Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. June 15th is Father’s Day. It’s always the third Sunday of June. I remember when I was in college, for the first time they made it a national holiday— think in 1972. It derives, in our country, from the early 1900s, when people wanted to because we had a previous holiday of Mother’s Day. They wanted to also honor Father’s Day. In Europe, I think, it’s called St. Joseph’s Day to honor the husband of the Virgin Mary. And, in any case, we honor what our parents did for us by Mother’s Day and for Father’s Day. It recalls something that I like to share with you. One of the roles of fathers is to give young children, especially males, a sense of direction. And almost this tragic sense that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do, but somebody else won’t do them, you’re going to be in trouble. And I look back at my father—I’d like to relate just three things very quickly. Once he wanted us to work in the summer. We were working on the farm. There wasn’t enough work, so he had a friend that wanted us to shake almonds with a mallet. In those days, there was no machine. You just hit the mallet with a canvas. But it was 110 degrees in August. So, he dropped us off in this 40 acre almond field—the four of us—and he started to worry. He said, “My God, it’s hot. I’ve got to go talk to this guy.” And the guy said, ”No, you said you’re going to drop them off.” Bottom line. He came back in his early fifties and he had his work clothes on and he got a mallet. And he worked every day, for a week, hitting the trees while we moved the canvas and put them in gunny sack. And he was completely in sweat. And he said, “You boys are going to be in trouble.” And every hour, he went down to a mountain drive-in and brought back drinks and water. But he stood by us the whole time. And he outworked us. Second thing I remember was, I was in Greece and I had a torn ureter. That’s when a kidney stone—a staghorn calculus—gets lodged and the ureter and begins to cut. And I was in pretty bad shape and I called my parents—they knew about it—and I said, “The doctor can’t take it out. I’ve got to get home.” My father said, “You get on the next flight, I wire you the money. Your mother will find a surgeon. And I will pick you up.” I said, “Well, how am I going to get from the airport to Fresno?” “You worry about that. You worry about the flight. I will get you.” So, 20 hours later, I go there and here’s my father at the airport. I was 20 years old—excuse me—24. And he picks me up. He was 6’4″. He puts me into this old Buick station wagon, that he’d made into an ambulance. He put down all the seats. He had pillows, and he said, “We’re off on a wild ride, Victor.” And we drove 200 miles, in the middle of the night. And he pulled up right to the ambulance entry at Fresno Community Hospital. He pulled over in Los Banos. He called the surgeon and said, “I’m going to be here. You operate.” He pulled in. And within 40 minutes, I was being operated by a surgeon, in Fresno. Because of him. He saved my life. The other thing that I remember was, I was—very quickly— at Stanford University, in a very bad neighborhood. I didn’t have a lot of money. I was on a scholarship. And he was very worried. My mother, of course, was too. And he said, “I’m going to drive up and see this.” So, he went up and he saw it was a rough neighborhood. Didn’t have a lot of money. The next thing I knew, he came over to my apartment and he had these sacks of frozen foods. And they weren’t just prepared foods, they were steaks, they were roast. And he said, “I bought you enough meat for six months. Let’s put it in the freezer.” And I said, “Oh my gosh.” And my roommate, he was very poor. He was from a steelworker’s family in Ohio. So, he had all this meat. And then he said, “You have any money?” And I said—he looked—“Give me your wallet.” So, I had $20. And that was a lot of money, in 1975. So, he pulled out his wallet. He had three twenties. He gave all three to me. I said, “You don’t have any money to drive home.” He said, “You don’t worry about it.” And he said, “That $80, now you’re going to be—I want you to eat well.” He did that every time I was in trouble. And I think that’s the role of fathers. And finally, I said to him, ”Dad, why do you always do this?” And he said, “Because that’s my responsibility. And that will be your responsibility, when you have children. You’re always there if they need you. You’re not there to pamper them. You’re not there to subsidize them. But they need you to keep them going, when they can’t go on their own.” And he didn’t mean that, in the sense of dependency. And he was always like that. And I cherish the memory of him. And I think all of us, in this period of turbulent times, I think we must reevaluate the role of fathers. To the degree this country will make it, it will be a strong father figure that instructs us how to be masculine. How to be a man. How to protect the weak. How to stand forward and challenge bullies, that prey on the weak and the innocent. And that’s a lost art now. And to the degree, that we’ve had strong fathers, as I did, I think each year of our lives, we appreciate it evermore on Father’s Day. Thank you very much. The post Strong Fathers Build Civilizations—Weak Ones Lose Them appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Senate Republicans are sharply criticizing Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., for his disruption Thursday of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem‘s press conference. “Sen. Padilla should have been in Washington, D.C., voting. He has a responsibility to his constituents to show up at work—not try to make a spectacle of himself,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the Senate Majority Whip, told The Daily Signal.  Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also had harsh words for the California lawmaker. “Sen. Padilla should be standing up for the law-abiding citizens he was elected to serve—not defending illegal aliens committing horrific crimes in communities across California,” Blackburn said. “His decision to storm into Secretary Noem’s press conference and refuse to follow instructions was entirely unacceptable. This kind of behavior shouldn’t be tolerated from anyone, let alone a sitting U.S. senator,” the Tennessee lawmaker told The Daily Signal. After Padilla repeatedly ignored instructions from Noem’s security team to put his hands up and pushed against the team in attempting to make his way to interrupt her press conference, he was forcibly removed from the room. At that point, he was told to get on the ground and was handcuffed.  “You can’t show up without your pin, refuse to announce yourself, and lunge at a Cabinet secretary. It doesn’t matter who you are,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said in a post on X.  “If Sen. Padilla wanted to speak with Secretary Noem, he could have set up a meeting like everyone else,” Tuberville said.  “But this wasn’t about that. Sen. Padilla wanted to cause a scene … and then to cry wolf when he got it,” the Alabama senator contended.  Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told The Daily Signal he was still assessing the situation. “Well, I’ve spoken with Sen. Padilla. I’ve spoken with Jennifer Hemingway, who is the sergeant-at-arms in the Senate, and I’m trying to connect with Secretary Noem. I haven’t reached her quite yet, but we want to get the full scope of what happened and do what we would do in any incident like this involving a senator. And that’s try to gather all the relevant information,” Thune said. (The GOP leader said he has since spoken with Noem, a fellow South Dakotan.) Padilla defended his outburst in a number of posts on X. “What happened yesterday was part of a much bigger effort to try and silence anyone who dares to question what the Trump administration is doing. But we will not be intimidated, and we will not be deterred. We must hold this administration accountable,” the California senator said on the social media platform. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the response to Padilla’s disruption. “[It] sickened my stomach—the manhandling of a United States senator,” Politico reported Schumer as saying. Fellow California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff also weighed in on the incident. “The disgraceful and disrespectful conduct of DHS agents, pushing and shoving him out of a briefing like that, demands our condemnation,” Schiff said in a post on X. .@SenAlexPadilla represents the best of the Senate. The disgraceful and disrespectful conduct of DHS agents, pushing and shoving him out of a briefing like that, demands our condemnation.He will not be silenced or intimidated. His questions will be answered.I’m with Alex. https://t.co/QlQyDO1k80— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) June 12, 2025 Padilla was initially appointed to his Senate seat by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the vacancy left by Kamala Harris after she was elected to the vice presidency in 2020. In November 2022, he won a special election to complete Harris’ term, which was set to expire in January 2023. He won a full six-year term for the Senate in a separate general election also held that November. Now 52, Padilla has spent half of his life in California politics, serving first as a member of the Los Angeles City Council, where he became the council’s youngest member at just 26 in 1999. Padilla was elevated to president of the City Council by his colleagues in 2001 and briefly served as acting mayor of Los Angeles after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. From there, he entered state politics, serving as a member of the state Senate from 2006 to 2014. He became California’s secretary of state in January 2015, and served in that role until his appointment to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.  The post ‘Entirely Unacceptable’: Senate Republicans Condemn California Democrat’s Outburst appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Washington, D.C., police are looking for the arsonist believed responsible for over 30 fires set in the Capitol Hill neighborhood since early March. Four fires were set Wednesday morning and 10 were set the previous night.  Local station NBC4 reported Wednesday that a federal warrant is out for the arrest of 50-year-old Mohammad Al-Rashidi, whom police believe is homeless. Police arrested Al-Rashidi in May after he was caught lighting a fire in a trash can but released him after prosecutors dropped the charges. District of Columbia Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly told NBC4, “The prosecutors didn’t feel they could get a conviction.”  Most of the fires Al-Rashidi is suspected of starting have been in trash cans, but both St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center on Capitol Hill have been damaged from larger fires. The church’s garage, containing the pastor’s car, was lit on fire last month, destroying the car. Police estimate the damages total around $30,000.   The day after the church fire, security footage showed the suspect light a fire in a trash bin and walk away.   Construction equipment on the side of the Kirby Center building was set on fire Wednesday night. Scorching from the flames reached up to 20 feet high. Staff from St. Joseph’s Church, just blocks from the Capitol, discovered another trash can fire on the property Thursday morning.  Donnelly warned, “These fires are happening in the middle of the night. They’re happening where they could grow, and my fear is that one’s going to extend to a house and someone’s going to get hurt or lose their property. … This is a big problem.”  The post Capitol Hill Plagued by Over 30 Arson Fires  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signs a state Medical Aid in Dying Act into law, there will come a time when we will look back on this week with deep regret.  We’ll see it not as a triumph of compassion, but as a failure of courage, ethics, and love. On Monday, the New York state Senate passed legislation to legalize assisted suicide by a vote of 35 to 27. With just six Democrats joining Republicans in opposition, the Medical Aid in Dying Act now moves one step closer to becoming law and making New York the 12th state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide. But what sets New York apart is not progress. It’s recklessness. This bill has some of the loosest safeguards in the country, stripping away even the bare minimum protections seen in other states. There is no mandatory waiting period. No requirement for in-person evaluations. Mental health screening is only required if a doctor suspects impaired judgment, which, given that evaluations can be done virtually, opens the door wide to inaccurate diagnoses. New York’s bill allows for assessments over Zoom and no follow-up. There is no requirement for physicians or pharmacists to report cases to the state. Supporters insist the law is only for those near death, those with terminal diagnoses who are suffering. But we’ve heard this all before. We’ve seen what happens when assisted suicide becomes legal. In countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, eligibility quickly expanded beyond the terminally ill. In the Netherlands, assisted suicide accounts for nearly 6% of all deaths, and proposals have been floated to allow otherwise healthy seniors over the age of 75 to request assisted suicide after six months of counseling. In Canada, officials have documented cases of patients seeking death not due to pain, but because of poverty, loneliness, or fear of becoming a burden to others. But there is another cost to this bill. The erosion of something deeply precious; namely, our culture of care. My mother worked in hospice care for years in Westchester and the Bronx. It was hard, unglamorous work—physically exhausting, emotionally raw, and often unfolding in the quietest, most sacred corners of people’s lives. She sat with the dying in the middle of the night. She answered urgent calls at 2 a.m., sometimes driving through snowstorms and summer heat waves to be at a bedside as someone took his or her last breath. Her patients came from every part of society. She treated people from old-money families in historic mansions in Bronxville. And she treated people from no-money families in the housing projects, where dangerous streets meant a son or neighbor would escort her back to her car after dark. But despite the enormous differences in wealth, education, and background, those families had something profound in common. They showed up. They made space. They rearranged their lives to care for someone they loved. And it wasn’t easy. Most of them weren’t expecting it. Few were trained for it. But they took on the sacred responsibility anyway. They bathed their loved ones, managed pain medication, and sat with them through the long, quiet hours of dying. Many were holding down jobs or raising kids at the same time. But they still chose to do it. To serve. To love. My mom always said that these were some of the best people she’d ever met. Not because they were perfect, but because they focused on others and didn’t look away. They leaned in. They saw that a life’s final chapter deserved dignity, even if it came at personal cost. That is what death with dignity looks like—not a video call with a distant doctor, but a life ending in the arms of those who care. A family bound together in service and sacrifice. A culture that remembers what it means to love until the very end. This New York bill doesn’t offer dignity. It offers escape. And it teaches the next generation that death is preferable to dependence, that needing help is shameful, that providing care is burdensome. We will come to see the cost of this legislation in the years to come—in the isolation of the elderly, in the erosion of family bonds, in the loss of those small, everyday acts of heroism that keep love alive in a culture drifting toward indifference. There are proactive steps we should be taking on behalf of the dying and the seriously ill, but the Medical Aid in Dying Act isn’t it. We should be fighting for better pain management, for stronger hospice systems, for support for families, for more affordable nursing homes, and for better mental health care. Because in the end, how we care for one another defines who we are. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post New York’s Assisted-Suicide Bill Is a Tragedy, Not a Triumph appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As tensions escalate in the Middle East after Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military and nuclear sites, Heritage Foundation experts hit the airwaves Friday to discuss the latest developments. Victoria Coates, vice president of Heritage’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, discussed the conflict on “Fox & Friends First” with Carley Shimkus and Todd Piro. “We are materially closer to enforcing President @realDonaldTrump's red line.”As Israel launches strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, @VictoriaCoates reaffirms President Trump’s long-standing stance: Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon. pic.twitter.com/H0skpjIQ8a— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 13, 2025 Her interview transcript has been lightly edited. Carley Shimkus: What do you think the outcome will be? Did Israel set Iran’s nuclear program back years, decades? Could it have been eliminated entirely in this?   Victoria Coates: The critical thing for the American people waking up this morning is that we are materially closer to enforcing President Trump’s red line: that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple. He reiterated it to Brett [Baier] last night. This regime, that chants “Death to America and death to Israel,” can’t have a nuclear weapon. And he did everything by the book.   During the Biden administration, we had appeasement. We had this advancement in their nuclear program. That is all on them for allowing that to happen.   But [Trump] wrote a letter to the supreme leader. He engaged in negotiations. The Iranians are the ones who kept saying no.   Last night, the Israelis took action into their own hands. The administration was clear we did not participate in this. The Israelis really did take material steps to degrading that nuclear program, despite the fact that we have stated repeatedly that we did not participate in this.  Todd Piro: Do you expect Iran to retaliate against us?  Coates: That’s always possible.   But I think what we also saw last night is how vulnerable Iran is. They could do nothing.   Two hundred Israeli planes flew hundreds of miles and hit 100 targets all over Iran, not just in Tehran, but in their nuclear sites as well.   [Iran is] somewhat limited in what they can do. They fired off about 100 drones. Israel seems pretty confident they can shoot those down. We will probably have a role in supporting Israel, in case Iran does something bigger.   But from a historical perspective, Iran generally backs down when you take strong action against them, be it Operation Praying Mantis, for example, under President Reagan in 1988. In 2020, when President Trump rightly took out Qasem Soleimani, whose successor also was taken out last night, the head of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp], they really didn’t push back hard.   What we have to do is be very vigilant now, very concerned. Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth said all of our contingencies were being attended to in the region and beyond in case of Iranian retaliation.   But I think we can also trust the Israelis to have a handle on this.   Shimkus:  Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, was conducting operations inside Iran, including hunting for leadership targets in Tehran. That means that when it comes to Iranian leadership, they are once again reminded that no one is safe.   Coates: Exactly. The Israelis are just saying, “We can reach out and touch you whenever we want to.”   The other critical thing is how much Israel has done since Oct. 7 to degrade Iran’s other tools in the region—for example, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Assad regime in Syria. These things are all gone for Israel.  This notion of this huge regional conflagration, the seven-front war, Israel has done the hard work to prevent that from happening, from not dragging the United States into a war, and now not to face the same kinds of tools they would have faced two years ago in the event that this had been necessary.   That is another really important part of this picture. They’re not as concerned about all of the precision-guided missiles that used to be targeted at them out of Lebanon.   Those are gone now, due to these kinds of very dramatic operations that we’re seeing the Mossad conduct in Iran today.   Piro: Will Iran be able to complete its nuclear program and get a weaponized nuke in light of the fact that six scientists were wiped out last night? Do they have the personnel to complete their mission?  Coates: It’s certainly much harder now.   Israel is looking at this holistically. Yes, they want to damage the infrastructure and the missiles and the missile defense and the terrorist proxies but also take out the scientists. Iran has had every opportunity to prevent this from happening. If they really didn’t want a nuclear weapon, why wouldn’t they have welcomed the inspectors? Why wouldn’t they have opened up these scientists to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], to investigations of what they’re up to?  They could have avoided all of this. President Trump has offered them so many off-ramps, and they are the ones who said no. They are the ones who brought this on themselves.   They’re going to have a much harder time putting it back together without that kind of technical expertise that was eradicated last night. The post Israel Expert Forecasts Iran’s Next Move appeared first on The Daily Signal.