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.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of Friday’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Jennifer Hanson: So, let’s turn to the International Criminal Court. And [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani wants to enforce its laws in New York City. When Bibi Netanyahu shows up, he says he’s going to arrest him because they have a warrant out for Bibi for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I want to just note one thing about those war crimes. They are starvation as a method of warfare. They’ve been accusing the Israelis of stealing or subverting supplies that are supposed to go to Gazans. And we just had the U.N. admit that, in fact, it is Hamas doing that. So I’m not sure why we haven’t seen war crimes Victor Davis Hanson: I’m really surprised. I know people are going to be shocked by this, but Mamdani, with that socialist smile and that oozy, unctuous personality, I thought he wouldn’t be so stupid to admit that he’s an absolute antisemite and hates Israel. Because any person who listened to his video and read what he wrote, the first question is, okay, you have a policy that anybody that you think, in your infinite wisdom, committed genocide can’t come into your city. He said, you can’t come into our city.  It’s not your city. You’re an interloper. You had about 11% of the resident population vote for you. And it’s not your city, I’m sorry. You may think it is. You’re the mayor for a while, but it’s not your city. And then the question everybody has is, though, I know our listeners are saying, well, of course, when the Palestinians come in, because they aided and abetted Hamas in many cases, you’re going to arrest them given Oct. 7. You’re going to arrest the Iranian delegation because they were responsible, that government, for killing 40,000 to 50,000 of their own well after Gaza. Oh, wait a minute, you’re not going to do that because members of your staff were secretly planning to meet with them as a friendly little chat.  Are you going to go after the Pakistani government? Because they have, they’ve killed a lot of people, a lot of people. They also had bin Laden, right, harboring the world’s greatest terrorist on their own territory and protected him. Are you going to go after the Chinese government? They’ve got a million people in a re-education—I shouldn’t say that—in a labor camp, concentration camp. You’re going to go after the Muslim Azerbaijanis because they ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian, what, thousand-year enclave in Azerbaijan? No, you’re not going to do any of that because you’re an antisemite and you only want to focus on Jews. And so he looks–and then he, I don’t know, he’s–I’m not a lawyer, but most of our listeners aren’t lawyers, but they all know that a mayor in charge of the boroughs of New York can’t enforce federal law that says what? What is federal law? What federal law is–take a pause. Mamdani, there is a statute that we’ve signed onto that says that people who come to the U.N. that are authentic, genuine diplomats cannot be arrested by the United States. You understand that? They cannot be. Number two, do you really think the International Criminal Court has any jurisdiction? We’re not a signee to that court. They have zero, zero jurisdiction. Did you know that the head of the International Criminal Court was just fired for sexual harassment? It’s a corrupt organization. Don’t you understand that? It has no authority in the United States. You have no authority to interfere with federal law. And I have a feeling that if all of that didn’t stop you and you went ahead and you called up the chief of police—she was standing right by him—and said, go get NYPD and cut off the Israeli motorcade. We’re going to put him in Rikers until we formally charge him. They wouldn’t do it. And so he knows that. Jennifer Hanson: Did you notice that Rubio took the opportunity to say, Not only do we–everything you said about the International Criminal Court, but we want to dismantle the International Criminal Court? Victor Davis Hanson: I hope so. We shouldn’t give a dime to the U.N. Actually, we should get the U.N.–they always give these platitude speeches, and then their diplomats, for the first and only time in their life, in the case of about 90 countries, come over here and they vote. You know, they vote in the General Assembly on resolutions, half of which, until recently, were just about condemning Israel. And you think, Well, if you don’t vote in Somalia, and you don’t vote in Egypt, and you don’t vote in, I don’t know, you don’t have a fair vote in Uganda till recently, why would you vote over here? And what would that mean? The first time in your life you’d live it up. And they’re always getting caught for not paying parking tickets, speeding, because they have exemption. And they’re always giving lectures to us about the Global South versus the Global North, about people of color. I’ve said that in print twice. Why don’t we take the U.N.–we don’t have to fund it. We just say to them, Go, take your pick. You could put it in Cambodia. You could put it in Peru. You could put it in Nigeria, and there would be among the people of the world, and you wouldn’t have to see those awful Americans anymore. And they won’t do it, because they won’t be, after they make some denunciation of Israel on the floor of the Security Council or the General Assembly, they won’t, three hours later, walk down the street to NPR and be told, well, why did you say that speech, Ambassador Kinte-Wata? Well, you know. And that’s what they love. They love all the global media. They love the restaurants. They love the hotels. They love the Western lifestyle that they hang out all night at, and then they trash the United States during the day, and it’s just so boring. Just go away. You know what I mean? I just say go away. I was the biggest supporter of legal immigration. I still am, but this latest iteration of all these people coming in here from third-world countries, and whether it’s the illegal 40,000 illegal truck drivers—those are illegal—or it’s people like [Melat] Kiros or [Darializa] Chevalier or [Rep. Rashida] Tlaib, their parents, first- or second-generation, or Mamdani or Pi–and they all lecture us, lecture us about how awful we are. You know, if you ask them anything about U.S. history, what are the Articles of Confederation that prompted the need for the Constitution? Who was the general at the Battle of New Orleans? Why did the North win? They don’t, they don’t care. All they do is … It’s so funny to see these people who—I think it was Kiros—who was telling us, what was she saying? That it was going to be more people from the Global South? Jennifer Hanson: She was suggesting that in Congress they needed to elect more representatives from the Global South to fight the global world order as it stands today, i.e., against capitalism. Victor Davis Hanson: What does that mean? Does she think people of color? Jennifer Hanson: Yes, I suppose she would put it that way.  Victor Davis Hanson: We have over 50 people, I think, in the Black Caucus. It’s greater than the percentage of the demography of the Black population in the general population. Jennifer Hanson: Maybe she thinks that the Global South would understand the importance of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. Victor Davis Hanson: Can you imagine if some person got up and said–can you imagine if Rand Paul or Josh Hawley or somebody said, I think we have a problem. We don’t have enough people from the Global North. We haven’t had representative immigration from Europe in years, not since 1965. Europeans were 90% of the country at its founding, and we have been systematically prejudicial, so we want more Global North people in the Senate. Well, they’re racist, right? It’s so tribal and so boring, too.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., rolled out the Retirement Fairness for Working Americans Act this week, and the name alone tells you how Washington sells a bad idea. There is nothing fair about capping retirement accounts and forcing selloffs on people who did exactly what the tax code told them to do for 30 years. Fairness does not shrink the pot. This bill does. I have spent three decades building investment strategies for single-family offices, running a hedge fund, and structuring private credit deals, and I serve as a designated expert witness on fiduciary duty in federal and state courts. I know the difference between closing a genuine loophole and moving the goalposts on savers who followed the rules Congress wrote. This bill is the second thing dressed up as the first. The legislation, in both its House and Senate versions, targets anyone with more than $10 million combined across IRAs and defined contribution plans, barring further contributions and forcing a 50% annual drawdown on the excess, once income tops $400,000 for individuals or $450,000 for couples. To justify this, Wyden and Neal point to Peter Thiel, whose Roth IRA grew into a multibillion-dollar account after he placed early PayPal founder shares into it decades ago. Here is what Washington will not say plainly: Thiel has not been shown to have broken any rule. He used a structure that was legally available, priced his shares the way the custodian did not object to at the time, and then did what Thiel does, which is build companies that work. Punishing a man for being smarter and earlier than everyone else is a poor tax policy. The maneuver is also rarer than the bill’s sponsors let on. Pulling it off requires three things at once: access to founder or seed-stage shares in a company that becomes a generational winner, a specialized custodian willing to hold private stock inside a Roth, and counsel sophisticated enough to navigate prohibited-transaction and self-dealing rules without tripping them. That combination narrows the field to a small slice of founders and early-stage investors, not a meaningful share of American savers. The numbers back that up. IRS data on IRA balances is aggregated by income and age, not broken out by “founder stock that became a fortune,” so nobody can cite a real percentage, and the people claiming otherwise are guessing. A generous estimate puts the accounts that pulled off Thiel’s specific trick in the hundreds or low thousands, against roughly 150 million American tax filers and tens of millions of IRA holders. That rounds to zero, and it should not be confused with the millions of households doing routine backdoor Roth conversions on ordinary portfolio assets, a different behavior entirely. The capital markets case matters too. Retirement accounts are the largest pool of patient, long-horizon capital in the economy, sitting in equities, bonds, and private markets for decades and funding the expansion capital that lets companies build plants and hire workers. Force accounts above $10 million to liquidate half of every excess dollar each year, and you pull capital out of the market that funds hiring at companies nobody has accused of tax avoidance. The Joint Committee on Taxation put the scale in context: just 208 individuals held $85.1 billion in these accounts at the end of 2024, averaging $409 million each, against the trillions in the broader 401(k) and IRA system. I work with private credit strategies that depend on exactly this kind of long-duration capital. Force annual liquidation on the longest-horizon accounts in the system, and you shrink the pool that keeps credit flowing to small businesses that cannot get a bank loan on reasonable terms. There is a trust problem here too. Every American who maxes out a 401(k) or funds a backdoor Roth is betting that Washington will not move the finish line on them. Change the rules retroactively on people who followed them, and you teach the next generation that the smart move is to spend today and let Social Security sort out tomorrow. This bill has no path through the current Congress; its authors are writing it for 2027, banking on a Democratic majority to hand them the gavels to move it. That is a marker laid down for a future fight, not a fairness agenda. Wyden told reporters this bill closes “an egregious loophole.” It does not. A loophole implies a widespread hole in the fence that thousands are climbing through. What Thiel found was a door so narrow almost nobody else could locate it, let alone walk through it, and he walked through it legally. A nationwide law capping 32,000 account holders—business owners, physicians, and long-tenured executives who built seven-figure balances through decades of contributions and compounding—to catch a problem that applies to a rounding error’s worth of people is not fairness. It is a lot of legislative effort spent finding a problem that barely exists. I coached kids in youth sports, and the first thing I teach them is that discipline compounds. Show up, do the reps, and results follow years later, often long after anyone is watching. That is what four decades of retirement contributions look like too. Punishing the people who did the reps because one outlier used a legal structure better than anyone else did is bad policy, and the savers who did everything right deserve better than a bill named for the opposite of what it does. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

A proposed data center in Henderson County, Texas, has withdrawn its plans to acquire land for its development. On Thursday, Diode, a global semiconductor company, notified Henderson County officials that it will no longer pursue the land development near Cedar Creek Lake. “Instead, we will focus on opportunities where we can support Texas’ growing infrastructure needs. We support practices that allow for responsible data center development, including the use of advanced water efficient technologies, like closed-loop and air-cooled systems, while engaging openly with communities from the beginning of the site exploration process,” the company’s notice states. Diode officials said the decision came after recent conversations with Gov. Greg Abbott’s staff, state Rep. Cody Harris, Henderson County Commissioner Wendy Spivey, and other county officials. They also said local residents raised concerns about the proposed data center being located near the rural residential communities surrounding Cedar Creek Lake. Earlier this month, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure that data centers’ interconnections reduce residential electricity costs, require developers to pay for all electric infrastructure without passing costs on to residential ratepayers, and have both the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas review their existing authorities to identify additional actions that could protect Texas residents. Abbott said Diode made the right decision by withdrawing the proposal. “Data centers that want to do business in Texas must meet a clear standard. This project did not,” Abbott said. “Texas requires companies to put communities first, protect our natural resources and power grid, and respect the quality of life of our residents. Diode did the right thing by withdrawing their project. If other data center developments refuse to meet these standards, I expect them to do the same.” Spivey, the Henderson County Precinct 1 commissioner, also welcomed the decision in a Facebook post. “I want to thank every resident who attended meetings, asked questions, researched the facts, signed petitions, wrote letters, sent emails, made phone calls, and spoke with courtesy and conviction. Your participation mattered,” said Spivey. “I also appreciate Diode Ventures for taking the time to listen to our community’s concerns and for making the decision that this location was not the right fit for a large-scale data center.” “From the very beginning, my position has been consistent: while Texas will continue to need infrastructure to support growth, this proposed location—surrounded by homes, families, and the Cedar Creek Lake community—was not an appropriate place for a project of this scale,” Spivey added.