At his confirmation hearing Thursday, EPA Administrator-designate Lee Zeldin suggested he would rein in a weaponized—literally weaponized—bureaucracy at the EPA. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held the hearing for Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the EPA administrator.  During the hearing, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, relayed instances during the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden of armed EPA officials conducting raids of local miners and auto mechanics’ shops in Alaska, only to find no violations of the Clean Water Act they were looking for. “I believe in the Second Amendment. I don’t believe in an armed bureaucracy. The EPA is a SWAT team,” the Alaska lawmaker said. “Do you believe the EPA should even have armed agents?” Sullivan asked, adding: “Can I get your commitment to focus on compliance, civil compliance, as opposed to kicking in doors, assault rifles, helicopters? It’s crazy. It’s really outrageous, and it happens under Democrats.” Zeldin, a former U.S. House member who ran for New York governor in 2022, responded, “Senator, it is outrageous.” “It led me, as someone who is going through this transition, to be asking questions: How did that even get authorized? Who signed off on that? What are the standards that need to be met in order to even say ‘yes’ to an operation like that?” Zeldin said.   Sullivan noted that one of the auto mechanic shops was owned by eight men who were state National Guard members and “great Alaskans.” He asked again whether EPA officials should even have firearms.  “Senator, if something requires an enforcement action on a prosecutorial front that is working with the Department of Justice, Congress has enacted laws where enforcement is part of the effort on the compliance front, there are people and entities owning property where there is mitigation that needs to happen, where they want to work with the government to mitigate that situation on their property, we should be working with them to make that happen,” Zeldin said.  In sharing details of the events in Alaska, Sullivan said such matters didn’t happen during the Trump administration.  “The Obama administration, what they do is, they come in with giant, heavily armed agents, body armor, helicopters. It’s shocking,” the Alaskan said. “We had a raid on some plaster miners in a place called Chicken, Alaska, under President Obama. Over 30 armed agents, body armor, to do what? To do with compliance with the Clean Water Act. They didn’t find one violation. They scared the hell out of the miners.” That was restarted under Biden, Sullivan said.  “Not to be outdone, the Biden administration has done these raids on small mechanic shops in Alaska. They bring up EPA agents from all over the country—armed agents, kicking in doors in mechanic shops in Alaska,” he said.    During the hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who caucuses with Democrats, suggested the need for the EPA to cooperate with China.  “I know it’s fashionable to be beating up on China. It’s good politics. They are now the major carbon polluter in the world. We have historically had that role. We are now No. 2. We’re not going to solve this crisis without working with China. Are you prepared to work with China to lower carbon emissions?” They are now the major carbon polluter in the world. We have historically had that role. We are now No. 2. We’re not going to solve this crisis without working with China. Are you prepared to work with China to lower carbon emissions?”  Zeldin responded that China is an adversary.  “Senator, on many different issues, it is important not to just be working with nations that we are the strongest aligned with, but to also be in communication and engaged in dialogue with countries that might be competitors and also our greatest adversaries. Right now, China is an adversary in many respects,” Zeldin said.  The post What Zeldin Plans to Do About a Literally Weaponized EPA appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Texas A&M University is in legal and political trouble. It faces threats of civil rights liability, the loss of federal funding, and the firing of its president, Mark Welsh III, all because its general counsel, Ray Bonilla, gave the university legal advice that he should have known was unsound. Journalist-activist Chris Rufo revealed on X that Texas A&M University is sponsoring employees’ travel to a racially segregated diversity, equity, and inclusion conference on March 20 and 21 in Chicago. The conference lists Texas A&M among its “university partners” and excludes Asian and white people from attending. EXCLUSIVE: Texas A&M is sponsoring a trip to a DEI conference that prohibits whites and Asians from attending. The university falsely claims that this use of taxpayer funds does not violate the state's DEI ban.@TAMU is supporting racial segregation and breaking the law. pic.twitter.com/pFWYnZdweE— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) January 13, 2025 Internal emails from the university reveal that Dean Michael Withers solicited attendees from among the university’s faculty and Ph.D. students to represent Texas A&M at the conference. Those emails also reveal that Withers sought the advice of Bonilla, and that Bonilla approved the university’s participation in this racially discriminatory program—even though federal and state law forbid it. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Texas A&M receives hundreds of millions of federal dollars, and the DEI conference excludes anyone who is white or Asian. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal to discriminate based on race with respect to any “privileges of employment.” According to the internal emails that Rufo obtained, Dean Withers said that the university sends several of its faculty and advanced Ph.D. students to this conference in their official capacities as “representatives” of the school.  Texas has civil rights laws that mirror the federal ones, and it has another law, SB 17, that forbids Texas universities from engaging in DEI activities that, among other things, give racial preferences to any “participant in any function of the institution.” It’s unclear from the emails that Rufo published why Bonilla advised Texas A&M that it could support and sponsor travel to this racially discriminatory DEI conference. But given that the law is clear, two conclusions suggest themselves: Either Bonilla made an enormous mistake of legal judgment or his judgment was clouded by ideology. It’s no secret that many administrators at America’s colleges are opposed to race neutrality. Harvard recently lost at the Supreme Court, where it tried to defend admissions policies that discriminated against Asian and white students. Other universities are resisting that ruling to preserve racial preferences. Still other universities spend hundreds of millions of dollars creating racially segregated dorms, graduation ceremonies, and programs about “white supremacy culture.” Many universities, including Texas A&M, have embraced “anti-racism,” which calls race neutrality “white supremacy” and whose leading proponent argues that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Bonilla seems to be one of those administrators. Before he served as the university’s general counsel, he was a staffer for a Democratic senator, and according to the political donation-tracking website Open Secrets, Bonilla and his former law firm, Ray, Wood & Bonilla, donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates, campaign committees, and PACs. Of course, Bonilla is within his rights to donate to partisans. As general counsel to a public university that takes billions of taxpayer dollars, however, he has a legal duty not to let his political opinions cloud his legal judgment. He might not like state and federal civil rights laws that mandate race neutrality and nondiscrimination, but he cannot tell his client that it can violate those laws. Texas A&M is now in serious legal jeopardy. President-elect Donald Trump made opposition to racially discriminatory DEI programs a central part of his platform. So has Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has threatened to sack Welsh over the matter. Bonilla has put a target on his school’s back. The school could be sued, could lose federal funding, and Welsh could lose his job. Bonilla himself may be at risk with the state bar for advising a state university that it could violate state law. But the risk to Texas A&M students is the greatest. The loss of funding would devastate the school, but the law is what it is. The consequences of violating civil rights law are dire because race discrimination is dire. That’s why it’s so important for general counsels to carefully advise their clients to obey the law. Bonilla’s error, whether motivated my partisanship and ideology or simply poor legal judgment, is enormous, and every university general counsel should be careful not to repeat it. The post Texas A&M’s Partisan General Counsel Puts University in Legal Jeopardy Over DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It’s time to make Washington, D.C., safe again. Washington is one of the most dangerous capital cities in the civilized world. Tourists, diplomats, members of Congress and their staffs, and residents—especially in minority neighborhoods—have all been victims of crime.  If Washington, D.C., was a state, it would have the highest per capita homicide rate of any state in the United States. It’s a disgrace.  The United States of America should have one of the safest capitals, if not the safest, among Western democracies. But we don’t. Residents of the city have become anesthetized to the violence. The Washington Post barely covers crime. Local media cover the constant drumbeat of armed carjackings and murders with less zeal than the weather and traffic.    In a city that had over 25 million tourists last year from all around the world and received $10.2 billion in visitor revenue, you would think that driving down crime rates would be priority No. 1 for city leaders.  But it’s not. Washington, D.C., like a lot of major metropolitan cities, has “safe” areas to live and work, and “dangerous” areas. The city is shaped like a tiled square, the left half of which is the safe area. Residents who live and work on the right half—east of Rock Creek Parkway—live in a different reality. That segment of the city contains Wards  7 and 8, the most dangerous areas in the city. All Wards Map 2022Download And who suffers the most from violent crime in our city?  It’s not the lawyers, lobbyists, corporate big shots, and other elites who live in Wards 2 or 3, which includes tony Chevy Chase, Spring Valley, Georgetown, and the folks who live west of Rock Creek Park. Their neighborhoods are, with some exceptions, relatively safe. They have three to five homicides a year. Those parents don’t stress about their kids getting shot on the way to school or in a drive-by or being recruited into a gang. They don’t lie awake at night praying that their child makes it to 21 years of age. They fret about their kids’ SAT scores, their AP courses and grades, and college admissions.    The people who suffer the most live east of Rock Creek Parkway, especially those who live and work in Anacostia. In 2023, in Wards 7 and 8, there were 154 homicides. In Ward 7 alone, there were seven times more motor vehicle thefts (1,262) than in Ward 3 (167), 11 times more assaults with a dangerous weapon (324 versus 29), and 10 times more robberies (679 versus 64). The liberal elites who work for The Washington Post or cable news aren’t really affected by this crime because they live and work in the safe areas.  The Trump administration and Congress have an opportunity to make D.C. safe again, as I outlined in my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last fall.  Before highlighting most important thing President Donald Trump can do to make D.C. safe again, it is important to understand the D.C. crime scene. Prosecution 101 The chief felony prosecutor for the District of Columbia is the D.C. United States attorney. That position is unique among the 92 other presidentially appointed federal prosecutors spread across the country because he wears two hats: He acts as the local district attorney handling local crime and the head federal prosecutor, handling federal crimes. All prosecutors in his office are assistant United States attorneys, but roughly 75% of them handle cases in the local D.C. Superior Court and are no different from any other large city deputy district attorney.     The D.C. Office of the Attorney General is the city attorney’s office. The office is tasked with handling civil issues, traffic infractions, and juvenile crime, except in situations where the United States Attorney’s Office decides to prosecute violent juveniles as adults.  Homicides, Carjackings, and Gun Crimes Galore The crime statistics speak for themselves. In 2023, 274 people were murdered in this tiny 68-square mile enclave, the most homicides in 20 years.  Take a hard look at the homicide data taken from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department website. In 2023, there were 1,412 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 3,468 robberies, 1,095 burglaries, 6,809 motor vehicle thefts, 7,795 thefts of property from autos, and a whopping 13,314 garden-variety thefts.  And those are just the crimes reported to the police. The real numbers are likely higher; potentially much higher. Matt Graves, the current U.S. attorney, recently bragged that overall violent crime was down in 2024 by 15% in a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his reputation and gloss over the fact that crime spiked dramatically under his watch. The 187 homicides in 2024 were a 32% drop from the previous year, but that’s nothing to brag about, since the 274 homicides in 2023 were the highest death count in more than 20 years.  During the Trump administration, there was an average of 160 homicides per year. During the eight years of the Obama administration, there was an average of 122 homicides per year. Shockingly, during the Biden administration, there was an average of 222 homicides per year, 100 more per year compared to the Obama administration.  And when you consider that in 2024—the year Graves brags about—there were 1,026 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 5,139 motor vehicle thefts, and 1,001 burglaries, that’s a sad legacy.  Carjackings Through the Roof The city also has a major carjacking problem. The vast majority of carjackings are committed by 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old males, two-thirds of whom were armed, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics.  By law, 16- and 17-year-olds who commit certain violent crimes, including carjacking, can be prosecuted as an adult by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office.  Consider this: in the 10 years between Dec. 31, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2023, there were only 176 juveniles charged as adults in the D.C. Superior Court Criminal Division for violent felonies, according to a D.C. Sentencing Commission report on sentencing trends for juveniles.  That is a stunningly low number, especially when you consider that just during the last two years of the Biden administration, 587 people were arrested for carjacking, 64% of whom (375) were juveniles. Seventy-five percent of those carjackings during that time frame involved the use of a firearm, according to the police department’s carjacking interactive database.  The two juveniles prosecuted as adults for unarmed carjacking during that 10-year period received an average sentence of 84 months. There was one juvenile charged as an adult for armed carjacking during that time frame who received a sentence of 180 months. In any other city with a violent juvenile crime problem like this, the district attorney prosecutes those violent armed juveniles as adults to keep the community safe. But not Matt Graves. Not in D.C.  Graves’ Abysmal Record on Gun Crimes Every week, the Metropolitan Police Department arrests felons in possession of a handgun and presents those cases to the United States Attorney’s Office. Felons are not allowed to carry firearms under the law. And violent felons in D.C. are caught carrying firearms every week. Virtually every single one of those cases could be prosecuted in federal district court under federal law 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).   These are not hard cases to prove beyond a reasonable doubt: The defendant has a felony record or he doesn’t, and he either had possession of the firearm or he didn’t.  According to the United States Sentencing Commission, in fiscal year 2023, 97.5% of individuals prosecuted across the country in federal district court under section 922(g) were sentenced to prison with an average sentence of 68 months. For those with long criminal records who were charged under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act, the average sentence was 203 months. But instead of prosecuting career felons who carry guns in federal district court, where almost everyone convicted will receive a prison sentence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office processes those cases in the local D.C. Superior Court with full knowledge that only 1% of total arrests result in prison time. That number is based on an analysis by the D.C. Sentencing Commission for arrests between 2018 and 2022.  One percent! In 2018, during the Trump administration, 85% of those arrested for either carrying a pistol without a license or unlawful possession of a firearm were charged in the D.C. Superior Court. In 2022, under Graves, only 54% of carrying a pistol without a license and 56% of unlawful firearm possession arrests were charged in Superior Court. Between 2018 and 2022, the Metropolitan Police Department made 5,558 arrests for carrying a pistol without a license. The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to charge 1,933 (34%) of those and closed another 1,213 cases (32%) without a conviction. Of the remaining cases, 1,564 resulted in a felony conviction, but only 97 of those who were convicted were sent to prison, representing 1% of total arrests. A stunning 57.7% of those convicted received probation from D.C. Superior Court judges. With those odds, no wonder criminals in D.C. don’t fear being caught with a gun. The situation is almost as bad for unlawful possession of a firearm prosecutions. Of the 2,149 arrests between 2018 and 2022, 829 (38.6%)  weren’t charged, 517 (38.2%) were closed without a conviction, and only 592 resulted in a felony conviction, representing 27% of those arrested. Of those felony convictions, only 312 of the perpetrators were sentenced to prison, or 14.5% of all those arrested for unlawful possession.  This is not a track record any career prosecutor should brag about.  A 67% Declination Rate Is Pathetic And Graves is not just going easy on armed criminals. He has been giving most criminals a pass, as the statistics below prove, while blaming the police, the city council, the appeals courts, or anyone else other than himself for his failure to do his job.  For example, in 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had an abysmal 67% declination rate, despite the fact that the office has 330 prosecutors—one for every 2,035 residents. The declination rate in 2015 under President Barack Obama was 31%. In 2019, under Trump, it was 48%.  Compare those numbers to the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, which has a 22.6% declination rate for the past 20 years in over 500,000 cases. That office also has 330 prosecutors but serves a county with 3,276,208 residents—one prosecutor for every 9,927 residents of the county.   Personnel Is Policy In order to make D.C. safe again, Trump must appoint a law-and-order prosecutor who is willing to reform the U.S. Attorney’s Office and prosecute the most violent criminals, including 16- and 17-year-olds, to the fullest extent of the law.  Reforming the office should start with hiring law-and-order prosecutors, not woke social justice warriors who see defendants as victims and the police as the enemy.  The best large city prosecutors’ offices have professional investigators on staff who work with felony prosecutors to build and support their cases. The best offices, such as San Diego County and Riverside County District Attorney’s Offices in California have 120 and 126 district attorney investigators, respectively, or about one investigator for every two or three felony prosecutors. Riverside County spends almost $40 million per year on investigators. In contrast, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office currently has three investigators for the entire office, or one investigator for every 80-90 felony Superior Court prosecutor. That’s pathetic. Additionally, Matt Graves closed what was known as the Community Prosecution Unit in his office for no reason whatsoever. Attorneys in that unit attended hundreds of community meetings each year as the public face of the office. They listened to residents, explained policies, and were ambassadors for the office. This must be reversed immediately, as the office needs to be seen as part of the community. These and other commonsense practices utilized in other successful large city district attorney offices are keys to making D.C. safe again.  The post Make DC Safe Again appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This week, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees began their Senate confirmation hearings. After four years of the administrative malaise of the Biden administration, the nominees proved to be a breath of fresh air. They completely reject the failed philosophies of the Biden years—and the contrast is absolutely stunning. Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth explained that it was time to “bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense.” His laser focus would be on “warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness.” To do that, Hegseth pledged to eviscerate so-called diversity, equity and inclusion standards, explaining, “The strength of our military is our unity—our shared purpose—not our differences.” For that absolutely anodyne perspective, Democrats raked Hegseth over the coals. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., angrily intoned, “Our military is more diverse than it has ever been, but more importantly, it is more lethal than it has ever been. This is not a coincidence.” Of course, diversity has literally nothing to do with lethality; the notion that an army formed from members of different ethnicities but without common purpose would somehow overcome an army with unified purpose but without racial diversity is absolutely asinine. But such nostrums have governed our military policy for decades. That’s how we end up with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley disclaiming on the evils of “white rage.” Reed went on to criticize Hegseth for his negative appraisal of the restrictive rules of engagement often promulgated by the Defense Department. “As someone who’s led men in combat directly and had to make very difficult decisions, I thought very deeply about the balance between legality and lethality, ensuring that the men and women on the front lines have the opportunity to destroy with and close the enemy and that lawyers aren’t the ones getting in the way,” Hegseth replied. Hegseth understands that all too often, the rules of war are turned against the humane parties to any conflict while those who abuse those rules are treated to their benefits. Meanwhile, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., was having a meltdown of her own. Enraged at past Hegseth comments suggesting his opposition to women serving in frontline positions, she ranted, “You said in your statement you don’t want politics in the DOD. Everything you’ve said in these public statements is politics. ‘I don’t want women, I don’t want moms.’ What’s wrong with a mom, by the way? Once you have babies, you therefore are no longer able to be lethal?” Of course, as Hegseth made clear, what he was saying was that any factor that stands in the way of military efficacy ought to be put aside. But for the Left, the purpose of the military is to promote social policy rather than to win wars. Hegseth will be approved this week. And he should be. For too long, the American military has been run by generals focused on winning the internal political warfare within Defense rather than winning actual wars. For too long, members of the American military have served at the whim of those who are willing to risk their blood to preserve utopian fantasies about the antiseptic possibilities of warfighting. That era is over. If only it had ended long ago. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post A Breath of Fresh Air appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Sen. Steve Daines is set to introduce a bill Thursday afternoon to prohibit the federal government from using taxpayers’ funds to enter contracts with anti-Second Amendment companies. “Democrats and woke corporations have proven over and over again that they want to carry out an unconstitutional, overreaching, gun-grabbing agenda, and under no circumstances should our federal government use taxpayer dollars for these efforts,” said Daines, R-Mont. Daines’ Firearm Industry Non-Discrimination Act (FIND Act) would prevent corporations from benefiting from taxpayer-funded contracts and subcontracts while discriminating against firearms trade associations or businesses that sell firearms, ammunition, and the like. “Doing business with anti-Second Amendment corporations erodes Americans’ trust and infringes on law-abiding citizens’ constitutional rights,” Daines said. “It must stop.” Companies said to discriminate against gun owners include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Capital One, according to the American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit government oversight and research group. For instance, Bank of America has denied services to gun manufacturers, fossil-fuel producers, and contractors for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the Montana Attorney General’s Office. Cosponsors of the FIND Act are Republican Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rick Scott of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Tim Sheehy of Montana, Pete Ricketts and Deb Fischer of Nebraska, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Katie Britt of Alabama. Daines previously introduced the bill in both the 117th and 118th Congress. “The Second Amendment is ingrained in America and Idaho’s culture and way of life. If a business promotes anti-Second Amendment rhetoric, it should forfeit its right to gain a federal government contract,” Risch said of its 2023 introduction. “Through the Firearm Industry Non-Discrimination Act, the federal government would be prevented from awarding contracts to businesses that engage in that discrimination.” The post EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Daines to Introduce Bill Defending Second Amendment From Woke Companies appeared first on The Daily Signal.