When evangelical leader James Robison heard the words this weekend, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the first thing on the Lord’s mind would have been the tens of millions of souls Robison brought into the kingdom over his 60 years of ministry. Not so much the 2016 election. Still, what happened that year is something for the history books, if not the Book of Life. According to Pew Research data, Donald Trump almost certainly would have lost the razor-thin race to Hillary Clinton if not for the support of white evangelical Christians. That support almost certainly would not have turned out in winning numbers if not for Robison’s Herculean behind-the-scenes efforts. I had a front row seat to this political thriller, as I was then working for James (as I knew him). A Primary Full of Friends … and ‘That Man Trump’ The story begins with the GOP primary. Of the dozen-plus Republican candidates, James was friends with about 10. Close to about seven. A father figure to two or three. Trump was not one of those friends—far from it. In fact, for about a year, I swear James never referred to him as anything other than “That Man Trump.” When some faith leaders started endorsing Trump, oh, boy. I remember the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, an early endorser of Trump, coming on “LIFE Today.” Between segments, James chewed his ears like they were beef jerky. Mike Huckabee, who owed his first professional job (and his first-ever suits) to James called from the campaign trail. “James, you’re not going to believe this. But Trump listens.” That caught James’ attention, because another candidate he’d known since he was young man was not listening. But still … “That Man Trump.” I worked for James Robison in the 70's as Dir of Comms. He & wife Betty were huge influences in my life. My middle son's middle name is "James" after him. His death hits hard. He mentored me in so many ways. Remembering James Robison https://t.co/lmx5bkWSSw— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) May 18, 2026 Then James got word that Ben Carson, a spiritual son, was set to endorse Trump. James immediately called Carson backstage at the Trump rally to give him chapter and verse. Carson cooly replied, “I told Trump I’d endorse him if he spent an hour with you.” James would rather have had teeth removed without Novocain than go to Trump Tower to meet “That Man Trump.” But the evangelist in him couldn’t resist. “I hit him with everything I had,” James recalled. “I told him, ‘You might know how to be a father to these boys, but you don’t know anything about being a father to this nation!’” To James’ amazement, Trump was incredibly gracious and receptive to what he was saying. Still, James didn’t trust the billionaire reality star. Too many other candidates schmoozed him for support only to disappear after Election Day. But Trump had taken a liking to James and suggested another meeting. Then another with a group of evangelical influencers. Next thing you know, they’re buds, with James even doing a campaign event. He also began counseling other evangelical leaders that while Trump may not be “our” choice, get used to the idea he’s the people’s choice. Fast-forward to the general election. Trump had worked hard to win over evangelical leaders. Although some remained vehement Never-Trumpers, many had started to support him, if only as an alternative to Clinton. And then … The ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape On Oct. 7, one month before the election, the “Access Hollywood” story broke, shattering the fragile alliance Trump had been building among evangelical leaders—shattering even long-term relationships between leaders who held onto their Trump support and those who saw it as immoral to back such a crude, ungodly character. One nationally-known leader of a Christian conservative political organization was so distraught over the Trump drama that he told James he was retiring. Another leading pastor-author was near tears, broken over the rancor within his congregation. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign was in crisis mode. James got busy. The man who could convince a leopard to lose his spots spent 17 exhausting hours a day on the phone. One minute, talking leaders off the ledge. “With Trump you don’t know what you’re going to get. With Hillary you KNOW what you’re going to get.” The next minute, praying with leaders who were at odds, healing rifts before they became insurmountable. The minute after that, counseling the campaign, ministering to the Trump family. Hour after hour, day after day, James kept at it, the voice that could thunder across stadiums reduced to a raspy, exhausted whisper, pulling by force of will and argument the fragile evangelical coalition back together. A coalition, not incidentally, that included people who, for doctrinal reasons, would “never have even been in the same room together,” who were now banding together. This “miracle,” as James called it, would become the basis for President Trump’s Faith Council. By the third debate, 12 days later, the alliance had mostly reformed, if held together only by Scotch tape and prayer. Then, partway through, Trump and Clinton had an exchange over abortion, particularly partial-birth abortion. Trump let loose: “Well, I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s OK and Hillary can say that that’s OK. But it’s not OK with me, because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.”  I could almost feel a jolt through the TV set. Never had a presidential candidate, Republican or otherwise, spoken so bluntly, forcefully, and even passionately against abortion. Strategic or from the heart? I don’t know. Something James had put on his mind? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. But in that moment—having been on some of those calls with James, having a strong sense of the heart of those evangelical leaders—I knew Trump had just struck a nerve and sealed the deal. What was that old “Access Hollywood” tape compared to the prospect of protecting new life? It wasn’t about Trump. It was about rescuing the unborn, rescuing the nation from the curse of secularism—heck, rescuing the ability to say “Merry Christmas” without getting grief for it. What was fragile would now be a force. Trump would go on to ride the support of white Christian evangelicals to victory. Mere hours after being declared the winner, the president-elect called James. After jokes about how remarkable their wives were for putting up with them, Trump closed with this: “James, never let me forget what you did for me.” I certainly won’t. Nor should the nation ever forget James Robison. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Climate litigation is having a difficult month.  As plaintiffs suing energy companies for global warming gear up for their upcoming Supreme Court hearing, the plans to extract billions under local tort laws suffered significant setbacks in recent weeks.  Last week, the modeling scenarios used to predict the most dire consequences from global warming were deemed “implausible” by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which climate activists typically cite as the key source for global warming projections.   And on May 12, the government of New Zealand outlawed climate lawsuits in that country, echoing energy companies’ defense that regulating global greenhouse gas emissions belonged under the purview of national regulators and lawmakers rather than local courts.  “Even in a place that is far to the left of the United States on most policy issues, they can see the common sense that you don’t want your government policy and your national economy regulated by lawsuits,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the Daily Signal.  Calling the lawsuits “a backdoor way to set policy through the courts instead of through elected lawmakers,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said that the “legal and evidentiary landscape has shifted substantially” against climate litigators.  “Layer on the recent developments—the Federal Judicial Center pulling its climate science chapter from its judicial reference manual, the EPA reconsidering the 2009 Endangerment Finding, and the IPCC retiring [its most extreme modeling scenario]—and the entire scientific scaffolding underpinning these cases is being reassessed in real time,” Isaac told the Daily Signal.   On the New Zealand government’s website, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith stated that climate lawsuits were increasing uncertainty and undermining energy investment.   “The courts are not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change, and tort law is not well-suited to respond to a problem like climate change, which involves a range of complex environmental, economic and social factors,” Goldsmith stated.   This action comes as climate lawsuits proliferate, not just in America, but around the world.   According to a 2025 report by London School of Economics research fellows Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, there have been nearly 3,000 climate lawsuits filed in 60 countries since 1986. About 1,900 of them were filed in the U.S., 164 in Australia, 133 in the U.K., and 131 in Brazil.   “Climate litigation has evolved into a powerful global tool for advancing climate action and accountability,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environmental Program, stated.  This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, a Colorado lawsuit that will likely set a national precedent. In these suits, plaintiffs claim that burning oil, gas, and coal harmed local residents by creating a “public nuisance” and that energy companies “failed to warn” consumers that using their products can cause bad weather. Plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars in damages, with one lawsuit in Multnomah County, Oregon, alone demanding $50 billion.  These claims are often based on climate models produced by organizations like the IPCC, but the IPCC’s recent statement that the most extreme modeling scenarios are unrealistic undermines many of the damage claims. The IPCC’s “Representative Concentration Pathways (RPC) 8.5” projection is based on assumptions, such as the dramatic expansion of coal burning, despite the recent rise of natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar energy.   “Every study that comes out that says the world is ending is based on these extreme scenarios,” Kenny Stein, policy vice president at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Signal. “If you use the scenario estimates that are actually closer to what’s really happening and you run those through a climate model, you don’t get significant impacts.”  Climate litigators have denied that they are attempting to regulate energy companies.   Attorney Victor Sher argued before state supreme court justices last fall that his lawsuit on behalf of Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County “does not involve capping, regulating or limiting emissions by the defendants or anybody … It doesn’t involve changing pollution control measures or installing equipment or anything like that.”  But attorney David Bookbinder, who represented Boulder in its suit, stated that the goal of the suits was indeed to impose “an indirect carbon tax.”   “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable, the oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products. In some sense, it is the most efficient way—the people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products,” Bookbinder stated at an Oct. 10 Federalist Society webinar.  If the suits succeed, Isaac said, “they would raise prices sharply—through damages passed to consumers, higher liability insurance and capital costs, and reduced investment in domestic energy production.”  And this presents another hurdle for climate litigation. The recent spike in gasoline prices due to the Gulf war has given consumers around the world a taste of what would happen if climate lawsuits succeeded. European consumers have already been paying significantly higher electricity rates since the EU-mandated shift to wind and solar energy.  “In a democracy, that’s a political problem because people rightly ask their governments: why are our prices rising?” Stein said. “Climate change actions are absolutely on their back foot in general because of this problem of responsive democracy.”  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal. 

Pentecost ought to remind us of our identity and renew our trust that God is always with us. After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Apostles all gathered together in a building’s upper room, worried and confused about how to move forward. Then the Holy Spirit came rushing forth upon them (Acts 2:2). They were immediately emboldened to rush out of the upper room and proclaim Jesus’ identity to anyone who would hear. This is what the God’s Spirit does: It ignites us. The Holy Spirit was felt and seen among the Apostles, and He reminded them of who Jesus called them to be. The Apostles were convicted; they knew that they were not alone. God’s presence in them showed them how to act and what to do. The same is true for Christians today. Pentecost confronts us with a question: are we stuck in our own “upper room”? Do we silo our faith from our lives, rather than allowing God’s Spirit to move through us in all of our interactions? In my prayer during this Easter season, I have been reflecting on the general tone of my conversation with God. If I am completely honest, much of it is self-centered. I ask Him for help. I implore His love to be with my wife and kids. I pray for sick family members, and I am open with God about what is bothering me. My prayer is often too centered on myself, rather than being an expression of the fact that God is with me. This had to be a factor in the Apostles’ gathering in the upper room. They were worried about what to do and how to move forward. In the midst of their turning inward, the Spirit came to convince them of their identity: They were made to be with God and to tell others about Him. The role of the Christian in today’s world is the same. In 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II put it well: “The Church of Christ is always, so to speak, in a situation of Pentecost: she is always gathered in the Upper Room in prayer, and at the same time, driven by the powerful wind of the Spirit, she is always on the streets preaching.” This is the dual foundation of the Christian life: to be in communion with God and to be willing to share that union with others. Believers in Christ exist in order to know Him, love Him, and serve Him. Therefore, the celebration of Pentecost implores us to consider how we do so. We should ask ourselves two questions. First, are we people of daily prayer? Do we make intentional and personal time for God each and every day? If the answer is no, then we can implement practices and structures that can help bolster our prayer life. Set aside an extra 10 minutes when you wake up and before you go to bed. Start small, perhaps by making a promise to God, in prayer, that you will give Him this time. Tell a friend or family member about it so you are kept accountable and have someone to speak with about your prayer life. Second, we must ask ourselves if we courageously speak about the faith openly to people. This does not mean that we become street preachers, nor does it mean that we heckle people with our faith. It simply means that we become more aware of how we can bring up the faith or our practice of prayer to people in casual and organic ways. This can happen at work when someone asks about our weekend. We can explain our experiences with family and friends but also mention our attendance at church and how it helps guide us. This can also take place among our immediate family by calling for more opportunities to pray before meals or together as a family before bed. These two little practices can go a long way to mold us into men and women like the Apostles, who ran out of the upper room on that first Pentecost. It only takes some commitment and a daily encounter with Christ in prayer to light a fire in our souls to live with a Pentecost spirit. This spirit will help shape our families and communities for a brighter future and a holier world. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

People who have been hoodwinked by transgender ideology and the medical establishment telling them to physically damage their own bodies in pursuit of a false identity may have a strong new remedy. The Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced last week a seismic shift in medicine. For the first time, a major hospital will open a clinic dedicated to providing health care for people victimized by harmful medical experiments to make them appear like members of the opposite sex. The Struggles of Detransitioners While activists claim that teens who suffer from gender dysphoria—the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex—need experimental medical interventions to prevent suicide, the Department of Health and Human Services concluded there is little evidence for positive impacts from such “treatments” for minors. Although the full side effects of transgender “medicine” remain unclear, studies have demonstrated concrete harms. One study found that males who identify as transgender and take estrogen in order to appear female face higher risks of infertility, diabetes, testicular and breast cancer, and early death. A Food and Drug Administration study found that suicidal thoughts actually increase among kids who take so-called puberty blockers. A jury awarded a detransitioner $2 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit in February, and psychiatrists reportedly agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle another detransitioner’s medical malpractice claim this week. Yet the medical establishment has vigorously championed grotesque interventions, euphemistically branded “gender-affirming care.” Transgender ideology has spread—particularly among teenage girls—as a social contagion, promoted by schools, YouTube algorithms, and TikTok influencers. Thousands of children and teens across the country have taken experimental hormone “treatments,” and by 2023, surgeons had operated on more than 5,000 minors. Many of these unfortunate people have since realized the truth. No matter how many hormone shots they take, no matter how many surgeries they undergo, they cannot change their biological sex. The DNA in their cells will still be coded male or female, and their bodies will reflect this, in one way or another. Women like Chloe Cole, who underwent chemical and surgical alterations to appear male, have rejected that false identity and returned to accepting their biological sex. But these detransitioners struggle to find doctors who can fully address their struggles. “After over 5 years of searching I’ve finally found a doctor who wants to help me,” Cole shared on X Wednesday. She told me that this doctor is an internal medicine specialist who is “not working on autopilot like most docs are.” That makes it hard to find a doctor willing or able to address her struggles. After over 5 years of searching I’ve finally found a doctor who wants to help meBetween this and the detrans clinic opening, it feels like there’s a lot of hope on the horizon. Never give up. To detransitioners: keep advocating for yourself, because help is on the way.— Chloe Cole (@ChloeCole) May 20, 2026 The health care system manages treatment through the International Classification of Diseases diagnosis codes, but detransitioners remain mostly invisible in this system. Doctors and public policy groups have advocated for detransition codes. A New Hope for Detransitioners That’s why it matters so much that Texas Children’s Hospital has agreed to open a special clinic dedicated to detransition care, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department. Under the terms of the agreement, the hospital will pay $10 million to resolve allegations that it submitted false billings to public and private payors to secure insurance coverage for pediatric sex-rejecting procedures, and it will terminate the doctors who arguably violated their Hippocratic Oath by subjecting patients to these harmful procedures. As the Justice Department announced, the hospital “has committed to establishing the first-of-its-kind clinic dedicated to restorative care for detransitioners.” The clinic will provide free detransition care for its first five years. Paxton opened an investigation into Texas Children’s in 2022, after determining that sex-rejecting medical procedures may constitute child abuse under Lone Star State law. In June 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill banning these procedures statewide. Texas Children’s framed its decision to settle the case as an attempt to avoid wasting money. “We are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation,” the hospital said in a statement reported by NBC News. “This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care.” “The detransition clinic will formalize the supportive, multidisciplinary services we already deliver to all patients who need our care,” the hospital added. Formalizing detransition services would represent a tremendous step forward for the medical industry. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the hospital’s agreement “protects vulnerable children, holds providers accountable, and ensures those harmed receive the care they need.” The medical profession needs to understand the struggles of detransitioners and how to help them, and a new clinic dedicated to this noble mission will change the game. The new clinic should bring together endocrinologists (hormone specialists), plastic surgeons, psychiatrists, and obstetricians and gynecologists. Providing care for people in detransition truly is a groundbreaking medical field, and it’s inspiring to see a hospital that once harmed children now pioneer a new way to reverse those harms.

Two were wounded after shots were fired outside the White House near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, including the potential suspect, CBS news reported. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Saturday evening that the bureau is investigating after reporters heard shots fired near the White House. “FBI is on the scene and supporting Secret Service responding to shots fired near White House grounds – we will update the public as we’re able,” Patel posted on X. About 15 to 30 gunshots were fired, according to CBS. FBI is on the scene and supporting Secret Service responding to shots fired near White House grounds – we will update the public as we’re able— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 23, 2026 “The U.S. Secret Service is gathering information and will have more on this incident shortly,” the Secret Service told The Daily Signal in a statement Saturday. Police and security forces swarmed the area around the White House after reports of shots fired, AFP journalists reported. President Donald Trump was at the White House at the time. Selina Wang, senior White House correspondent for ABC News, was on the scene. I was in the middle of taping on my iPhone for a social video from the White House North Lawn when we heard the shots. It sounded like dozens of gunshots. We were told to sprint to the press briefing room where we are holding now. pic.twitter.com/iqdQwh4soq— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) May 23, 2026 Trump recently posted an update on the negotiations seeking peace with Iran. “Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.” This is a breaking news story and will be updated.