Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican candidate running to unseat New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, announced she is pulling out of the race and will not seek reelection for her congressional seat, in which she is now serving her sixth term. It’s been a rough couple years for Stefanik.  After President Donald Trump’s reelection, she was named to be the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. However, this never happened because she returned to the House to alleviate the thin Republican majority to get the One Big Beautiful Bill passed Last month she announced her bid for the governorship, thinking she would be the Republican nominee. Now a local county Republican official has entered the race, necessitating a primary.  Stefanik decided to call it quits.  She says she’s decided what is critical in her life now is to spend time with her family and raising her young son. “I believe being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility,” she said. Some jaded cynics may see this as an excuse for giving up. I don’t. Stefanik is anything but a shrinking violet. Winning her congressional seat at age 30 made her the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress. She entered the national spotlight with her incisive and persistent questioning of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in House hearings on antisemitism. The ordeal they went through with Stefanik led both to step down from their positions.  Contrary to the dour view of those who live secular lives, whose struggles take place in a backdrop of meaninglessness, those of faith know each critical node to which we arrive is not random. Even the great physicist Albert Einstein noted, “God does not play dice with the universe.” The challenges we face, those critical forks in the road to which we arrive, cause us to take stock and get our priorities clear. The model that Stefanik now sets could influence our country far more than she ever might as a congressional leader or U.N. ambassador. Erika Kirk, taking over as CEO of Turning Point USA, assuming the leadership of her late husband Charlie, has noted her interest in bringing the Christian values of marriage and family to young women as her husband did with young men. Our country is experiencing both a marriage crisis and a children crisis. At a recent press briefing at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called our declining fertility rate a “national security threat.” The fertility rate—the number of births per woman—is now 1.6. To maintain the population at its existing level requires a rate of 2.1. Kennedy noted that when his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, the rate was 3.5. The Washington Post reports that the number of women between 25 and 44 that have never given birth has risen from 18.2% in 1976 to 34.6% in 2022. And, per Pew Research, the percent of 40-year-old Americans who have never married has risen from 6% in 1980 to 25% in 2021. It’s worse with women than men. Per Pew Research, in 1993, 83% of 12th grade girls said they were likely to get married. By 2023, this was down to 61%. Among 12th grade boys, 76% in 1993 and 74% in 2023 said they were likely to get married.  Why materialism and secularism have taken a greater toll among young women is open to speculation. But RFK Jr. is right. This is a national security threat. So now let’s use the awe of Christmas to recall and celebrate that our scripture tells us to “choose life.” And let’s pray that our examples of transforming the isolation of pain into the joy of meaning and giving and creating will touch our troubled nation. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Common Faith of Elise Stefanik and Erika Kirk appeared first on The Daily Signal.

More than a million Americans may unwittingly hold second jobs—because that work is being performed by an illegal alien using their stolen social security number. News of the identity theft can come as a rude shock to citizens like the Minnesota factory worker who had crushing tax bills because of a thrice-deported illegal immigrant in Missouri who was working under his name for years. Or Iowa taxpayers who learned that the superintendent of the Des Moines school system was an illegal immigrant facing a deportation order. More likely, they may never know that their identity was pilfered, perhaps by one of the 70 illegal workers accused last summer of stealing more than 100 identities so they could work at a Nebraska meatpacking plant, or by one of the 18 individuals charged with “aggravated identity theft, misuse of Social Security numbers, and false statements” in March. While the crimes may seem innocuous or something committed more in cyberspace than in everyday life, they are far from victimless law-breaking. Studies show that identity theft can often lead not just to financial pressures, but also emotional and physical stress.  “There are real victims involved in this. When someone gets your or your child’s Social Security number, that is no longer a victimless crime,” said Ron Mortensen, a retired Foreign Service Officer and former human resources director with the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. A RealClearInvestigations analysis has found that the federal and state governments bear some responsibility for this harm to American citizens because of their failure to address long-acknowledged weaknesses in the primary tool used to limit this identity theft—E-Verify. Established in 1997, the federal E-Verify system allows employers to establish whether the information applicants provide on their Form I-9 is valid. It is not infallible—it confirms information by checking it against various federal records, but doesn’t confirm if that information belongs to the applicants. Still, most experts consider it an effective deterrent.  “E-Verify isn’t foolproof, but it’s actually pretty good for a government program,” according to Mark Kirkorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “It doesn’t screen a large part of the illegal immigrants in the country, but you have to commit a felony to fool it.” Nevertheless, while it is mandatory for those working on federal projects or contracts, only nine states also require its use for all larger private employers, according to I-9 Intelligence, an E-Verify compliance company. In most other states, the system, administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, is voluntary. California actively restricts its use; Illinois discourages it.  Although it is against the law to employ those who are ineligible to work in the U.S., the fines are relatively modest, rising to criminal charges only with repeated violations. Consequently, the net that E-Verify might throw over the illegal immigrants seeking employment has rips. In the Iowa incident, the head of the Des Moines school board told the New York Times that it does not use E-Verify to check applicants’ work eligibility.  From time to time, a bill has been floated in Congress—most recently by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley—to mandate E-Verify, but none have approached the 60 Senate votes necessary to pass. Mortensen believes E-Verify could be implemented via an executive order, but acknowledged that, like virtually all steps taken by President Donald Trump, it would be sure to face a legal challenge.  It is unclear how effective that move would be, as there are hiccups in the system. As of Tuesday morning, the government’s E-Verify website was full of broken links regarding “Hiring Sites, FY2025 Cases, and Usage past 365 days by state.” Even without a federal mandate, however, E-Verify usage has increased. In 2011, barely a quarter of a million employers nationwide checked potential hires via E-Verify, but the most recent figure for 2025 shows the number of employers that have entered into what is termed an E-Verify Memorandum of Understanding has topped 1.4 million. As might be expected given the patchwork legal requirements, the figures vary wildly from state to state. E-Verify use is widespread in states that have made it mandatory, such as Florida, with 2.4 million checks in 2025, or South Carolina, where there have been more than half a million. Even in California, there have been more than 2.6 million E-Verify checks this year, according to federal figures. How It Works The E-Verify system is free for employers, although it does require some training, and businesses with many employees often outsource the job. When an employee begins work, they are expected to complete Form I-9, which includes their name, Social Security number, date of birth, and other relevant information. That is the same information entered into the E-Verify system, which then checks it against various federal records.  But the process involves only the employer and the computer; it doesn’t alert a U.S. citizen whose personal information has been checked in the system. It simply ensures that the pieces of information match those on record for the name of the person entered into the system. The exact number of Americans whose Social Security numbers might be available to fool E-Verify isn’t clear, but authorities agree it’s large. The information is relatively easy to purchase on the dark web, and there have been some huge data breaches. In 2013, a breach at Yahoo may have touched 3 billion people, and last year, a class action lawsuit was filed against a now-defunct company, National Public Data, alleging identity information on some 2.9 billion people had been breached. In FY 2024, the Social Security Administration’s inspector general received 78,588 allegations of misuse of numbers, while between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2025, it got another 26,822. Another indicator of fraud is the rapid growth in the Social Security Administration’s “Earnings Suspense File,” which reflects the amount of taxes paid to the fund that can’t be matched with a U.S. citizen. The fund—which for many years was dominated by women whose maiden names did not match their married names—has skyrocketed in recent years largely because of illegal immigration. Between 1937 and the end of FY2021, the amassed money stood at $1.9 trillion. By the end of FY2023, the latest year for which numbers are available, that total had jumped more than 20%, to $2.3 trillion. Even as identity theft has grown over the years, cracking down on it has become harder as a unanimous Supreme Court has whittled down the ways in which the Justice Department can charge people with aggravated identity theft. In 2009, the court ruled the person using stolen ID information had to have knowledge that the information had been stolen, and a 2023 decision said “aggravated identity theft is violated only when the misuse of another person’s means of identification is at the crux of what makes the underlying offense criminal.” Nevertheless, the dockets of U.S. Attorney’s offices show multiple cases of aggravated identity theft in Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere. RealClearInvestigations asked the Justice Department and several U.S. Attorneys’ offices about the frequency of such cases and how they are trending in terms of time and geography. The Justice Department did not respond, while the different offices declined to comment. Employers not using E-Verify can be easily fooled, according to several experts, as fake documents have become increasingly sophisticated and artificial intelligence is helping criminals, too. “It’s no longer a cottage industry, it’s a mansion industry,” said Bob Griggs, the chief executive and founder of Verify I-9, a company that handles I-9 audits and E-Verify entries for employers.  Eva Velasquez, a former law enforcement officer who is now chief executive of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, says personal information can be captured from lost wallets, stolen mail, online fraud, calls from conmen, and more. Children’s identity is especially attractive to thieves, and because they do not file quarterly reports, the scope of it all remains uncertain. “There are IDs now where it’s almost impossible to detect they’re bogus just by looking,” she told RCI. “The overall figures ebb and flow, but the level of sophistication and variety of ways they are finding to steal identities is increasing exponentially, and the way we use data is increasing exponentially.” Why It Isn’t Used There are ideological reasons behind some states’ refusal to mandate E-Verify, such as left-wing lawmakers in California and Illinois, but opponents also advance economic arguments against it. Employers who prefer a low-wage labor market have never been enthusiastic backers of the system: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed it until 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld mandated use in Arizona. The Chamber of Commerce declined to comment on the issue to RealClearInvestigations. One argument is that E-Verify raises many false flags, and it does so disproportionately against immigrants. Pro-immigration groups, including the National Immigration Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, cite errors as grounds for opposing the system, although the study most often cited found E-Verify returns a “Tentative Non-Confirmation” in just one of 400 cases. That small fraction is hardly an indictment of E-Verify, according to Mortensen and others who compared it to issues women might have if they choose to change their last name after marriage. California also contends that an E-Verify mandate would have an adverse impact on the state’s unemployment rate and drive already skittish immigrants further underground. Thus, E-Verify could actually hurt the state’s economy, especially in agriculture and other sectors that often rely on a transient workforce. But those negative developments have not occurred in states that do mandate E-Verify. For example, South Carolina mandated E-Verify in 2012 when its gross domestic product was $21.4 billion, and its unemployment rate stood at 9.9%. By 2024, South Carolina had a GDP of $34.3 billion, and its unemployment rate in August was just 4.3%. The same is true in Georgia, where E-Verify has been required for companies with 10 or more employees since 2013. Since it made the move, Georgia’s GDP has doubled, and its August 2025 unemployment rate was 3.4%, according to Federal Reserve Bank figures. Florida, perhaps surprisingly given its long-time Republican majority in Tallahassee and the governor’s mansion, did not mandate E-Verify until 2023, when it became required for all businesses with 25 or more employees. The move came one year after an illegal immigrant using a fake identity to get a construction job wound up killing an off-duty Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy in a heavy machinery accident. The Honduran national in that incident, 35-year-old Juan Ariel Molina-Salles, was sentenced last week. That incident infuriated the community. “This company is employing a bunch of illegals, and they are all out there lying and giving us fake names, fake IDs, a lot of fake IDs out of North Carolina that really frustrated this investigation,” Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at the time.  RealClearInvestigations reached out repeatedly to officials at economic departments in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona, asking about their experience with E-Verify, but none responded to questions. Improving the System Aside from an elusive federal mandate, perhaps the biggest improvement that could be made to E-Verify would be connecting it with state motor vehicle records. That way, a photo of the person’s driver’s license would provide a visual ID the system currently lacks. In some states, however, illegal immigrants can obtain valid driver’s licenses—there have been high-profile fatalities this year caused by immigrants given valid driver’s licenses—although the duplication would still raise a flag. Another step to buttress E-Verify would be the more aggressive use of “no match letters,” according to Kirkorian. If the Social Security number does not match up on a tax return, the IRS is supposed to notify employers, and those letters, accompanied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids like the one in Nebraska earlier this year, would likely induce more widespread use of E-Verify. “If you take these steps, and an employer does not fire unresolved identities, then there is proof someone is knowingly employing illegals,” Kirkorian said. Installing additional layers of identification is also necessary to combat counterfeiters’ growing skill, according to Griggs. “All of this is more related to industry than geography,” he said. “Somebody has found a counterfeiter and they’ve told their buddies and then you see it in clumps. We recently had a case where there were more than a dozen driver’s licenses in which the people had on the exact same black suit, the same white shirt and the same tie.” Originally published by RealClearInvestigations. The post How Illegal Immigration and Government Failure Fuel Identity Theft appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Congressional Republicans capped off 2025 with one notable accomplishment: overturning a record number of regulations enacted under former President Joe Biden. Republicans undid 22 regulations issued in the final months of Biden’s presidency that restrict fossil fuel production, phase out the sale of gas-powered cars and limit access to credit in the name of capping overdraft fees. The record number of resolutions of disapproval, used to block regulations, signed into law by President Donald Trump is the most of any Congress since the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was enacted in 1996. GOP lawmakers rescinded 14 Obama regulations during Trump’s first term in 2017. The CRA allows Congress to rescind recent administrative rulemakings with a simple majority vote in both chambers, along with the president’s stamp of approval. “By reining in Biden’s heavy-handed bureaucrats, we are saving Americans $180 billion,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in a floor speech on Dec. 17. “That pencils out to over $2,000 in savings for each and every family.” 1. Banning New Gas-Powered Cars Congressional Republicans successfully undid a Biden-era waiver in May allowing California and any state that adopts its stringent standards to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The Republican-controlled Congress also rescinded two California vehicle emissions rules requiring the sale of zero-emission heavy-duty trucks and effectively banning diesel engines. Republicans—and some Democrats—warned California’s aggressive electric vehicle (EV) mandate would undermine consumer choice and devastate Americans employed in the automobile industry. “These job losses will not be confined to California, but they will be spread all across the nation,” Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said in a speech on the Senate floor prior to the upper chamber voting to nix the waiver. Trump frequently called for the repeal of EV mandates during his 2024 presidential campaign. Though the push to rescind the rules hit several procedural roadblocks, Senate Majority Leader John Thune kept his conference united before the window to nix the waivers closed. 2. Ending Coal Leasing in America’s Top Coal Region GOP lawmakers voted in October to repeal a Biden-era rule restricting millions of acres of land in the Powder River Basin—spanning Montana and Wyoming—from future mining. Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines argued the Biden administration’s move to end coal leasing in the resource-rich region following the 2024 election amounted to a “midnight rule” with little political support among the affected states. Daines alongside fellow Republican Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy and Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke spearheaded the successful effort to nix the heavy-handed resource management plan. “The American people have rejected the left’s radical climate hysteria and removing this harmful rule will help protect our energy dominance and our national security,” Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines told the DCNF prior the resolution of disapproval’s passage in the Senate. Biden sought to restrict coal production and pledged to shut down coal plants “all across America” in 2022. More than 40% of the country’s coal production comes from the Powder River Basin, according to analysis published by the Energy Information Administration in 2019. The Republican-controlled Congress also overturned a Biden plan restricting coal leasing on Wyoming public lands in November. 3. Blocking Energy Production in Alaska In December, Trump signed into law two resolutions of disapproval overturning Biden-era rules restricting energy production in Alaska. The Biden regulations, finalized after the 2024 election, blocked oil and gas leasing across 13 million acres across Central Yukon in the name of conservation and restricted future energy production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain (ANWR). “When we unlock Alaska, we are strengthening America’s national security and economic posture in this generation and for generations to come,” Republican Alaska Rep. Nick Begich told the DCNF in December. “These bills are not isolated. They are representative of a long-term strategy to rebuild our energy strength, reconstruct our critical mineral inventory, and ensure that America—not China—controls the supply chains that power our economy.” Alaska’s congressional delegation and many tribal communities within the Last Frontier State argued the Biden-era regulations tamping down energy production were economically devastating. “The economy in the North Slope is oil and gas activity,” Begich also told the DCNF. “The building blocks of communities—schools, health care, roads and running water —exist due to the “economic base our early leaders ensured that we had access to.” 4. Instituting Price Controls on Overdraft Fees Republicans voted in spring 2025 to undo a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that limited most bank overdraft fees to $5, far less than the $35 average. The Biden administration approved the controversial rulemaking capping the amount banks can charge their customers when they overdraft their checking accounts in December 2024. GOP lawmakers and the banking industry warned the overdraft fee rule would reduce the amount of credit that banks can provide to low-income customers, who would be forced to turn to payday lenders that typically charge higher interest rates. Opponents of the rule also slammed the agency for overstepping its authority to regulate checking accounts. “The Biden administration’s ill-conceived rule imposing new price controls on overdraft services provided by banks and credit unions harmed the very consumers the CFPB is supposed to protect,” Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott said in May. “The rule would have reduced access to credit and important financial services and resulted in more unbanked Americans.” 5. Driving Up Costs for Commercial Appliances Trump approved two resolutions of disapproval in May canceling Biden regulations that imposed stringent energy efficiency standards on walk-in coolers and freezers and a separate rule targeting commercial refrigerators and freezers. Republicans argued the Biden-era rules imposed a high cost burden on the small businesses who would have to comply with the new standards and limited consumer choice. “This regulation, which had an estimated cost of a billion dollars, would have been crippling for businesses throughout the country, especially in rural areas,” Republican Oklahoma Rep. Stephanie Bice, the sponsor of one of the resolutions of disapproval, said in a statement in March. Republicans also successfully nixed a Biden Department of Energy rule banning some gas water heaters by 2029. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Republicans Erased Record Number Of Biden Regulations In 2025. Here Are The Worst Ones. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—CNN host Dana Bash admitted Thursday that President Donald Trump had turned around the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border in his first year since returning to the White House. Upon taking office, Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration, including designating Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations. Bash put up a series of charts showing the difference on the border between the Joe Biden administration and the Trump administration.  “One of the things that you—many things that you’ve been covering in a very detailed way this year, Zolan, is what’s going on with immigration,” Bash told CNN political analyst Zolan Kanno-Youngs. “And our producer, Tess, put together a fantastic illustration of the difference in what’s happening in the border now versus what happened just in the year beforehand, which was Joe Biden’s presidency. Joe Biden’s presidency is green and Donald Trump’s is the yellow.” “I mean, that tells a story of an accomplishment for the president, one that he definitely ran on,” Bash continued. “He definitely made a promise there, and yet there hasn’t been a lot of focus on that because of what he has been doing in the interior of the country, which he also promised to do, which is apprehend people who are in the United States illegally and deport them.” The Border Patrol encountered millions of illegal immigrants during the Biden administration, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, many of whom were released into the United States. The Trump administration touted in a Dec. 15 release that no illegal immigrants had been released into the United States for seven straight months. The Department of Homeland Security announced that over 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States, of which 1.9 million elected to self-deport, in a Dec. 10 release. DHS also noted in a Dec. 19 release summarizing operations for the entire year that it had accounted for over 129,000 unaccompanied minors that the Biden administration had been unable to account for, while also touting operations across the country, including those in the areas of Chicago, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post CNN’s Dana Bash Admits Border Is ‘Story of Accomplishment’ For Donald Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

About 70% of Americans said they didn’t have “very much” or any trust that news outlets would fairly cover President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a YouGov poll. Media Research Center found that 92% of the major network media coverage of Trump during his first 100 days in office was negative. As Trump’s second administration nears its one year anniversary, here are five stories about the president’s achievements that you won’t find in legacy media coverage. 1. Pardoning the FACE Act Prisoners On Jan. 23, Trump pardoned the 23 pro-lifers who were convicted for actions including praying outside abortion clinics and encouraging women in unplanned pregnancies to choose life. “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted,” the president said. The predecessor Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department had brought criminal or civil cases under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act against at least 50 pro-life advocates. Twenty-three were convicted. Ten were released from prison after the pardons. The Daily Signal spoke to several of the pardoned pro-life advocates, who thanked the president for setting them free. “I’m very thankful to the Lord to be pardoned and to get back into the fight against baby-murdering and to serve the Lord and to be with my family,” Calvin Zastrow, 64, told The Daily Signal. “I really believe that President Trump saved my life,” Paulette Harlow, 75, told The Daily Signal. “Because if I had ever gone to prison, I don’t think I would have made it. And I certainly would not have been able to have my back surgeries and everything that I needed to have and have taken care of.” 2. Expanding the Mexico City Policy On Jan. 24, President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy after President Joe Biden rescinded it. The State Department announced in October that it was working to expand the scope of the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for foreign abortions. “The department will soon take additional steps to close loopholes that allowed taxpayer funding for promotion of abortion in previous iterations of the Mexico City Policy and expand the scope of the policy to ensure every penny of U.S. foreign assistance prioritizes American values, not the woke agenda,” a senior State Department official told The Daily Signal. The expanded policy will prohibit U.S. funding for gender ideology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. For example, the State Department is ending a $2 million grant to fund gender-affirming operations in Guatemala. The new provision restricts a broader range of nongovernmental organization programming, such as those for HIV/AIDS, President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, maternal and child health, nutrition, and infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. This scope of the policy will apply across all non-military foreign assistance. Trump also renewed America’s membership in the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a 40-nation coalition of countries that declare that there is no international right to abortion. 3. Classifying Transgender Procedures for Kids as Human Rights Violations As of November, the State Department is classifying “destructive ideologies” formerly promoted by the Biden administration in the United States as human rights violations. The State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices will now account for transgender procedures for minors, DEI hiring, attacks on free speech, and state-funded abortions, a State Department official told The Daily Signal. The State Department submits Human Rights Reports on all countries receiving assistance and all United Nations member states to Congress in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974. Member states will be required to count the number of abortions taking place in their countries, and they will be denounced for funding abortions or the distribution of drugs which end an unborn baby’s life. 4. Ending Taxpayer-Funded Abortions for Illegal Migrant Children The Department of Health and Human Services is moving to roll back a Biden-era regulation that allows taxpayer dollars to pay for unaccompanied illegal alien children in the U.S. to travel to get abortions, The Daily Signal first reported. HHS is cleaning up the Biden administration regulation so that it is in compliance with the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions, HHS officials told The Daily Signal.  “HHS is reviewing the relevant regulations and guidance to ensure they align with all applicable laws, including the Hyde Amendment,” an HHS official told The Daily Signal in a statement. On Nov. 10, 2022, the Biden administration proposed the “Unaccompanied Children Program Foundational Rule,” which required the Office of Refugee Resettlement to “ensure unaccompanied children have access to medical care, including transportation across state lines and associated ancillary services if necessary to access appropriate medical services, including access to medical specialists, family planning services, and medical services requiring heightened ORR involvement.” The Biden rule violates the Hyde Amendment, the 1976 law prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for most abortions, according to a July memorandum of opinion from Trump’s Office of Legal Counsel, a branch of the Department of Justice.  Now, the Department of Health and Human Services is undergoing the task of challenging a final rule on a topic with a history of court precedent.  5. Upgrading Human Trafficking Hotline The Trump administration has chosen a new provider to run its human trafficking hotline after complaints that the Biden administration’s provider failed to answer calls from victims, The Daily Signal first reported. HHS’ Administration for Children and Families announced a five-year, projected $35 million grant to Compass Connections to run the National Human Trafficking Hotline. HHS received complaints from victims and state attorneys general that with the previous provider under the Biden administration, wait times were too long, calls were dropped, and victims could not rely on the hotline to deliver the necessary quality of service. “State attorneys general were telling us that third-party tips were not getting delivered to law enforcement, so their investigations into human trafficking were hindered,” acting Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison told The Daily Signal, “and they had a much harder time getting criminals off the streets of human trafficking, to get information where it needs to go on time in an accurate way, so that law enforcement can make arrests and end human trafficking.” The award includes an increase of $1 million annually and will bring annual funding to $7 million, showing Trump’s commitment to protecting survivors of human trafficking, according to Gradison. The post 5 Trump Moves From 2025 You Didn’t Hear About from Legacy Media appeared first on The Daily Signal.