New Venture Fund, a hub of the Left’s dark money network, bankrolls both sides of climate lawfare: the lawyers who file lawsuits against energy companies and a nonprofit training judges to view such cases favorably. The fund, however, claims these projects are “unrelated.” In its 2024 tax filing, New Venture Fund reported sending $2.3 million to Sher Edling, L.L.P., a law firm that represents Democratic prosecutors when they file climate litigation against tax filings. The fund also gave $1.25 million to the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit that trains judges how to approach their work to “make environmental, economic, and social progress.” “New Venture Fund works with numerous projects and institutional funders to advance their missions on a variety of issues, including education, health care, and the environment,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Our grants to Sher Edling and the Environmental Law Institute were made on behalf of two separate fiscally sponsored projects. These grants are unrelated and have no connection to each other.” New Venture Fund does direct money from donors to fiscally sponsored projects, a model that critics say allows donors to cloak which projects their funding supports. Even so, Sher Edling has represented lawsuits that arise before judges who have worked with the Environmental Law Institute. As The Washington Free Beacon previously reported, Sher Edling has taken up lawsuits against the oil industry on behalf of at least nine Democrat-run states and more than a dozen Democrat-run cities. The lawsuits accuse oil companies of causing climate change and deceiving the public about the alleged harms of burning fossil fuels. Sher Edling represented the city and county of Honolulu in a 2020 lawsuit seeking to force Sunoco, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevon, BP, and others to compensate them for coastal erosion, tropical storms, and flooding. Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald allowed the case to proceed in late 2023. In December 2022, Recktenwald spoke at an Environmental Law Institute event on “Hurricanes in a Changing Climate and Related Litigation.” ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project aims “to provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to its website. Since its creation in 2018, the project estimates that it has hosted more than 50 events and trained more than 2,000 judges. “The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project isn’t education; it’s a backdoor lobbying effort targeting judges with materials crafted by climate activists and litigation insiders,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, previously told The Daily Signal. He called it a “scheme to rig the courts against American energy.” ELI says it does not advise judges how they should rule on any issue. “The Climate Judiciary Project does not participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties related to any litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule on any issue or in any case,” ELI Communications Director Nick Collins told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. The Environmental Protection Agency canceled two grants to the Environmental Law Institute, which had sought to integrate “environmental justice in restoration and protection programs” and build “capacity to incorporate climate change in compensatory mitigation projects.” “Since day one, the Trump EPA has been crystal clear that the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” an agency spokesperson told The Daily Signal. The ELI defended its relationship with the Biden EPA. “Through every administration, the Environmental Law Institute has worked closely with the EPA to ensure Americans have access to clean air and water,” the spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “To do its work ELI receives support from a wide range of sources, including energy companies, private philanthropy, and individual donors, but no funder dictates our work. Nor does shared philanthropic support create partiality or a conflict of interest, and the assertion that they do is false and ridiculous.” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who led a group of state litigators in urging the EPA to defund ELI, condemned the Climate Judiciary Project’s efforts as “lawfare.” “This is the Left not being able to get their agenda passed through the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate, so what do they do? They shift their tactics and they run to their buddies on the judiciary,” Knudsen previously told The Daily Signal. The post PLAYING BOTH ENDS OF THE COURT? Leftist Dark Money Group Defends Funding Climate Litigators and NGO That Trains Judges appeared first on The Daily Signal.

All week long, I have tried to cry for the narco-terrorists who survived a U.S. military strike on their drug-laden boat, only to be snuffed in a second attack. Somehow, my eyes have stayed totally dry. The only thing wrong with the Venezuelan Two-Step is that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth did not hold a press conference and take full credit for this operation. Critics from left to right have clutched their pearls so hard over this episode that their hands are smothered in pearl dust. The sane and thoughtful Chris Whiton is among the detractors. Writing in Tuesday’s Substack, the Trump 45 foreign-affairs advisor complained: “It is a federal crime for a U.S. national or servicemember to willfully kill wounded, sick, or shipwrecked combatants who are protected by the Geneva Conventions.” Whiton would be correct, if an overhead MS-9 Reaper drone detonated a Venezuelan Navy vessel and then circled back to slam a second Hellfire missile onto the surviving sailors who bobbed beside their flaming ship. Caracas’ sailors are combatants, subject to the Geneva Convention, which Venezuela signed in 1956. However, the bad hombres in those narcotics-stuffed boats are not Venezuelan sailors. They are private-sector criminals, namely drug cartel thugs. President Trump designated the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua a terrorist group. Thus, these vessels carry terrorists or, at least, terror-linked criminals. Tren de Aragua and their lawless associates did not sign the Geneva Convention. As non-state actors, they are not entitled to its protections. The one-two punch on this criminal/terrorist boat was no less legal than bombing an ISIS safehouse and then hitting it again, if survivors of the first blast crawled from the wreckage, to fight another day. The right thing to do: Hammer them anew, so they no longer menace society. If the U.S. armed forces no longer may kill narco-terrorists who survive single-tap strikes, then these individuals suddenly have grown a right to life that must be respected. If so, leaving them clinging to flaming flotsam on the high seas is a de facto death penalty. Those lucky enough to escape death from above might get scooped up by a yacht sailing toward the Dutch Antilles. More likely, however, any such survivors would succumb to exposure, sharks, or their injuries. Since neglect probably would kill these survivors, one could argue that the U.S. military has a moral obligation to deploy an expeditionary force to fish these cartelistos from the water and whisk them to the nearest hospital. If Hegseth’s foes are to be believed, anything less would be the ethical equivalent of a Santa Monica lifeguard spotting a beachgoer floundering in the water and then leaving his tower for lunch.  So, imagine that Navy Seals aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford swoop in to save these survivors. Surprise! An enraged narco-terrorists opens fire on the incoming Gringos. Three Seals tumble into the Caribbean, dead. What would those bashing Hegseth say then? Meanwhile, a Trump-hostile news agency reports that those who were blown apart by that second bomb were not model citizens. “According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike,” ABC’s Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz said on Wednesday’s “World News Tonight.” “They were believed to be potentially in communication with others and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets. A JAG officer was also giving legal advice.” There is a simple solution to all of this: Those who prefer not to get obliterated in narcotics boats or wind up clutching the wreckage after military assaults should spend their days in more worthwhile ways. In short, if you want to stay alive and well, do not smuggle fentanyl and other deadly drugs into the United States of America. Secretary Pete Hegseth’s response to this entire controversy should be two words:  “You’re welcome.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Three Cheers for the Pentagon’s Two-Step Boat Attack appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In a country halfway across the world, Agnes remembers the song her dad taught her when she was scared. And that was most of the time. While American children can’t sleep because of invisible monsters, in Nigeria, the nightmares are real life. Would tonight be the night the men attacked, burning, shooting, and killing? “In those moments,” she remembers, “my dad sang to us, ‘God will never forsake us. God will never abandon us. Even when there is suffering and persecution, God will never leave us.’” It is the song of millions of sons and daughters now, passed down through the years of grief—the nation’s unofficial heirloom. Like so much of Africa, Nigeria’s story is one of constant violence, suffering, and mourning. While the government looks away, tens of thousands of Christians have been massacred, buried in mass graves that have taken over miles of desolate countryside. At the hands of Boko Haram or the Fulani herdsman, armed gangs roam across the country—kidnapping, beheading, and setting on fire anyone in their path. Some are held hostage in terror camps, others are forced into brutal marriages against their wills, raped by so many men they don’t know who their babies’ fathers are. It is, most people who have been there will tell you, worse than genocide. Fred Williams, a missionary to Nigeria, has pleaded with the West to intervene. “Since [2001], the attacks have been relentless, continuous,” he stressed. “[These are] stories of carnage and killing and horror. … Thousands are being killed,” he insists. “I’m constantly in those villages. I have interviews. I have photos. Most of what is happening is too graphic to show the media. That is how bad it is,” he tells reporters. Just days ago, a bride and her bridal party were kidnapped in the north, as another pastor and members of his congregation were put in cars and driven away. To where, no one knows. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who’s tried to absolve himself of the world’s criticism, arguing he’s done everything he can to protect Christians, declared a national “security emergency” last week, authorizing the police and army to recruit and train additional personnel. “There will be no more hiding places for agents of evil,” Tinubu vowed. But Nigerians have heard that before. When 300 girls were abducted from a Catholic school last month and Nigerian leaders did nothing, parents started begging America to intervene. “We almost had a heart attack,” Peter Jagaba said emotionally of his daughter Paulina’s capture. Like the thousands of fathers who have walked this dread before him, he’s asking his government to get involved. “I want the Federal Government of Nigeria to bring back my daughter safe and alive,” Jagaba told The Wall Street Journal. “I’m also calling on the American government to help us—we need help from anywhere,” he said desperately. President Trump, who’s become actively engaged in the crisis across Africa these last several weeks, has been open about his disgust with the country’s leaders. “I’m really angry about it,” Trump said during an interview in late November, arguing the Nigerian government has “done nothing” and that “what’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace.” He’s leaned on Congress to find ways that members can help the administration apply more pressure there, especially in stopping the bloodshed that’s claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives. On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee hosted a joint briefing to investigate the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria with Republicans, Democrats, and experts like former Congresswoman and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Vicky Hartzler. Together, they agreed, time is short. “The Nigerian government is trying to run out the clock,” longtime human rights advocate Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., warned. “We cannot allow this to happen. We must act quickly and decisively to save more lives.” To be a Christian, or even a moderate Muslim living in Nigeria, Smith explained, “means to be living under the constant threat of murder, rape, and torture by radical Islamist groups. … The most brutal and murderous anti-Christian persecution in the world—as well as the systemic targeting and killing of moderate Muslims who speak out against radical Islamists or refuse to conform with their extreme ideals—occurs in Nigeria, the ground zero of religious violence.” And while the Nigerian government has a “fundamental, constitutional obligation to protect its citizens,” he underscored, “the perpetrators of this persecution operate with complete impunity.” The United States, he promised, “is committed to standing firmly with the persecuted, no matter where in the world.” Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wanted people to understand the severity of what’s taking place 5,500 miles away. “This is not merely ‘intercommunal violence’ or a ‘resource conflict,’ as many claim. This is a targeted campaign of religious cleansing,” he argued. “Whether it is Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, or radicalized nomadic Fulani militants, the objective is to drive Christians out of their ancestral lands in the Middle Belt and impose a radical Islamist ideology, as has already happened across the northern states, where blasphemy laws are used to oppress.” He paused, adding solemnly, “I firmly stand with President Trump in his decision to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. We must demand that the Nigerian government disarm these militias, return displaced families to their homes, and bring the perpetrators to justice.” Brad Brandon, CEO and founder of Across Nigeria, agrees that putting the spotlight on the terrorism happening across the country is exactly what believers there desperately need. “The attention that’s happening here in the United States is something that many Nigerians have been waiting for and asking for,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “Their government has been nonresponsive. … So to get the United States government involved, members of Congress involved, to see the media starting to talk about it—from Bill Maher to Nicki Minaj to President Trump, all of these people drawing attention to it—it’s a welcome change for Nigerians who are suffering under this persecution.” Brandon pointed out the astonishing statistic that 70% of all Christians killed around the world are killed in northern Nigeria. “I’ve stood at the mass graves of friends of mine who’ve been buried, many, many times,” he said somberly. Then he paused, raising the one question that should motivate every leader act: “If the United States does not address this right now globally, who will?” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post ‘We Must Act Quickly’: Hill Leaders Push for Immediate Action on Nigeria appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Republicans have come to a critical juncture, with less than a year to go before their control of Congress is at stake, but they say the way to hold on to power is more legislative aggression, not less. “We have a short time to fix a very large problem that the Biden administration left us, and we did that. Look at how quickly that we secured the border,” House Republican conference chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., told The Daily Signal on Tuesday at the Republican Study Committee’s media row event. “My view is we need to continue those bold, aggressive actions for the American people because we don’t have a lot of time to do it.” In just 11 months, Republicans will attempt to hold on to their narrow majorities in the House and Senate. A consensus has emerged that Republicans will have to counter Democrats’ narratives on affordability and offer their own vision. “I think we need to do a better job of messaging,” Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal. “Republicans are going to be fine in the midterm. We just need to make sure that we get the message out there that we are correcting the after effect, if you will, of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.” “I think that we need to be more aggressive in terms of talking about what the real issues are,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., told The Daily Signal. “We saw the [losses in] … elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and I actually think that we need to be holding the Democrats accountable for the crises that they created and also describing the things that we are doing to attempt to resolve them.” A big part of Hageman’s vision for a Republican affordability plan is health care—ambitiously restructuring the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. Obamacare “has exacerbated every single problem in the industry, and the Republicans do need to seize this moment and actually come up with a better plan of how to provide health insurance and medical care to the American people,” Hageman said. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images) President Donald Trump and Republican leadership in both chambers have been attempting to attack this issue. Throughout the shutdown, Democrats emphasized the issue of expiring enhanced premium tax credits.  The White House has floated proposals of a temporary, reformed extension of the tax credits.  In the Senate—where this issue came to prominence amid Democrats’ shutdown of the government—Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., have proposed setting up flexible health care savings accounts as an alternative to the tax credits, which they view as inflationary and prone to fraud. In the House, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., has introduced a similar proposal of “MAHA accounts.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., is currently working on finalizing a health care package. The stakes of the moment are high. If President Donald Trump were to lose his trifecta, it would likely hamstring attempts to pass ambitious, conservative legislation. With a majority, House Democrats would also be able to impeach and stymie the administration. Claiming ‘Affordability’ for MAGA The president appears to understand the importance of winning the narrative and has worked in recent days to counter Democrats’ attempts to frame themselves as the party of affordability. “They just say the word,” Trump told reporters in a cabinet meeting Tuesday of Democrats’ affordability narrative. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it—‘affordability.’ I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.” Trump on affordability: It doesn't mean anything to anybody… The word is a con job by the Democrats pic.twitter.com/pRgh3ZAHa4— Acyn (@Acyn) December 2, 2025 Trump would continue to call the affordability narrative a “con job” at an oval office press event on auto industry deregulation and blame Democrats for the country’s lingering inflation. House Republicans now have a precious eleven month span to try to show the American public that they are the party of affordability.  Republicans had previously hoped to protect their majority with redistricting across the country. But with retaliatory redistricting coming in California, it is unclear how many seats Republicans will be able to net through this strategy. Some Republicans say they need to focus on passing popular legislation which yields tangible benefits for Americans. “Joe Biden put us into a massive hole to take time to dig out of. Some people want to fix affordability by just shoveling more government money out the door. That will only make things worse. More money in the economy will be inflationary,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., told The Daily Signal.  “Instead, we need to do things like reduce regulations, make it easier for people to go out and build projects in this country, Start businesses, do energy exploration,” Johnson continued. “Those chickens take time to come home to roost, but that needs to be the agenda of this Republican majority.” The Speaker’s Future In recent days, Speaker Johnson has faced criticisms from House GOP members, and outlets such as The New York Times have speculated on how long he will retain the gavel. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., recently told The Wall Street Journal that “the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership” if Johnson were up for election tomorrow. But the speaker says he is in it for the long haul. Speaker Johnson downplays House GOP dissent. I asked him if he plans to run for speaker/leader next Congress.“Absolutely,” he said, touting their recordAlso said Trump pardoning Cuellar has “no effect on us at all” in flipping seatTold me he hadn’t yet seen Signalgate report pic.twitter.com/F9AcgMzVxW— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 4, 2025 “Absolutely,” he said Wednesday when asked if he would be running for to lead the Republican conference again next Congress. “We’re going to continue this agenda. We have had one of the most successful, productive congresses in the history of this institution. We’ll put it up against any in history and we did that because we were able to keep everybody together even with the smallest margins in history.” The post Stakes High for House Republicans With Midterms Approaching appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This week, the National Council for Social Studies—the largest professional association dedicated to social studies education—is hosting its 105th annual conference in Washington, D.C. The conference webpage tells attendees, “You will leave the conference with strong strategies for delivering instruction that engages students, the best ways to advocate for the most pressing issues of social studies education, and a network of colleagues to support you throughout the year.”  Naturally, with the NCSS’ conference theme “Because democracy depends on it,” one might expect educational sessions on history, geography, and civics with some soft leftist messaging sprinkled in. However, a closer look at the conference reveals this form of professional development is far beyond neutral social studies pedagogy. Democracy does indeed depend on it—but what version of democracy does the NCSS have in mind?   NCSS conference content is no longer centered around education—it’s practically an ideological boot camp. The conference’s star speaker will be Kimberlé Crenshaw, called the “architect” and “co-editor” of critical race theory. Crenshaw has criticized Republicans’ rejection of CRT as “suffocating democracy” and has led national-level campaigns, hoping to embed CRT into the fabric of American education.   Other speakers include House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who gained notoriety for her inaugural sermon for President Donald Trump.   But it’s not only about the speakers signaling a political agenda. The sessions themselves reek of ideology:  “Reclaiming Elementary Social Studies Through Critical Literacy, Antiracism, and Storytelling”  “Working Towards More Abolitionist Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education”  “Conceiving Reproductive Justice in Social Studies Education”  “Contending with the Challenges and Possibilities of Climate Change Education in Social Studies”  “Decolonial Perspectives on Palestine, Indigenous Rights, and Global Justice”  “Teaching democracy in the dark: Perspectives on social studies education amid a cloud of authoritarianism”  Is this professional development or professional brainwashing? The answer seems clear.   This “social studies conference” prompts us to reexamine the intellectual ethos that guides modern education. At this moment, kids don’t need an overdose of reproductive justice, critical race action civics, or decolonial perspectives. Kids need faith. Faith in America and the American experiment.  We should be worried about the worldview that the NCSS wants teachers to pass along to kids. The NCSS would rather systematically train educators to see America as oppressive and out-to-get-everyone than equip educators and students with the confidence and hope to engage confidently with their communities and understand what America—for generations and generations—has invested in its young.   Uncritical patriotism is the antithesis of an effective social studies education, but what we have now is darkness, followed by pessimism, narratives of oppression, and topped with existential despair.   In public education, thanks to organizations such as the NCSS, this darkness has increasingly become an all-too-consuming attitude toward social studies education. “As social studies educators, we play an integral role in protecting democracy now and in perpetuity,” NCSS President Tina M. Ellsworth wrote. What irony from the organization that seeks to undermine it.   As Robert Pondiscio—senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute—put it on his Substack, too many schools and social studies curriculums are consumed by an “unbearable bleakness.” Pondiscio reflects on teaching a civics seminar in a Harlem charter school and passing out invoices detailing the amount that the city and state of New York spent on students’ “free” K-12 education.   The purpose? Remind students that school is their civic inheritance, “a sign that the world might be for them, not against them.” A reminder that behind the scenes, America’s investments into each student’s life are taking place.   “I am all for truth telling,” Pondiscio wrote, “but kids are not getting the full truth. They are getting the bleakest possible version.”  This week, the NCSS will continue replaying this doomed, failure-oriented narrative through its sessions on “troubled times” and “faculty activism.” The long-term result won’t be student engagement. As Pondiscio noted, the result is dejected and unmotivated students, convinced that there’s no reason to invest in a country that hates them.  Kids are less motivated to go to school, period. The key driver? A lack of purpose, quite possibly stemming from overdone, pessimistic narratives that have been shoved down kids’ throats since elementary school social studies education.   Pondiscio concluded with the most important civics lesson kids can learn: optimism, attachment, and patriotism. “Let’s build schools that help them see that the world is not something to withdraw from, but something to join, and a place in which they can flourish.”  Another 7th grade teacher piggybacked on this theme of school as a pathway to civic life. He opened his blog with a joke about the question that every teacher has faced at one point or another: “When am I ever going to use this?” His response? The lessons learned in school aren’t about taking PEMDAS and Shakespearean sonnets to the workforce. What’s learned in school is more important than that.   He argued, what kids are learning in school is as much about about giving kids a way to make sense of the world as it is about content. Social studies, and every lesson, “becomes part of a person’s capacity to navigate life,” giving kids the tools they need to look at the world in an intelligent, thoughtful way.   In this vein, when we give kids nothing but bleakness, darkness, and division, we teach them to look at their futures—and America’s future—through this lens. We’re seeing the first wave of results now—boys falling behind, overall lack of engagement in school, Gen-Zers reporting hatred for America, young people searching for work in other countries. Young people are so angry with the system that they’ve become jaded and uninvested.   This is just the beginning, if we continue letting groups such as the NCSS dictate the narrative for our kids. The NCSS may preach that “democracy depends on it,” but for them, their success depends on framing America in as irredeemable a way as possible, leaving kids as political pawns, rather than civic agents filled with curiosity and hope.  Our students need to learn that the American experiment is not a burden—it’s a complex, faulted promise that requires investment and care. It’s time that social studies classrooms remind kids of their power and agency in fulfilling America’s promise. Teach with hope and courage, rather than disdain.   Unlike the NCSS’ upcoming boot camp, democracy does, indeed, depend on it.   We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post What Does It Mean to Teach Social Studies? appeared first on The Daily Signal.