Border Protection agents continue to seize fentanyl at the border and U.S. ports, but seizures did decline in fiscal year 2025.   In fiscal year 2023, CBP seized 27,000 pounds of fentanyl. Seizures fell to 21,900 pounds in 2024 and declined again in fiscal year 2025 to 12,000 pounds.   The post Trump Declares Lethal Drug a ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Even a year later, it’s hard to wrap your head around the upside-down world of the Biden administration: The White House celebrated transgender ideology on Easter Sunday, your tax dollars funded the settlement of immigrants who broke the law to come here, and authorities turned to an Antifa-linked group whose “hate map” inspired an act of terror for advice on combatting domestic terrorism. I want to dwell on that last point, because I am testifying in Congress about it Tuesday, and I think it highlights the threats conservatives still face from an organization too many Democrats continue to trust. Among the many left-wing NGOs that called the shots in the Biden administration, the Southern Poverty Law Center stands out. This organization claims to monitor “hate” yet fosters animus against conservative Christians. It claims to support “inclusive education,” but demonizes moms and dads who want a say in what their children learn. It claims to oppose “extremism” yet refuses to condemn Antifa, even though agitators loosely connected with that movement caused the most destructive riots in U.S. history in 2020, riots that led to the deaths of at least 26 Americans. The SPLC sued Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy but today, it puts mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits on a “hate map” with Klan chapters, claiming to reveal the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The SPLC uses the “hate map” for two goals: to scare donors into ponying up cash and to demonize its political opponents, narrowing the parameters of socially acceptable debate. If you oppose the SPLC’s agenda, you might just find yourself on the map. Do you support the enforcement of immigration law? You might be an “anti-immigrant hate group,” even if you have legal immigrants on your board. Do you oppose the grotesque medical interventions euphemistically described as “gender-affirming care?” You might be an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” even if your organization consists of doctors. Do you oppose “drag queen story hour?” You might just be an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” even if your membership is gay and lesbian. Inspiring… Well, Terrorism Of course, not everyone who sees the “hate map” knows it’s a fundraising ploy or a political weapon. In 2012, an LGBTQ activist saw the conservative Christian organization Family Research Council on the “hate map,” and decided he’d shoot everyone in the building. The building manager foiled his plan, and he’s now a convicted terrorist serving 25 years in prison. Earlier this year, the SPLC added Turning Point USA—the largest conservative youth grassroots organization in the country—to the “hate map.” The assassination of TPUSA Founder Charlie Kirk followed months later. The SPLC condemned both attacks—but has yet to remove either group from the “hate map.” Antifa While the SPLC’s former president condemned Antifa once in 2017, the group has repeatedly carried water for the violent movement. The “hate map,” for instance, includes the parental rights group Moms For Liberty as an “antigovernment extremist group,” but fails to include Antifa agitators, who have hurled Molotov cocktails at government buildings. The SPLC has minimized Antifa violence as “skirmishes and property crimes.” In 2023, authorities arrested an SPLC lawyer, charging him with domestic terrorism for his alleged role in an Antifa riot. The SPLC also hired a woman who had been described as “antifa’s secret weapon against far-right extremists.” According to researcher Jennica Pounds, better known as Data Republican, an internal Antifa document praises the SPLC as a “great resource” for tracking “fascists.” Domestic Terrorism Advice Yet when President Joe Biden took office, federal agencies reached out to the SPLC “to solicit” expertise “to help shape the policies” to “counter the domestic terrorism threat,” then-SPLC President Margaret Huang said in a 2021 donor meeting. The Biden White House hosted SPLC leaders and staff at least 18 times. The FBI cited the SPLC in its notorious memo on “radical-traditional Catholics.” Biden nominated SPLC attorney Nancy Abudu to a federal judgeship, and the White House touted the SPLC in its strategy to combat antisemitism. SPLC leaders also had close ties with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, taking part in “quarterly meetings.” An SPLC staffer even spoke at a symposium for prosecutors, briefing them on the “anti-LGBTQ movement.” An Abiding Threat Conservatives often scoff at the SPLC, and a recent YouGov survey shows that the center has a negative 19% favorability rating among self-identified Republicans. Yet that same survey finds that 39% of Democrats view the group favorably, and the SPLC enjoys 8% favorability among U.S. adults. In other words, Biden is no longer president, and the Trump administration is excising the SPLC’s influence, but that doesn’t mean a future left-leaning administration won’t go right back to using the SPLC. The fact that our own government worked with a group that compares mainstream conservatives to the Klan just for the sin of disagreeing with the SPLC’s agenda, and that seems happy to look the other way on leftist street violence, should send a shiver down our spines. This group is contributing to the distrust and polarization of America, and it should be radioactive to both conservatives and liberals alike. The post UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD: Biden Admin Sought Domestic Terrorism Guidance From Leftist Group Linked to Antifa appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., designed to protect children nationally from transgender procedures that disrupt children’s biology and development. Greene’s legislation, called the Protect Children’s Innocent Act, would make it a felony to perform surgery, administer medication, or provide other procedures to a child for the purpose of changing his or her body to correspond to a sex different from his or her biological sex. The penalty for committing such a crime would be up to 10 years in federal prison and/or a fine. Greene has led the effort in the House, but the Georgia congresswoman’s shocking resignation left many in Washington wondering if the Protect Children’s Innocence Act would get a vote before she resigned her seat on Jan. 5, 2026. The Georgia congresswoman has pushed hard for a vote on this legislation that would enshrine into federal law some of what President Donald Trump wrote in an executive order issued in January. That executive order stopped the federal government’s support for transgender procedures for minors. Greene’s bill is slated to get a vote on the House floor this week. She secured a vote on the legislation from House leadership in exchange for her support of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is the legislation that governs the budget and expenditures for national defense. I made a deal and changed my NO vote on the rule to a Yes in exchange for a floor vote next week on my bill that is one of President Trump’s key campaign promises and executive orders.Leader Steve Scalise has promised me that my bill Protect Children’s Innocence Act, H.R. 3492,…— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) December 10, 2025 The legislation redefines chemical castration and genital or bodily mutilation in the federal code, while providing clear exemptions for treatment of certain rare genetic conditions and medical emergencies testified to by a doctor. Importantly, there would not be exemptions for nebulous claims of mental health issues. This means puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments for children, which transgender advocates call “gender-affirming care,” would be banned by federal law. “Left-wing activists and medical institutions are targeting America’s children with dangerous drugs, disfiguring surgeries, and permanent sterilization,” Greene said in a previous statement.  “My bill stops the mutilation of kids and holds those responsible for performing or facilitating these barbaric procedures accountable,” Greene added.  The bill has more than 40 co-sponsors in the House including Reps. Mary Miller of Illinois, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Riley Moore of West Virginia, and Eric Burlison of Missouri. The legislation has been endorsed by Citizens for Renewing America, the American Principles Project, Independent Women, Gays Against Groomers, CPAC, and Moms for Liberty. The bill also prevents federal funds from being used for so-called gender-affirming care or to subsidize health insurance plans that cover such procedures. It prohibits federal employees and facilities from performing these procedures, and bars qualified health plans from providing coverage for gender-affirming care. It also stops institutions of higher education that receive federal funding from offering instruction on gender-affirming care. When JD Vance was running for Senate, I was the first member of Congress to endorse him. After he was sworn in, we got to work. JD joined me by introducing the Senate companion of my bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, to END the genital mutilation of kids.We must end… pic.twitter.com/R4VVP79zTx— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) July 17, 2024 The bill would also empower minors who have had been subjected to transgender procedures to bring a civil action lawsuit against the perpetrators of the procedures for compensatory and punitive damages. Furthermore, any non-U.S. national who performs such procedures would also be inadmissible and deportable under the proposed law.  If Greene’s bill fails, there are other bills to ban transgender procedures for minors that House Republicans could bring to the floor. The Chloe Coe Act, for example, would prohibit medical institutions from performing transgender procedures on children and also provides a right of civil action for damages. The post MTG’s Last Legislative Push Before Resigning House Seat Aims to Deliver on MAGA Promise appeared first on The Daily Signal.