After the United States Senate voted on Wednesday to go on a 19-day recess instead of voting on the SAVE America Act, the House Freedom Caucus declared that the House of Representatives should not act on Senate legislation until the voter ID legislation is passed. “There should be no more legislation until the Senate is back in session,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a Thursday morning press conference. “The only question right now is whether the Senate will put America first or the Senate first,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said. “I am a creature of the Senate, as former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, I understand the Senate better than most.” “The Senate must stop hiding behind these fake rules and norms,” he added. Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., scolded the Senate, saying she “doesn’t care about your reelection efforts.” “I don’t care about your fundraising efforts. Do the job the American people elected you to do,” Harshbarger added. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., agreed with Harshbarger and Roy, adding, “The Senate sucks, the Senate just sucks.” On Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, posted on social media a list of reasons why invoking the talking filibuster is a bad idea. One of the ideas listed was that invoking the talking filibuster would prevent senators from fundraising and spending time away from Washington, D.C., the city they were elected to serve in. There is not single instance in the history of the United States Senate where a “talking filibuster“ has resulted in a favorable outcome for the proponent. Furthermore, here are some very important priorities we would be precluded from from considering => pic.twitter.com/ZJE7NgrMSn— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 25, 2026 “I think it’s important to [President Donald Trump] because of how important it is to American citizens,” Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., added. Crane raised a national security concern, adding that if the SAVE America Act does not become law, the United States could very well be infiltrated by its enemies from within. “If you are a dictator around the world, all you would have to do is slip 5, 10, 15,000 people to vote, and you can easily flip a state. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, filed a bill on Thursday to repeal the 17th Amendment, which, if enacted, would return the power to elect senators to the state legislatures. “This is the most important bill Congress could pass in a decade,” Self added. “I have spent most of my life in uniform fighting the cultures we have mass imported in recent years.” “This is embarrassing. It is America 250, that is even more reason to stay here and do their job,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said during the conference. “The notion that women won’t be able to vote is BS. I am a woman, I went through a name change, and I can still vote,” Boebert added. “The only reason the Democrat Party wants to shut down this bill is because they want to cheat.” “Americans, they are watching a communist takeover, they are watching Sharia law be implemented across the country,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., stated. After a Republican Senate luncheon on Wednesday, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told the Daily Signal that he invited the president to attend in order to unify the party behind the SAVE America Act. “I mean, what I did was create a venue for people who have a conversation,” Scott said. “I think, you know, we’ll continue to talk to the conference and see what we want.” During the meeting, Scott outlined the different pathways to move the legislation out of the Senate. “We can do the talking filibuster and see if we can get the 60 votes, get through the filibuster, and it only takes 51 votes, or we can try it, like what I sent in my letter,” Scott told the Daily Signal and other reporters as he walked back to his office from the meeting room. “Or third, we can look at what we can do through carrots and sticks with regard to the reconciliation package,” Scott added. However, Roy responded to the senator’s remarks, saying that “we are not interested in a watered-down version.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL — Indiana state Rep. Andrew Ireland is sounding the alarm on Pakistani and other foreign students imported by Indiana University to fill American jobs in its medical school. This move from the university prompted Ireland to not only shed light on the issue, but also introduce legislation that would cut taxpayer funding for the state-run university if it continues to undermine American talent, and tackle the hiring practices he suspects may be at fault. “IU is home to the country’s largest medical school,” Ireland said in an interview with the Daily Signal. “We actually have the largest graduating class of medical students at any university in the country.” “But somehow, we still can’t seem to find Americans apparently that are qualified for these positions,” he added. “Or you can have the kind of the opposite conclusion of perhaps there’s something going on with their hiring practices, because we continue to pick foreign nationals over Americans for these really important opportunities.” Ireland’s remarks come after the university hired seven foreign-born candidates to fill jobs at the school. Wow. Seven of the eight new internal medicine residents at taxpayer-funded Indiana University are foreigners. Half are from Pakistan.Does anyone believe no American medical students are qualified? IU has our country’s largest medical school.We need to end the H-1B visa… pic.twitter.com/1LcSnS4UC1— Andrew Ireland (@AndrewIrelandIN) June 17, 2026 Four of those candidates currently live in Pakistan, a country Ireland described as a “nation of concern.” As reported by The College Fix, international students from these nations have caused disruptions at American colleges, including championing Hamas and preventing their Jewish peers from attending class, among other things. “I think it certainly is a national security angle to this too,” he told the Daily Signal. “We have this thing called the IU Muslim Philanthropy Initiative. But now, it turns out that the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative had partnered with this group called Hayat Yolu, a group that the Treasury Department actually noted as a sham charity working with everything from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to basically funnel money to them.” “And so IU, through this Muslim Philanthropy Initiative they were running, was partnering with this organization that ultimately was funneling this money to terror groups,” he added. After the program’s financial motives were brought to the university’s attention by Ireland and his cooperation with law enforcement, the institution moved to put an end to the program. However, he fears programs like these are yet to be exposed, and importing more students who could be a part of these programs could lead to devastating consequences. “You know, I’m grateful that police leadership there took me very seriously. They’ve put a stop to that program. But I think it’s ultimately indicative of kind of the broader problem we have at universities right now is that I don’t think we have a great handle on a lot of these foreign students.” “We have people that, you know, clearly do not have the country’s best interest in mind, and yet we’re letting them right in the front door.” That isn’t the only national security concern the representative fears could come from importing foreign students from countries of concern. As reported by The College Fix, the representative cited the example of a Chinese international student using his placement at Indiana University to smuggle biological materials and steal sensitive information. “He hid them (the chemical) in women’s underwear in his suitcase and tried to bring it into the country illegally from China,” he stated. “I mean, it’s surprising to me that we’re doing any sort of biological research with a Chinese national at our public university. I think that’s damning in itself,” he concluded.

A few members of Congress were told to expect the Food and Drug Administration’s safety review of the abortion pill to be completed by September, a lawmaker who asked to remain anonymous told the Daily Signal. Pro-life members on the House Appropriations Committee earlier this month considered a provision in a bill funding the Agriculture Department and FDA that would nullify a Biden-era rule allowing the abortion pill to be dispensed in the mail. However, they decided to instead wait for the FDA to release the safety review report. If the FDA finds that the abortion pill is unsafe, according to its review of data, it could then update its program for high-risk drugs, the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, to restore the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. In April 2021, the Biden administration’s FDA stopped requiring that abortion pills be dispensed to women in person, allowing them to be prescribed at telehealth appointments and shipped through the mail. The Wall Street Journal reported June 4 that the FDA’s study had officially launched after moving through the data collection phase. An Ethics & Public Policy Center study found that about 11% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a chemical abortion. This has led to pro-life calls to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. Seven out of 10 American voters say they don’t think it’s safe for abortion drugs to be sent via mail, according to a McLaughlin & Associates poll. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment. “The Trump Administration is pursuing a rigorous review of mifepristone in response to widespread safety concerns, adhering to the highest scientific standards,” White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told The Daily Signal. “This Gold Standard Science-based safety review led by the FDA, which remains ongoing, is just one example of President Trump’s total commitment to thoroughly evaluating emerging drugs to ensure the health and safety of all Americans.”

Last summer, Congress passed the Working Families Tax Cuts Act (WFTCA), which was a massive budget reconciliation package that combined permanent tax relief with much-needed changes to the federal student loan program. The higher education reforms passed in the WFTCA represent one of the most significant overhauls of federal student lending. These reforms helped to right-size borrowing and repayment options for millions of students, borrowers, and families, shifts that some have described as “some of the most consequential changes to federal higher education policy in years.” Unfortunately, a group of Senate leftists were seeking to unravel the progress that’s been made. Earlier this month, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced Senate Joint Resolution 196, a Congressional Review Act resolution that, if passed by Congress, would invalidate the Department of Education’s final regulation implementing the changes made by the WFTCA to federal student loan limits and repayment plans. Yesterday evening, the Senate voted on whether the Senate Joint Resolution should be brought to the floor for a vote. Thankfully, the motion failed. The final regulation in question was titled “Reimagining and Improving Student Education.” It was released for publication by the Department of Education last month. The regulation, once it goes into effect on July 1, operationalizes the changes made by Congress in statute, answering dozens of questions for borrowers, such as when the new loan limits apply to new borrowers or existing ones and how graduate and professional programs are defined. This is not a new responsibility for the department, nor is it hijacking duties from Congress. Congress has long delegated rulemaking authority to federal agencies so they can fill in the technical details necessary to implement statutory programs. And the Department of Education has not done this on its own. The Higher Education Act requires the Department to conduct negotiated rulemaking for major regulatory changes. This means convening stakeholder committees that include representatives from institutions of higher education, taxpayer-focused groups, the legal aid community, and others, and engaging in formal negotiations to help shape the final rule. If Congress had passed Senate Joint Resolution 196, it would have eliminated the entire regulatory framework needed to implement the new loan caps, repayment plans, and administrative guidance, just days before these higher education reforms are scheduled to take effect on July 1. While the statutory changes enacted in the WFTCA would technically have remained in law, the rules necessary to operationalize those changes would have disappeared. Passing Senate Joint Resolution 196 would have caused utter chaos in the federal student loan and repayment system, which is already very fragile due to actions over the past few years, including prolonged payment pauses, loan cancellation schemes, and illegal repayment plans. Financial aid offices, loan servicers, and institutions would have been left without clear rules, risking delays, inconsistent application, and significant compliance challenges across the system. The stakes are substantial. The changes made in the WFTCA to the loan limits alone will save taxpayers $44 billion over the next decade, while enacting common-sense loan caps that rein in excessive student loan borrowing that has long enabled universities and colleges to raise tuition and encouraged students to take on disproportionate levels of debt relative to their likely earnings. Early signs suggest that institutions are already responding to these reforms. In fact, we’re already seeing some schools implement measures to lower costs for students. Santa Clara University School of Law announced that this fall it will provide all law students with a guaranteed tuition scholarship, resulting in a reduction in the net tuition students pay. The University of California, Irvine lowered tuition by more than 20% for its master of business administration program after the new loan caps were announced. The Senate rightfully rejected Senate Joint Resolution 196. If lawmakers want to revisit elements of these reforms, they should do so through legislation that preserves clarity and stability in the federal student aid system, not by dismantling the regulatory framework required to implement laws already on the books.  

Americans should be free to buy soda, but taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize this unhealthy habit. Now, a district judge is blocking state efforts to keep taxpayer dollars from funding soda purchases. The ruling challenges USDA’s authority to approve state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waivers, more commonly known as food stamps, making congressional action urgent. Some critics argue that removing soda from SNAP restricts consumer choice, and aren’t conservatives all about consumer choice? This is a fake and cynical ploy. Conservatives should defend the freedom of Americans to make their own health and dietary decisions. None of us should want the federal government dictating our food choices. However, the freedom to buy something does not mean taxpayers should be forced to finance it. Unlike a soda tax or prohibition, which penalizes all consumers through coercive government intervention, a SNAP restriction simply holds a nutrition program accountable to its own stated mission. Consider the purpose of food stamps. The first program began in 1939 to connect struggling families with surplus agricultural products, not to subsidize the beverage industry. SNAP, as the name implies, exists to provide nutrition-focused assistance. The USDA describes it as a program to help Americans “afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.” Soda offers no nutritional benefits beyond mere calories and is, for most Americans, the most metabolically harmful source of calories. One soda won’t kill you, but when it serves as a dietary staple consumed for years, it is harmful to health and well-being. The CDC associates frequent consumption of “sugar-sweetened beverages” with increased weight gain, heart disease, obesity, and other chronic diseases. Unfortunately, soda represents a huge portion of SNAP recipient purchases. According to the most recent USDA analysis of point-of-sale data, sweetened beverages accounted for 9.25% of SNAP household expenditures in 2011, making them the second-highest spending category. “Soft drinks” was the top individual commodity purchased by SNAP households, accounting for 5.44% of SNAP household spending. On top of this, Americans also fund treatment for the chronically ill, leaving taxpayers to bear the cost twice over. At a time when taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid are stretched to their limits, it makes no sense for the government to subsidize soda consumption, especially via a program that one in eight Americans relies on. With obesity rising sharply and health care spending at record highs, America must urgently reshape the program. The growing appetite to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) provides a unique opportunity to hold the food stamp program to its original purpose. The great news is that reform is already underway: 23 states have moved to enact SNAP food restriction waivers that restrict the purchase of soda and other sweetened beverages, led mostly by Republican governors. States like Nevada have limited their waivers to “sugar-sweetened beverages,” while others, like Arkansas and Louisiana, have also included diet drinks and zero-calorie sodas. It is time to adopt a clear standard: taxpayer-funded nutrition benefits should not subsidize beverages that provide little or no nutritional value, however they are sweetened. Diet and ‘light’ sodas are no exception; they carry their own risks of metabolic syndrome, weight gain, and other health complications. This is a straightforward reform that conservative and MAHA advocates should champion. This momentum faces two obstacles. First, the federal district court ruled that USDA lacks authority to approve SNAP waivers in five states. While state-level soda restrictions fall under the secretary of agriculture’s authority to conduct pilot projects “providing food assistance to raise levels of nutrition,” the final outcome remains uncertain. Second, the beverage industry has strong financial incentives to resist reform. Such resistance should not deter a continued push for change. Because such challenges may limit what states can accomplish, only federal action can secure long-term SNAP reform. The upcoming farm bill reauthorization presents a critical, yet narrow, opportunity to build on the MAHA momentum and pass legislation to restrict soda purchases with taxpayer dollars. Legislators owe it to the American people to stop subsidizing chronic disease.