Toyota Motor Corp said on Monday it will build a new $3.6 billion auto plant in Texas and shift some truck production to the United States from Mexico, prompting triumphant statements from the White House. The Japanese automaker said the new 2.5-million-square-foot building will be located on its San Antonio manufacturing campus and will open by 2030, creating 2,000 jobs. The company said it will move production of its mid-size Tacoma pickup truck from its Baja California plant in Mexico to Texas when the factory is completed. Toyota will continue to build Tacoma trucks at its Guanajuato plant in Mexico. Toyota already produces Tundra trucks and SUVs at its existing San Antonio assembly plant on the site where the new facility will be built and a new 500,000-square-foot rear axle plant is set to open in the autumn. President Donald Trump has urged automakers to move production to the United States and has hiked tariffs on autos, steel, aluminum and parts. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used,” Trump stated of the news on Tuesday while taking questions from reporters in Ankara, Turkey, at the 2026 NATO Summit. “President Trump promised to bring manufacturing back to our country, and he is delivering for American workers,” stated White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a post on X. President Trump promised to bring manufacturing back to our country, and he is delivering for American workers: https://t.co/WwmOPjxM3K— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) July 7, 2026 Toyota said it remains committed to its operations throughout Mexico, Canada and the United States and urged Trump to extend a North American free trade deal that automakers say is critical to integrated auto production. In 2020, Toyota moved Tacoma production from San Antonio to the Guanajuato plant, alongside the Baja plant that had produced the truck since 2004. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the investment will qualify for a $20 million state grant and other incentives. Last year, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda wore a 2024 Trump-Vance T-shirt and a red “Make America Great Again” Trump hat, drawing praise from Trump and criticism from environmentalists. Toyota successfully lobbied Congress and the White House to roll back California emissions rules and other EV requirements, but has also faced billions of dollars in higher costs from Trump tariffs. The X account for the Department of Labor stated on Tuesday, “When we say investments and jobs are POURING into our country—we mean it.” 2,000 MANUFACTURING JOBS. $3.6 BILLION initial investment. Up to $10 BILLION more in investment by 2030.When we say investments and jobs are POURING into our country—we mean it.Americans are building again thanks to @POTUS! READ MORE: https://t.co/MOylonsRAw pic.twitter.com/3w2R036rzM— U.S. Department of Labor (@USDOL) July 7, 2026 Reuters contributed to this report.

PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) – A French appeal court on Tuesday upheld Marine Le Pen’s conviction for misusing EU funds but shortened her ban on running for public office, in theory preserving a path for the conservative leader to run in the 2027 presidential election. However, the court also sentenced Le Pen to a three-year jail term: two suspended and one with an electronic ankle tag. This could make a presidential campaign politically and logistically difficult. Le Pen previously said she would be reluctant to wage a presidential campaign while serving a sentence under electronic monitoring, arguing that it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility. But she is yet to confirm what she will do. As she left the courtroom, Le Pen was smiling but did not say a word. She then went to the headquarters of her party, the anti-immigrant National Rally (RN), to discuss what to do next. Le Pen had been convicted in March 2025 of embezzlement and banned for five years with immediate effect from holding public office, and thus from making her long-planned fourth bid for the Elysee Palace. Tuesday’s appeal judgment, under which Le Pen is ineligible to hold public office for 45 months, 30 of which are suspended, means she will be eligible to stand when voters go to the polls in April 2027, because she has already served the 15-month ban, which has been running since last year’s ruling. Will Le Pen Campaign With an Electronic Tag? The decision is likely to trigger intense debate within the RN, which has spent months preparing for two possible futures: one led by Le Pen and another by party president Jordan Bardella. The electronic tag was stipulated as part of a softened jail sentence, and means she would not actually have to go to jail. A sentencing judge will decide on the terms of Le Pen’s tag, setting out the hours when she can be away from her home and what time she must return at night. Restrictions on weekends are usually tighter. A judicial source said the tag would likely complicate a nationwide presidential campaign, as she would need to return home each night, but probably not make it impossible. Le Pen could also ask for the tag to be removed after a few months for good behaviour, the source added. Polls have consistently shown both RN figures as strong contenders to reach a presidential runoff. Some recent surveys have even suggested Bardella would outperform Le Pen in the first round. Le Pen’s conviction stems from charges that National Rally figures misused European Parliament funds intended for parliamentary assistants, instead paying party staff in France. In 2025, judges found Le Pen had played a central role in the scheme, a finding she has consistently disputed. The original verdict sparked condemnation from Le Pen’s allies in France and abroad, who accused the judiciary of influencing democratic competition. Her opponents argued that elected officials must be held to the same legal standards as any other citizen.    (Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro and Elizabeth Pineau, additional reporting by Makini Brice, Nicolas Delame, Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Kevin Liffey)

I’ve spent time on both sides of a badge. I worked private security and executive protection, and in 1992, I drove in the presidential motorcade for President George H.W. Bush after the Los Angeles riots while working on an Assembly campaign with Young Republicans. I earned my California EMT license in 1992. I know what it looks like when the rule of law breaks down, and I know what it looks like when someone finally decides to enforce it. What’s happening at ICE right now is the latter, and it’s about time. The numbers tell the story. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 10,000 people over a five-day stretch at the end of June, roughly 2,000 arrests a day, close to double the pace tracked in recent months. The Department of Homeland Security says roughly 70% of ICE arrests this year have targeted people already facing criminal charges or convictions, and reports that more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the country since the administration took office—roughly 900,000 formally deported and the rest self-deported. ICE is finally doing the job Congress funded it to do. Compare that to what came before. The House Homeland Security Committee documented more than 10.8 million Customs and Border Protection encounters nationwide since the start of fiscal year 2021, with roughly 2 million more “gotaways” who were never even processed. Millions of those encountered were released into the interior on notices to appear, a paperwork promise that a huge share of them simply ignored. Thomas Sowell spent a career explaining that you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax. Catch-and-release subsidized illegal entry. Predictably, we got more of it. Jonathan Turley has written for years that a nation that stops enforcing its own laws doesn’t have a border policy; it has an opinion about borders. For four years, that’s roughly what we had. Agents were told to prioritize almost nothing, judges were backlogged for years, and the message that traveled fast was the one that mattered: Get across, and you’re probably staying. Ten million-plus encounters later, nobody serious should be surprised by the result. I spent 2023 working on a rainforest preservation project deep in the Brazilian Amazon, flying into Manaus and traveling upriver past the reach of any government office, coordinating with indigenous community leaders and local officials on land nobody effectively polices. What struck me wasn’t the remoteness. It was how quickly any system, jungle, or border degrades once the people responsible for it stop showing up. A border isn’t a mere line on a map; it’s a commitment that gets renewed daily by whether anyone’s actually standing on it. We stopped standing on ours for the better part of a decade, and the detention population, which independent tracking of ICE’s own released data put above 60,000 as of the most recent figures, is the bill coming due. None of this means the current surge is without friction. Federal officials say Renee Good drove her vehicle at an ICE agent in Minneapolis after ignoring an order to get out of the car and defended the shooting as self-defense; Minneapolis officials dispute that account, citing security footage, and the case remains under state investigation, along with the separate killing of Alex Pretti two and a half weeks later. Whatever the final findings, the controversy forced DHS to adjust its posture, and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin has since pursued a quieter way of carrying out removals rather than high-visibility citywide raids. That’s the right call. Competent enforcement doesn’t require theatrics. It requires consistency, and it requires prioritizing people who’ve already proven, through a felony charge or conviction, that they don’t belong here. I trained in Muay Thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu for years, and every striking coach teaches the same first lesson: Dropping your hands has to cost you something. Get tagged for it enough times in sparring and the bad habit disappears. Take away the consequence, and the same mistake repeats forever. We ran a decade-long experiment in removing consequences from illegal entry, and the mistake repeated by the millions. What ICE is doing now—arresting people with real criminal histories at a real operational pace—isn’t cruelty. It’s the return of consequences to a system that had abandoned them entirely. Fix the border, and you fix the incentives. Everything else downstream; the fentanyl, the human trafficking, and the strain on schools and hospitals in border and sanctuary states all trace back to that one broken incentive. I’ve spent 30 years managing risk for a living. Unenforced law is the biggest unpriced risk a country can carry, and we’re only now starting to price it correctly. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Imagine a government deciding which parts of a church are sacred. The altar, yes. The nave, no. The chapels, the dome, the atrium, the vestibule, and great bronze doors—no as well. The faithful may pray here, but not there, and only after passing through a state-run exhibition with a political and ideological message before entering. It might sound invented, but it is happening right now in Spain.  The target is the Basilica of the Holy Cross in the Valley of Cuelgamuros. There is nothing else like it in the Christian world. It extends some 260 meters into the granite of the Sierra de Guadarrama, making it longer than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Above it rises the tallest cross on earth, a 152-meter monument of stone.   Consecrated in 1960 and entrusted since 1958 to a Benedictine abbey that reports directly to the pope, it contains beneath its floor the remains of more than 33,000 dead from both sides of the Spanish Civil War, including approximately 140 men and women whom the Church has raised to Her altars as saints, blesseds, and servants of God.   It is a living temple and an immense cemetery, and it is sacred from end to end. While it was built during Francisco Franco’s regime, the space was entrusted entirely to the Catholic Church. However, Spain’s socialist government is now using the site’s history as a pretext to undermine religious freedom.  A religious site is sacred in its entirety. A Catholic basilica is not merely religious at the altar and during the celebration of Mass. Its doors, its naves, and its chapels are dedicated to divine worship. And no government—none—has the authority to walk in and decide which of those spaces remain sacred and which do not.   What a faith considers sacred is for that faith to determine. This is neither a minor nor a sectarian matter. Religious freedom is not simply one liberty among many; it is the foundation upon which all the others rest.   Once a people is deprived of the right to follow conscience and worship freely, every remaining freedom becomes a privilege that the state may revoke at will. The Spanish Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and so does Spain’s agreement with the Holy See, which expressly recognizes the inviolability of places of worship. Those guarantees are now being put to the test.  An assault is underway. Through a chain of laws, royal decrees, and an international architectural competition launched in 2025, the state has set in motion a project that reaches into the consecrated interior of the basilica. It strips the atrium and vestibule of their religious character, relocates the bronze doors, abolishes the basilica’s independent entrance, and forces worshippers to pass through a politically curated interpretation center before they can kneel in prayer. Most remarkably of all, the state has assumed for itself—through the fine print of its own administrative specifications—the authority to determine which parts of the basilica qualify as “places of worship” and which do not.  None of these measures carry the authorization of any religious authority with jurisdiction over the temple. Neither the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal José Cobo Cano—whose involvement has at times been invoked, though he holds no jurisdiction over the basilica—nor the Benedictine monks who serve as its lawful custodians have given their consent. The monks, in any event, could not: The Code of Canon Law itself bars them from agreeing to the partition of a consecrated church in the manner the project envisions. These are administrative acts being carried out upon a church that has never said yes.  And to justify intervention in a religious symbol, only one thing is ever invoked: the ghost of Franco. Wrap the project in the language of historical memory, summon the dictator, and an intrusion into the interior of a church is supposed to appear as an act of democratic housekeeping.   But remove that ghost and the real engine of the project becomes visible: a strain of anti-religious and anti-Catholic fanaticism that views a consecrated basilica, a place of prayer for thousands of people, not as sacred ground but as a trophy to be redesigned. This is not ultimately about the past. It is about who gets to cross the threshold of a place of worship, and on what terms.  There is, however, an encouraging aspect to the story. Judges are proving to be the strongest line of defense. The Benedictine community—the lawful guardian of the basilica—turned to the courts, and its legal challenge is likely, in practical terms, to bring the project to a halt.   Even as ideological figures push forward, the rule of law is still taken seriously in Spanish courtrooms, where a religious community can still ask a judge whether the state has the right to force its way into a place of worship and receive an impartial hearing. The separation of powers is not a slogan here. At this very moment, it is the only barrier standing between this basilica and the plans that have been drawn up for its interior.  Strip away the noise and the propaganda, and the question becomes simple—one that concerns everyone, believer and nonbeliever alike: How far may public power go inside the doors of a place of worship?  Americans answered that question long ago, and they placed the answer first in the Bill of Rights. It is no accident that the First Amendment begins with the free exercise of religion. The Founders understood that religious liberty is the cornerstone that supports every other freedom. A state that can force its way into a church and ration the sacred can, in time, force its way into anything—your speech, your associations, your conscience.  For that reason, defending the threshold of a basilica in Spain means defending something far greater than a single house of worship or a single faith. It means defending the first freedom, the one upon which all the others depend, and the very idea of liberty that has stood at the heart of the Western democratic tradition. For now, Spain’s courts are carrying that defense forward. They deserve the attention—and the solidarity—of everyone who still believes that freedom begins precisely where the state agrees to stop.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Hours after Graham Platner, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, was accused of sexual assault, his party abandoned him. While Democrats claim to be taking the moral high ground, their timeline says otherwise. Monday afternoon, Politico reported another Platner scandal the political world had sensed was coming after he canceled his campaign events for the day. In an exclusive interview, his 41-year-old ex-girlfriend of five years, Jenny Racicot, detailed the night she says he raped her in 2021. Platner denied the allegations, calling them “troubling, serious, and false,” and the detailed behavior “categorically untrue.” Democrats have supported Platner extensively through countless allegations of violent and inappropriate behavior. Women described him as volatile and physically intimidating, as reported last month by The New York Times. A list of allegations against him includes domestic abuse, kidnapping, adultery, and lying about his Nazi tattoo. He received funding and support through them all. The Politico story dropped at roughly 3 p.m. Monday afternoon. By 7 p.m., Democratic leadership withdrew their funding and support, setting the stage for Senate candidates in battleground states to fall in line. At 7:01 p.m., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., released a joint statement: “The allegations reported today are incredibly disturbing—violence, abuse, and sexual assault are absolutely unacceptable.” Refusing to invest in his race anymore, they called for Platner to immediately withdraw and allow Maine the opportunity to choose a new candidate. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota was the first Democrat Senate candidate to fall in line. At 7:07 p.m., she posted on X, “These allegations are deeply disturbing and troubling,” and called for him to end his campaign. Minutes later, the Senate Democrats Super PAC announced they will be “redirecting resources away from the Maine Senate race in light of the latest allegations against Graham Platner.” Lauren French, a spokesperson for the fundraising arm, posted their statement to X at 7:24 p.m.: “We continue to believe this seat is winnable if Platner is not on the ballot, but we cannot strategically continue to invest here when there is an expansive battleground map where these resources can help win a Democratic majority.” Both of these tweets from Dem Senate candidates came out within a minute of each other. Very authentic. Absolutely wasn’t the @dscc sending out the marching orders. Couldn’t be. Someone should probably ask though, right? #ncsen pic.twitter.com/D9tPLoFL36— Tyler Voigt (@TylerJVoigt) July 7, 2026 Quickly following their Senate leadership and fundraising group, battleground candidates fell in line, protecting their race. At 8:12 p.m., Peggy Flanagan, another Democrat Senate candidate in Minnesota, posted, “I believe Jenny. Graham Platner should not be Democrats’ nominee for U.S. Senate.” Four minutes later, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said, “Mr. Platner should withdraw his candidacy for the Senate.” Less than an hour later, Roy Cooper, Democrat Senate candidate in North Carolina, wrote, “This goes beyond politics. These are disturbing allegations, and I believe Graham Platner should drop out of this race.” Sherrod Brown in Ohio agreed the allegations were “deeply disturbing,” and “he should drop out.” Haley Stevens in Michigan agreed, “I believe women. Graham Platner should drop out.” The allegations so far:Domestic abuse, kidnapping, cheating on his wife with other women & possibly minors, saying women deserved rape, saying vets deserved to die.ALSO lied about: his Nazi tattoo, PTSD, joining Blackwater, his oyster farm.He's Chernobyl the candidate. https://t.co/64l1cJGeZ3— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) July 6, 2026 The final string of statements came in at 10:35 p.m. “The allegations against Graham Platner are truly disturbing,” said Iowa’s Josh Turek. “This isn’t about party—this is about right and wrong and who should represent their state in the U.S. Senate. He should drop out immediately.” Texas Democrat James Talarico called the allegations against Platner “credible,” and said, “he should withdraw from the race immediately.” Finally, at 12:22 a.m. Eastern time, Mary Peltola of Alaska called the allegations disturbing and disqualifying. “He needs to drop out,” she wrote. Without funding or support from his party, he is staying in the race for now. The State has until Friday for him to drop out so they can replace him on the November ticket. The DSCC could not be reached immediately for comment.