President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Iranians want to protest the regime but are not armed to withstand a violent crackdown. The Daily Signal’s White House correspondent, Elizabeth Mitchell, asked Trump, “You said recently that if Iran—Iranians were armed, they could take over their regime. Do you plan to arm them soon?” “Well, I don’t want to say that, but, yeah, I mean, people say why aren’t they protesting. They want to protest, but they don’t have any guns,” he told her. “They want to protest so badly, but they don’t have weapons,” Trump said. NEW: I asked @POTUS about his latest comments on arming Iranians. “I don't want to say that, but, yeah, I mean, people say, Why aren't they protesting? They want to protest, but they don't have any guns….”@DailySignal pic.twitter.com/fwDIQ3vDfg— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) May 5, 2026 Yesterday, the Iranian regime executed three men—Mehdi Rassouli, Mohammad Reza Miri, and Ebrahim Dolatabadi—for their participation in protests in December 2025. Another three were killed over the weekend: Yaghoub Karimpour and Nasser Bakarzadeh for cooperating with Israel, and Mehrab Abdollahzade for the 2022 uprising against the regime, the Washington Examiner reported, citing Iranian state media and the Kurdistan Human Rights Network. “So, you can have 200,000 people protesting and have five or six sick people with guns. And when they start shooting them right between the eyes and you see a guy fall and another one fall and you have no guns, very few people would be able to stand there and do it,” Trump continued. Trump reminded the press that the Iranian regime killed 42,000 unarmed protesters last month alone. He explained that there were roughly 250,000 people in a crowd, and the regime executed protesters on the ground using just four or five snipers hiding in buildings above. BELIEVED THAT MORE THAN 50K PROTESTORS KILLED IN STREETS OF IRANIt is believed that the survivors are ready to come back to the streets and reclaim their power. "There are underground clinics, because people cannot show up to hospitals." @RobbyDawkins@AndrewKolvet pic.twitter.com/AvwdVbPgNu— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) March 2, 2026 The president described a similar protest over a year ago. “They had 200,000 women protesting a year ago, and everyone thought that was the end of Iran. And then, all of a sudden, a woman dropped dead with a bullet right there, always right there,” he said, pointing to his forehead between his eyes, insinuating it was an execution. “Then another woman dropped, and then the word started to spread, and then there was panic, and then they ran. And, you know, so I don’t want that to happen,” he insisted. In a Feb. 28 video message announcing Operation Epic Fury, Trump told Iranians, “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.” The United States is continuing Operation Project Freedom—the effort to regain control of the strait by ensuring commercial vessels have safe passage. However, the ceasefire with Iran is still in place. “Very good news! I have just been informed that eight women protestors who were going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed…” – President Donald J. Trump https://t.co/gsW76RQufY pic.twitter.com/oU1AlAOPpk— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 22, 2026 Related PostsVictor Davis Hanson: Trump Has Left Iran With 3 OptionsEditor’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.   We’re about 60 days into the Iran war, and we’re getting a lot of mixed signals from the media, from the administration,…US Sinking Iran Ships in Strait, Trump SaysThe United States has sunk Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump said in a statement on Monday as the Navy worked to reopen the global shipping lane. “We’ve shot down seven small Boats or, as they like to call them, ‘fast’ Boats. It’s all they have left,” Trump wrote on social…Trump Says Visit With King Improved UK Relations Amid Iran TensionPresident Donald Trump said the visit of King Charles III smoothed over U.S. relations with the United Kingdom amid tension over Iran. Trump has criticized U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer for declining to help the United States with its military operation in Iran. The president has said the U.K. “should be our best ally” and…

Late Monday night, Senate Republicans announced a funding package to earmark more than $70 billion to protect the American homeland. The package would fund immigration services, training for officers, efforts to combat human and drug trafficking, and security provisions related to President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom. This is Reconciliation 2.0. Republicans plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through the reconciliation process, beginning in the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have released the first draft of legislative text, which is expected to reach the floor the week of May 18 to meet the president’s June 1 funding deadline. “We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay,” Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said. Serious legislating requires basic reading. The bill funds Secret Service enhancements, not ballroom construction."LIMITATION—None of the funds made availableunder this section may be used for non-security elements of the East Wing Modernization Project." https://t.co/IwFwPMAkj1 pic.twitter.com/ei9ViURxt2— Senate Judiciary Republicans (@SenJudiciaryGOP) May 5, 2026 The proposed appropriations would run through Sept. 30, 2029—nearly a year into the next president’s term—with one restriction. Judiciary Committee The Judiciary Committee proposed appropriating more than $30 billion to ICE to hire and train personnel. The funding would also support deportations, improved body cameras for agents, coordination and cooperation with states, and legal staffing costs, including attorneys. This is on top of the $75 billion the agency received last year from the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Judiciary Committee also proposed $3.4 billion for hiring and training Customs and Border Protection agents, as well as an additional $2.5 billion for ICE and CBP operations. An additional $1.45 billion is earmarked for the Department of Justice and the attorney general to support the National Security Division on terrorism. The funding would also support the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration in combating drug trafficking, child trafficking, and fraud. The final directive would provide $1 billion to the U.S. Secret Service for security costs related to the East Wing Modernization Project, commonly referred to as Trump’s ballroom. The funding is restricted to security-related costs only, within the White House fence, above or below ground. JudiciaryRecDownload More ICE Funding in Homeland Security A separate Homeland Security bill proposes additional funding for ICE and CBP. Committee members proposed nearly $20 billion to hire and train border agents. This funding could not be spent after Oct. 31, 2028. The proposal also includes $7.45 billion for ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents, including new border security screening technology. Another $3.45 billion is earmarked for new artificial intelligence equipment to combat drugs entering or leaving the country, air surveillance upgrades, and initial screening of children to prevent child trafficking or protect unaccompanied minors crossing the border. None of the funding could be used for untested AI surveillance towers along the border. An additional $2.5 billion would be granted for these operations. HLSCRecDownload The bills, which will be marked up once Congress returns next week, is already facing pushback from Democrats. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement that Democrats are prepared to “vigorously challenge any provision that violates the Byrd Rule.” Senate Republicans released a budget bill that gives BILLIONS to ICE and CBP. But not a single cent to lower costs for American taxpayers. Ridiculous.— House Democrats (@HouseDemocrats) May 5, 2026 Many of these agencies have been left unfunded since February, after Democrats refused to support funding for immigration services and Border Patrol. Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to fund all Department of Homeland Security components unrelated to immigration enforcement, including the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Republicans announced then their plan to fund immigration enforcement separately through reconciliation.

California’s high-speed rail funding was delayed yet again, causing some to wonder if the project truly is a train to nowhere. When voters passed Proposition 1A in 2008, the estimated $30 billion transportation project was designed to let Californians travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours. However, current estimates from the High-Speed Rail Authority now project $126 billion for a bare-bones “optimized plan,” and $250 billion for the original plan as approved by voters—a 700% increase over the initial budget. Assemblyman David Tangipa, R-Fresno, told The Daily Signal the High-Speed Rail Authority’s “optimized” plan is not only costly, but “illegal.” “The plan that was given to us right now is illegal. It’s non-compliant with state law, and we’ve got to have a really hard look in the mirror of what California high-speed rail is going to look like in the future,” he said. “… I think that we have to go all the way back to the books and potentially go back to the voters to see if they still approve this project like they did in 2018.” Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, agrees with Tangipa. “Back in 2008, voters were told that it would be a $30 billion total project cost and that it would be a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours,” he told The Daily Signal. ” … But if they built it today the way they sold it to voters, it would be $251 billion.” Congressman Vince Fong, a Republican from California, has a different solution to the project’s ballooning cost. “The next step for California’s High-Speed Rail Authority is simple: end this project. We were promised a completed system by 2020 for $33 billion,” he said. “Instead, it’s 2026 with zero operational trains, zero usable tracks, a business plan that the Authority’s own inspector general says lacks transparency and violates state law, and a price tag that’s ballooned to $231 billion. “It’s the quintessential example of government waste. California taxpayers have been forced to bankroll this boondoggle for far too long—it’s time to end this nightmare.” However, some policy experts says at least part of the project can be salvaged.  “There’s enough funding to maybe get us from Bakersfield to Merced. There’s certainly no funding available that would be sufficient to connect that Central Valley segment to either Los Angeles or San Francisco,” Marc Joffe, president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, said.   Joffe added that the original plan of a two hour, 40-minute ride from San Francisco to LA is “not achievable” and will be “closer to four hours.” He said voters should be able to weigh in on both the construction costs and operating losses. The transportation project has other missed targets, including carbon emissions estimates, which Joffe said would take “71 years of service to recapture the initial cost in terms of new carbon emissions.” Also, he ended by comparing California’s infrastructure work to similar projects in China. “China started their projects in the exact same year. China has built 33,000 miles, and we haven’t built beyond 1600 feet,” he said. “There’s no excuse for saying that high speed rail can’t happen. The only excuse is that we have inept elected officials, or there’s some systemic fraud happening in high-speed, under our noses, essentially.”

Earlier this year, a local by-election in the United Kingdom drew widespread attention for its political outcomes. Less visible, but equally important, were the recurring questions about how those outcomes were reached. The February Gorton and Denton by-elections resulted in a significant Green party victory, drawing headlines not only for the result, but for reports from independent observers documenting unusually high levels of “family voting,” a practice in which multiple individuals enter polling booths together. In this case, the number of affected votes exceeded the margin of victory—a finding that raises significant questions about an entire election that may have been undemocratic. Just this weekend, news broke that the U.K.’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s postal ballot was examined in litigation connected to the 2004 Birmingham election fraud case, drawing attention to vulnerabilities that have never been fully resolved. In this case, a court found widespread fraud across multiple wards, voided the results, and barred those responsible from office. Its reappearance in the public record underscores a broader concern that structural weaknesses in the British electoral system persist. It also raised the question of whether in closely contested races these weaknesses may affect outcomes in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder to remedy. These fresh concerns over the U.K.’s electoral system—both in the case of Mahmood and in the February by-elections—are revealing of deeper, more pervasive problems. In the past decade, prosecutions have been extremely low relative to reports of electoral fraud. In 1998, there were reportedly only nine convictions for postal vote fraud—a rate of less than one every two years. In 2017, hundreds of complaints (including 1,000 emails sent to the Electoral Commission and 60 letters from 47 MPs) about alleged double voting resulted in only one conviction. The 2004 Birmingham election fraud case—in which a court identified widespread manipulation of postal ballots, voided election results, and barred those responsible from holding office—was so egregious that presiding election commissioner Richard Mawrey QC remarked that the scale of fraud in this case would “disgrace a banana republic.” At the center of these concerns is the postal voting system. In the U.K., voters can request and submit ballots by post with limited identity verification and outside a controlled environment. Ballots may be completed in shared settings, raising the risk of undue influence or coercion, and signature verification processes have been shown to produce inconsistencies. These conditions do not in themselves prove widespread abuse, but they do create opportunities for it; areas with high levels of immigration from Pakistan and Bangladesh have been shown to be high-risk for undemocratic elections, as cultural practices like clan systems mean votes can be exchanged for loyalty and power. In the years since British voters were allowed to vote by post, there have been cases of rightful recipients never receiving their ballots (which were returned by someone else). There have also been cases where ballots were signed and filled out by candidate representatives to demonstrate loyalty. Worse still, the identification systems for the postal vote do not include requirements for matching addresses on file with ballots, they do not include strict scrutiny over witness requirements, and they do not include a requirement that the voter turns the ballot to the Elections Office themselves. Because of the vulnerabilities in the British system and the nature of the fraud (particularly around postal voting), using successful petitions or prosecutions as the sole indicator of fraud risk paints a very misleading picture of its systemic health. The structure of the British election petition process is rooted in 19th-century legal design, requiring individuals to privately initiate and finance challenges. Political parties themselves lack standing to bring cases. Strict procedural requirements and short filing windows further reduce the number of disputes that reach formal review. Taken together, these factors limit the system’s ability to address potential problems once they arise. In theory, in order to successfully prove postal voting fraud, a private citizen would have to bring the charge themselves—incurring all the burdens financial and otherwise—and prove that fraud occurred (likely behind closed doors) to authorities in a system where scrutiny is relatively impossible. These weaknesses of the British electoral system intersect with broader trends in the U.K.’s civic decline, including the erosion of shared national identity, elite reluctance to confront institutional dysfunction, and growing sectarian political mobilization in certain localities. Underlying all of this is problematically high levels of immigration from culturally distant nations. This has included many immigrants who have not displayed assimilation to the beliefs, values, and practices of their new home. The implications for the U.S. are at once practical, symbolic, and strategic. If election integrity is so severely compromised in our leading civilizational ally, can we continue to operate on the same grounds as we used to? The Anglo-American alliance relies on a high degree of mutual confidence that both countries’ electoral processes are sound; we must share the strict adherence to free and fair elections. Americans do not want to see clear vulnerabilities dismissed in the leadership of our closest allies. We no doubt have issues with election integrity in the U.S., but this administration—and the American Right in general—has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to secure elections such as trying to pass the SAVE Act. The U.K. occupies a singular position in American foreign policy; we are core partners in intelligence sharing, military planning, and diplomatic coordination. Even though the dynamics have shifted in President Donald Trump’s second term, the function of the ongoing U.S.-U.K. partnership assumes a baseline of institutional stability and public confidence. Electoral systems are foundational to both. Like limits on free speech, eroding electoral integrity has consequences that extend beyond domestic politics into the reliability of international commitments and the coherence of allied strategy. Another broader international dimension is at play with the U.S and the U.K. historically positioning themselves as leading proponents of democratic governance. There is no doubt our adversaries will see weaknesses in our systems as an opportunity to challenge our position and to promote alternative models. In the U.K.’s first-past-the-post system, where electoral outcomes can hinge on very small margins, these factors create a very real credible risk that results may not fully reflect voter intent in all constituencies. Special elections on May 7 will likely see wins for both Reform UK and the Green party as over 5,000 councilor seats are up for grabs. But on the eve of this pivotal vote in British politics, there are lingering questions about the democratic process that deserve attention no matter the political outcome. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL — Texas Hispanic voters overwhelmingly support President Donald Trump’s job performance and immigration agenda, according to a new poll from Tejano PAC, a group that promotes conservative principles in public service. The survey, conducted by National Victory Strategies between April 21 and April 27, questioned 1,012 Texas voters. 36% of those surveyed said illegal immigration is their top concern. Trump has cracked down on illegal immigration since returning to office, with a particular focus on activity at the Texas border. As a result, violent crime has dropped sharply across the United States, according to a Department of Homeland Security report last June. According to the department’s data, gun assaults declined 21%, aggravated assaults fell 10%, sexual assaults dropped 10%, and carjackings decreased 24% between January and June 2025 compared with the same period the year before. “70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged with a crime,” former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said at the time. “These arrests and deportations of criminal illegal aliens are having real impact on public safety.” The poll also found that 16% of respondents identified the “Islamification of the United States” as their top concern. In fall 2025, Texas Republicans Rep. Chip Roy and Rep. Keith Self co‑founded the Congressional Sharia Free America Caucus, citing concerns about what they describe as growing Islamist influence in the United States. “Let’s be very clear: There is a war being waged against Western civilization, against the United States of America, and against the state of Texas,” Roy previously said. “Since 9/11, some five million people have been granted the ability to come into our country from majority‑Muslim countries, in a post‑9/11 world where we were attacked.” “These attacks, clustered in just a few weeks, shows that the enemy are inside the gates,” Self said after a wave of terrorist attacks rocked the United States in early 2026. “We cannot allow that here in the United States.” Since its founding, the caucus has introduced dozens of pieces of legislation, held televised press conferences, and expanded its membership to more than 65 members of Congress. Statewide and National Elections On the midterm electoral front, the poll found Sen. John Cornyn trailing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the upcoming Republican Senate primary runoff, 50% to 23%, with 27% undecided. (A separate poll of likely Texas voters out Tuesday from the Univ. of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs shows Paxton with a 3% lead over the incumbent.) In the May 2026 Republican runoff for attorney general between Roy and attorney Mayes Middleton, Roy leads 36% to 34%, according to the Tejano poll of Hispanics, while 30% of voters remain undecided. Regarding the 2028 presidential election, 40% of the voters surveyed in the poll indicated that they would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vice-President J.D. Vance as the Republican nominee. 29% indicated otherwise. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Related PostsRep. Keith Self Urges Federal Probes Into Texas Muslim Development After Watchdog ReportRep. Keith Self called for additional federal probes after a watchdog group raised legal and constitutional concerns about a proposed Muslim-centered development in his district. The Oversight Project, a watchdog group, alleges in a new report Thursday that the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC, is violating federal law in spearheading the development of “EPIC…Texas Rep Takes Aim at ‘Sharia Tax’Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, introduced legislation Monday that would prohibit the imposition of religiously based financial penalties, a measure he says is aimed at preventing Sharia-inspired practices such as taxing non-Muslims. The Freedom Against Imposed Theology Harms (FAITH) Act would establish a nationwide ban on fees, fines, penalties, or other financial burdens imposed on individuals…Why Republicans Think Twice About Embracing AI in TexasAs the Trump administration moves full speed ahead with artificial intelligence innovation, Texas state lawmakers are worried about unintended consequences for their constituents.  The AI boom is fueling the growth of hundreds more data centers, and Texas offers ample space for their construction. While Republican state lawmakers want Texas to support innovation so the United…