How does an organization like the Boy Scouts of America restore trust after betraying its values? Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has given the Boy Scouts a chance, but it remains unclear whether the historic organization will take it. Fickle human hearts often lead us to sully our integrity. The biblical history of Israel presents a recurring pattern: God’s chosen people reject him to worship idols, so he delivers them into the hands of their enemies. Only when they cry out to God does he rescue them, restoring their integrity as God’s people, before the cycle repeats. The external motivation of God’s judgment leads them to repent, but is the repentance genuine? Something similar is happening with Scouting America, the institution that has rejected its original name, the Boy Scouts. After standing firm for traditional values in the 1990s by rejecting the pressure to admit openly homosexual boys—and winning at the Supreme Court—the Boy Scouts caved on homosexuality in 2013 and 2015, and then embraced transgender ideology in 2017. In 2020, it announced solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and introduced a merit badge celebrating “diversity and inclusion,” now mandatory for the rank of Eagle Scout. As an Eagle Scout, I felt utterly betrayed. The Boy Scout Betrayal It’s hard to grasp the full extent of this betrayal. The Boy Scouts of America, founded in 1910 to teach young men survival skills, foster friendships, and train boys to become citizens and leaders, has helped form many of America’s heroes, including Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Rowe. The Scout Oath runs, “On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” The Scout Law states, “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” These values aren’t inherently conservative or liberal. They set a moral standard for honesty and integrity. In recent years, however, the Left has warped basic words to advocate radical social positions, and its ideology corrupted the Boy Scouts. Transgender ideology represents a fundamental betrayal of the pledge to be trustworthy and reverent. What is less trustworthy than promoting the lie that a boy can become a girl and vice versa? What is less reverent than saying God made a mistake when he created each person male and female, and a person’s supposed internal sense of gender justifies Frankensteinian “treatments” to force their male or female body to resemble that of the opposite sex? As for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” it sounds noble, but it often cloaks the Marxist poison of critical race theory, which teaches that America is systemically racist such that only a radical transformation akin to a revolution can bring about justice. This ideology teaches that white people are inherently racist and oppressive, while black people are inherently oppressed. Adopted in the middle of the Black Lives Matter riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the pro-DEI merit badge sent the message that the Boy Scouts was aligning with the divisive racial movement inspiring violence on the streets, rather than the men and women in uniform whom the movement demonized. Hegseth’s Wake Up Call Last year, Hegseth drew a line in the sand. The Boy Scouts, and now Scouting America, enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the U.S. military, and President Donald Trump had rightly declared that transgender ideology and DEI are antithetical to his administration’s priorities and the good of America. If Scouting America wanted to maintain its benefits with the U.S. military, it needed to return to its core values. That pressure paid off. Hegseth announced that Scouting America agreed to review and replace DEI language; to revoke the “Citizen in Society” merit badge that encouraged DEI and asked scouts to engage in activism; and to allow membership based only on biological sex, not gender identity. The Department of War has officially put Scouting America on notice. It’s time to get back to basics — and DoW is leading the charge. pic.twitter.com/EnY9mvaFLX— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026 External pressure should not have been necessary to deliver these concessions—they represent a return to the politically neutral position the Boy Scouts of America had historically prided itself on. Scouting America released its own statement, noting that its moves reinforce its “commitment to scouting’s foundational ideas: leadership, character, duty to God, duty to country and service.” The group noted that it would not revert to its original name, because girl troops have played a role since the 1960s. Scouting America needs to not just celebrate the new policies, but explain what went wrong, and hold the leadership accountable. The organization’s president, Roger Krone, has served as chief scout executive since November 2023. Before that, he served as the CEO of Leidos from 2014 to 2023. During that time, Leidos received a perfect 100% score with the LGBTQ activist group the Human Rights Campaign. Krone needs to address this and explain why he won’t keep advocating transgender ideology at the Boy Scouts—or he needs to step down. The rejection of DEI and transgender ideology represents a step in the right direction, but alienated conservatives need to see more. It will take time for Scouting America to reverse the serious damage it did to its own honor. Like God’s judgment on Israel, Hegseth’s pressure campaign represents a call for the Boy Scouts to return to its original mission and restore its integrity. It may feel like punishment at first, but it will help restore the organization in the long run. The post ‘ON MY HONOR’: Can the Boy Scouts Restore Trust After Betraying Its Values? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If men’s basketball is the most popular and professional athlete-filled team sport at the quadrennial Summer Olympic Games, then men’s ice hockey is its Winter Olympic Games analogue. Every four years, the two-week Summer and Winter Olympics provide a respite for NBA and NHL fans from the annual domestic calendar. Stars who might normally be teammates instead pick up the jerseys of rival nations, competing against one another for love of home and hearth on the world’s grandest sporting stage. Each Olympic sport has had its iconic American triumphs too: Who can forget the 1992 basketball “Dream Team” in Barcelona, or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid? But there is one major difference. The United States has dominated men’s basketball at the Summer Olympic Games, only once failing to win gold since NBA players were first allowed to compete in the Barcelona games. But in men’s ice hockey, the U.S. hadn’t won gold since the 1980 miracle—and not once since NHL players first competed in Nagano in 1998. Basketball, like baseball (which returns as an Olympic sport in Los Angeles in 2028), is an American invention. Not so for hockey: The bruising tough-guy game is Canadian in origin, and Canada is the winningest team in Olympic history. This year’s Canadian hockey team was touted by some as the greatest team ever assembled on ice. Yet, in one of the more extraordinary fixtures in recent sporting memory, the United States upset mighty Canada in Italy last Sunday to capture the Olympic gold medal in men’s ice hockey. It was a wildly entertaining affair—a bitterly contested 2-1 overtime thriller, marked by intense passion from both sides and an all-time historic performance from American netminder Connor Hellebuyck. It was a gritty upset victory over a more talented foe, made possible through determination and sheer force of will. The viral photo of golden goal-scoring forward Jack Hughes, smiling widely with two teeth missing and an American flag draped around his shoulder, instantly entered the realm of American sporting lore. Arguably even more impressive than the victory itself, though, was the way the American team handled the aftermath. And here, some additional context is necessary. For over a decade, the sports establishment has increasingly embraced the Left. The trend was crystallized when, in 2015, ESPN awarded Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at its eponymous ESPY Awards—just for being a man “identifying” as a woman. Alternative sports media such as Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports and Clay Travis’ OutKick seized on the obvious market share void, but much of the sports establishment still leans leftward. At the Australian Open tennis tournament in January, American stars deftly swatted away obnoxious questions from tendentious anti-Trump sports journalists. Earlier in the Milan Cortina games, some American athletes unfortunately succumbed to similar journalistic activism; freestyle skier Chris Lillis, for example, said he was “heartbroken” about the political situation at home. The golden American hockey men had no interest in playing this game. FBI Director Kash Patel, a lifelong recreational hockey player and fan who was in attendance, joined the men’s team in the locker room afterward to celebrate. Patel was able to get President Donald Trump on speakerphone, and the president congratulated the team for a hard-fought and well-earned victory. He invited the team to attend Tuesday’s State of the Union address in Washington. The players immediately accepted, and, in a viral video of the interaction, they seemed genuinely grateful for the phone call. But in a slew of predictable subsequent interviews, a number of journalists asked the players whether they were concerned at all about appearing alongside such a divisive president. In each and every instance, the players refused to take the bait. Golden boy Jack Hughes encapsulated this sobriety in Miami on Monday: “Everything is so political. We’re athletes. We’re so proud to represent the U.S. When you get the chance to go to White House and meet the president, we’re [just] proud to be Americans.” Jack’s brother Quinn Hughes, also on Team USA, even thanked the military for the victory over Canada: “It’s so special, and I want to thank our troops for allowing us to play this game.” Two-time Stanley Cup winner Matthew Tkachuk offered a similar sentiment when asked about Trump’s locker room call: “It’s an honor hearing from the president of the United States. … We’re definitely honored to represent him and the hundreds of millions across the country and to bring a gold medal back.” How unbelievably refreshing it all is. Sports, at its finest, can act as a cultural common denominator for our ever-fractious and divided polity. For a long time, it looked as if that might have been written off as nostalgia and forever lost to history. But perhaps not. As many noted, the instantly iconic photo of Hughes looks and feels like a throwback to a bygone era. The gold medal-winning 2026 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team will inspire an entire generation of American hockey players, but if they can help us recover sports as a rare cultural totem that we share in common, and not yet another thing tearing us apart, they will make an even greater contribution to the health of the country they very clearly love. 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. The post The US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team Did It the Right Way appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Viewing the U.S. public policy and political scene as a chessboard, the prelates of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have downgraded themselves from their historic leadership role as bishops to the subservient position of mere pawns. Specifically, on birthright citizenship, the bishops willingly allow themselves to be manipulated by leftists pushing secular humanist, globalist ideologies. The Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an “amicus” brief to the Supreme Court, which will soon rule on President Donald Trump’s executive order to rescind the long-debated precedent of American citizenship by birthright. Does every birth occurring on U.S. soil mean automatic citizenship, even if the parents trespassed into America as illegal aliens? Here is the crux of the bishops’ misbegotten argument: “Birthright citizenship aligns with the Church’s teaching that humans were created as social beings and that political authority is morally bound to affirm and protect the inherent dignity of every human person in the community.” Of course, the inherent logical flaw here contends that the human dignity of every person can only be ratified by virtue of conferring U.S. citizenship. Given this absurd line of thinking, the United States is then bound to grant American citizenship to every single human on the planet, since they all possess clear human dignity as sons and daughters of the eternal Creator. Kelsey Reinhardt, president of CatholicVote, correctly deconstructs the actual philosophical danger with this clearly politicized tactic, masked within the language of pastoral teaching: “That argument does not strengthen the Church’s moral witness—it weakens it. By tying dignity to civil status, the bishops inadvertently echo the logic of the abortion industry: rights exist because the state recognizes them.” After all, legitimate civil authority is validated by God himself precisely because it intrinsically leads to human flourishing. Societies can only succeed—and only seek the will of God freely—when governed by the rule of law. As such, prudential judgment about identifying the qualifications for citizenship lies with civil authorities who must prioritize the common good of existing citizens before admitting newcomers, especially at a massive scale. These principles have been taught by the Church for time immemorial and were perhaps best elucidated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. Aquinas weighed the prerogatives of citizens against any arguments for indiscriminate openness. His Thomistic vision flowed from the timeless maxim that “charity begins at home.” As such, Aquinas even argued that full citizenship for immigrants should not be granted until the second or third generation. St. Thomas, Doctor of the Church, would surely be branded as some sort of heartless immigration hawk by the bishops today. But Aquinas understood the crucial role of enlightened patriotism within God’s earthly kingdom. He observed: “Man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country.” Moreover, looking at the realities of birthright citizenship today, in an era of global travel and trade, the bishops seem to willfully ignore some very unpleasant abuses of America’s generosity. First, “birth tourism” has exploded. It is simply routine now for expectant mothers who live near the U.S. southern border to legally cross into America as visitors for the express purpose of having a U.S.-born child with full citizenship. For the wealthy of the world, an entire industry now exists to purchase U.S. holidays that include giving birth. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on Chinese moguls effectively “renting” American women and their wombs to have dozens of U.S.-citizen babies per father. Not only is this kind of chaos awful policy and plainly disordered, but it is also a grave violation of Catholic teaching regarding family life and procreation. So, clearly the bishops overstepped by inserting the authority of the Church into a partisan legal matter. Honest people and sincere Catholics can disagree on this important issue. But by framing it in such lofty moral terms, these men acted far more like activists than like shepherds of Christ’s flock. Over time, such actions diminish the authority earned by the Catholic Church over the years as a pillar of American society. The post Bishops as Pawns Over Birthright Citizenship appeared first on The Daily Signal.

By afternoon Sunday, the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran sunk nine Iranian ships and took out dozens of Iranian leaders, President Donald Trump announced.  “I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday.  pic.twitter.com/AeAfBbVaAq— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 1, 2026 “We are going after the rest–They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also!” Trump’s post continued. “In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters. Other than that, their Navy is doing very well!” Separately, Fox News reported that Trump said 48 Iranian leaders were wiped out in the strikes.  Most notably, the air strikes killed the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and targeted Iranian military sites to stop the country’s ability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons.  U.S. Central Command reported Suday afternoon that B-2 stealth bombers, armed with 2,000 pound bombs hit Iran’s ballistic missile facilities.  Last night, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers, armed with 2,000 lb. bombs, struck Iran’s hardened ballistic missile facilities. No nation should ever doubt America's resolve. pic.twitter.com/6JpG73lHYW— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 1, 2026 Minutes after Trump’s post, the Associated Press reported that a senior White House official said the “new potential leadership” in Iran suggested they were open to talks.  CBS News reported that Trump told CBS News Sunday morning a diplomatic solution is “Much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously.” He said that’s since “they are getting beat up badly.” U.S. Central Command also reported three U.S. service members had been killed, five were seriously wounded in Operation Epic Fury.  Trump called for Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, to fully dismantle its nuclear program, which Iran’s government had been unwilling to do. Trump indicated on Friday the negotiations were not going well. The Iranian regime has reportedly killed tens of thousands of protesters. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday that a new leadership council “has begun its work” after death of Khamenei. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a new supreme leader will be chosen in “one or two days,” the Associated Press reported.  The post ‘We Are Going After the Rest’: Trump Gives Big Update on Iran Strike by the Numbers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

There is a clear American interest at stake in Gorton and Denton by-election outcome. The British parliamentary contest, held Thursday, shocked many with a Green Party victory. Candidate Hannah Spencer overturned Labour’s 13,000 vote majority from 2024 to win with 40.7% of the vote, totaling 14,980 ballots under the U.K.’s first past the post system. Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin placed second with 28.7% with 10,578 votes. The margin of victory was only approximately 4,402 votes in a contest decided by 36,903 total ballots. Like elections at home, the maps are what tell this story. Before the election, the area of Gorton and Denton was known to be very demographically bifurcated. Denton is almost entirely English working class, whereas Gorton contains a substantial Muslim population, including significant Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. The illegal and legal immigrant population from the Middle East and India has exploded in the U.K. in the past decade and the formation of high-density enclaves like those in Gorton are not uncommon. The constituency’s stark ethnic and religious lines was where this election results were drawn, with the Green Party taking the area of Gorton decisively. The Green Party conducted targeted outreach to Muslim and Indian voters, including open support of Palestine and distributing literature in Urdu. This is not only ridiculous in principle but means that campaign communication was obfuscated from the British electorate, miring transparency and political accountability in a distinct civic space. The Green Party has formed what is termed in U.S. circles as a “red-green” alliance, whereby segments of the political Left consolidate electoral partnerships with organized Islamic voting blocs. It is bizarre how the Left’s objective to expand its electorate merits a partnership with a voting bloc that is diametrically opposed to them on significant issues like sexuality, drugs, pornography, and prostitution. Power inspires interesting allies, and indeed their ideological alliance coalesces around two major streams of hatred: America and Israel. In the U.S., the Islamic lobby has successfully coalesced with the Left, producing disastrous consequences like the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, a man who openly supports communism, Palestine, and rejects our own nation’s values.  The results of the Gorton and Denton by-election, accompanied with a damming election observation report prove how deadly the Red-Green alliance is to election integrity. Around 10 p.m. on election night, the official UK election observers Democracy Volunteers reported unusually high levels of “family voting,” describing instances in which multiple family members entered polling booths together in ways that compromise the secret ballot. They reported 12% of voters were either impacted by or involved in such activity, representing 4,428 affected votes in an election decided by 4,402 votes. This represents massive cause for concern in Britain’s democracy. Family voting is illegal under British electoral law because it undermines the principle of individual political autonomy. British law permits election results to be challenged where legal violations may have affected the outcome, and this one should be contested. Family voting was observed in areas like Denton with strong patriarchal community structures where voting behavior may be influenced within households. In places with strong numbers of unassimilated Islamic immigrants in the U.K., communal authority structures exert influence that do not work alongside liberal democratic norms. Unfortunately, family voting is just part of a range of electoral offenses becoming more common in Britain in recent years. These represent undue influence, personation, false postal or proxy applications, bribery, and false statements about candidates. The particular concern in Gorton and Denton is the apparent concentration of irregularities in a constituency already characterized by tight margins and strong communal organization. Taken together, language segmented campaigning, bloc mobilization along religious lines, and credible allegations of compromised ballots are indicative of a system under severe strain, with serious implications like family voting potentially costing a free and fair election. You don’t have to wish the victory of Goodwin over Spencer to be concerned about the reported family voting.  The U.K. is unmistakably our closest ally, not least because intelligence cooperation, defense integration, financial interdependence, and diplomatic coordination are embedded at every level of the transatlantic relationship. We share a language, a common culture, civilizational values (dare I say), and we inherited our common law NATO planning, Five Eyes intelligence sharing, and joint operational capabilities that all presuppose institutional stability and public trust within each partner state.  Many basic legal protections central to modern democratic elections in America, such as the secret ballot, trace their origins to British electoral reform. Perhaps though, it is more important to note that we are alarmed about serious election fraud and a growing powerful election lobby because we’ve seen these issues manifest at home, with only negative and drastic consequences for Americans. The Mamdani election, coupled with the fraud in the 2020 Presidential race should be a warning sign for our allies. As stated in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, strong alliances rest on strong partners, and electoral legitimacy and the consistent enforcement of the rule of law are foundational to a state’s reliability as a strategic partner. Witnessing the degradation of political competition harden on sectarian lines, alongside diminishing trust in electoral integrity, the consequences extend beyond national borders. Domestic fragmentation upsets foreign policy, erodes public support for alliance commitments, and creates openings for adversarial influence. The outcome here is also a signal that the local elections occurring in May across England and, ultimately, in the next general election scheduled for 2029, cannot be left to the current system of structural weakness.  The U.S. strategic interest is a stable, cohesive, and law governed United Kingdom, which is indispensable to Western security and the long-term defense of shared institutions writ large. American policymakers are not here to dictate British domestic policy, but it would be a dereliction of our role as a civilizational ally to ignore the declining integrity of Britain’s democratic processes and civil society.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Britain’s Fragile Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.