A possible hate crime occurred in New York City on Thursday after a man stabbed two people while yelling “Allahu Akbar,” Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed. The NYPD has arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales in connection with both assaults, and no other people are being sought. Detectives are continuing to work the case and determine a motive, but according to victim and witness statements, Morales yelled the religious phrase during both attacks. The NYPD is currently evaluating whether the assault is a potential hate crime, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch wrote on X. “I want to commend the bravery of a good Samaritan who led our officers to the location where the perpetrator was hiding, as well as our NYPD cops who brought an end to the incident without further injuries,” she added. The two victims of the individual stabbings, an Asian man and a Jewish man, were rushed to NYC’s Mt. Sinai-St. Luke’s Hospital and are reportedly in stable condition. As reported by Tisch, mental health problems could have been at play. “While the perpetrator has no known mental health history with the NYPD, the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor,” she wrote. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also addressed the news and said that “mental health may have played a factor.” He added that the incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime. “According to witness and victim statements, the perpetrator yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ during both attacks. I am relieved that both victims are in stable condition,” Mamdani wrote on X. I have been briefed on today’s horrifying stabbings on the Upper West Side, where an Asian man and a Jewish man were attacked. According to witness and victim statements, the perpetrator yelled “Allahu Akbar” during both attacks. I am relieved that both victims are in stable… https://t.co/0LSGtvPojx— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 23, 2026 Congressional leaders also reacted to the news, including Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who pointed a finger directly at those who “normalize antisemitism.” “I have no doubt there will be many well-written social media posts condemning the antisemitic stabbings on the Upper West Side today, and I’m sure many people’s thoughts and prayers will be with the victims and their families,” Goldman wrote on X in response to Mamdani’s post. “These statements ring hollow when so many in the city normalize antisemitism, including simply by associating American Jews with the actions of the Israeli government,” he continued. “Enough is enough.” Goldman did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., called on Mamdani to “get it together” in an X post. “This is the United States. Not some third-world failed state where you run around screaming ‘Allah Akbar’ & stabbing people because you feel like it. Get it together @NYCMayor,” she wrote. Mamdani’s office did not return the Daily Signal’s request for comment by the time of publication. Israeli’s ambassador to the United Nations also expressed outraged at the situation, directly attributing the attack to Mamdani’s anti-Israel campaign. “The words and incitement of Zohran Mamdani endanger the lives of Jews in New York, the city that houses the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. Zohran Mamdani, it’s time you take responsibility and stop the dangerous political campaign you started!!!” Danny Dannon wrote on X. “You are fanning the flames of hatred and endangering human lives,” he continued. “The more you stoke the flames, the more people will get hurt.@NYCMayor.” Mamdani has long campaigned on a platform of opposing Israel’s campaign to defend against Islamic terrorism. He even called for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The recent knife attack adds to the list of hostile attacks on Jewish residents. According to the Anti-Defamation League, more than 1,000 antisemitic attacks have occurred in New York City in the past year. Antisemitic hate crimes rose 186% in Mamdani’s first month in office, according to Combat Antisemitism. In the last month alone, anti-Jewish hate crimes have gone up by 46% compared to the last three months, as reported to NYPD data.

For at least 30 years, the American welfare state has become a global magnet for immigrants, both legal and illegal, despite longstanding law to prevent exactly that. Since the late 19th century, federal law has barred any immigrant likely to become a public charge from entering the country. In 1996, with bipartisan support, Congress declared self-sufficiency the explicit policy of the United States and required many legal immigrants to have a sponsor sign a legally binding contract that they would support the immigrant to prevent their enrollment on welfare programs. But, to put it mildly, Democrats have changed in the years since. Most recently, the Biden administration’s 2022 “public charge” rule gutted a principle as old as the Republic itself: Those who come to America should get to work, not get on welfare. Yet, half of all households headed by noncitizens use at least one welfare program—a rate much higher than that of households headed by the American-born, according to census data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies. Some countries’ immigrants, like those from Somalia living in Minnesota, receive welfare at more than a 70% clip when they show up in the U.S. That is not healthy immigration. And it is certainly not the immigration policy Americans want, one defined by eager newcomers ready to take advantage of a once-in-a-family-tree opportunity to participate in the world’s most dynamic and work-rewarding economy. Instead, it is a predictable and ruinous subsidization of third world dependency and depravity. And a shameful subversion of American generosity. But that era is ending. And it is thanks to President Donald Trump. This past week, the Trump administration’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rescinded Biden’s disastrous 2022 public charge regulation and restored the plain meaning of federal law. This reverses 30 years of shadow government subterfuge, beginning with the Clinton administration’s lieutenants, including then-Deputy Assistant to the President Elena Kagan, gutting the law through regulation. More recently, the Biden administration largely ignored the law. President Trump and Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, in particular, deserve credit for their determination to defend American sovereignty. This is not only measured in miles of border wall built. It is also measured in the extent to which American welfare goes where it belongs: to truly needy Americans. It’s a simple principle but has required work from Secretaries Marco Rubio, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner, as well as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and many others to end the USAID scam, audit Medicaid and food stamp rolls to remove illegal aliens, announce that illegal aliens should be deemed ineligible for Head Start funds, remove illegal aliens from public housing, and more. Every dollar siphoned off by someone who came here specifically to game the system is a dollar stolen from a disabled veteran, a struggling single mom, an elderly widow on a fixed income. These are the truly needy Americans these programs were built to serve. Restoring self-sufficiency is not cruelty. It is justice. But the Trump administration cannot win this fight alone. States must step up. The blueprint exists. States should run every welfare applicant through the federal SAVE database to check immigration status before a single dollar goes out the door. They should report every non-citizen on the welfare rolls to federal authorities so public charge determinations can be made and the law can be enforced exactly as written. They should share enrollment data for federal auditing. And they should collect the cost of welfare given to immigrants from the sponsors who promised to pay taxpayers back. That money belongs to the American people. Let’s go get it back for them. Same goes for our safety net—and our country. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

California’s Medi-Cal crisis has left taxpayers paying for fraud, waste, and abuse. The Pacific Research Institute released a study this week breaking down how taxpayers are paying for “a program that has grown beyond the state’s ability to effectively manage it.” The findings come as the Trump administration announced on July 21 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is pausing over $860 million in funding to California after federal officials discovered in-home supportive services claims that significantly exceeded national trends. Sally Pipes, the institute’s president, told the Daily Signal that rooting out fraud should be lawmakers’ top priority. “If lawmakers could make only one thing happen this year, it should be eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse from Medi-Cal, which now covers 15 million Californians at a cost of $220 billion. The entire state budget for fiscal 2026-27 is $351.7 billion,” she said. The report, titled “Too Big, Too Broken: Restoring Integrity to Medi-Cal,” states that the program has expanded far beyond its original mission. Medicaid was created in 1965 as a safety-net program for low-income Americans, seniors, and people with disabilities. Over the decades, eligibility expanded, including to pregnant women in the 1980s, and to able-bodied adults under the Affordable Care Act. California has since gone further, extending state-funded Medi-Cal coverage to low-income immigrants regardless of immigration status. Today, Medi-Cal covers roughly 1 in 3 Californians and accounts for about 40% of the state’s budget. According to the report, that rapid growth has strained the program, leading to longer wait times, worsening provider shortages, more difficult oversight, and mounting fiscal pressures. To address those problems, the report recommends improving oversight, strengthening eligibility verification, increasing transparency around financing, and prioritizing resources for the most vulnerable. Pipes said eliminating fraud would not only save taxpayer dollars but also help vulnerable Californians access care more quickly. “If fraud and abuse are cut from Medi-Cal, there would be so much more funding available to cover those who are truly vulnerable and eligible for the program,” she said. “Today, many of the eligible cannot find a doctor because there is too much demand for too few doctors,” Pipes added. “As Robert Kennedy Jr., secretary of [Health and Human Services], said: ‘Medicaid exists to serve vulnerable Americans—not to bankroll unsupported claims.’ Accountability must be restored.”

Twenty five states, with the help of a Department of Homeland Security database, have identified hundreds of thousands of dead people and noncitizens registered to vote, and they haven’t finished counting yet. So far, just 10 states—including key battlegrounds Georgia and North Carolina—have fully processed the voter data through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. SAVE is primarily used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to verify eligibility for government benefits. The Trump administration made it available to states to cross-reference voter registration data. So far, 25 states have cross-checked more than 68 million voter registration records through SAVE and found 28,000 noncitizens and 400,000 dead people registered to vote. As more states finalize the process, the number will likely grow. Among just those 10 states that completely processed their voter data through the SAVE system, they found more than 10,000 noncitizens and more than 360,000 dead people on the voter rolls, according to DHS. A DHS memo says, “these states are serious about ensuring that only US citizens vote in US elections.” Georgia, in using the SAVE system, found 2,549 noncitizens had at some point registered to vote. It also found 42,776 deceased people on the rolls. “Of the 2,500 on the DHS list, most were flagged by our office as potential noncitizens upon registering to the vote,” Robert Sinners, spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told the Daily Signal. “They were placed in pending status immediately.” “We ran those records through SAVE to double-check our data and confirm they were noncitizens,” Sinners said. “These never made it onto the voter rolls. The remaining records were primarily either old records created before Georgia’s REAL ID implementation that had applied without REAL ID. When we identified those using SAVE, they were moved off the rolls and into pending status.” Several other of the 10 states that completed the process corroborated the numbers referenced in the DHS memo. Ohio identified only 769 noncitizens on the voter rolls, but 59,774 dead people were listed. “The numbers provided by DHS generally track with our internal data during a defined period of time over the past year, but we use multiple data sources to verify our voter rolls,” Ben Kindel, press secretary for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, told the Daily Signal. “That means some of the records identified through the SAVE process might have already been flagged and removed by another process we use to remove deceased individuals through public health records,” he added. North Carolina’s review determined 34,622 deceased people and 1,599 noncitizens were on the voter rolls. Sam Hayes, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, stressed those numbers are out of 7.8 million registered voters in the state. “However, one ineligible registrant is still one too many,” Hayes said in a public statement, noting the state board will be working with county boards going forward. Tennessee is tied with Arkansas for the top spot on The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard. Nevertheless, the state identified 1,009 noncitizens registered to vote and 37,850 dead people still on the voter lists, according to DHS. In Texas, the nation’s second-most-populous state, there are 111,573 dead people and 2,296 noncitizens on the voter rolls, according to DHS. Louisiana had 15,231 dead people on the voter rolls, and 419 noncitizens, according to DHS. Those names were removed from the voter registration rolls, said Trey Williams, spokesman for Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry. The secretary of state’s office pegged the number at 403 noncitizens. “Louisiana was first in the country to compare its voter registration records against the federal SAVE database as part of its ongoing efforts to identify and address any potential noncitizen registrations in accordance with state and federal law,” Williams told the Daily Signal. “Using the data from SAVE, we identified 403 non-citizens registered to vote in Louisiana, with 83 of those individuals voting in at least one election.” Alabama, using the SAVE system, found 33,165 dead people on the rolls, and 465 noncitizens, according to DHS. Missouri had 10,660 dead people registered to vote, and 1,112 noncitizens. Kansas has 10,197 dead registered voters and 449 noncitizens on the voter lists, according to DHS. Idaho had 4,328 dead people on the voter rolls and 49 noncitizens. “Our work with the federal government continues to ensure noncitizens are not voting in Idaho,” Joe Parris, spokesman for Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, told the Daily Signal. “We already do monthly voter roll cleanup. Idaho has the per capita cleanest voter rolls in the country.”

The June 30 Supreme Court ruling defending states’ right to ban trans-identifying men from women’s sports is already paying dividends, including in sports that had previously skirted U.S. law on American soil. Since 2023, the world’s largest Irish dance organization, An Coimisiún le Rinci Gaelacha (CLRG), together with the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America (IDTANA), has permitted a young man who identifies as female to compete in girls’ competitions. He now participates in the Girls Under 17 category at the regional, North American, and world levels. Compared with girls, males possess naturally superior lung capacity, denser bones, and significantly greater muscle mass. The young male dancer’s record reflects this unjust advantage over the girls with whom he competes. He has repeatedly taken regional titles, World Championship qualifications, and extremely high placements at international competitions, including the World and North American Championships. Even after President Donald Trump’s executive order banned men from women’s sports, CLRG, as an Irish organization, claimed immunity from American law. As a woman who competed up to the World Championship level in Irish dance, one of the authors of this piece has personally witnessed, and taken part in, the widespread response against this injustice. Thousands of dancers and supporters signed petitions protesting CLRG’s policy. Many of us wrote op-eds. Dance teachers pressed high-level internal dissent. And yet, those defending biological standards of fairness in Irish dance were fighting an uncertain battle. Until now. The North American Irish Dance Championships (NAIDC), a world-qualifying opportunity for dancers from North America, has just concluded. Once again, CLRG and IDTANA were fully prepared to deny the Girls Under 17 a fair competition. But they made one miscalculation: holding the event in Orlando, Florida. On June 26, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a letter warning CLRG and IDTANA that their policy comprised an infraction of the Florida Civil Rights Act, which protects women from sex-based discrimination in public spaces. Thanks to a series of laws passed by the Florida state legislature, the term “woman” and the rights that follow are unambiguous. Uthmeier also argued that the organizations were violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act by advertising, but failing to provide, women’s competitions. Uthmeier gave CLRG and IDTANA until June 30 to confirm that they would not permit men to compete in women’s categories at the upcoming NAIDC or at any future events held in Florida. On June 30, the day of Uthmeier’s deadline, the Supreme Court handed down a consolidated ruling in favor of West Virginia and Idaho laws that protect equal opportunity in sports for girls and women. In effect, the Court’s majority opinion recognizes as constitutional not only the laws of West Virginia and Idaho, but also those of the 25 other states that currently protect women’s sports—including Florida. CLRG and IDTANA made no public response to Attorney General Uthmeier. But to his credit, the young man in question recognized the futility of resisting both Florida and the Supreme Court. He withdrew from the Girls Under 17 competition. For those dancers from his region, Southern USA, this was the first fair major championship in three years. Talented girls worked hard to earn a World Qualification and a top 10 placement, which would otherwise likely have been stolen from one or more of them. More importantly, every girl in the competition was accorded the dignity that she deserved. No longer was her womanhood reduced to less than the value of a boy’s emotions. For the hundreds of girls in the Under 17 age group, the long struggle against an unscientific and degrading policy is at last turning in their favor.And fortunately for them, the next major championship, the Southern Region Oireachtas, will be held in Texas, which also protects women’s sports. With no boys qualifying at either the North American or Regional competition, the girls’ competition at the World Championships will also be fair play. If this victory for Irish dancers teaches us anything, it’s that a great executive order is not sufficient to fully protect our rights. We need state laws and fair courts, too. It was the state of Florida, backed by a Supreme Court decision, that guaranteed fairness in this competition. State law can make or break equal opportunity for hundreds—if not thousands—of girls. It is past time for the 23 states that still fail to protect women’s sports to value their girls more than their radically unscientific and unjust ideology.