With time winding down before the House breaks for Christmas, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is hitting Republicans’ pressure points. On Monday, Jeffries announced he is introducing a discharge petition—a way to circumvent Republican leadership—in a bid to extend COVID-19-era enhanced health care premium tax credits before they expire.  Jeffries appears to be trying to hit Republicans where it hurts, fomenting dissent in their caucus and gaining political momentum off of the health care issue. Discharge Mayhem Discharge petitions, which require 218 members to sign on in order to force consideration of a bill, have become increasingly common in this Congress. The petitions are a thorn in the side of leadership, granting Democrats power in the minority. The mechanism allows a member to force a vote on legislation that leadership is not putting on the floor once the petition collects 218 signatures. The petition then sets off a timer of seven legislative days for the petition to “ripen,” at which point the speaker is given two legislative days to schedule a vote. Recently, a discharge petition brought forward by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., forced consideration of a bill to compel the release of information on the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, has also successfully gathered the 218 signatures necessary to force consideration of a bill to protect federal employees’ union rights. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., has also submitted a discharge petition to force a vote on his bill to sanction Russia, and the backers of a bipartisan bill to ban stock trading among members have discussed a discharge petition to force it on to the floor, as well. Jeffries Not Interested in Negotiating Jeffries is demanding a three-year, clean extension of the Obamacare premium tax credits—an idea most Republicans have rejected.  “We only need a handful of Republicans to join us in order to save the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans,” Jeffries writes in his letter announcing the initiative. “It’s time for the do-nothing Republican Congress to proceed with urgency.” This demand for a clean extension—despite Republicans criticisms of the credits as market-distorting, prone to fraud, and permissive of abortion—is in contrast with the openness some Democrats previously expressed to negotiate and reform the credits with Republicans. “We have to write a version that is good for our values that helps people, but also is designed to get some Republican votes,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said shortly before the shutdown ended.  Kaine ultimately voted to end the shutdown after receiving Republican guarantees of a vote on whether or not to extend the credits. “Time has run out on Republican inaction,” Jeffries told The Daily Signal when asked why he would propose a clean extension. The credits, which were boosted to higher levels and granted to higher earners under President Joe Biden, were set to expire at the end of 2025 by Democrats. “We have a discharge petition that if it received an up or down vote in the House of Representatives, we are confident will pass,” Jeffries told The Daily Signal. “But obviously, [Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson [R-La.] has zero interest in protecting the health care of the American people. Instead, these extremists are gutting the health care of the people that they represent, including in the state of Louisiana.” In response to Jeffries’ statement, a spokeswoman for Johnson told The Daily Signal, “Democrats are once again fabricating a narrative and misrepresenting the speaker’s position. The speaker welcomes President Trump’s efforts to lower health care costs, and any White House input is a meaningful contribution to the thoughtful, deliberative conversations taking place in Congress.” The White House, although it has not released any final proposal of how to resolve the subsidy expiration issue, has reportedly flirted with the idea of a two-year extension of the credits, involving reforms such as ending zero-premium credits. She added, “After 43 days of the Democrat Shutdown—during which they demanded bipartisan talks and direct White House engagement—Democrats now attacked the mere possibility of President Trump’s involvement. If Democrats truly want to address health care affordability, why would they reject a plan they haven’t even seen? Democrats clearly prefer a partisan fight over working towards a bipartisan solution.” The Path Forward Jeffries’ discharge petition might be more of a messaging ploy than an actual attempt at passing legislation, as Democrats have consistently messaged on purported Republican attacks on health care and entitlement programs. In the Senate, Republicans are still discussing proposals for replacing the COVID-19-era credits, such as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy’s proposed flexible savings accounts, which, if enacted, would allow consumers more flexibility in shopping for health care coverage and eliminate direct subsidies to insurance companies. Jeffries suggests that, with total Democrat unanimity in the House, picking up the five necessary Republican defectors is a possibility. “I guess we can always hope that there are a handful of Republicans who will actually do what they said that they would do once their shutdown ended, which is to work with Democrats to find a path forward,” he told reporters Monday. Democrats’ success in this attempt would have to involve an extraordinary revolt against Republican leadership, going against the long-established position that the credits need reform if they are to be extended at all. The post Jeffries Tries to Sidestep Republican Leadership on Health Care appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fraudsters in the Somali community of Minnesota stole billions of dollars from American taxpayers over a period of years, and the state government did nothing to stop it. That outrageous scandal has finally become part of a “national conversation” after City Journal published a stunning article written by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe titled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer” in November. Al-Shabaab is a Somalia-based Islamist terror organization. “Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone,” Rufo and Thorpe wrote. “Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.” The piece highlighted truly titanic fraud schemes involving various state welfare programs, including “Feeding Our Future,” a program that received hundreds of millions of dollars annually and was ultimately “being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya.” The report set off a firestorm. Rufo was accused of being anti-immigrant and racist. Many on social media accused him of exaggerating the problem. But then The New York Times published a follow-up basically confirming that Minnesota’s social services were essentially eviscerated by Somali fraudsters under Walz’s watch. There was a very important line in this piece provided by Ahmed Samatar, a professor at Macalester College. Samatar said, according to the Times, that “Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.” This sort of gets to the heart of why immigration policies have been so out of whack and destructive in Western countries for a generation, producing the current justified backlash. It should be no surprise that in concentrated Somali communities, like the ones that exist in Minnesota, similar scams have taken place. One doesn’t need to be wholly against immigration to understand that. After all, Thomas Jefferson warned in his famed “Notes on the State of Virginia” about taking in too many people from “absolute monarchies” who will bring with them “the principles of the governments they leave imbibed in their early youth.” “These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children,” Jefferson wrote. “In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in legislation. Our laws and institutions must therefore be guarded with jealous attention; and in order to preserve them, we must incorporate our immigrants into the body of our people.” He recommended essentially slowing our roll bringing in people from such places. That’s prudence, not nativism. What we’ve seen under President Joe Biden and Democrat governors like Walz, is the furthest thing from prudence. Instead, our country has been subjected to a reckless, cynical vote grab combined with the toxic empathy of modern leftism. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. needs to stop taking people in from countries like Somalia where they have “virtually no government” and “then they come into our country and tell us how to run our country.” .@POTUS: "Countries like Somalia, that have virtually no government, no military — all they do is go around killing each other, then they come into our country and tell us how to run our country. WE DON'T WANT THEM." pic.twitter.com/x8oVgKAXR4— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 30, 2025 The president is on to something here when talking about the Somalia issue. The war-torn nation typically ranks as one of the most corrupt on Earth. Theft of public money is commonplace. In 2022 it was discovered that two-thirds of the five thousand civil servants in Somalia didn’t report to work and in many cases were likely “ghost employees” according to the Horn Observer. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud groused about this issue. “There are more than 5,000 civil servants registered in our biometric system, but only 1,500 of them report to work every day,” he said, according to the Horn Observer. “Where are the rest? They do not exist or they do not live in the country. However, they are still paid. They are thieves and their superiors who accepted this scheme are also thieves. They are simply stealing public money.” Hassan may be right, but it seems he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He’s been accused of corruption related to public land sales. There has been, no surprise, widespread problems with theft of international aid in Somalia too. The European Union had to temporarily suspend Somalia’s World Food Programme in 2023 because of widespread theft. Reuters reported how the program was supposed to send $130 a month to displaced persons in a refugee camp, but they would frequently only receive $65 after it was handled by the camp manager. In 2024 the Minnesota Informer published an interesting piece about the corruption clearly taking place among Somalis in Minnesota. It was written by Kayseh Magan, a man with a Somali background who had worked as a fraud investigator in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Magan explained that widespread fraud was common in the Somali community. He said that this crime problem is the classic case of when “desire meets opportunity.” Magan wrote that “Minnesota’s public programs don’t adequately guard against organized fraud.” Part of the issue: The fraudsters have exploited “the burgeoning political power of the Somali community, and the feckless fear that establishment politicians and state agencies show when confronted with charges of racism or Islamophobia.” It’s here we see the crisis facing many Western governments playing out in the most extreme way in Minnesota. They’ve combined a generous welfare state with the near religious belief in mass immigration from developing, “third world” countries as Trump called them. To even question that system is to be ostracized as part of the wholly unacceptable “far right.” The result in Europe, after years of evidence that the system isn’t working, is that governments literally silence people who disagree with unlimited immigration. The U.K. is conducting this Orwellian experiment in tyranny as I write this. What we are seeing in the United States is hopefully an immigration reset of sorts. More Americans now question the value that unlimited, unchecked migration from dysfunctional countries brings to ours. What is happening in Minnesota needs to stop. The country can’t afford it. The post Thomas Jefferson Could Have Predicted Massive Somali Minnesota Fraud Schemes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Boy Scouts of America taught me valuable lessons about tying knots, lighting fires, and what it means to be a man, but I’m glad to see the Department of War reconsidering its historic partnership with the Scouts. Founded in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America taught young men wilderness survival skills, fostered friendship, and trained boys to become citizens and leaders. In order to attain the rank of Eagle Scout, a young man must not just demonstrate mastery of many skills but also plan his own project, leading others. For these and other reasons, the military awards an automatic rank increase to Eagle Scouts who enlist. A 2017 post for Scouting Magazine noted that 20% of West Point cadets, 12% of the Naval Academy Class of 2016, and 10% of Air Force Academy cadets had attained the highest rank in Scouting. Yet the Boy Scouts of America no longer exists, and the organization that replaced it, Scouting America, leaves a great deal to be desired. It is high time the military reconsider, and establish clear benchmarks for a scouting program that fosters virtue, rather than virtue-signaling. The Trans Scouts of America As a young man, I learned the Scout Law: “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” Tragically, the Boy Scouts of America abandoned these commitments. In January 2017, the organization endorsed transgender ideology, which I’ve long argued is fundamentally at odds with both trustworthiness and reverence: ‘A scout is trustworthy’ means more than just telling the truth. It means living with integrity, not presenting a false sense of yourself to others. There is a fundamental falseness in presenting yourself as a boy when you are in fact biologically a girl. But I think there is a worse loss of integrity among those who encourage biological girls to identify as boys. ‘A scout is reverent’ means honoring God, or at least a principle greater than yourself. Christians—and most Jews and Muslims, to my knowledge—believe that God created humans male and female, and that their sexuality is a good gift from God. Rejecting that gift—or encouraging others to reject it—is arguably irreverent. Endorsing transgender ideology is a fundamental rejection of the virtues the Boy Scouts of America once championed. The Boy Scouts of America also faced 82,000 claims of child sexual abuse in a scandal that led the institution to declare bankruptcy in 2020. I thank God that I never experienced any such abuse, but I am horrified by the fact that an institution tarred by such a scandal would go on to embrace an ideology that arguably makes young people more vulnerable to predation. The Boy Scouts drifted from a non-political home for Democrats and Republicans alike to a left-leaning institution. The transgender policy came after the Boy Scouts allowed open homosexuality among boys in 2013, and then among adult leaders in 2015. In 2020, it announced solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and introduced a “diversity and inclusion” merit badge, now mandatory for the rank of Eagle Scout. When the BSA changed its position on homosexuality, former scout leaders banded together to form Trail Life USA, a Christian alternative. The BSA encouraged a faith in God or a higher power, but Trail Life USA is explicitly Christian. By 2023, Trail Life USA had grown to more than 50,000 members in all 50 states, with 1,200 troops across the country. Perhaps fittingly, at the beginning of this year the organization changed its name from Boy Scouts of America to “Scouting America.” The Department of War Last week, NPR published a story claiming that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had written a memo cutting off Scouting America. Hegseth reportedly wrote that the Scouts no longer promotes “masculine values,” instead focusing on “gender confusion” and diversity, equity, and inclusion. A War Department official told The Daily Signal that “the department will not comment on leaked documents that we cannot authenticate and that may be pre-decisional.” I support the Department of War’s connection with scouting institutions. Scouting trains young boys—and girls—to develop important skills, and the military should reward scouting achievements with a higher initial rank. That said, I think Scouting America has taken this important relationship for granted, and it is high time the Department of War develop clear guidelines for what kind of scouting program it will honor. Since Scouting America aims to indoctrinate kids on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and rejects the distinction between men and women, Hegseth would be well advised to reconsider this relationship. I’d recommend two things. First, the Department of War should set forth clear standards for scouting partners: standards focused on key skills and virtues, not political correctness. Second, the Department of War should seriously consider partnering with Trail Life USA and American Heritage Girls, the conservative alternatives to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Perhaps, if the military establishes clear standards, it may not just send Scouting America a well-deserved wake-up call, but also encourage reforms to restore the Boy Scouts to their own high ideals. The post An Eagle Scout Weighs in on Department of War Cutting Ties With the Boy Scouts appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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. I’d like to talk about immigration, legal and illegal. Under President Joe Biden, we let in an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants and about 1 million legal immigrants. We’re starting to see some of the consequences that happen when you don’t vet people at the border. We have, over the years, a massive Somali expatriate population in Minnesota. Now we are learning that during the COVID-19 period, when there were not audits and scrutiny, as there should have been, a lot of Somali expatriates, both legal citizens and green card holders and illegal aliens, ran a massive fraud against their adopted country, perhaps multibillion. And Rep. Ilhan Omar, the self-appointed representative and the elected representative of the Somali community, has denied anything was wrong. Tim Walz, who is the governor of Minnesota, doesn’t wanna talk about it. That entire community abused the hospitality that was accorded to them. Now we hear that an Afghan refugee who came in, largely unvetted, they say he was militarily vetted, but that doesn’t—that’s not the same criteria for someone that we want to bring in and accord enormous generosity to: give him a subsidized apartment, let him, his wife, and five children have access to it and subsidies with it ahead of normal U.S. citizens. And he repays that gratitude with what? He drives across the country and executes a young National Guardsman from West Virginia and almost fatally wounds—seriously wounds—his companion. Murders one and tries the murder of the other, who’s in critical condition. As what? Thanks for the generosity that was accorded to them? Almost daily, we hear of an illegal alien who is involved in a DUI and kills innocents on the road. We hear about murders. And we’re kind of tired of it, and we’re reexamining immigration. We all understand that illegal immigration is clearly wrong. You cannot come into the country without legal authorization, and if you are here illegally, then you should return to your home. I think all Americans agree with that. They may disagree about the tactics of finding illegal immigrants. It’s much easier to destroy the border and allow 10,000 people to come across a day than it is the hard work of finding them and then rounding them up when they don’t wanna go back home, and then having the Left champion them as if they’re saviors or heroes or something for breaking the U.S. immigration law. But I want to get back to just a larger issue of immigration. Something is wrong with all of this because we are not inculcating immigration—talking about it in the way that we used to talk about it. We’re talking about it in the salad bowl, not the melting pot. We’re assuming that people that come in here, when—the moment they arrive, they have grievances against this country. They’ve been victims of oppression. We don’t really audit them legally. We don’t say to them, “We want you to know English. We want you to respect our laws. We want you to be acquainted with our traditions and customs and history, and we insist that you acculturate, you integrate, and you assimilate and do full American citizenship.” We don’t do that. And so, we have truck drivers who are here both legally and illegally who don’t speak English, they don’t read English. And yet, out of our kindness, our naivete, or stupidity, we give them driver’s licenses. And the result is they’re killing people on American freeways. And yet, we can’t object because we feel that we’re going to be illiberal. So, what is the solution? The solution is to rethink legal immigration. It should be much smaller, maybe 200,000 or 300,000, a number that we feel we can comfortably and easily assimilate. They must come in with knowledge of the English language. They should have some skill sets, so they do not become wards of the local, state, or federal government. And most importantly, we have to have a civic education program in K-12 and outreach to them that explains, “You wanted to come to our country. We don’t wanna go to your country. You made the decision. You said that you wanted to give up your homeland, your customs, everything about it, and transfer across the ocean to the United States. If you wanted to do that, then we can accommodate you, but it’s going to be brutal. You’re going to be an American citizen first and a Somali or an Indian or a Mexican or a Guatemalan second. You’ll be fully assimilated. But don’t come over here and then congregate in a community where you speak your native language and you break our laws, and you feel that you can do so with impunity, as if you’re some victim on a Marxist binary of victim/victimizer, oppressed/oppressor. It’s not gonna work.” Yes, we are a nation of immigrants*. We’re a nation of legal immigrants whose first mission upon arrival in America was to be a better American than a native-born American. And many millions were. I don’t think that is the case now, and the fault is not just with the immigrant, it’s with us. We ask nothing of the immigrant. So little confidence, perhaps, we had in our own culture and civilization, we were derelict. And it’s the 11th hour, and if we don’t change rapidly in our approaches to legal immigration, we’re gonna end up and have a rendezvous with the European disaster and tragedy. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post America’s About to Have a ‘Rendezvous’ With Europe’s Immigration Disaster appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Charlie Kirk’s legacy could live on for generations to come in Ohio if a bill on education ultimately becomes law, and it’s one step closer to doing so. The Ohio House voted along party lines last month to pass the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act, which permits the teaching of Christian influence on American history. State Rep. Gary Click, a Republican who represents Ohio’s 88th district and who sponsored the bill, previously told The Daily Signal that the bill aims to prevent teachers from feeling “shackled” when teaching about the influence of religion. There’s also a free speech component. The bill “works to preserve the ability for educators to discuss the positive impact of religion on American history, highlighting its consistency with freedom of speech and emphasizing how imperative it is to reduce politically motivated hate and violence in society,” according to a November press release. Kirk was assassinated during a Turning Point USA event on September 10 at Utah Valley University. Click told The Daily Signal that although he had been aware of issues for teachers speaking about religious influence “for a long time,” Kirk’s assassination prompted this legislation. “Charlie was a committed Christian, whose life and work will serve as a testament to the power of conservative ideals combined with a legacy of faith for generations to come,” Click added. Throughout October and early November, the bill went through sponsor testimony, and legislators heard from proponents and opponents. Opposition The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, among other left-leaning groups, opposed the bill. “H.B. 486 is an uncomplicated bill, essentially confirming Ohio’s K-12 public school teachers and faculty at our state universities and colleges are permitted to teach about religion in their classrooms,” Gary Daniels, the group’s legislative director, testified in October. “If that is all H.B. 486 seeks to accomplish, then House Bill 486 is entirely unnecessary and it’s introduction is deeply puzzling.” Both the U.S. and Ohio Constitutions protect such teaching, Daniels noted. “However, H.B. 486 does not stop there,” he noted. “Indeed, the other admitted goal of H.B. 486 is to promote Christianity to captive K-12 school students and also adults in our colleges and our universities.” He argued that references to Christianity in the bill aim to “paint Christianity in the most positive light while deliberately avoiding the negative,” such as historic justifications for slavery, denying women the right to vote, and the battles between different Christian denominations. He warned that “promotion and celebration of one particular religious faith or set of religious beliefs” will “create far more problems than it solves.” Clarity Finn Laursen, an education consultant for Christian Educators, told The Daily Signal that the bill provides needed clarity about what educators are allowed to teach. Laursen also testified for the bill last month. Ohioans tend to assume, Laursen warned, that public schools must be secular. “Quite frankly, well-meaning administrators stop it,” he noted, even when it comes to the role that Christianity played in America’s founding. In addition to his role as a consultant, Laursen has 32 years of experience working within public schools as a teacher, counselor, principal, and superintendent. Laursen argued that neutrality towards religion is often “misunderstood.” “Here’s the truth: that schools are government schools, employees are government employees, so they need to be neutral to religion,” he stressed. “And I think that’s what’s misunderstood. Neutral means you can’t proselytize. You can’t push your beliefs on someone. But it doesn’t mean you can’t study it. I mean, the Bible is taught in public schools across the nation, but not as the divine Word of God, but as history, as sometimes poetry, literature.” Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation, expressed hope for a revival of sorts, if the bill becomes law. “I’m thrilled to see the Ohio House act in line with the spirit of America’s founding by passing this bill,” Guidarini told The Daily Signal. “If the bill makes it past the governor’s desk, it’ll help empower a rebirth of education on our nation’s Christian ideals and history. I want to especially thank Representatives Gary Click and Mike Dovilla who made this victory possible.” Rep. Mike Dovilla, a Republican who represents the 17th district, also sponsored the bill. “It’s essential that we highlight the positive influence religion has had throughout our history – uniting communities, enriching our shared values, and safeguarding our First Amendment rights as Americans to speak and worship freely,” Dovilla said. Kirk was known for his Christian faith, and his group of Turning Point USA has been devoted to equipping and empowering high school and college students. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, now heads the group. After passing the Ohio House, the bill goes to the Senate. The post Ohio Bill Honoring Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Closer to Becoming Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.