President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued his call for more NATO assistance in the Middle East.  When asked by The Daily Signal’s White House Correspondent Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell if he wanted the Gulf States to be more involved in the ongoing operation against Iran, Trump said, “a little bit, but more—more NATO.”   “I think our Gulf allies have been pretty good, to be honest with you,” he told The Daily Signal. “UAE has been hit so hard. I think they got hit by 1,400 rockets, shot them all out of the air with our great—with our great Patriot missiles.”  Trump Demands More From NATO After Gulf States ‘Hit So Hard’When asked by The Daily Signal's @TheElizMitchell if @POTUS wants the Gulf States to become more involved in the war, Trump said "a little bit, but more—more NATO.""I think our Gulf allies have been pretty good, to… pic.twitter.com/ohJDrso81X— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) March 24, 2026 Trump spoke with reporters at a White House event for the swearing-in of new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The president has previously called on NATO allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported. He went on to praise the military’s ability to think and respond quickly, saying, “These guys don’t choke. They’re the best in the world. We have the best in the world.”  Trump said that Iran “shot 100 missiles at one of our aircraft carriers, the Abraham Lincoln, one of the biggest ships in the world.”  Out of the “highly sophisticated, very fast” missiles shot, “all 101 were shot down,” Trump said. “Our military is amazing.”  Throughout his remarks, Trump emphasized the effectiveness of U.S. military equipment and the ability of American service members to perform under pressure.  The post Trump Demands More From NATO as Gulf States ‘Hit So Hard’  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal health agencies and the White House under President Joe Biden pressured social media companies to censor speech that contradicted the federal government’s narrative, but two Republican attorneys general secured a consent decree Tuesday that will prevent the government from returning to that “Orwellian” strategy. “It was absolutely Orwellian,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Tuesday. “The federal government is enormously powerful and they leveraged that power to threaten something that these companies hold very dear—which is their Section 230 immunity—and that threat was enough to essentially have these companies make themselves agents of the federal government.” “Missouri will not allow politicians to police speech,” Misssouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, also a Republican, told The Daily Signal. “The Biden censorship regime was something straight out of Orwell’s 1984. Missouri is proud to have led the most consequential fight for free speech in a generation.” The consent decree notes that the federal government “unlawfully pressured, coerced, induced, and encouraged major social media platforms to censor their posts” about the pandemic, the reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the 2020 presidential election. While the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from directly censoring speech, the plaintiffs accused the Biden administration of pressuring social media companies to do what the government itself could not. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 grants tech companies legal immunity for speech published on their platforms, though critics have urged reform to the policy. “One of the most egregious acts of corruption by the Biden administration was its pressure campaign against social media companies to censor the free speech of everyday Americans,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told The Daily Signal. “No president and no movement have experienced censorship more in recent years than President Trump and the MAGA movement, and this administration is committed to ensuring Americans’ First Amendment rights are never impinged again.” The Consent Decree The consent decree, which will end the litigation from Missouri and Louisiana, binds the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from taking any actions “to threaten social media companies with some form of punishment (i.e., an adverse legal, regulatory, or economic government sanction) unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.” The decree will last for a period of 10 years, well past the next administration. Murrill celebrated the consent decree as “historic” and “extraordinarily unusual.” “States are frequently forced into consent decrees often by the federal government but it’s a very, very unique situation for the federal government to enter into one,” she explained. Censorship and the Supreme Court The attorney general noted that leaders in the Biden administration were “very deliberately chilling speech they disliked even though it was true.” A Media Research Center report from 2020 found that many Biden voters said they would not have voted for the Democrat if they had known about the revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which social media companies suppressed after the FBI suggested it had been Russian misinformation. In 2021, a Facebook staffer told a Biden White House official that the company suppressed “often true content” because it contradicted the White House’s narrative about COVID-19 vaccines. Louisiana and Missouri, joined by social media users whose content had been suppressed, sued in May 2022, aiming to block the censorship. On July 4, 2023, a federal district judge granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction, ordering the government to stop the censorship scheme. The Biden administration appealed the case, however, and the Supreme Court struck down the injunction, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing—meaning they could not prove that the government’s actions resulted in direct harms to them that the court could stop. As the consent decree explains, however, the Supreme Court found that no plaintiff demonstrated standing for a preliminary injunction, but it did not strike the overall lawsuit. Amid the litigation, President Trump signed Executive Order 14149 on Jan. 20, 2025. The order acknowledged the Biden administration’s censorship efforts and directed agencies to identify and take actions to correct past misconduct. In light of this order, the federal agencies at issue agreed to enter into the consent decree. Murrill acknowledged that federal entities not covered by the consent decree—notably agencies such as the FBI—arguably engaged in the suppression of free speech via social media pressure. She emphasized, however, that the consent decree sets a precedent that should help address any future attempts to silence speech. “We’re getting a consent decree that recognizes the federal government’s obligation to abide by the First Amendment and giving us an enforceable means to ensure that they do for the next ten years,” she explained. “We can’t undo what they did in the sense that when they throttled people’s speech and they forced their message out to the direct exclusion of contrary messaging,” Murrill noted. “That was an injury to the entire country to deprive them of true speech and true messaging and force the government’s message on them while other messaging was being blocked.” She noted that, unlike an executive order—which a future president could strike down with the stroke of a pen—the consent decree “creates a binding agreement between the parties that can be judicially enforced.” Terminating the decree would require “a new round of litigation.” Social Media Consent DecreeDownload The post Consent Decree Will Prevent a Repeat of Biden Admin’s ‘Orwellian’ Suppression of Free Speech: Louisiana AG appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“You cannot have human health until you first have soil health,” says Rick Clark, a fifth-generation regenerative farmer.  Clark joined public health and public policy experts Monday at The Heritage Foundation to discuss “Feeding America Safely: A Practical Path Forward on Pesticides.”  The discussion focused on the importance of openness and transparency, the negative effects of pesticide residues in food on both human health and the environment, and the issue of liability shields for pesticide manufacturers.  Dr. Jay Richards, The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for social and domestic policy, opened the conversation with Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general and a professor at the University of Florida, by asking about the importance of “an attempt to increase openness and transparency in health and public health for the citizens of Florida.”  Ladapo said the public had long been complacent and inattentive to the lack of openness and transparency of the government’s public health system before the COVID-19 pandemic. He also warned about the potential problems that could arise if COVID-19 vaccines were mandated for everyone.  “I think one of the benefits of the COVID pandemic, despite all the tremendous suffering that it brought and continues to wreak, is that more people became aware of the fact that things we assumed were OK or assumed were free of corruption or well-intended are completely not,” Ladapo said.  Dr. Meryl Nass is a medical researcher and physician who, incidentally, had her license suspended for dissenting from mainstream COVID-19 policy.   She said that glyphosate, a chemical commonly used in pesticides, is legally classified as a pesticide but is actually an herbicide, meaning “it kills plants; it kills bacteria, most plants.”  “There may be other things that glyphosate does. It has been shown, for example, that it is genotoxic. It can actually cause damage to DNA, and it also increases oxidative stress. And either of those mechanisms potentially can lead to cancers and other illnesses in humans,” Nass said.  Major agricultural biotech corporations such as Monsanto have been able to continue producing this chemical and selling it at high profit because they “point the finger at the regulator and say, ‘Look, they agree with us on the science. This stuff doesn’t cause an issue,’” said Pedram Esfandiary, a partner and trial attorney at Wisner Baum.  “We are seeing the effects. We’re not in a position where we’re saying, ‘Well, let’s try this. Everything seems to be fine.’” said Heritage’s Dr. Richards. “We’re in a position where we’re seeing the effects. It has to be something that we’re doing to our environment.”  The post Pesticides and the Fight for America’s Health appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration wants to use the process of reconciliation to move the SAVE America Act through the Senate, new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said in response to a question from The Daily Signal.  “There’s a framework that we can do through reconciliation, paying for, putting some of the policies that cost money in, because there’s nothing more important than the SAVE America Act,” Mullin said at the White House on Tuesday, shortly after he was sworn in as secretary. Trump has repeatedly insisted that the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote and implement nationwide voter ID, must be passed to secure American elections. However, the bill has faced an uncertain future in the Senate because it lacked the necessary 60 votes. If the Senate uses reconciliation to pass the SAVE America Act, as Mullin signaled, it would only need 50 votes to pass. However, because the act is not budget-related, some say the Senate parliamentarian will likely reject its provisions in the process. NEW: @SenMullin tells @DailySignal the Trump administration wants to use reconciliation to fund ICE and, "most importantly," pass the SAVE America Act. "There's a framework that we can do through reconciliation, paying for-put some of the policies that cost money in, because… pic.twitter.com/73HC4B3Ndk— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) March 24, 2026 Trump told The Daily Signal, “We’re certainly talking about reconciliation.” Mullin noted that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget, “is committed to making sure we get reconciliation through, if that is in some form, with funding ICE and possibly backfilling from the One, Big Beautiful Bill, but also more importantly, the SAVE America Act.” Democrats have voted against funding the Department of Homeland Security to demand policy changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Reports say that Republicans and Democrats are close to a deal on a bill that would fund the entire department except for ICE, which has received separate funding under the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” Republicans could then fund ICE, and pass the SAVE America Act, through reconciliation. When asked by The Daily Signal if he would support such a deal that separates ICE funding from the overall funding package, Trump said, “They’re working on all of that.” “That’s a detail that they’ll explain later,” he said. Trump Responds to Proposal Separating ICE Funding in DHS Deal TalksCongress will explain the details later regarding a potential deal involving the separation of ICE funding from the DHS funding package, @POTUS told @TheElizMitchell, The Daily Signal’s White House… pic.twitter.com/nrE9yLwRca— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) March 24, 2026 Mullin emphasized the need for the SAVE America Act, saying 80% of the population wants only American citizens to vote. “I believe that everybody wants election integrity,” Mullin said. “Fortunately, Lindsey Graham said through reconciliation he’s willing to put the framework out for that.” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who sponsored the SAVE America Act, said in a post on X, “It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation. “And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible,'” he said.  It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation And by “hard” I mean “essentially impossible”— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 24, 2026 “When you really don’t want to do something so you claim you’ll ‘put it in reconciliation’ and then blame the parliamentarian for being the problem,” Conservative Partnership Institute Vice President Rachel Bovard said of the strategy.  “A Washington classic!” she added in a post on X.  Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., has urged the “smart lawyers” in Congress to rework the SAVE America Act to comply with the Senate parliamentarian. “You don’t know till you try, and we haven’t tried,” he said. A second reconciliation bill is uncertain, said Lora Ries, Heritage Foundation immigration expert. “Claiming that such an uncertain bill is where the SAVE America Act can pass is a Lucy-with-the-football move,” she told The Daily Signal. “The Parliamentarian would likely strike it for failing the Byrd test (not budget-related). Don’t be Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.” The post White House Reveals New Strategy to Require Voter ID appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It happened again: A parent, this one in South Carolina, has accused teachers at her child’s school of hiding information about him from his family. Fortunately, state lawmakers are considering a proposal to protect parents from educators who insert a wedge between them and their children. Members of the state’s House of Representatives have advanced a parent bill of rights that says parents have a “fundamental” right to direct the upbringing, education, healthcare, and mental health of their child. The proposal is consistent with essential U.S. Supreme Court rulings that uphold parent rights. The provisions are also consistent with U.S. Department of Education policies that protect parents’ access to a child’s academic and medical information. Earlier this year, the Education Department found the California Department of Education in violation of federal policy for “pressuring” school officials to withhold student information about the child’s “gender” from parents. The federal agency cited a case in which a California parent sued her child’s school because educators had kept secrets about her daughter’s confusion regarding her sex—similar to the new case in South Carolina. Unfortunately, the examples from South Carolina and California are not unique. Other suits challenging teachers and administrators over information that may have been kept from families have been filed in Maine, Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Colorado, and New Jersey, to name a few states. Lawmakers in half of all states have adopted provisions stating that parent rights do not end at the schoolhouse door, including South Carolina’s neighbors in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Teachers remain mandated reporters and are responsible for documenting safety concerns (potential abuse or neglect), but parents are still their child’s primary caregivers. The Supreme Court has upheld parent rights in court decisions such as the opinions in Meyer v.Nebraska (individuals have a right “to marry, establish a home, and bring up children”), Wisconsin v. Yoder(parents have a “primary role…in the upbringing of their children” that is “established beyond debate”), and Troxel v. Granville (the U.S. Constitution protects parents’ rights to “make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children”). And more recently, the Supreme Court issued another ruling in favor of families. The court said that a set of California parents is likely to prevail in a case against the aforementioned California policy because the rules interfere with their rights. The Supreme Court reinstated a lower court ruling that blocked California schools from “misleading parents about their children’s gender presentation.” The South Carolina teacher union opposes the state’s legislative proposal, calling it “unnecessary.” Yet South Carolina is clearly not immune to cases in which educators keep secrets from parents—or situations in which parents should be the first to know about what takes place in their child’s classroom. For example, last summer administrators at a North Charleston elementary school hired an art teacher who drew “transcartoons” and promoted “Gendeer (sic) fluid” content online. Parents confronted school officials about the material, and the teacher’s drawings on social media suddenly disappeared—but families may have appropriate concerns that these ideas could wind up in front of their young children. The South Carolina proposal includes provisions that require educators to allow parents to view the instructional materials that teachers use with students. Such transparency would give peace of mind to parents in North Charleston. The proposal also gives parents a private cause of action when educators violate parent rights. This legal remedy is valuable for parents when public officials “substantially burden” a family’s rights. Such clauses are part of “strict scrutiny” tests in court and are essential to parent bills of rights because they limit the regulations that lawmakers can impose on families. The South Carolina proposal met nearly unanimous support (only one member voted against) in the state’s House of Representatives, a rebuke to the state’s teacher union. News of “transcartoons” and teacher secrecy make it difficult to believe special interests when they say protecting parent rights is “unnecessary.” The post South Carolina Lawmakers Must Protect Parent Rights. Here’s What Families Need to Know. appeared first on The Daily Signal.