Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced this week that the Federal Aviation Administration launched a new initiative to “streamline commercial space licensing.” The decision removes barriers for companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin to further advance space exploration. “America won the first Space Race, and we can do it again—but only if we get government red tape out of the way,” Duffy said. “That’s why President [Donald] Trump has charged USDOT with unlocking the final frontier and re-establishing the United States’ dominance in space.” This initiative, under the FAA, would waive “unnecessary environmental laws” that the department says are “slowing American innovation.” In cutting this red tape, the department says the proposed rule will not impact requirements protecting public health and safety, property, national security, or foreign policy interests. The FAA can now fast-track commercial space launch licensing. Companies with FAA commercial launch licenses could be approved more quickly to launch rockets, re-enter spacecraft, and operate launch and re-entry sites. In a month, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to embark on a journey to discover the unknowns of our universe!Launching 9 months ahead of schedule, Roman is slated to lift off no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30 aboard a @SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. pic.twitter.com/rz7QAlYRJJ— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) July 30, 2026 “Commercial space activity is surging, and we must do everything safely possible to support this vital sector,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said. “The bottom line is clear: we will not keep pace with this rapid growth unless we streamline, modernize, and strengthen our regulatory approach.” According to the Department of Transportation, the FAA has authorized more commercial space operations in the past five years than in the previous three decades. The increase is due to the administration’s overall push for space exploration. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we are supercharging commercial space activity, slashing costs, and strengthening America’s competitive edge in this vital field,” Duffy continued. LIVE FROM SPACE: President Donald J. Trump Calls Artemis II Astronauts After Breaking the Farthest Distance Record in Human Spaceflight HISTORIC!"Your mission paves the way for America's return to the lunar surface very soon." pic.twitter.com/1TzmIEQG0l— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 7, 2026 The proposed rule follows the 2025 executive order Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry, which pushed for an increase in U.S.-based commercial launches. It also instructed Duffy to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for licenses and permits. The FAA can now waive requirements from 13 federal laws for certain licenses. According to the department, this includes laws from the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, parts of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and several other environmental and natural resource laws.

This week, Dr. Amy Acton’s team held a virtual meeting nearly a month after the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee offered comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding state laws protecting women’s sports. As Acton told the Toledo Blade on June 30, “I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor, I will enforce and uphold the law.” Among those taking issue with Acton’s comments were the Ohio Democratic Progressive Caucus and Arienne Childrey, a transgender candidate running for the 84th House District. Although Childrey previously mentioned having “high hopes” for a meeting with Acton, the campaign “made no commitments to any sort of action to repair the damage, and they completely refused to offer a retraction of her prior comments.” Childrey also claimed that LGBTQ+ “voices were actively suppressed,” and some “were refused entry” into the meeting. It took involvement from the chair of the Pride Caucus calling and putting Childrey on live speakerphone. “All in all, this felt like a meeting designed to pacify the LGBTQ+ community and allies, without any real commitment to change or making amends for past harm,” Childrey said in a statement. The statement concluded with Childrey extending “a direct invitation” to Acton, calling for “real explanations” and “a conversation that includes a public commitment to repair the damage she has caused.” "And to be clear, this is all about people, because trans youth are not 'issues,' they are people. Trans adults are not 'issues,' we are people." pic.twitter.com/gMsDZQazoS— Arienne Childrey (@Ari4Ohio) July 29, 2026 Childrey did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment. About half of states, including Ohio, have laws on the books protecting women’s sports. Ohio’s law, HB 68, went into effect in 2024 after the Legislature overrode a December 2023 veto from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Since making the comments, Acton has seen more pushback from liberal constituents. Equality Ohio downgraded Acton’s score from an “A” to “pending,” according to the Buckeye Flame. A statement from the LGBTQ+ advocacy group noted comments like Acton’s “are extremely harmful” and “reflect a broader pattern of scapegoating trans people.” The statement also noted that the pending grade reflects the group’s belief “that accountability is still possible, and that the door remains open at this time.” “Should Dr. Acton choose to take meaningful steps forward, we will update the status accordingly,” the group added.

A suspended state representative In Georgia has pleaded guilty in federal court to unemployment fraud dealings made during the COVID-19 pandemic era. Sharon Henderson, the third official in a string of Georgia Democrats to plead guilty, admitted to fraudulent unemployment dealings resulting from the 2020 pandemic, collecting a total of $17,811. “While running for and holding political office, Representative Henderson was fleecing taxpayers, lying to steal money from federal programs intended to help people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic,” U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg said in a press release. “Her prosecution and conviction demonstrate that elected officials who enrich themselves through fraud will be held accountable for violating the public’s trust.” In June 2020, while running for election to the Georgia General Assembly, Henderson submitted an application for federal pandemic unemployment compensation. While applying for benefits, she stated that she was employed with Henry County Schools, despite the fact that she had not worked there in nearly two years, according to the Department of Justice. Prior to that, she worked as a substitute teacher for a week. While working as a substitute teacher for the school system, she had signed an acknowledgment form stating that her role as a substitute teacher did not qualify her for unemployment benefits. While appearing in court in December 2025, Henderson pleaded not guilty, the Georgia Recorder reported. In January, Gov. Brian Kemp suspended her from her position as a state representative. Her seat was left empty during the state Legislature’s 2026 session and the following special session. Officials have commented on the situation. “Pandemic relief programs were created to help Americans facing genuine hardship—not to enrich those willing to lie for personal gain,” Marlo Graham, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, said in a press release. He continued, “When an elected official abuses taxpayer-funded programs through fraud, it undermines public confidence in both government institutions and the integrity of public service.” According to the DOJ, Henderson falsely claimed that she had worked for Henry County Schools throughout the duration of 2019 until March 10, 2020. Additionally, she stated that she had proof of earnings through paystubs and that she was unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this, she submitted false certifications on a weekly basis, stating that she could not get to her place of work due to a pandemic quarantine. Following her swearing-in as a state representative, she submitted eight false certifications in June of 2021, according to the DOJ. According to the Georgia Recorder, Hertzberg said Henderson continued to receive unemployment compensation after being sworn in as a state representative in 2021. Henderson represented District 113, encompassing Newton County and a portion of Covington, for six years, following her victory over incumbent Democrat Pam Dickerson in 2020. She was successfully reelected in both 2022 and 2024. However, in April 2026, during the Democratic Party primary race, she lost in her effort to unseat incumbent state Sen. Tonya Anderson. Karla Daniels Hooper, a Democrat, will run against Don Scarbrough, a Republican, this November for the district’s seat. Two other Democrats, Rep. Karen Bennett and Rep. Dexter Sharper, both former Georgia legislators, pleaded guilty earlier in the year on related counts. Bennett was mandated to pay back nearly $14,000 and a $1,000 fine but did not receive a jail sentence from U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross. Henderson is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 3, appearing before U.S. District Judge Michael L. Brown. Assistant U.S. Attorney Garrett L. Bradford will serve as the prosecutor.

Spain’s border is being overrun by migrants, and it is a dramatic reminder of how things could be again in the United States. On Thursday, dramatic images and videos began to emerge from the city of Ceuta, which sits on the Moroccan border. Thousands of young men could be seen crowding beaches, pushing through gates, whooping and hollering in excitement as they made their way into Spain. Here are a few dramatic examples posted on social media. Insane footage from the Moroccan border with Spain: thousands of migrants are gathering at the borderThis is exactly what Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez was aiming for. pic.twitter.com/Fb1pEKU0jj— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 30, 2026 Spain has now had more than 24 hours to deal with this and it’s still happening. pic.twitter.com/f3GjL2qZ32— Patrick Christys (@PatrickChristys) July 31, 2026 The number of migrants pouring into Ceuta really is astounding. The seaside town is home to about 80,000 people. Nearly that many appeared to have poured in over the last few days. The only thing that’s seemingly slowing them down is the same barrier armies through history have run into: logistics. The region doesn’t have enough food and water to supply all the sudden arrivals. From the Wall Street Journal: “Spain’s Interior Ministry said Friday that roughly 50,000 people had entered Ceuta from surrounding Morocco on Thursday and early Friday, but that half of those—some 25,000—had already returned to Morocco by Friday afternoon, mostly because the enclave was overrun and they had no food or water.” That doesn’t surprise me. From the images I’ve seen, most of the men charging the border don’t appear to have luggage or anything else with them. They must expect to get food, clothes, and shelter when they arrive. Now, there are many narratives developing right now about who or what is to blame for this border mob. The European Union has certainly been encouraging this kind of mass migration for years. At the end of the day, though, it’s up to the Spanish government to deal with it. And they’ve signaled in the brightest terms possible that “all are welcome.” They’ve shown not a single inkling so far to demonstrate that they are willing to do what’s necessary to stop this invasion. As Heritage Foundation border security expert Simon Hankinson wrote for the Daily Signal on Thursday, Spain’s left-wing government is pro-amnesty. He noted that in April, “Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced a scheme to give one-year, renewable residence permits to illegal immigrants. The bar was incredibly low — applicants only had to prove they’d lived for at least five months in Spain and had no criminal records.” The program was supposed to admit only half a million people. But more than a million applied, and now the floodgates are open as countless, mostly young men scramble to get into the country. They remain implacably committed to letting this burn out of control. As of publication, Spain has still failed to declare a national emergency. It’s so shambolic that other European governments are considering withdrawing from the EU’s border-free Schengen arrangements. Italy did so on Friday, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if others followed. I can’t help but think when reading about what’s happening in Spain and watching the videos that we’ve traveled back in time. This is pretty much exactly what our own border looked like just a few years ago. I certainly wasn’t the only one who thought that. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, noted the similarities between what we are seeing in Spain and what we saw at the southern border during the years under President Joe Biden. “The images of illegal third-world migrants storming over the borders of Spain, while their leftist government does nothing about it, are completely insane,” he wrote. “Oh, wait– this was America’s southern border the last time the Democrat Party was in power.” The images of illegal third-world migrants storming over the borders of Spain, while their leftist government does nothing about it, are completely insane.Oh, wait– this was America's southern border the last time the Democrat Party was in power. pic.twitter.com/0DUS5IxTRi— Brandon Gill (@realBrandonGill) July 31, 2026 That gets to the lesson to be learned from what’s happening in Spain, and it’s a simple one. This is your country ruled by the Left. The Biden administration and its media enablers spent four years allowing a similar kind of mess to develop at the border as sometimes hundreds of thousands of people poured in every month. They blamed the weather, COVID-19, tenuous economic “root causes,” and even Republicans for the disaster that mysteriously appeared when Biden came into office and then mysteriously disappeared when he left. But as should be obvious now, the problem was them. Democrats created that mix of border policies that led to the mad scramble at our border. They wanted it to happen; they just didn’t like the bad optics of it. But that didn’t stop them from carrying on with the lunacy. And they’ve signaled that they’ll do it again, maybe even more wildly, if they regain power. Democrats used to at least pretend to want some kind of border enforcement. Now they insist on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and making any kind of border security or border enforcement effectively impossible. It isn’t just the new, frothing cadres of socialists that have joined Democratic ranks in Congress. Abolishing ICE and blowing up President Donald Trump’s border policies are now becoming “mainstream” Democratic positions. These are the policies of national suicide, to which we should say, “never again.”

I discovered from my own personal experience identifying as a woman for eight years that attempting to change from male to female is a form of self-harm, even self-destruction. Many people claim that “transgender” language is “gender-affirming.” It is hard to square that claim with medical procedures that ruin healthy genital organs. Though I once believed those lies, today I embrace my true sex, and I refer to such “gender-affirming” actions as “God-rejecting.” Difficult though it is to admit, I embraced the lying “trans” language, unaware it rejected God and His scientific design of man and woman. I was lost for a while in Satan’s “trans” world. So lost, I found myself walking swiftly down a street in San Francisco on a warm summer day in 1981, unaware that the moment I turned the doorknob on the front door to the office of a world-renowned specialist in “gender therapy,” my life would be upended. I sought him out because I desperately hoped he could treat the identity distress I had been tormented by since childhood. In less than 45 minutes, the doctor heard my history of childhood trauma, diagnosed me with “gender dysphoria,” and recommended hormones and surgery. Only after undergoing surgery and living as a woman for eight years, did I discover that “gender dysphoria” is better understood as a symptom of something much deeper. Over the years of working with people with stories like my own, I’ve seen that most “gender therapists” quickly diagnose patients with “gender dysphoria,” regardless of the person’s history, and clinics like Planned Parenthood provide cross-sex hormones on the first visit, no questions asked. The “transgender” crusade is founded on lies and distortion of familiar language and reality. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas agrees. In his concurring opinion in a ruling on women’s sports at the end of June, he wrote: Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable “biological” characteristic; it is binary; and “man” and “woman,” “boy” and “girl,” are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex. To use language to obscure reality—to show “indifference regarding the truth”—is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens “as equal[s].” Telling the truth is important for everyone, but Christians like me in particular must use truthful language, especially when it is unpopular. We must not indulge in cultural misappropriations that obscure reality and serve to reinforce the false idea that men can become women. One such misuse of language is the claim that “sex is assigned at birth.” The truth is that sex is determined at conception, many months before birth, and is recognized at birth, not assigned. “Gender” is distinct from sex, says Stanford University, and gender is based on social and cultural roles and norms. The American Medical Association says that gender is one’s overall sense of identity. But there’s no consistent, universal consensus on what gender is or how many genders there are, so trying to use the term falls down a rabbit hole of “Alice in Wonderland” distortions and contradictions, all of which defy simple biology. “Transgender” implies that a person can be born into the wrong body, and that that body can change its sex. The truth is that changing from male to female (or vice versa) is biologically impossible. The thirty trillion male or female sexed cells that make up the human body are unchangeable. Anyone can identify as “transgender,” but no man can become a woman, and no woman can become a man. Gender clinics use the word “transition” to describe a process that never actually succeeds. No matter how long a person uses cross-sex hormones or how many “gender” surgeries a person inflicts on his or her poor body, the person’s sex does not change. The human species has two sexes: male and female. As a Christian, I believe that this design has a Designer: God. The use of pronouns that do not align with one’s real sex rejects God’s design. Christians who capitulate to using incorrect pronouns participate in and reinforce a lie, and lies can never bring a person happiness. My story and the stories of those who write to me underscore the need for compassion for those who take drastic measures to “transition.” People who identify as “transgender” likely have untreated underlying causes such as adverse childhood experiences, trauma, social contagion, or untreated mental illness. They deserve compassion. But using language that rejects God and obscures reality is not compassion. It lies to the people who are told hormones and surgery will cure their distress. It jeopardizes and devalues both women and men. It sugarcoats the dehumanizing experience of living in the “trans” world. Justice Thomas got it right. Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. To show indifference regarding the truth of God’s design of man and woman is to lie. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.