I just had to show ID at my county dump. Yes, in order to get rid of my moldy, worn, faded, and generally disgusting old outdoor rug that my wife’s been bugging me for a year to dispose of, I had to hand the landfill worker my driver’s license.“My license?” I blurted. “Well, that’s new.”“Started last week,” he said before scanning the license into a newly installed contraption at road’s edge. A few hundred yards away to the south, just on the other side of the tree line, rests our local community center. When I go there to fulfil my civic responsibility and American right to vote, nobody asks me for ID. And if Democrats have their way, nobody ever will. I have to show ID to use the local dump, but not the voting booth. My ratty old rug means more in Maryland than my vote. The thought’s enough to leave one down in the dumps. But Wait, Isn’t Making Me Show ID Racist?   If I were a Democrat, I’d be framing my complaint differently. Demanding a driver’s license … or shall I say Garbage ID … to discard junk is racist. It’s “Jim Crow 3.0,” to borrow from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And sexist. After all, the dump is a public facility. If you can’t provide an ID to prove you’re a local resident … and the Democrats assert that if you are black or a married woman, you are incapable of getting an ID … you must pay extra. The 2026 equivalent of a poll tax.   Maryland’s freshman senator, Angela Alsobrooks, is a black woman. Does she have any idea the oppression she’d face, the hardship she’d encounter, if made to show ID to use the Calvert County Appeal Landfill? It’s like Bull Connor himself is standing at the gate. Democracy itself getting hosed. I have a dream that one day, blacks and women will be marching as one, carrying to the red dumpsters their lumpy mattresses, broken down bicycles, cruddy carpets. We shall overcome the burden of getting an ID. Clearly, I’m being ridiculous. No one beyond a booze-minded teenager actually believes that getting and presenting a valid ID is a problem. We are forced to identify ourselves all the time for all manner of minor things. The Home Depot up the road wanted my license the other day to return a couple bucks worth of tile spacers.The black woman working customer service did not appear to believe I was enjoying white male privilege by handing over the ID. And yet suggesting that we make folks prove they are who they say they are when exercising the sacred right to vote has sent the Democratic Party into an apoplexy. Add to it their demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement stay away from polling places—a demand so intense it’s a key reason they have Homeland Security shut down in the middle of a war—and you’re left with one conclusion: They want ineligible … in particular, illegal immigrants … to vote.And why is that?   Maryland Loves Violent Young Illegal Immigrants More Than It Loves Me It’s bad enough that my ratty rug means more to Maryland than I do, but the evidence has become overwhelming in the past year that Maryland loves illegal immigrants … including criminals … more than your law-abiding servant. (Could the state still be mad at me for leaving when I was young? It’s not my mother … as much as progressives try to be.)The most famous example is Sen. Chris Van Hollen. I’m old enough to remember when local politicians wanted to lock up gangbangers, wife-beaters, and human traffickers, particularly those here illegally. Today, Sen. Van Hollen locks loving eyes at these thugs. Last year, the Trump administration tried to deport alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They sent the euphemistically dubbed “Maryland Dad” back to El Salvador. Van Hollen chased after him like Andrew Walker chasing down Lacey Chabert at the end of a Hallmark movie. He fought to free Garcia like he’s never fought for the citizens of the state. And this was to set loose on our streets a member of a vicious, demonic gang that earlier this month saw four of its members—all illegal immigrants—indicted for allegedly murdering a 14-year-old boy in a Maryland park. Gov.—and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate—Wes Moore—is little better. Last month, he signed a bill banning local law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Again, this is an example of choosing to coddle criminal illegal immigrants over protecting legal citizens and lawful migrants. Practically guaranteeing more cases like Maryland mother-of-five Rachel Morin, who was abducted, raped, and murdered in 2023 while walking the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail. Her killer, an illegal immigrant who waltzed across Biden’s open border a few months earlier after reportedly killing a woman in El Salvador. From their war on Voter ID to their vitriol against immigration enforcement, Van Hollen, Moore, and fellow Democrat leaders prove the cartels are more their constituents than card-carrying Americans. Can there be any other conclusion?Democrats have collectively rejected the idea that protecting American citizens, their lives, their property, and their votes is a prime responsibility of government. And that is rubbish. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Maryland Loves My Ratty Old Rug More Than It Loves Me appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger is currently considering whether to sign a bill to codify contraceptive access in Virginia, but for progressive policymakers in the state, the real battle for “reproductive rights” will take place this November.   This is when voters in the Commonwealth will decide whether to enshrine abortion on-demand into the state constitution with House Joint Resolution No. 1. Similar ballot measures in other states have struck down pro-life laws, such as Ohio’s law for proper disposal of fetal remains. But HJ1 is the most extreme of these ballot measures due to its vague legal wording.   Current Virginia law is already extremely permissive, allowing abortion all the way through the second trimester. In the third trimester, three doctors must certify that “the pregnancy is likely to result in the death of the woman or substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.”   The proposed amendment would change this rule to only need one physician (namely an abortion provider) to determine if it would protect the “life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.”   Voters might mistakenly think that terms like “physical and mental health” provide real guardrails. But they don’t. Physical and mental health are not defined in the proposal. That means an abortion provider could decide that almost anything counts as a threat to someone’s “mental health.” For example, a late?term abortion could be approved simply because the mother says having a baby would be too stressful. The legislature could have clearly defined those terms, but it didn’t.   That’s not the only way this measure is extreme. Virginia Democrats never use the word “woman” in the resolution. Their decision to use “pregnant individual” suggests someone other than women can become pregnant.   Democrats also voted down an amendment to the ballot measure that would allow protections for babies who are born alive after surviving botched abortion attempts.   They also rejected another amendment that would have kept parental consent and notification laws in place. Right now, minors need a parent’s permission to get a tattoo, go on a school field trip, and play sports. But if this amendment passes, a child could undergo a surgical abortion or take dangerous abortion drugs without their parent being told. It could even be facilitated by a school without a parent’s knowledge or consent.   If you think schools would never facilitate abortions behind the parents’ backs, then you should know that it has already happened in Fairfax County.   According to The Family Foundation, Fairfax County school officials arranged and paid for abortions using school resources for two minor students last fall without informing their parents.  If the amendment is ratified, similar situations wouldn’t just be allowed, they could become common across the Commonwealth.   There are even concerns that the amendment goes beyond abortion. Take sex-rejecting sterilization procedures, for example. Right now, minors need parental consent for these kinds of procedures. The Family Foundation has pointed out that since “fertility care” includes sterilization procedures, individuals could have a right to sterilization, puberty blockers, and sex-rejecting surgeries.   Will the Commonwealth be the first state in the country to remove parental consent for sex-rejecting surgeries for minors? Not even California and New York have gone that far.  Virginia Sen. Glen Sturtevant said this amendment would be “the most extreme” in the nation. Unlimited, taxpayer-funded sex-rejecting surgeries and abortion till birth with no parental consent is radical. It’s dangerous for women, children, and unborn babies.   Let’s hope that as more Virginians learn how extreme this resolution is, they’ll say “no” in November.  The post How Radical is the Virginia Abortion Amendment? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court held that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could detain an illegal alien without bond pending his removal proceedings after he was arrested in Minneapolis in 2025. In journeyman fashion, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the applicable immigration laws as written and applied common sense to reach its decision.   That law, 8 U.S.C. § 1225, a nearly three-decade-old statute, requires detention without bond for “an alien who is an applicant for admission if … an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.” This case could be a game-changer in the administration’s efforts to hold illegal aliens pending their removal hearings.   Joaquin Herrera Avila is a Mexican national. He was arrested last Aug. in Minneapolis and admitted he was in the country illegally. Avila had illegally entered the U.S. twice; once in 2006 and again in 2016. When he was caught in 2025, Avila was held without bond, and DHS initiated removal proceedings for lacking valid entry documentation.   Avila requested a bond redetermination before the immigration judge, who denied his request. Avila’s attorney then filed a habeas petition in federal district court seeking his immediate release or a bond hearing. Avila argued that since he was not “seeking admission” while in the U.S., the statute simply didn’t apply to him.   Avila’s argument goes like this: as long as an illegal alien in the U.S. just sits back and does nothing to adjust his status in the country, such as seek asylum, 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) did not apply to him.   The district court ruled in favor of Avila, claiming the statute did not apply because he had lived in the country for years without “seeking admission” to the U.S.   But the text of the statute itself, as the Eighth Circuit noted in its de novo review of the law, is unambiguous. You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it.   Section 1225(a)(1) is clear as a bell: “An alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or who arrives in the United States … shall be deemed for purposes of this chapter an applicant for admission.”   So, whether you actively apply for admission while you’re illegally in the country, or pull an Avila and do nothing, you’re still considered an “applicant for admission.” No further legal reasoning is required beyond the text of the statute itself.  Avila’s argument hinged on the concept that “seeking” requires an affirmative act occurring in the present tense. It was a creative argument but failed the sniff test with the appeals court.   Citing the Fifth Circuit case of Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, the Eighth Circuit noted that adopting this logic leads to strange conclusions, among them that an applicant who has already submitted an application is no longer seeking admission.   The Fifth Circuit concluded that “an applicant for admission to the United States is ‘seeking admission’ to the same, regardless of whether the person actively engages in further affirmative acts to gain admission.”   Under Avila’s reading, an alien who enters the country unlawfully and evades detection for years would be entitled to a bond hearing, whereas an alien who lawfully presents himself at a port of entry and seeks admission would not be entitled to a bond hearing.   Avila also argued that the Laken Riley Act, found at 8 U.S.C. § 1226, added an exception to the bond eligibility for people like him, but allows for detention without bond for aliens who commit certain offenses, including burglary, larceny, and theft. A plain reading of § 1225(b)(2)(A), Avila argued, would render the Act superfluous. The Eighth Circuit was unconvinced, for two reasons.  First, the reach of the Laken Riley Act is not wholly analogous. It applies not only to unadmitted aliens but also to those who were previously admitted and later lost their legal status, including immigrants who overstayed their visas.  Second, the Laken Riley Act eliminates the possibility of parole entirely for the aliens it covers. Its passage is best understood as a congressional effort to be “doubly sure” to deny parole to criminal offenders, not as evidence that § 1225 was ever limited to the border.  Finally, Avila argued that the majority’s decision ran counter to legislative history. But legislative history does not carry the same authority as the law itself. The Supreme Court has said as much repeatedly, and the Eighth Circuit was right to decline the invitation to cloud a clear statutory text with speculation about what Congress might have intended.  The dissent’s first sentence raised our eyebrows: “Except for a single DUI, for nearly 20 years, Joaquin Herrera Avila had been living a law-abiding life in the United States.”   Law abiding? Apparently the two times Avila entered the country illegally did not count. No doubt, that’s why the majority cited 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a) at the beginning of their opinion.   That statute makes it illegal to “enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers” and carries a term of imprisonment of up to six months for the first offense and up to two years for subsequent offenses.   One of the stronger points made by the dissent is this: five previous presidential administrations (including the first Trump administration) had applied the statute only to nationals arriving at the border, rendering the majority’s reading a “novel interpretation.” That novel interpretation likely stems from a memo issued on July 8, 2025, by the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement explaining that the agency had “revisited its legal position” by determining that the mandatory detention provisions of section 1225—not the discretionary detention provisions of section 1226—is the new policy of the administration.   Quoting from the 2001 Supreme Court decision in Zadyvdas v. Davis, the dissent wrote: “the distinction between an alien who has effected an entry into the U.S. and one who has never entered runs throughout immigration law [because] once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the U.S., including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.”   This issue has been litigated across the country in federal courts. As more circuit courts split on this issue, it’s only a matter of time before this issue finds its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The post Federal Appeals Court Holds That DHS Can Detain Illegal Alien Without Bond appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It’s amazing how much California does these days to roll into its stereotype as a dysfunctional, woke-ified political wasteland. On Tuesday, the University of Southern California canceled its scheduled gubernatorial debate after several top Democrats reportedly waged a pressure campaign to put a halt to it. The field is currently wide open with Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom being term limited out of office. One would think that would be a reason to give voters a chance to learn about the policies of the new candidates, a mix of Republicans and Democrats competing in the state’s “jungle” primary that lumps the parties together. Nope. You see, the leading candidates set to appear on stage had a BIG problem. They were all WHITE. None of the non-white candidates crossed the polling and fundraising thresholds set ahead of time by USC. “The ‘data-driven’ candidate viability framework produced a lineup of Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, as well as Democrats Tom Steyer, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell—all White candidates,” Fox News reported. “The same criteria, developed by a USC professor and defended by the university, ended up axing Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa, Betty Yee, and Tony Thurman, all Democratic Party minority candidates, due to lower polling and fundraising scores.” In modern California, democracy without DEI is canceled it seems. It’s rather amusing to read USC’s defense of its criteria for those who would be allowed on stage. You can feel the creeping panic through the words of whatever committee put the statement together. They knew they were going to be labeled racists for using a colorblind, nonbiased metric and getting undesirable diversity results. “We want to be clear that we categorically, unequivocally deny any allegations that the debate criteria was in any way biased in favor or against any candidate,” the USC statement read. “… The methodology was based on well-established metrics consistent with formulas widely used to set debate participation nationwide—a combination of polling and fundraising—and developed without regard to any particular candidate.” That’s the sound of technocrats naively pleading their case in a kangaroo court. Did they learn nothing from the COVID years? The real pandemic was racism. You are supposed to believe in science up and until the moment that “science” collides with leftwing cultural narratives, then it’s flushed down the toilet along with self-government, constitutional rights, or any of that other fluff Americans bitterly cling to. That’s the trick to staying on the right side of history and all that. Just a few days after defending their reasonable debate rubric, USC folded and said that they couldn’t come to an agreement with the Los Angeles TV station KABC set to air the event. “As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues,” they said in another statement according to NBC News. Incredible. This primary is now set up to be a indictment of the failed governing ethos of the Golden State. California voters have time and again overwhelmingly rejected affirmative action at the ballot box. Even in a state that practically defines the “Left Coast,” regular people don’t want race-based school admissions, quotas, and policies that fly in the face equality before the law. But the Left’s activist class and their ruling elites just can’t quit it, no matter what. So, they’re even willing to blow up the electoral process to ensure that something like a racial quota remains, even for an endeavor as narrow as running for governor. Competence isn’t really a criterion for high office in California these days, but blowing up a debate for DEI-related reasons is a little too on the nose for why so much in the state seems broken. DEI nonsense proves once again to be an un-American plaything for elites to play with in their manic scramble for power and recognition in institutions captured by the Left. The California gubernatorial race is so filled with Democratic Party aspirants that the two Republicans in the race have a real chance to emerge as the two winning candidates in the primary, despite the deep blue hue of most statewide elections. If that somehow holds it would be one of the more hilarious self owns in modern political history, but it’s a calamity the Left is pushing the party into. Despite Democrat success in running vanilla, often white candidates who campaign like centrists and vote like Mao, they just can’t escape the gravitational pull of the Left’s toxic, identitarian ideology. And so, they end up with what happened on Tuesday. The most absurd demands for DEI can never really be met, therefore a barely functioning political system grinds to a halt because too few people in power are willing to publicly question its fundamental premises. That’s the world under Democrat one-party rule and leftwing institutional dominance. The whole nation practically fell under that model during the Biden White House years. Now, it’s just playing out in places like California that provide a harbinger for the stupidity to come if we follow that model toward oblivion. The post California Primary Debate Collapses Under the Weight of DEI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is attempting to withhold funding from states that violate the Trump administration’s policies of dropping initiatives on gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, Democrat attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia are suing in federal court to restore what they say is a cumulative $74 billion for food stamps, fighting wildfires, and school nutrition. Democrat AGs have led numerous lawsuits to block actions by the Trump administration in the president’s second term. They claim that requiring compliance to certain administration policies for funding is a violation of the Spending Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act. The strings attached to federal funding didn’t come without warning. In December, the USDA issued new terms and conditions for federal funding. These cited President Donald Trump’s executive orders from January and February of 2025 that restricted federal funds to states promoting gender ideology, unlawful DEI initiatives, and biological males playing in female sports.  The lawsuit calls for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the USDA from imposing the funding conditions. The complaint says this would affect several federal programs: the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC program; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps; the Emergency Food Assistance Program; and the Volunteer Fire Capacity Program. “These federal grant programs are a lifeline for families across Massachusetts. I know that firsthand, as my own family relied on these programs when I was growing up,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a public statement. “They ensure that children have access to meals at school, families can cover basic necessities, seniors can stretch limited incomes, and rural communities have critical support,” Campbell continued. A USDA spokesperson told The Daily Signal the department does not comment on pending litigation. States joining Massachusetts and D.C. in the litigation are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.  The post USDA Blocks Funds to States Pushing DEI, Gender Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.