Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the latest 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. Jack Fowler: This from the New York Post the other day: “Thousands of illegal African immigrants overrun Spanish enclave, turn streets into open toilets, bathe in fountains.”  Sixty thousand illegal immigrants from Africa flooded the Spanish enclave of Ceuta—I’m not sure if I said that properly—prompting Spain to deploy its military as terrified locals likened the invasion to an apocalypse.  Ceuta is located on the North African coast, and I just want to see some of the reaction. I’m looking at headlines from The Brussels Signal, which is an English-language center-right news source.  Here’s the reaction from the rest of Europe:  Von der Leyen, the head of the EU, demands an immediate halt to the crossings and swift returns.  Sweden tells Spain to regain control of Ceuta and warns it is ready to act.  France deploys a rapid border force and tightens checks at the Spanish border over the Ceuta crossings.  The Netherlands tells Spain to protect the EU’s external border after the crossings, etc., etc.  Victor Davis Hanson: My gosh—they’re border hawks. How illiberal.  Fowler: Yeah, I know, right?  So, your thoughts on this massive overnight invasion?  Hanson: Well, in 1973, a member of the French Academy, Jean Raspail, wrote “The Camp of the Saints.” Everybody said he was a racist because it was a fictional novel about an announcement that France was going to allow anybody to come in who wanted to. Then this whole army from impoverished lands on the Indian subcontinent arrives, takes over, and starts demanding religious and political concessions from the French.  Everybody said he was a racist. He wasn’t a racist, I should say that. He was a Renaissance man—an explorer, athlete, novelist, essayist, everything.  But it’s like reality is imitating fiction.  Sixty thousand people swarm this little enclave—this little, can I say it, colonial enclave in Morocco—and it was all preordained.  As soon as you saw thousands of people pouring into a city of only about 70,000 or 80,000 people, the first thing you ask is: Where are they going to relieve themselves? Who’s going to feed them? Where are they going to sleep tonight? Who’s going to clothe them? Some of them were just in cutoffs, barefoot, with no shoes on.  Then those who say, “Go back,” are called cruel, and you start to see what the socialist enterprise is.  Why did Alejandro Mayorkas want 12,000 people coming from the poorest areas of the world here every day? The answer is they wanted to grow the progressive project.  So, they come in, and then they say, “You’re heartless. You’re heartless. All our ERs are overcrowded, you can’t get legal services, and there’s a big line at the food stamp office.”  Yes—you caused that, and at the expense of U.S. citizens who were in need.  Then they say, “We need this. We need billions of dollars. Minneapolis needs billions of dollars, and Los Angeles needs billions of dollars to help.”  Of course, we know where that money goes. Most of it never goes to the people. It’s siphoned off, as we’ve seen with these crooked communities, many of them immigrant communities.  But then you get a constituency.  The second part of the paradigm was that, under the guise of COVID, we adopted same-day voter registration in many states.  Most states—I think only about 20 require an ID, and they’re all red states—allow no ID, same-day registration and voting, ballot harvesting, ballot curing, early voting, and votes that can come in up to a week or even ten days later if they’re postmarked by Election Day.   In some states, I think they don’t even have to be postmarked on Election Day. They just have to arrive within a certain number of days.  All of that was geared toward letting people who are not legally qualified to vote cast ballots.  That, coupled with demography, was the answer to the left-wing dilemma.  The left-wing dilemma is that socialism never works. It impoverishes everything it touches.  Nobody wants open borders.  Nobody wants trans men in your teenage daughter’s locker room.  Nobody wants to defund the police or the Pentagon.  Nobody wants to get rid of the Senate.  Nobody wants to pack the Supreme Court.  We all know that, so we import voters. That’s what we do, and that’s what they’ve done.  Fifty-three million immigrants in the United States is an all-time high. So is 16% of the population.  This has been another gift to Donald Trump if he can use it.  He can say, “I kept telling you that when Joe Biden destroyed our borders and we got 12 million people here—people we’re still paying for—and they affected everything from available housing to health care, you laughed at me.”  And it spread, didn’t it?  People said, “Why not Spain? Why not Britain? Why not France?”  If they don’t get it under control …  Yeah. The only difference is that when Donald Trump starts arresting people and deporting them, they’re going to call him a fascist.  In Europe, a few may, but they’re very proprietary, and finally they’ve had it.  They’re not going to say a word when they round up many of these people and start deporting them.  Before you say Donald Trump is cruel because he’s deporting people on visas, remember that Sweden is going to deport even citizens if they don’t commit major crimes and send them back to their country of origin.  Fowler: I don’t know what the oath of allegiance is in Sweden, but if you come somewhere and raise your hand—or whatever you do—to say, “I’m abiding by the rules here,” I feel that’s contractual.  If you break the contract, we’ll send you back to whatever blank hole you came from.  Hanson: Yeah, I think what we’re watching is a counterrevolution.  I wrote about that in the book that’s coming out on Sept. 8.  It’s a counterrevolution, and its essence is that we’re going to be traditional and normal and follow the law.  What we’ve seen over the last 40 years is the law becoming a joke. It’s fluid.  It’s all about compassion and empathy—fake empathy—and we let people go because of their color, sexual orientation, gender, or race.  Everybody’s going to say, “You know what? That is racist. That is Neanderthal.”  We’re going to go back to  equality under the law.  Fowler: Right—and truth.  Justice doesn’t matter. Truth doesn’t matter to the Left. What matters is power.  Two plus two is five if the party says so.  Hanson: Yeah. When you see Hasan Piker, whose parents are wealthy Turkish immigrants …  He was born in the United States, so he’s a citizen.  Then he was taken back to Turkey—his supposed paradise—but apparently he didn’t like paradise in Muslim Turkey, so he came back here.  Now he’s praising Mao, he has a celebratory image of 9/11, and just the other day he said, “I can guarantee you a Jew won’t be nominated as our candidate.”  What if he said, “I can guarantee you that a Turk won’t ever be the Republican nominee”?  Would that be racist? I think it would.  How would he like that?  He’s really a demonic figure. He really is.  Fowler: Yeah. Well, Victor, we’re going to take a little break, and when we come back—  Hanson: Although he has good taste in cars.  I mean, if you have a $130,000 Porsche sports car and a $2.8 million home in West Hollywood, I guess you’re doing pretty well as a capitalist. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

The year was 2008, and a group of insurgent Republicans mounted a rebellion on the floor of the House of Representatives as Congress bolted for the August recess.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi had adjourned the chamber without a vote on offshore drilling. Republicans refused to leave. The microphones were cut, the C-SPAN cameras went dark, and the lights were dimmed—and roughly 45 members kept giving speeches anyway, filling the seats with staffers, Boy Scouts, and tourists pulled in off the hallway. It was the first and only time I set foot on the House floor, documenting the drama on Twitter. The talkathon stretched for hours and continued for days, sparking a “don’t go” rallying cry among grassroots conservatives back home. Eighteen years later, it’s now the Senate, not the House, where another group of Republicans is asking their leadership to delay recess. The difference is that this time, the standoff is with their own party. A Standoff With Their Own Leader President Donald Trump wants the Senate to stay in Washington until it passes the SAVE America Act. The man they need to convince, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, wants someone to show him how that ends in a victory. The standoff has defined the final week before the Senate’s five-week August recess, and it has exposed a rift between Republicans at the worst possible moment: three months before an election that will decide control of Congress. Trump has been unequivocal about where the bill ranks on his agenda. “There is nothing more important than the SAVE America Act,” the president said this week. “I think they should stay. They do what they want, but I think they should stay.” Thune, for his part, insists he isn’t the obstacle. The South Dakota Republican has repeatedly pointed out that the chamber has already voted on the measure five times and spent two full weeks debating it on the floor. “I’ve been very clear about the prospects for the SAVE America Act,” Thune said. “The only thing I’ve said all along is that we’ve voted on the SAVE America Act five times. It was the pending business on the floor of the Senate for two weeks. I am willing, in any way possible, to get that across the finish line if there is a path to do it.” His frustration appears aimed less at the contents of the bill than at the math of getting it to the president’s desk. He even suggested that Republicans pivot to making it a campaign issue. “There are no Democrats who are going to vote for this,” Thune said. “All 47 voted against the SAVE Act five times, so let’s make this an issue in the campaign. How about we go out and turn our fire on Democrats and make it about them?” The Senate’s To-Do List Other Republicans are less willing to concede that August is off the table.  Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” laid out a three-item to-do list for the week: a continuing resolution to fund the government past Sept. 30, confirmation of more of Trump’s nominees, and a $95 billion reconciliation package that carries election reforms drawn from the SAVE America Act. “It’s a lot this week,” Lankford told Fox News’ Shannon Bream. “If we don’t get it done this week, we’ll keep going until we do get it done.” “There’s not a plan to leave when it’s unfinished,” the Oklahoma Republican later added. “All those three things, they’ll happen this week, or we’ll keep going to be able to get them done. So, the focus is to be able to get them done.” What the SAVE America Act Actually Does Conservatives aren’t satisfied with the status quo, nor should they be. The SAVE America Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, photo identification to cast a ballot, and other commonsense election reforms to reduce fraud and restore confidence in our elections. After winning approval in the House of Representatives, Lee has made it a priority to do the same in the Senate. He’s presented Senate GOP leadership with no shortage of ideas and amassed a growing chorus of colleagues who want to cancel or delay August recess. Lee, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, and more than a dozen colleagues are standing with Trump and asking fellow Republicans to use August to act on the legislation. Lee has warned that how Republicans handle the bill could shape not just November but the next round of Senate GOP leadership elections. Trump, meanwhile, has renewed his call to scrap the legislative filibuster altogether—an idea that lacks 50 Republican votes. It’s why Lee has instead asked the Senate to scrap the “zombie filibuster,” demanding that Republicans force Democrats to actually show up and debate the legislation rather than block it from the comfort of an empty chamber. Lee has the data to back up his point. Voter ID commands support from more than 80% of Americans, the highest level ever recorded in some surveys. The obstacle isn’t public opinion. It’s Democrat obstruction—and that’s an argument Republicans should want to have in front of voters, not one they should be having with each other. The Lesson of the 2008 Revolt The 2008 protest produced pressure on Democrats—and by that fall, with public opinion moved, they let the offshore drilling ban lapse rather than keep defending it. That’s the lesson worth remembering. Republicans don’t win this by turning their fire inward. They win it by making Democrats answer for their opposition to proof of citizenship and voter ID—and by refusing to go home quietly until they do.

The Supreme Court will hear seven arguments in early October on cases including immigrant detention and the environment. The high court on Tuesday released its schedule for oral arguments in seven cases from Oct. 5 through Oct. 14. On Oct. 13, justices will hear arguments in the case of Genalo v. Black, concerning whether, at some point, a noncitizen’s detention becomes “unreasonably prolonged” that he has a constitutional right to a bond hearing. In July 2025, the Department of Homeland Security implemented a policy stating that certain illegal immigrants—even those who have lived in the United States for a long time—can be held in detention without access to an immigration bond hearing. The justices will also consider whether that case is relevant, or moot, since the defendant was already released in 2022, SCOTUSBlog reported. However, if the justices rule on the merits of the case, it could potentially affect a major immigration policy of the Trump administration. Another notable case on the court’s first day back in session is Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The city and county of Boulder, Colorado, sued Suncor Energy and Exxon-Mobil, alleging that fossil fuel emissions contributed to climate change and caused injuries to residents. Earlier in litigation, a member of the legal team representing Boulder described the effort as “an indirect carbon tax.” In the Oct. 5 arguments, justices will consider whether federal law prohibits claims under state law seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse gas emissions. Justices will also determine whether federal courts have the authority to hear such cases. Also on the opening day, the justices will hear arguments in Johnson v. United States Congress to determine whether U.S. district courts have the authority to hear challenges to federal laws regarding veterans’ benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. In another case on the environmental front, justices will hear arguments on Oct. 7 in Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan. The question before the court in that case is whether an environmental organization can challenge the Air Force’s application to renew its permit to dispose of unexploded ordnance before Guam’s Environmental Protection Agency acted on the application. The high court will also consider whether the Air Force was required to submit an environmental impact statement to Guam before submitting its application.

A recent NOTUS review of financial records found that the congressional campaign of Paige Cognetti, the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, accepted funding from political committees that have accepted large amounts of corporate money. According to NOTUS, Cognetti has accepted donations from numerous political committees that receive large sums of money from corporate PACs, including money from Boeing, JPMorgan Chase, and UnitedHealthcare. Cognetti is running to unseat Rep. Josh Bresnahan, R-Pa., possibly changing the balance of power in the House of Representatives. The progressive candidate has taken at least $5,000 from Blue Hen Federal PAC, a committee sponsored by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del, NOTUS reported. The committee “has received hundreds of thousands of dollars this election cycle from a who’s who of corporate and trade association PACs,” the outlet wrote. The outlet also reported that Coons’ committee is tied to companies including Visa, Pfizer, Northrop Grumman, FedEx, Google, McKinsey, Eli Lilly, and Fox Corp., among others. Blue Hen Federal PAC did not return the Daily Signal’s request for comment. Cognetti’s campaign also has received $4,000 from the campaign committee of Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., the House Democratic Party whip. That committee, NOTUS reports, is “partly bankrolled by numerous corporate PACs, including those sponsored by Delta Air Lines, Verizon, Allstate Insurance and law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.” Her campaign also took money from dozens of Democrat leadership PACs that report significant corporate contributions. These include PACs of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu. Emma Mustion, Cognetti’s campaign communication director, reaffirmed the candidate’s promise to run a race free of corporate money. “Paige is independent and doesn’t work for anybody but the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania,” she told NOTUS. The campaign director added: “Paige is the only candidate in this race who does not accept donations from corporate PACs, supports a federal ban on corporate PAC donations, and will never be handed a corporate check in exchange for special access or political favors.” Cognetti’s pledge to reject corporate PAC money has become a key feature of her campaign. It is cited in endorsements from advocacy groups and lawmakers. NOTUS cites End Citizens United and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona as examples. End Citizens United told the Daily Signal that corporate money did not directly stem from corporate PACs or individual corporations. The group said it is not rescinding its endorsement of the Democrat. In a statement to the Daily Signal, Peter Brath, Bresnahan’s campaign manager, accused Cognetti of exploiting a loophole to accept corporate money while deceiving voters. “Paige Cognetti doesn’t care whether she is dishonest with the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania as long as she can use them to advance her career,” Brath said. “Only a brazen liar and unabashed hypocrite like Cognetti would make a pledge not to accept corporate dollars then find a loophole to do exactly that.” Federal records show that these contributions have been vital for her campaign. As of June 30, Cognetti’s campaign had $800,000 more on hand than Bresnahan’s. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race between Bresnahan and Cognetti as a toss-up. National Republicans and Democrats alike consider the race critical to winning a House majority in 2027.

A third whistleblower came forward about a Biden-era operation involving alleged massive shipments of fentanyl into the United States that federal agents were told to track and not seize. The U.S. Justice Department is conducting an internal probe of the operation that critics say likely led to numerous deaths. The most recent whistleblower complaint details a November 2022 fentanyl delivery from Arizona to New Mexico where Drug Enforcement Administration agents were told to monitor the shipment but not arrest anyone. “Agents believe the courier made a minimum of at least five large deliveries over the following months, each time bringing 50,000-100,000 fentanyl pills and 20-40 pounds of methamphetamine per trip,” the complaint says. “The DEA did not arrest the courier until June 2023; at that time, agents found him with 19 kilograms of methamphetamine and 7 kilograms of fentanyl.” According to the DEA, as few as two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal depending on a person’s body size and tolerance, and one kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people. The new complaint also notes that during a training session, one DEA agent dismissed concerns about the operation, saying, “We walk fentanyl,” but adding that federal prosecutors were aware of it. The complaint comes after the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General interviewed two other whistleblowers—former DEA Special Agent David Howell and financial investigator Kevin Small, who worked as a contractor for the DEA’s Albuquerque office—on Friday and Monday, respectively. Howell was the first to blow the whistle on the operation, alleging that the DEA allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills into New Mexico because Justice Department prosecutors wanted to track the shipments and bring a bigger criminal case against traffickers. Former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, Alex Uballez, oversaw the program, Howell said. Uballez publicly defended the operation, telling The Associated Press it saved lives, was key to intelligence gathering on drug traffickers, and that “the bigger fish are worth catching.” Howell also alleged that he faced retaliation by DEA officials for exposing the program. The new 20-page complaint is from a DEA special agent whose name is redacted in the document released by his attorney. Similar to Small’s complaint, the third whistleblower alleges retaliation by Jeffrey Armijo, the assistant special agent in charge of the DEA’s Albuquerque office. In a March 28, 2025, conversation detailed in the complaint, Armijo screamed, “This is a one way conversation and this stays within my office.” The complaint alleges Armijo threatened to have the whistleblower moved to a different office and said, “I will ice you like Dave [Howell] where you will not work another case again.” 2026-08-03_TL_to_OSC_-_PPP_Complaint__redacted,_no_attachments_Download Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group representing all three whistleblowers, sent the new complaint to the Office of Special Counsel late Monday afternoon and forwarded it to the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General. The offices have the unredacted version of the complaint. The Daily Signal contacted the press office at DEA headquarters in Washington and left a voicemail with the DEA district office in Albuquerque but did not receive a response before publication. The Daily Signal contacted the office of the New Mexico Attorney General but did not receive a response before publication. ‘Fast and Furious’ Comparisons The operation has invited comparisons to an Obama administration program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, in which gun shipments were allowed to travel into Mexico; two of the guns were found at the scene of the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Interestingly, the whistleblower complaint notes that the U.S. Justice Department Office of Enforcement Operations conducted a May 9, 2024, training session that included a reference to Operation Fast and Furious. This prompted Howell to raise concerns about the DEA’s program, the new complaint says. “When the OEO attorneys opened for questions toward the end of the training, SA Howell raised his hand and commented that he believed the Albuquerque District Office needed more training on risk mitigation and expressed concern that OEO, and therefore the Criminal Division’s DAAG, wasn’t being notified regarding the amount of fentanyl that was being allowed to walk in Albuquerque,” the complaint says. “An agent from Group 3 interrupted, saying, ‘We walk fentanyl and our AUSAs are aware.’” AUSAs are assistant U.S. attorneys, in this case working under the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico. A 2024 Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility report said agents had “discretion” in deciding when to seize drugs. While previous whistleblower complaints said the New Mexico fentanyl walking began in 2023 and ran into March 2025, during the first months of the Trump administration, the new complaint details conversations and confrontations between the whistleblower and his supervisors, namely Armijo, well into 2026. State Investigation Leavitt, of Empower Oversight, told the Daily Signal the U.S. Justice Department has asked his clients not to work with New Mexico state investigators for the time being. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez this week turned up the heat on the U.S. Justice Department, challenging the agency’s refusal to cooperate with state investigators. Torrez said in a letter to First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison for the District of New Mexico that his office is “investigating the decisions and conduct of the DEA that resulted in a significant quantity of fentanyl unseized on the streets and in the communities of New Mexico.” “I further previously explained that the investigation requires access to the full record of the DEA’s activities, operational guidance, and changes to operational guidance in order to assess the lawfulness of these practices,” he continued. He later added, “To that end, NMDOJ seeks to review USDOJ protocols governing fentanyl seizure decisions, and protocols that were apparently rewritten in 2024 to afford agents greater discretion on the timing of fentanyl seizures.” In a July 29 letter, Ellison told Torrez the Justice Department must regulate access to government information contained in its files or obtained by its employees during the scope of their official duties. Further, it said the U.S. Justice Department cannot be compelled to respond to a demand for documents if it is not a party in the case. The Daily Signal reached out to the Justice Department Tuesday afternoon but did not immediately receive a comment. A DOJ spokesperson commented to the Daily Signal on the matter in June. “The alleged conduct occurred under the Biden Administration’s disastrous open border policies. The Trump administration has closed the border and is aggressively pursuing drug traffickers,” the DOJ spokesperson said in a June statement. “DEA Administrator Cole has requested an independent DOJ-OIG review of DEA’s actions in light of this reporting to reaffirm the public’s confidence in our law enforcement agencies. Should that review identify areas of improvement, the DEA will of course implement changes to better their practices.” “This success has been achieved less than two years into this Administration. We welcome a partnership with Governor Lujan Grisham, as well as New Mexico state and local leaders, to fight the scourge of fentanyl and keep her constituents safe,” the spokesperson added.