A federal judge ruled to halt the construction of the White House ballroom on Tuesday, citing that Congress must approve of the project. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon paused construction on the ballroom after the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States sued the administration for tearing down the White House’s East Wing. The $300 million ballroom, which President Donald Trump claims is necessary to host state dinners, has been funded by private donations and not taxpayer funds. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families,” Leon, a former President George W. Bush appointee, wrote. “He is not, however, the owner!” “Unfortunately for Defendants, unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop,” the judge added. Trump responded to the judge’s decision in a Truth Social post, claiming the lawsuit “doesn’t make much sense.” “So, the White House Ballroom, and The Trump Kennedy Center, which are under budget, ahead of schedule, and will be among the most magnificent Buildings of their kind anywhere in the World, get sued by a group that was cut off by the government years ago, but all of the many DISASTERS in our Country are left alone to die,” Trump posted. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump took aim at the ruling. “In the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG! Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House,” the president claimed. “In this case, even less so, because the Ballroom is being built with Private Donations, no Federal Taxpayer Money!” Congress is now expected to comply with the judge’s orders and green-light the rest of the construction, someone familiar with the matter told The Daily Signal. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, chaired by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is now expected to help the ballroom construction continue after Congress returns from recess. Lee did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, but some Republicans on the committee have previously signaled their support for the project. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital in August 2025 that the new ballroom will be a great addition to the White House and commemorated the president for doing so with “no cost to the taxpayer.” Hoeven did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. Other Republican senators have also signaled support for the ballroom. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said in August 2025 that he’s “glad” the construction is being carried out through “private dollars.” “I think it’ll be a great thing to add and put that Trump stamp on the White House,” he added. In response to Democrat criticism of the construction, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, previously said that his colleagues from across the aisle oppose the construction because they “wake up animated by hatred for Trump and hatred for the American people that voted for him.” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., broke ranks with his Democrat colleagues when he shrugged off the project in August 2025 and called it “pretty normal.” “The plans are going to be done in a tasteful and historical kind of way,” Fetterman said. “They’re not putting in a Dave & Buster’s kind of situation here, so I think upgrading some of these facilities seems pretty normal.” In the lower chamber, Reps. Andy Biggs, Marlin Stutzman, Andy Ogles, and Josh Brecheen wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek in October applauding the construction and refuting any criticism. “The new ballroom is a practical investment in America’s most important home,” the members wrote. “For years, the White House has struggled to accommodate large-scale events, whether for state visits, national ceremonies or even bipartisan gatherings that bring leaders together.” The ballroom, if completed, would include an underground “military complex” that would serve as a bunker for the president, White House residents, and staff in the event of an emergency. “The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under,” Trump told reporters on Monday. The post With Federal Judge Halting White House Ballroom Construction, Will Congress Act? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration successfully launched four astronauts into deep space for the first time in more than 50 years. Artemis II launched the crewed Orion spacecraft at 6:35pm EST from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  The crew will travel for 10 days, loop around the moon, and go farther from Earth than humans have ever gone before.  The mission aboard the Orion spacecraft is the second mission of the Artemis program, but the first with a manned crew. NASA says the program is critical to advancing a sustained human presence on the moon, sending humans to Mars, and beyond.  “Space is the final frontier. We have always been a nation of explorers, and this is what’s next!” Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind., who serves on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, told The Daily Signal. Celebrating America 250-America Is Going to The Moon ????NASA is sending four astronauts on a historic mission to the moon. This 10 day long mission will help America establish larger space exploration. Follow The Daily Signal to get updates on the mission!@virginiagmck pic.twitter.com/4Pfa1IGe9T— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) April 1, 2026 This Mission Is America First  “In America’s 250th year, the Artemis II mission to the moon serves as a testament to American ingenuity and our ability to push the boundaries of what’s possible,” Baird said. “This mission cannot be underestimated: It is a critical step toward a greater U.S. presence in space, on the moon, and missions to Mars ahead of our adversaries. I commend the outstanding men and women of NASA and am praying for the astronauts’ successful mission and safe return,” Baird concluded. The Crew  The crew consists of three Americans—Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch—and one Canadian, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Hansen will be the first Canadian to fly on a mission to the moon. The Artemis II astronauts are wearing a commemorative @Freedom250 patch for America’s 250th birthday ??? @NASA @NASASpox @NASAAdmin @NASAArtemis pic.twitter.com/J7sg7z5ETp— Freedom 250 (@Freedom250) April 1, 2026 During prelaunch coverage, the astronauts shared that they plan to watch two movies during liftoff: Top Gun and Point Break, the latter requested by Koch, a former surfer.  The astronauts are bringing several personal items to keep close during their 10-day mission. Wiseman and Koch are bringing letters from their families, Glover is bringing his Bible and wedding rings, and Hansen is bringing his family’s birthstones.  The astronauts are wearing custom Artemis II patches alongside a commemorative Freedom 250 patch. The Economic Impact  During prelaunch coverage, NASA highlighted the massive economic impact of the Artemis program.  “Every dollar that comes out of the Treasury that goes to support this mission goes back into the Treasury three times,” a NASA spokesperson said.  Praying for the safety and success of the Artemis II crew and @NASA as they undertake a mission that will carry humanity farther into space than we have gone in over half a century.I had the privilege of hosting these courageous pioneers at the State of the Union earlier this… pic.twitter.com/Y2PvohPb6K— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) April 1, 2026 The Artemis program has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and was built by people and companies from all 50 states and around the world. The post LIFTOFF: Successful Artemis II Launch Sends Astronauts Into Deep Space appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With the partial government shutdown now the longest in U.S. history, House and Senate Republicans are trying a new plan to resolve the standstill. Last Friday, Republican senators passed a bill in the middle of the night to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Democrats refused to fund those two agencies without additional restrictions on immigration enforcement. The new plan would involve the House passing the Senate’s plan. Then both chambers would use the reconciliation process to fund immigration enforcement and border security for three years, without needing Democrat support. On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La, to pass a funding bill “NO LATER than June 1st.” Trump has threatened to recall members of Congress from their Easter recess to pass a bill funding the department. The president explained in a Truth Social post that funding from the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” will be used for now to pay ICE and Border Patrol agents “ON TIME, and IN FULL.” pic.twitter.com/9aaYTTHNGp— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2026 Thune and Johnson released a joint statement on Wednesday, laying out the new funding process. “In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” the statement reads. “In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited.” pic.twitter.com/t4QKgtyY9T— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) April 1, 2026 Republican senators told The Daily Signal they are working with Trump. “I absolutely agree with President Trump that Congress should reconvene and ensure that the Department of Homeland Security is fully funded, the SAVE America Act is passed, and Democrat obstruction is finally defeated,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, shared before Trump posted his statement. “We can’t forget how we arrived at this problem: Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan proposal passed by the House of Representatives and have continued to move the mark and changed the rules while Republicans negotiate in good faith,” a spokesperson for Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, told The Daily Signal. Members have discussed using the process of reconciliation to pass funding for the department, requiring only a simple majority support. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, involved in Senate Republicans’ partial funding plan, has been vocal on X about the need to fund the department. ?Weekly updateSenate Democrats put this country, and 260,000 families, through hell for 41 days. Why? Because they care much more about politics and illegals than American citizens and fulfilling their core duty: protecting the homeland.Shameful.Now that TSA, Coast Guard,…— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) March 27, 2026 “Phenomenal leadership by President Trump,” Moreno said on X in response to Trump’s statement. He stressed the move to “fund ALL of DHS.” Trump has called for an end to the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, a point he reiterated in Wednesday’s Truth Social post. The post At Trump’s Prompting, GOP Leadership Hatches New Plan to Fund DHS appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s always two wars, as I mentioned on earlier occasions, a political war and a military war once the conflict begins. But I didn’t discuss really what the political war is about. Donald Trump can easily decimate Iran. He can knock out the water, he can knock out the sewage facilities, the power grid, the communications grid, and paralyze the entire country.  And that might even lead to the removal of the regime. But he is not doing that for political reasons. Number one, he would get global outrage from even our allies, and that is a restraining influence. But more importantly, he wants to empower the Iranian resistance movement, and they need all of that infrastructure if someday they were going to come to power.  Now, I mentioned earlier that regime change was not an explicit aim of this administration when they went to war, but it was a collateral dividend that they hoped would occur by their earlier aims, which all weakened, existentially, the regime: cutting off the Houthis and the terrorist proxies, getting rid of their nuclear proliferation program, the ballistic missiles, et cetera, et cetera.  Wiping out command—that will all weaken it to such a degree that even if we were to stop without regime change and follow the agenda, they would stew in their own juice, and people would get very, very angry. We’ll get to that in another video. But right now, what are the constraints that Donald Trump has to deal with?  Number one, the MAGA base says, “It’s a forever war. It’s an endless war. He broke his word.” We see Megyn Kelly making that argument. We see Tucker Carlson making that argument. Steve Bannon—a lot of people in the MAGA base. But if you look carefully, he’s used force on many occasions. Took out Qasem Soleimani in his first term, the ISIS kingpin Baghdadi, bombed ISIS into oblivion, took out the Wagner program, the Wagner Group. Second term, he took out Maduro, 25 hours over—all of those were one-offers. He hasn’t had a forever war. What he did learn is: if you say that you are against forever wars or endless wars, that can be interpreted by your enemies that you’re an isolationist. And therefore, you can increase aggression, and you’ll lose deterrence. So it’s much better to be a Jacksonian and basically say, “we don’t want to nation-build, we don’t want to get into people’s affairs, but if you aggrieve us, if you’re aggressive, if you provoke us or the interests of our allies and us, we may retaliate in a way that you have no idea [what] will follow.  It will be asymmetrical, disproportionate, deadly, and that’s what Trump is doing. And I don’t think that anybody historically would say 30 days of an exclusively air campaign is an endless war. But he has to worry about that MAGA base. Not in numbers—the numbers are 90%, 85% of the Republican Party supports him—but the people who don’t have large audiences, and they can be influenced as they look at the pulse of the battle.  Then he has to worry about the economy. One of his signature achievements was getting gas down to $2.50 a gallon in some states. I think in Iowa, it was down to $1.80, prior to the war. The price of oil has soared from $50 to $60 a barrel to $100 to $120 a barrel, and oil is one of the linchpins of the economy that can hurt him.  And the news, the psychological news of war, and it could be regional and could involve the Houthis, it could involve the Gulf states, it could blow up, we might have to interdict supplies from Russia. All of that creates tension and uncertainty on Wall Street, the stock market, the bond market. So he has got to be careful of that. That’s an impediment to a purely military campaign. Then I mentioned earlier, he has the midterms coming up, and he can’t lose his legislative majority. If he does, you will see his last two years in office consumed by investigations of the Trump people, his family, his associates, and they [Democrats] will impeach him. You can count on that. They will not convict him, but they will impeach him. And then, of course, there’s the Israel question. He’s working with a very competent ally. Seventy-five percent of their aims and our aims overlap. We’re both Western democracies. We have a common theocratic enemy that has attacked and killed hundreds, in our case thousands, probably, if you count the Iraq War, and the Israelis have the similar—but we don’t have necessarily completely identical aims.  Why? Because we’re distant and not that vulnerable yet, because they don’t have, yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. They will, but not yet. Israel is proximate and vulnerable. So, in their way of thinking, the idea that we would neuter or disarm Iran would be like shooting a bear in the shoulder and leaving him on the prowl. He is going to be angry and capable and furious, and he’s going to crawl or charge them. They are the people who will take the punishment. So, in their way of thinking, why would you go to all this trouble, and that’s not an explicit aim of your campaign, i.e., regime change? “It is our aim,” the Israelis are saying. But that’s not influencing Donald Trump necessarily. He said it wasn’t an aim. He may change and announce he’s changed, but the idea that the Israelis are running things is untrue, but he has to be careful about that.  Finally, there are some other impediments, and those impediments are: if you put an American boot on the ground in the Middle East, everybody left and right becomes hysterical, and for good cause. They remember the first Gulf War. They remember a brilliant four-day war. They remember the liberation of Kuwait. They remember the march on Baghdad. And what happened? We let Saddam [Hussein] stay in power. We had years of no-fly zones, and then we went back again, and we spent a trillion dollars from 2003 all the way into 2011, and we tried to have a consensual government. We lost over 4,000 soldiers, many more wounded and casualties. And then the Obama administration essentially, by 2010, 2011, said “I’m done with it,” and pulled out. And now we have Iraq—sort of consensual, sort of not—as a proxy, sort of, sort of not, of Iran. And then we had a 20-year … misadventure in Afghanistan, and we remember that pullout, that horrible August 2021 pullout that led to 13 deaths and, I don’t know, 15, 20, 50—I’ve heard 50—we heard $70 billion of military assets left. So anytime you go into the Middle East, Americans say, “Tell me when it has ever worked.” Did the Suez Crisis of ’56 work? Did the first Gulf War work and get rid of Saddam? Did the second Gulf War with the Iraq invasion work? Did Afghanistan work? Even did the bombing—we went and bombed the nuclear facilities, and now we have to do it again. It’s a quagmire. We don’t like the Middle East. That’s the American left and right, Republican and Democrat. That is a limitation. So anybody who says, I’m going to end this problem with Iran, once and for all, and neuter them, people are going to say, “It’s in the Middle East, Mr. President.”  So, Donald Trump has to contend with the MAGA base, the crazy Democratic opposition, the midterms, the economy, definitely handling the charge that he’s too influenced by Israel, and the general repulsion of the American people for anything to do with the Middle East, militarily, and blood and treasure on our part spent for people we feel are either ungracious or ungrateful or not worth it in a cost-benefit analysis.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: Why Trump’s Iran Strategy Isn’t a ‘Forever War’—It’s Deterrence appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump’s latest executive order on federal elections has set the stage for battles with Democrat state leaders. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order to regulate the use of mail-in ballots in federal elections. The order requires the Department of Homeland Security to provide states with a list of citizens who are eligible to vote in the next election. Additionally, it includes requirements for “secure ballot envelopes” and institutes a new rule blocking the U.S. Postal Service from transmitting ballots from individuals not on a state-specific mail-in and absentee voter list. It also orders the attorney general to investigate the distribution of “Federal ballots to ineligible voters” and empowers agencies to cut off federal funds to noncompliant states. Democrat state leaders and their allies sounded off against the order. “If Trump signs an unconstitutional Executive Order to take over voting, we will sue,” Marc Elias, a Democrat-aligned lawyer, wrote on X shortly before the order was signed. “I don’t bluff and I usually win.” Elias has already succeeded in blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to shape election policy. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order intended to effectively enforce federal citizenship checks for voter registration. Elias Law Group, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and other groups, challenged the order, and a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against it in January. Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania similarly criticized the order, which he pledged to challenge. “President Trump can sign whatever the hell he wants to, but it won’t change the Constitution,” Shapiro wrote Tuesday on X. “The authority to set our election rules belongs to the states — and as Governor, I will protect your right to vote. That includes your right to vote by mail.” The Constitution holds that state legislatures determine the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.” “We’re challenging it. See you in court,” wrote California Gov. Gavin Newsom on X in response to the executive order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated that the state is “prepared to stop” Trump’s order. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement, “We look forward to this unconstitutional overreach being stopped in court.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal on the politicians’ remarks. The post Trump Mail-In Ballot Order Sets Up Battle With States appeared first on The Daily Signal.