NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND—Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, laid out a plan to combat the Left’s infrastructure in Washington as the Department of Government Efficiency exposed how taxpayer funding went to support left-wing activists and causes. “Talk about what the Oversight Committee is doing … to really root out this corruption and this infrastructure the Left has built in D.C. to really push their political agenda on the entire country,” Townhall Editor Katie Pavlich asked Comer on the main stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday. Comer pledged that his committee will follow up on the corruption that President Donald Trump and DOGE unveil. “We will follow through with investigation, with subpoena power,” he responded. “Follow the money, that’s what we did in the Biden investigation. We got the bank records.” Comer released a book in January titled “All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes That Made the Biden Family Rich,” exposing how former President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and other family members reaped rewards by trading off the influence of Joe Biden’s official positions. Comer warned potential investigators that “tax records don’t always tell the true picture,” but he noted that “bank records don’t lie.” “Banks usually catch when something suspicious happens,” he said, so his team focuses on bank records. He mentioned the Democrat fundraising company ActBlue, which faces accusations that it made “straw donations” in the names of elderly Democrats who did not intend to donate to cover up the actual sources of its funding. “We’re doing this now with ActBlue, and I think we’re going to have some very interesting information to come out very soon on ActBlue,” Comer teased. He also noted that the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on March 5 with the mayors of “sanctuary cities.” “They have tried to obstruct what Tom Homan is doing and obstruct deportation efforts,” Comer noted, referring to Trump’s border czar. “Who’s been paying for this? I believe you’re going to see there are a lot of government pots of money that have been funneling through these [nongovernmental organizations].” Indeed, many nonprofits have received federal funds to move illegal aliens across the U.S., and they are now filing lawsuits to block Trump’s order defunding them. “That’s what we want to identify,” he noted. “[Elon] Musk is all over that, DOGE is all over that, and Congress is going to be all over that. Hopefully, we can show the American people how abusive the Democrats and their allies in the deep state bureaucracies have been with their tax dollars.” ?FOLLOW THE MONEY?@RepJamesComer, head of the @GOPoversight, lays out a plan to combat the Left's infrastructure as @DOGE reveals how USAID and others have funneled money to leftist groups and their allies.Comer has his sights set on ActBlue and the committee is calling… pic.twitter.com/cpBwTj3zLx— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 20, 2025 Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer in the White House who previously served as a legal spokeswoman for Trump, also spoke about the Left’s “lawfare” (legal warfare) at the conference. She remarked that Trump won the election in November in part as backlash to the multiple Democrat prosecutors filing charges against him. And when Trump got into office for his second term and the new administration started fulfilling its campaign promises, the Democrats and their allies started filing lawsuits yet again. Many of the same groups filing lawsuits against Trump had access in the Biden White House, as my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” exposes. Some of the woke activist groups in the book also had ties to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which DOGE has uncovered. ?DEMS CAN'T QUIT THE LAWFAREWATCH @AlinaHabba at @CPAC note the Democrats' addiction to lawfare.Trump won the election in part as a response to the lawfare. Then, "we started doing exactly what America voted for us to do, doing all the things we promised, and then again came… pic.twitter.com/j3ZSIefDt4— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 20, 2025 The post FOLLOW THE MONEY: James Comer’s Plan to Fight the Left’s Infrastructure appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Senate confirmed Kash Patel to become FBI director today on a narrow vote of 51-49. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaksa joined Democrats in voting against the nomination.   President Donald Trump nominated Patel to reform the FBI, which has been the subject of several whistleblower complaints in recent years and is under scrutiny for being politicized and weaponized, including for targeting parents who spoke out at school board meetings and for plans to infiltrate traditional Catholics churches.   Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., noted that law enforcement organizations and state attorney generals have supported Patel’s nomination. Kash Patel has spent his career working in criminal law and national security.I look forward to working with him to restore the integrity of the FBI and get it focused on its critical mission. pic.twitter.com/PUBm7C09Wk— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) February 20, 2025 The final vote came after Senate Democrats managed to delay the confirmation for several weeks.  Murkowski asserted she agreed with Patel’s concerns about a weaponized FBI, but she did not believe he had the record to restore credibility. In a post on X before the vote, Murkowski said, “My reservations with Mr. Patel stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership. The FBI must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores.” I will oppose Kash Patel’s confirmation to serve as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI’s mission is “to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” Mr. Patel and I agree the bureau has crept past that mission, become an…— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) February 20, 2025 Patel has a 16-year career in law and national security, with both career and political positions at the Justice Department, the White House, and the Defense Department.  Patel will bring needed reforms to the FBI, said Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general, and former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration.  “The FBI has been at the heart of weaponization of government,” Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal. “Putting someone in there with as much knowledge and experience as Kash Patel has is an important step forward. He’ll do a great job and will keep America protected, with a less biased FBI. There is an amazing amount to clean up there. He will never get it all cleaned up. But I think he can pick up the bureau up by the ankle and shake the change out of its pockets.” In 2023, Patel’s book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” was published and detailed his critique of federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the FBI. The book was a sticking point for many Democrat senators during the confirmation process. During the first Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. Before that, Patel was the deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.  While at the NSC, he helped oversee Trump policies that included eliminating the Islamic State terrorist group as well as al-Qaida leadership such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Qasim al-Rimi. Patel also was the principal deputy to the former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who oversaw the operations of 17 intelligence agencies. Before going to the White House, Patel was senior counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under then-Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and oversaw the investigation into the Russian active measures campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.  The two and a half year investigation into whether Trump conspired with the Russian government to win the 2016 election was prompted by information fed to the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democrat operatives. The House panel and later special counsel Robert Mueller concluded there was no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia.  Patel also played a key role in the Nunes memo that showed the FBI relied on partisan “politically motivated or questionable sources” to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.  Before working on Capitol Hill, Patel was a terrorism prosecutor at the Justice Department. While at the Justice Department, he was also the liaison officer to the Joint Special Operations Command, conducting collaborative targeting operations against high-value terrorism targets. The post Senate Confirms Kash Patel as FBI Director appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In his effort to purge the federal government of political corruption, President Donald Trump is firing all prosecutors hired by his predecessor. On Tuesday evening, Trump announced via Truth Social that he is dismissing U.S. attorneys appointed by former President Joe Biden. “Over the past four years, the Department of Justice has been politicized like never before,” Trump began. He continued, “Therefore, I have instructed the termination of ALL remaining ‘Biden Era’ U.S. Attorneys. We must ‘clean house’ IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence.” The president added, “America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System—THAT BEGINS TODAY!” According to a report from Reuters, U.S. attorneys were informed last week that they were being dismissed. Trent Morse, Trump’s deputy director for the Office of Presidential Personnel, sent an email Thursday to Biden administration prosecutors, saying, “At the direction of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as U.S. Attorney is terminated, effective immediately.” In comments to The Washington Stand, Article III Project Founder and Trump legal ally Mike Davis explained, “President Trump had to fire every remaining Biden-era U.S. attorney to remove partisan political actors from the justice system.” He added, “For too long, the DOJ was weaponized against half of the country. That changed yesterday. Good riddance.” Already, Trump has begun staffing U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country with his own nominees. For example, Edward R. Martin, Jr. has been appointed as Trump’s U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin’s predecessor in the role, Matthew M. Graves, enacted a host of prosecutions against Jan. 6 protestors but largely refused to prosecute rising crimes in D.C. During his tenure, Graves declined to prosecute 67% of crimes in the nation’s capital, including 72% of misdemeanor crimes and 53% of felony arrests. Martin, meanwhile, served as a defense attorney for many of the Jan. 6 protestors targeted by Graves. Upon taking office, Martin fired over two dozen federal prosecutors involved in Jan. 6 cases and implemented a hiring and promotions freeze on the office. The move comes as Trump’s U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi attempts to ensure that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is prepared to act on the president’s agenda, instead of hampering him. Upon taking office, Bondi reminded all DOJ prosecutors that their responsibilities are not only “aggressively enforcing criminal laws passed by Congress, but also vigorously defending presidential policies and actions on behalf of the United States against legal challenges.” She continued, “The discretion afforded Justice Department attorneys with respect to those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute their personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.” “When Justice Department attorneys refuse to faithfully carry out their role by, for example, refusing to advance good-faith arguments or declining to sign briefs, it undermines the constitutional order and deprives the president of the benefit of his lawyers,” Bondi clarified. She warned that “any Justice Department attorney who declines to sign a brief, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Trump administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Justice Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination.” Bondi also announced the formation of a “Weaponization Working Group” dedicated to examining instances of the Justice Department’s weaponization against Americans, including Jan. 6 prosecutions, the weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act against pro-life Americans, the targeting of American Catholics, and the political prosecutions carried out against Trump himself. Originally published by The Washington Stand The post ‘Good Riddance’: Trump Fires ‘Biden Era’ Prosecutors appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Young conservative women are three times as likely to report having a happy life than liberal women—and the key factors driving the happiness gap are faith and family, a new study has found. Attending church together is twice as important to marital happiness than regular date nights, the same researchers conclude. In all, 37% of conservative women say they are “completely satisfied” with their life, compared to 12% of liberal women and 28% of moderates, according to data that researchers Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey of the Institute for Family Studies drew from the 2024 American Family Survey. What accounts for these vast differences in life satisfaction? The science pinpoints two factors: marriage and church attendance. “Conservative women ages 18-40 are married at rates that are 20 percentage points higher than liberal women in the same age group. And whereas over half of conservative women in this age group attend church weekly, only 12% of their liberal peers do,” writes Wilcox, a professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and Bailey. “Together, these two factors account for about half the ideological gap among young women in a multivariate analysis of life satisfaction that included controls for factors like race, education, and income.” Among young women between the ages of 18 and 40, only conservatives boast of an outright majority who are married (51%) and attend church weekly (55%). Liberals are most likely to be single (40%) or cohabiting (17%) and to attend church seldom or never (65%). Conversely, 29% of liberal women report feeling lonely a few times a week or more, compared to only 11% of conservative women and 19% of moderates. The survey finds “a large part of this loneliness gap comes from different rates of marriage and church attendance,” reports the study. “Adding controls for marriage and church attendance, ideology becomes less important, with marriage being the strongest predictor of feeling less lonely.” Young white liberals are the most likely demographic to have been diagnosed with a mental illness, according to a study that found 46% of white liberals between the ages of 18 and 29 had been diagnosed with a mental disorder, compared to 21% of conservatives the same age. Some analysts have tied higher rates of liberal depression to progressives’ tendency to engage in catastrophic thinking, a cognitive distortion that predicts the chance of worst-case scenarios as improbably high. But Wilcox and Bailey say the Right-Left “ideological divide does not appear to be just a consequence of negative thinking; it also seems to flow from the fact that liberal young women are less likely to be integrated into core American institutions—specifically marriage and religion—that lend meaning, direction, and a sense of solidarity to women’s lives.” Since loneliness derives from the Left’s estrangement from purpose-giving institutions, “any efforts to bridge this ideological gap in young women’s emotional well-being will seemingly require not only a change in thinking but also a renewal of young liberal women’s connection to America’s core institutions—family and faith,” they conclude. But the two institutions of marriage and religion work best together, they find. The 4 Factors That Make for a Good Marriage Include … Church Attendance If you want to have a happy marriage, don’t make the wedding the only time you go to church, according to separate Institute for Family Studies research on the four factors that contribute to a happy marriage. Regular church attendance does twice as much to make a happy home than going on regular date nights, finds the study released earlier this month titled “For Better: Four Proven Ways to a Strong and Stable Marriage,” which analyzed data from the 2022 State of Our Unions Survey. The happiest marriages grow between two spouses who are committed, protective, religious, and romantic. People who regard their marriage as one of the most important parts of their life are more likely to have a “very happy” marriage, both among women (399%) and men (234%). Couples who go to church together are twice as likely to be “very happy” than couples who have regular date nights. Wives are 112% more likely to say they are “very happy” if they go to church with their spouse, and husbands are 212% more likely. By comparison, 56% of wives and 114% of husbands feel happy thanks to date nights. That results in a partisan gap between red states and blue states. “Republicans continue to enjoy significantly happier marriages and somewhat more stable families with children than Democrats,” stated Institute for Family Studies researchers Wilcox, Wendy Wang, and Sam Herrin, summarizing their research brief released last October. “One bottom line is that a majority of young Republicans are married, whereas only a minority of young Democrats are married.” Republicans were also more likely to say they were “very happy” with their marriages than Democrats (65% to 54%). The gap is more pronounced among those without a college education. Their conclusions dovetail with a host of other surveys tying lifetime satisfaction, personal thriving, and deep-seated happiness to marriage, children, and faith. Young married adults were more likely to be “thriving” than unmarried adults, according to a Gallup poll released last March. “From 2009 to 2023, married adults aged 25 to 50 were more likely to be thriving—by double-digit margins—than adults who have never married. The 16-percentage-point gap between married adults (61%) and those who have never married (45%) in 2023 is within the range of 10 to 24 points recorded since 2009,” found Gallup. Marriage’s emotional bonus held true “for men and women across all major racial/ethnic groups” and “is not explained by other demographic characteristics—such as age, race/ethnicity or education.” Gallup researchers added that “ideologically conservative parents report higher quality and more harmonious relationships with their children compared with liberal or moderate parents.” Additional studies have found: Americans who believe in God and value their marriage are more likely to be “very happy” than their secular and single counterparts, according to a March 2023 Wall Street Journal-NORC poll. Americans who regularly attended religious services were 44% more likely to consider themselves “very happy” than those who attended infrequently or never, found the Pew Research Center in 2019. “Regular churchgoers are between about 30% and 50% less likely to get divorced, compared to Americans who are unchurched,” wrote Wilcox and Wendy Wang last February. Christians who consistently read the Bible scored higher on the Human Flourishing Index than non-practicing Christians or Nones [those who have no religious affiliation and don’t attend church], especially on finding a “meaning and purpose” to their lives, an American Bible Society study reported in June 2023. The researchers who compiled the “Handbook of Religion and Health” reviewed “326 articles on the relationship between health and measures of ‘religiosity and subjective well-being, happiness, or life satisfaction,’ finding that 79% of those studies reported that religious people were happier, while only 1% reported that they were less happy (the rest found no or mixed findings),” reported Stephen Cranney of Baylor University and The Catholic University of America. Numerous studies also bear out biblical commandments on sex and marriage, showing that couples who wait until marriage to have sex never have sex with anyone other than their spouse, and those who attend church together report the highest level of sexual satisfaction. This article originally appeared in The Washington Stand. The post Conservative Women 3X Happier than Liberals Thanks to Church Attendance, Marriage, Study Shows appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell is expected to announce he will not seek reelection Thursday, according to multiple reports. McConnell, 83, led the Senate Republican conference for decades until he stepped down at the end of the last Congress. There was widespread speculation that the former Republican leader would retire following his decision to oppose several of President Donald Trump’s high-profile cabinet picks. “Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell is expected to say on the Senate floor Thursday. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.” “Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s determination, the work of strengthening American hard power was well underway when I arrived in the Senate,” McConnell will add. “But since then, we’ve allowed that power to atrophy. And today, a dangerous world threatens to outpace the work of rebuilding it. So, lest any of our colleagues still doubt my intentions for the remainder of my term: I have some unfinished business to attend to.” McConnell will continue to serve as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee until his retirement, giving the former GOP leader a perch to advocate for his hawkish foreign policy views. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Mitch McConnell Announces He Will Not Run for Reelection appeared first on The Daily Signal.