If the races were reversed, Bethany MaGee would be as well-known as George Floyd. MaGee, 26, was recently riding on the L train in Chicago. As she was sitting there, police believe Lawrence Reed, 50, came up behind her and dumped gasoline on her. Despite her attempt to flee, Reed set her on fire. She rolled on the ground in a vain attempt to put out the flames. When the train arrived at the station, she left the car while still being burned alive. Two good Samaritans came to her aid, putting out the fire. She survived but suffered severe burns. She faces a long and daunting recovery. Somehow, this crime gets even more outrageous. Reed had already been arrested 72 times. Yes, you read that correctly. Since 2016, he has been arrested more than 20 times. He previously pleaded guilty to nine felonies. Just three months before this attack, Reed was in custody. At an August hearing, Assistant State’s Attorney Jerrilyn Gumila urged Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez to keep Reed behind bars. Gumila laid out how, three days before the hearing, Reed had knocked a social worker unconscious. Electronic monitoring “could not protect the victim or the community from another vicious, random, and spontaneous attack,” the prosecutor said. “I understand your position, but I can’t keep everybody in jail because the State’s Attorney wants me to,” Molina-Gonzalez said. She released Reed with electronic monitoring. It didn’t stop him from allegedly setting MaGee on fire. This should be a major national story for at least three reasons. First, the details of the crime are shocking and appalling. The victim is even an attractive young woman, which the propaganda press usually craves. Second, there’s a major scandal here. Police had a career criminal in custody. A judge let him go, despite a prosecutor’s warning that he was a danger. Third, President Donald Trump has been sparring with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson over the city’s safety. In October, Trump even sent the National Guard to Chicago. A search of The New York Times website for “Bethany MaGee,” however, yielded zero results, as of this writing. The Washington Post didn’t have any either. Days after it occurred, NBC Nightly News finally mentioned it, but used the attack to take a swipe at Trump. They’re silent because this crime doesn’t fit the Left’s narrative. It wants you to believe that the criminal justice system is systemically racist against African Americans. What matters is someone’s group identity, not individual actions. White Americans have special privilege. This one case shows how laughable those claims are. Reed wasn’t jailed for being black. He was coddled by the justice system despite dozens of arrests. Critical race theory proponents lump people into groups based on their skin tone. They claim that black people are the victims, while white people are the oppressors. Yes, their worldview requires believing that the woman who was set on fire was the oppressor. It’s easier to ignore this story than explain that absurdity. MaGee’s skin color didn’t give her any special advantages on that train car. It didn’t protect Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska when Decarlos Brown Jr. allegedly stabbed her, either. She didn’t have much privilege when most of her fellow passengers ignored her as she bled to death. America’s criminal justice system has a systemic problem, but it isn’t white supremacy. It’s the judges and prosecutors who protect criminals, instead of the public. 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 When a Crime Burns Up the Narrative appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Hamas has a history of infiltrating nongovernmental organizations working in Gaza, according to a new report.   Documents removed from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces and obtained by NGO Monitor reveal “the terrorist group’s systemic control of foreign NGOs operating in Gaza.”   The 48-page report from NGO Monitor, a research and oversight organization based in Israel, details strategies Hamas has used to hold sway over organizations conducting humanitarian work in Gaza.   The report describes the way Hamas has monitored NGOs and even sought to manipulate them, but the “most invasive and egregious mechanism” of influence, according to NGO Monitor, is the “guarantor” system.  Through what NGO Monitor calls the “guarantor system,” a document from 2022 reveals that Hamas required “formal liaisons between its internal security apparatus and the international NGOs.”   “Hamas views ‘guarantors’ as potential high-value intelligence assets to gain access to the NGOs’ internal information and operations,” according to the report released Wednesday.  A 35-page document dated Dec. 14, 2022, from the State of Palestine Ministry of Interior and National Security Interior Security names more than 40 foreign NGOs operating in Gaza and details the “guarantor” Hamas has identified in each organization.  Since 2007, Hamas has controlled internal security in Gaza under the Ministry of Interior. Following two years of war with Israel, Hamas has been significantly weakened but not destroyed. Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October that is based on President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. It remains unclear who will take over leadership of Gaza once a formal end to the war is agreed upon. Some of the “guarantors” listed in the Ministry of the Interior document are noted to have direct ties to Hamas.   The document, which NGO Monitor translated, begins by explaining that the list of “guarantors” have been identified as individuals who are allowed to submit requests for a foreign visitor.   “These [guarantors] can be exploited for security purposes, in order to infiltrate foreign associations, their foreign senior staff and their movements on the field inside the Gaza Strip,” the formal document retrieved from Gaza states.   The list of named “guarantors” is the “linking element between the association and the Ministry of Interior,” according to the document.   NGO Monitor redacted the specific names of “guarantors” for security and privacy, but NGOs working in Gaza in 2022, in which Hamas had identified a “guarantor,” are named, along with specific notes about each individual and the level of cooperation with the “Internal Security Mechanism,” or Hamas.   Puppet Regime – Hamas’ Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in GazaDownload For example, Medical Aid for Palestinians—U.K. is listed as “neutral” in cooperation. Bullet points under the name of the group’s “guarantor” identify him as a director of the association and state that he is “affiliated with the Hamas movement and has allegiance [to its rule].” It is also noted that his “circle of friends is from the Hamas movement.”  Several pages down, Islamic Relief UK is identified as “cooperating” with the Ministry of Interior. The “guarantor” for the group is identified as a director and his travel and financial habits are also described.   Rahma Worldwide, a humanitarian organization headquartered in Michigan with operations around the globe, is listed as “cooperating.” The “guarantor” is identified as having “formerly affiliated with the Salafi movement, and is now affiliated with the Hamas movement.” His occupation, travel and financial habits, and “low” religious observance are also noted.   Save the Children, a large charity organization operating around the world, is labeled as “not cooperating” with Hamas. The “guarantor” is recorded to have a “very limited” circle of friends and be from a “religiously observant and committed family.”   Doctors Without Borders Spain is listed as being “neutral” in cooperation with ruling authorities in Gaza, but Doctors Without Borders Belgium and France are recorded as “not cooperating.”   The aid group Catholic Relief Services is labeled as “not cooperating,” and the “guarantor” is noted as being “affiliated with the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine],” a group the U.S. designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997.   The Daily Signal has contacted the humanitarian organizations specifically named in this report and is awaiting responses.   “The evidence confirms that NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally,” according to NGO Monitor. “Rather, they are embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation, and surveillance that serves Hamas’ terror objectives.”   The post New Report Exposes Hamas Strategy to Infiltrate, Control NGOs in Gaza   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

What will it take to get crime under control in our subways and public transit systems? On Monday, news broke of another passenger set on fire in New York City’s subway—though this story wasn’t all it seemed. The homeless man who at first said he was the victim of an attack turned tight-lipped when police pressed him about what happened. Had he set his own clothes ablaze to attract attention? In the wild environment our subways have become, a malicious attack or a madman’s self-inflicted injury are both all too believable. Most trips on the New York subway or Washington, D.C.’s metro system don’t resemble a clip from “Mad Max,” but sooner or later, anyone who rides the rails of our cities regularly encounters insanity, aggression, and the prospect of violence—or actual violence, including the murderous kind. The life-changing and very nearly life-ending attack on Bethany MaGee, the woman set aflame on a Chicago Blue Line train last month, was no hoax. Nor was the assault that killed Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte, North Carolina, this summer. Nor was the burning alive of Debrina Kawam on the New York subway last December. None of those women had any reason to fear for her life, yet a commute turned into unspeakable terror. And it was predictable—not because these victims had anything special to fear but because everyone knows what’s allowed to happen in the tunnels and on the trains. If a thug with 72 arrests to his name, like the man who tried to immolate the 26-year-old MaGee in Chicago—or with “just” 14 arrests, like Iryna’s murderer—decides this is the day to take an unsuspecting victim, what chance does she have? Her fate was already decided by judges who chose not to lock up men who were a demonstrated threat to the public. The killers and would-be killers are only half the problem. The other half are the judges and lawmakers who put them on the streets in the first place, leaving them free to ambush unsuspecting victims on train cars, where they can’t escape. (MaGee did try running, but her attacker caught up and torched her.) Legislators in North Carolina, at least, are trying to stop this murderous chain of events before it begins, by putting men with criminal records like those of Iryna’s killer in prison or mental institutions as soon as they start breaking the law. “Iryna’s Law” restricts cashless bail, requires judges to order more mental evaluations, and makes it easier to involuntarily commit offenders found to be disturbed. It also attempts to restore the death penalty in North Carolina, which has been blocked for nearly 20 years by legal challenges. The law is a good start, and other states need similar reforms to incarcerate and institutionalize more of the people who commit horrors like the subway attacks of recent months. There’s a federal role in this, too, including rigorous enforcement of immigration law: Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, the man charged with burning Kawam to death, is an illegal immigrant who should never have been in this country to begin with. Yet more is needed: Not only zero tolerance toward violent and repeat offenders but zero tolerance in the political process for judges who go easy on them. Some states elect judges, and voters in those places can make known just how they feel about judges’ culpability for crimes committed by the lawbreakers they set loose. And states have provisions for impeaching judges, just as the federal government does. Where judges egregiously endanger the public with their leniency toward criminals, they should be impeached and removed from office. It wouldn’t take many examples before soft-on-crime judges got the message. Of course, judges themselves, where they aren’t elected by the public, are appointed by politicians who have to answer to voters—and those pols should feel the heat, too. Five years ago, progressives were pushing, in all seriousness, to “defund the police” and “abolish bail,” meaning, in the latter instance, simply releasing a wider array of arrestees. In most of the country, those slogans were not political winners, but advocates for these policies count more on elite sympathy, especially within the legal profession, than they do on ballot-box victories. Their gamble is that most Americans pay no mind to the inner workings of state courts and legislatures, so what loses in an election can still win where laws and legal precedents are actually made. This populist moment in national politics arises from the distrust our leaders have engendered among the public. But leaders in states and cities have betrayed Americans’ trust, too, and their betrayal turns public transportation into scenes of public execution for innocents like Iryna Zarutska. 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 ‘Iryna’s Law’ and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Republican Matt Van Epps triumphed in Tuesday’s House special election in Tennessee, stifling talk of a possible Democrat upset in a reliably red district. As of Tuesday evening, the Associated Press projexted Van Epps as the winner, defeating his Democrat opponent, Tennessee state Rep. Aftyn Behn. Epps will fill the seat of former Rep. Mark Green, a Republican who resigned from Congress in July to work in the private sector. With 95% of the vote counted, Van Epps was beating Behn by about 9 percentage points, 53.9% to 45%. In 2024, President Donald Trump won the district by 22 percentage points. Going into the election, there were signs that the race in a solidly red district could produce an uncomfortably close outcome for Republicans with an election year right around the corner. A recent survey from Emerson College Polling and The Hill showed the race could be close, with Van Epps leading at 48% support against Behn’s 46%. The GOP Push for Van Epps Van Epps got a boost from Trump, who stepped in to encourage Republican turnout. “To the Great People of Tennessee’s 7th District, who gave me Record Setting Wins in each of three Elections, I am asking you to get out and VOTE FOR MATT VAN EPPS,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday. Trump also heaped scorn on Behn, the Democrat Tennessee state representative seeking an upset in a district where Republicans have won comfortably in the past. NEW: President Trump talks to voters through the phone after calling Speaker Johnson during a rally for Republican Matt Van Epps in the special election race in Tennessee against Aftyn Behn:"She said two things above all else that bothered me.Number 1: She hates Christianity.… pic.twitter.com/Wh9mhaRVvo— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 1, 2025 “Matt is fighting against a woman who hates Christianity, will take away your guns, wants Open Borders, Transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, and openly disdains Country music,” Trump wrote. House leadership and prominent Tennessee Republicans also stepped in to rally Republicans behind Van Epps. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., joined Van Epps at rallies in the leadup to the election, at one of which he had Trump via a speaker phone call say, “Matt Van Epps is a winner and will be great…The Democrats are spending a fortune, and we don’t want people that want to raise your taxes. [Behn] wants to raise your taxes on top of everything else.” Tennessee Republican Reps. Tim Burchett and Andy Ogles, as well as Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, rallied for Van Epps as well. Behn Attacked for Previous Comments About Nashville In the run up to the election, Republicans highlighted Behn’s online footprint, including a podcast appearance in which she said of Nashville, “I hate this city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music.” “I hate all of the things that make Nashville, apparently, an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country, but I hate it,” Behn said. “Number one, she hates Christianity. Number two, she hates country music. How the hell can you elect a person like that?” Trump said, calling into a Van Epps rally that featured the speaker. Nashville is the largest city in the district Behn hoped to represent. In response to the resurfaced audio, Behn said on CNN, that she “was a private citizen.” “Nashville’s my home,” Behn added. “Do I roll my eyes at the bachelorette parties and the pedal taverns that are blocking my access to my house? Yeah. Every Nashvillian does, but this race has always been about something bigger.” In 2020, Behn expressed support on social media for calls to defund the police, in addition to writing, “Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.” Pressed for clarification on those remarks, Behn said on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, “I don’t remember these tweets” and “I’m here to talk about my race, which is in literally nine days. WATCH: The Democratic nominee for the special election in Tennessee’s conservative Seventh Congressional District, Aftyn Behn, called to defund the police and praised rioters for burning down police stations. Asked whether she stands by those positions, Behn told MS NOW, “Um,… pic.twitter.com/oZv9L4dfXR— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) November 25, 2025 On Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., presented the surprisingly positive polls for Democrats in Tennessee as a bad sign for Republicans nationwide. “Republicans have already lost,” Jeffries said. “The fact that they are spending millions of dollars to hold a seat that Donald Trump just won by 22 points is extraordinary.” The post Republican Triumphs in Tennessee Special House Election 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. The November 2026 elections will be determined, fairly or not, largely on the status of the economy. The Left knows that. They know two things. One, the enormous, projected gain in oil and natural gas production. Two, the deregulation and tax cuts involved in the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that will kick in in full in 2026 and some $10 trillion in foreign investment, even if that’s maybe only half of what’s promised, but that’s an enormous amount, seven or eight times more than President Joe Biden received in his last year of office. You add all of that up: An economy right now that is doing well, and Black Friday, following Thanksgiving, had almost $11 billion in online sales. That was a record, not just better than last year at this time under the Biden administration, but better than in any time in history. So, the economy is already strong, and you can imagine that these catalysts and this stimuli that are coming—deregulation, tax reduction, massive foreign investment, expelling 2 million people from the United States per year who were probably on social assistance, involved in many cases of crime. You can see what’s going to happen. The economy is going to boom in 2026, and the Left knows that. So, what is their strategy? Don’t talk about the Trump economy. And we’ve seen what? Go after Tesla. Firebomb Tesla dealerships. Drive Tesla automobiles off the road because Elon Musk was the prince of darkness, and he was involved in the Department of Government Efficiency. Demonize DOGE. Go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Have street theater. Have riots. Call them Gestapo. Say they’re worse than Hitler. Go after the National Guard that has cleaned up Washington, D.C. Encourage massive resistance. Call it illegal. Shut down the government. Shut down the government for longer than any period in history—40 days. Shut it down for no purpose. It gained nothing. Supposedly, it gained nothing. Shut it down. Have major senators on the Democratic side and representatives cut a video. Have them tell the American soldiers, all 1.3 million active-duty strong, you don’t have to obey an order. If, in your legal wisdom, your vast knowledge of jurisprudence, if you’re a private and he says, “Go over that hill,” I don’t have to do it. It’s illegal. Create disruption. And the piece of resistance, the Epstein files. You had the Epstein files for four years under Joe Biden, Democrats. You knew that President Donald Trump expelled him from his circle of friends before he was convicted of anything. But there are about 80% or 90% of people in the so-called Epstein files—these are emails. These are text messages. These are transcripts from court proceedings. These may be IRS files. But 80% to 90% are Democrats. That’s why it was not released during the Democratic administration. But no matter, just say, “Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files.” And so, Donald Trump finally says, “OK, they’re released.” And what do we hear? Crickets. Maybe a little bit about Larry Summers, Democrat, but silence. Why doesn’t the Left demand that every single name be released? Because they have more Democratic donors than Trump has Republican donors that are mentioned in it. So, the Epstein files, like the shutdown, like the street theater, like all the videos, like all the smuddy language, they were designed for one point, one reason, one goal: Keep your mind off the economy. Create a word called “affordability.” The real message is: We Democrats raised prices by 21% when we were in power, 5.2% per year. We had enormous budget deficits. We ran the debt up by $8 trillion. We had a $1.1 trillion deficit. Don’t talk about that. Just say that Donald Trump, in 10 months, has a 3% inflation rate, the same as when he entered office, and therefore, he’s responsible for the 21% that we ran up, and we’ll call it affordability. My message to the Trump administration and all of you listening is: Tune out all of the street theater, all the pornography, all the smuddy language, all the insurrectionary activity, and just focus on the economy and talk two points. Two points: how much better it is already than the average of the four years prior, but more importantly, demonstrate why it’s going to be booming in 2026 and why the Democrats don’t want you to think about that. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats Want to Distract You From This Before Midterms appeared first on The Daily Signal.