“Tax the rich!” shout progressives. Why not? America’s richest people are ridiculously rich. “Five bucks to you is like $6 million to billionaire Jeff Bezos!” shrieks Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Taking more from billionaires and millionaires just seems fair. That’s why Washington state passed a new “millionaire’s tax,” California will soon vote on a “billionaire’s tax,” and my mayor in NYC shouts, “increase taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers!” Don’t these politicians realize that in America, people can move? The same day Washington’s House passed its millionaire’s tax, Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz announced that he’s leaving Washington for Florida. Billionaires Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Steven Spielberg, Peter Thiel, and now Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have left California. For 170 years, California brought in more people than any other state. It’s clear why—the weather is awesome. There were growing opportunities and jobs. But now regulation and taxes have changed that. “Remarkably, for the first time since California came into the union, they’re having out migration!” says Forbes magazine’s Steve Forbes in my new video. Some California activists think that’s OK. “The benefit from this tax is going to outweigh … a couple people moving out,” said a Healthcare Workers union boss. But “it’s not just people,” warns Forbes. “It’s capital.” Tesla, Chevron, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, SpaceX, Charles Schwab, and other companies have left. “When people are not well treated, they’re going to go elsewhere,” says Forbes. I push back, citing California’s planned tax on the very rich: “It’s just 5%. You’re a rich guy, why not pay 5%?” “You think it’s just taking 5% out of your checking account? No!” says Forbes. America’s wealth doesn’t sit in a vault. It’s invested in things that create products and jobs. Taxing that gives us less of both. “This also allows government to become more intrusive,” explains Forbes. “‘What’s that asset you might have in your cellar? We have to send inspectors in to find out where you’re hiding the art or the jewelry.'” In NYC, my new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is eager to be intrusive. He says, “I don’t have a hesitation in asking those who make … the most profits in the city to pay a little bit more.” But it’s not just a “little bit” that he wants, and it’s not just from those with the “most” profits. Mamdani wants to change the estate tax so that if you possess more than $750,000, he gets a cut. “Own a house? Mamdani’s after you,” says Forbes. “Instead of a 16% rate, which is outrageous, he wants to raise it to as high as 50%. You create something, he wants to take it.” What’s most absurd is high taxes on the rich have already been tried. They failed. Maryland expected to make money but instead lost $257 million. “Nobody should be surprised,” said former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich. “They’re out of here. These people aren’t stupid.” Europe tried wealth taxes but gave them up because so many rich people left. “You’re just a rich guy who wants to protect his stuff,” I say to Forbes. “I may have done well in life. I got a good start in life. But what I want is a world in which … all people have a chance to improve their lot in life.” “How does raising your taxes impede this?” I ask. “Because taxes are a price and burden,” says Forbes. “The tax you pay on your income is the price you pay for working … for being successful. And when you have a high price on that, guess what happens? You get less of it.” Next week is April 15, the horrible income tax day. Americans are reminded just how big that tax burden is. Years ago, Forbes ran for president pushing a “flat tax.” The idea went nowhere. I thought it would appeal to people because the current tax code is so complex. “The code today has over 10 million words,” says Forbes. “Nobody really knows what’s in it. It’s immoral. … We spend now over $500 billion a year in cash and time with this corrupt, incomprehensible tax code. Imagine if we’d taken those trillions of dollars, tens of billions of hours and used it for something productive, like making new products, new services, medical devices, cures for diseases. [We’d be] much better off. Huge opportunity wasted.” Politicians destroy opportunity all the time. America does need some taxes to fund limited government that the Founders had in mind. Sadly, our politicians today go way beyond that. COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Tax the Rich? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

At The Heritage Foundation, policy experts recently exposed how China is murdering innocents for organ harvesting. The April 7 event, titled “Organ Harvesting: Communist China’s Hideous Shop of Horrors,” featured Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., a panel of senior research fellows, and Jan Jekielek, senior editor of The Epoch Times and the host of “American Thought Leaders.”  The speakers discussed reports of forced organ harvesting in China and the implications for human rights. Among the horrors discussed is how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) profits from murdering healthy 28-year-old Uyghurs to sell their organs to the rich. “It is industrial-sized, and tens of thousands of young people, average age 28, are having their fellow non-practitioners, Uyghurs, others of faith (targeted),” Rep. Smith said. “In two weeks, you can get a heart, you can get anything you possibly want.”  In China, a wealthy CCP member can order a heart, kidney, liver, or other organ needed to survive. The organs come from young adults who are executed against their will. Ethan Gutmann, a China studies expert at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, explained that the target age is always 28 because that’s “when your organs have reached maturity and yet you haven’t started to deteriorate.” An estimated 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are murdered annually for their organs, and organ harvesting has grown into a billion-dollar industry in recent years. Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group in northwest China. The CCP keeps them in concentration camps to await interrogation–and eventually execution–for their organs. Gutmann said he visited Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia bordering northwestern China, and interviewed Kazakh refugees who had witnessed victims of the organ harvest firsthand. Refugees “didn’t accept that people were being harvested, but they did describe disappearances, always at age 28,” he said. Gutmann described one case in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where a nomadic Kazakh woman slept with another woman to keep warm at night. Until the woman disappeared. “It was terribly cold in these places, and she only noticed that the woman was gone because the bed had gone cold,” Gutmann said. Unlike China, the United States has extensive requirements for organ donors. The process, which is based on voluntary donors, involves a referral, being matched with an organ, and receiving the organ transplant. The process typically takes years, not weeks. Last year, Smith introduced the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025 to combat organ harvesting. The legislation includes policies to promote voluntary organ donation systems and to hold accountable anyone involved in forced organ harvesting.  The House of Representatives approved the bill in a 406-1 vote. The bill now awaits approval from the Senate. The post Heritage Panel: CCP is Murdering Citizens for Organs and Profiting by the Billions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, April 12 (Reuters) — President Donald Trump said on Sunday the U.S. Navy would immediately start blockading the Strait of Hormuz, raising the stakes after marathon talks with Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war, jeopardizing a fragile two-week ceasefire. Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked. “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added. “Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added. Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring. “The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier. “We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added. Iran Cites Lack of Trust  Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.” “The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X. The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons. “I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear programme were the main points of difference. ‘Imperative’ to Maintain Ceasefire Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran. Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.” In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop. The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.  Iranian Demands Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.  Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal. Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.   Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb. (Reporting by Reuters bureaus worldwide, Writing by Idrees Ali, Lisa Shumaker, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Matthias Williams; Editing by William Mallard, Gareth Jones and Alexander Smith) The post Trump Vows to Blockade Strait of Hormuz After Iran Peace Talks Stumble appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As we mark the end of another Women’s History Month, it’s worth asking the question: Is the current generation of women better off than previous generations? In many ways, the answer is yes. Women are certainly better off today. Women are CEOs, politicians, professional athletes. We have the right to vote and the right to defend our country. By all appearances, women are thriving. But as a Gen Z woman concerned about her generation and the next, I’m not so convinced this rings true.  If women are truly better off today, then why is it that nearly 80% of Gen Z reported feeling lonely in the past year? We have more ways to connect than any generation in history, and yet somewhere along the way, something essential has been lost.  For women especially, this loss of connection runs deep. Historically, women were the designers of community. It was women who organized the community bake sale and the neighborhood dance; the ones who ran the voluntary associations that stitched towns together; who held the extended kinship networks that guided young women toward love, family, and vocation.   But beyond the organizing, women have always brought something harder to name and more essential: an instinct for noticing. Noticing who is on the margins of a room, who has not spoken, who is grieving quietly. Women have historically been the ones to follow up, to remember, to show up with food, to ask the second question. They create the conditions where people feel safe enough to be known. This is not supplementary to community. It is the foundation of it.  That distinctly feminine genius did not disappear. But the culture that gave it room to prosper largely has. Women are particularly disadvantaged because they have lost one of the primary ways they have historically understood themselves: pillars of community.  The “third spaces” where community once operated—coffee shops, libraries, dance halls, civic squares—still exist, but we move through them like strangers in a waiting room, each of us absorbed in a private world of our own making.   The statistics reflect this: The rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019, and only 17% under 30 say they feel deeply connected to a community. This decline has real consequences; loneliness and social isolation increase mortality risk by 26% and 29%, respectively.  What we’ve forgotten is that connection requires friction: Asking someone out, introducing yourself, joining a new social group; these are acts of courage because they make us vulnerable to rejection.   The pandemic made this even harder, stripping away the unremarkable moments that quietly teach young people how to create lasting connection. And the current culture hasn’t helped us recover. Instead, it has reframed distance as wisdom. “You do you,” “protect your peace,” and other contemporary maxims sell radical individualism as liberation. But look at how we define ourselves through our relationships: “I am a sister,” “I have a great mentor,” “My friend taught me.”  Unfortunately, the practice of building and cultivating those relationships has become a lost art. Hyper-individualism harms women because it cuts against the feminine instinct to tend, to gather, to bind people together. In this culture, that instinct has been belittled and made to feel naive.  And yet, we crave community. We always have. And women, perhaps more than anyone, have historically known how to build it. To find it again, we must move beyond ourselves.  As a Gen Z woman entering the professional world, I look to the most transformative women in history, such as Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, and Mother Teresa, all of whom understood that human dignity flourishes in relationship. They remind us that connection is intentional, cultivated, and courageous.  Reversing the loneliness epidemic, especially among young women, will not come from another app or algorithm. It will come from something simpler and, honestly, far more difficult.  Building connection is not always convenient, and it often requires courage. Introducing yourself. Inviting someone to coffee. Looking someone in the eye and really listening. Asking someone how they are and being curious about the answer.  Humanity is beautiful: There is so much artistry; inspiration; ingenuity; entrepreneurship; passion; and deep, bountiful love to be shared and enjoyed. Let’s get back to that.  I challenge my fellow Gen Z women to lead the way in taking these risks. By next Women’s History Month, I hope to see women truly better off. I hope to see a generation more willing to take these small, courageous steps, to rebuild the habits of connection, to risk discomfort, to embrace vulnerability, and to create genuine communities.   While technology can connect us in ways our grandparents never imagined, it cannot replace the timeless bravery it takes to truly see and be seen by the world around us.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post The Courage to Connect: How Gen Z Women Can Make History and Rebuild Community  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Vice President JD Vance told reporters early Sunday morning that talks between the United States and Iran failed to reach an agreement for a permanent cease-fire. President Donald Trump announced a two-week pause in military strikes Tuesday hours before an 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to agree to a series of terms expired. Vance led the delegation for the talks days after a two-day visit to Hungary, joined by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—the president’s son-in-law who helped negotiate the Abraham Accords. “Let me say a couple of notes of appreciation, first of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to Field Marshal [Asim] Munir, who were both incredible hosts and whatever shortcomings of the negotiation, it wasn’t because of the Pakistanis who did an amazing job and really tried to help us and the Iranians bridge the gap and get to a deal,” Vance told reporters. “We have been at it now for 21 hours and we’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That’s the good news.” “The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement—and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance continued. Since a March 21 Truth Social post, Trump made multiple threats to target Iranian power plants if the theocratic regime did not halt efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz, but he has granted reprieves based on the progress of negotiations. “I don’t want to negotiate in public after we negotiated for 21 hours in private, but the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance told a reporter who asked why the talks ultimately failed. “That is the core goal of the President of the United States and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.” “Again, their nuclear programs, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they’ve been destroyed,” Vance continued. “But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven’t seen that yet. We hope that we will.” The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons in June, using GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators dropped by B-2A Spirit stealth bombers. Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a March 2 interview that Iranian diplomats declared their intent to continue enriching uranium and claimed that they already had enough material to construct 11 dirty bombs in negotiations that took place before Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post JD Vance: No Deal With Iran After 21-Hour Negotiation appeared first on The Daily Signal.