The U.S. must be growing and prosperous at home and strong and secure in the face of the many security threats facing us abroad. The former can only be achieved with free markets and limited government domestically and the latter through a robust defense budget. On both fronts, Democrats would take the country in the exact opposite direction needed. Voters seem to understand this. RealClearPolitics reports Democratic Party favorability at -20.0 unfavorable and Republicans at -15.4 unfavorable. Nevertheless, in polling on the overall congressional election for 2026, RealClearPolitics shows Democrats up +6.0. Two things may explain this disconnect. One, although voters show generically more favorability to Republicans, Republicans are still underwater in overall favorability. Second, when voters are overall not happy with how things are going, they vote against the party in power. Per the RealClearPolitics consensus, only 34.3% feel the country is going in the right direction. Regarding the climate that will define the upcoming election season, one big variable will be the outcome in the current hostilities in Iran. My prediction is that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party will emerge the clear big winner here. Those who have opposed this war will be inducted into the national hall of shame. And here we are talking overwhelmingly about Democrat leadership. The readiness of Trump to identify the clear and present danger to our country of the maniacal regime in Iran, both regarding their acquisition of nuclear weapons and development of a massive arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, will secure Trump’s place in history as a great leader. American action in Iran has also brought forth with clarity where the rest of the world stands. We now better understand the lack of principles of our so-called European allies and the squishiness of NATO. We now better understand the evil and threat lurking in Russia, China, and North Korea. And particularly interesting is the potential realignment that will emerge in the Persian Gulf, as suddenly the Arab nations in the Gulf have found themselves attacked by the Iranian maniacs. We may see a great solidifying of U.S. relations with those oil-rich Gulf nations, and we may see an historic solidifying of their relationship with Israel. It all has made the security picture even clearer to Trump, who is requesting in the 2027 budget a 50% increase in defense spending, from around $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. The current war has made abundantly clear the inadequacy of our defense spending, now hovering at an historic low of 3% of gross domestic product. We live in a dangerous world. The motto “peace through strength” has never been clearer. But how do we add $500 billion to our defense budget when we are running multitrillion dollar deficits at home and we’re carrying national debt greater than 100% of GDP? There is one answer. We must step up finally and revamp and reform the massive waste in our federal spending—now approaching 25% of our GDP. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported last year that the federal government loses $233 to $521 billion in fraud. It also reported improper federal payments since 2003 totaling at least $2.8 trillion. In 2024 alone, the Government Accountability Office notes improper payments in Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP (food stamps) of $95.5 billion. When Republicans moved to reform Medicaid in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” Democrats went crazy and took us to a government shutdown. Democrats are out front complaining about the spike in gasoline prices. The best way to manage gasoline prices is to increase supplies of oil and gas. Democrats are forever obstacles to this, making discredited claims about climate. Recently, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, once a climate change enthusiast, has repudiated “the doomsday view” of climate change, saying it “is wrong.” We may well see in the midterms that voters indeed see Democrats as the clear and present danger to the nation. COPYRIGHT 2026 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 Democrats Are Clear and Present Danger to the Nation appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sometimes, transgender advocates‘ own words form the best argument against them. A Democrat’s recent argument for a bill combating “conversion therapy” actually made a strong case against his measure, which would effectively prevent counseling to help young people come to terms with their biology. This counseling may be the only real solution for gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex). Scott Wiener, a Democrat in the California Senate, testified Tuesday in favor of SB-934, a bill to extend the statute of limitations for people to sue for damages if they claim to have been subjected to sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts. Wiener explained his bill this way: “Let’s say a parent has a 15-year-old who was born identified as a girl and now identifies as a boy, and if the parent says ‘I’m going to send you to this camp where a ‘therapist’ is going to convert you to being a girl through therapy.’ That would be subjected to this bill.” Let’s not get distracted by transgender gaslighting. A person who was “born identified as a girl and now identifies as a boy” is, in fact, a girl. No use of pronouns, injection of cross-sex hormones, or surgeries to remove her healthy body parts to experimentally make her appear male will change the basic fact of her nature. Yet, according to Scott Wiener, therapy to help her come to terms with her nature involves “converting” her to “being a girl.” In the Orwellian upside-down world of transgender topsy-turvydom, it isn’t considered a form of “conversion” to subject a person to experimental drugs and surgeries to force their body to resemble something it’s not, but it is a form of “conversion” to help someone come to terms with her sex. ‘Conversion Therapy’ Wiener attempts to maintain this utterly fatuous idea by using the term “conversion therapy.” The term historically refers to efforts to suppress same-sex attraction through controversial methods like electroshock therapy. Mainstream therapy has rejected such methods in favor of patient-directed talk therapy—and the Supreme Court recently upheld the free speech rights of a therapist to address same-sex attraction and gender identity through talk therapy with patients when a Colorado law banned this. “When a child’s like, ‘I’m gay, I’m trans,’ and the parent says, ‘I’m gonna make you not gay or trans,’ by sending you to that person who’s going to inflict severe harm,” Wiener explained. Yet the case that patient-directed talk therapy to resolve a gender mismatch inflicts “severe harm” is rather hard to prove. Such therapy does not leave any physical sign. By contrast, the scars of “gender-affirming care” are much more concrete. Wiener himself witnessed evidence of this in the same hearing, when the brave detransitioner Jonni Skinner got up to share his story. “When I was young, I was a feminine child and I discovered trans influencers online,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Change your body and your life gets better. Don’t, and it gets worse.’ Or, as my doctors told my mom, I would commit suicide.” “The medical and mental health providers didn’t bother to ask why I felt the way I did,” Skinner added. “They poisoned my body with blockers and hormones, arresting my puberty and messing with my development. The result? I’m a 23-year-old gay man who’s never had an orgasm and may never experience one.” “I was rendered inorgasmic because once you say you could be trans, that’s it, full stop,” he added. “No exploration as to why is allowed, even if you are a struggling kid.” Science Exposes Transgender Lies A recently published study found that young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria in Finland were more likely to receive specialist-level psychiatric care—both before and after diagnosis. “Gender-affirming care” made them far more likely to seek specialist-level care more than two years afterward. This study suggests two things: that those who identify as transgender are more likely to have psychological problems and that “gender-affirming care” makes those problems worse. Wiener is fighting a losing battle. The Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is little evidence for positive impacts from transgender medical interventions on minors, but it found many documented harms. A jury awarded a detransitioner $2 million, finding that the medical professionals who carried out sex-rejecting procedures on her were liable for medical malpractice. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a statement recommending against transgender surgery for minors under 19, leading other medical associations to follow suit. Americans really are waking up to the destructive harms of transgender ideology, but activists like Wiener are unlikely to throw in the towel. Those of us who really want to help people struggling with gender dysphoria should champion patient-directed talk therapy that helps patients resolve their gender mismatch, not medical experiments that enflame it. Unfortunately, we first have to make the case against Democrats like Wiener, who want to make such therapy radioactive, and therefore unavailable. That’s the true ugliness of transgender ideology: people like Wiener are seeking to remove the one potential solution that might actually resolve gender dysphoria. Rather than resolving underlying psychological issues, they want to trap gender dysphoric people in the gender mutilation pipeline, where they will subject their bodies to medical experiments and become perpetually reliant on Big Pharma. The post Democrat Unwittingly Reveals the Ugly Truth of Transgender Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is struggling to explain how her popularity has collapsed just months into her administration. At a press briefing designed to look like a happenstance meeting with reporters on the sidewalk outside of the governor’s mansion in Richmond, Spanberger addressed a Washington Post/Schar poll that showed her losing 11% of her approval since November’s election, when her approval rating was 57.4% to 46%. Her answer was more cringe than an impromptu chat with Kamala Harris: “If everybody hated me, why is everybody putting my face on their mailers for the referendum?” Spanberger said. Excuse us, madame governor, but that wasn’t the question. ? JUST IN: Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) is CONFRONTED about how she is the most unpopular Virginia governor in the 21st century, after she let illegal aliens kill VirginiansHer response: "If everyone hates me why are they putting my face on their mailers?!" Buyer's remorse is… pic.twitter.com/LwxoXjFJxe— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 8, 2026 Two folks I have recently spoken to could shed some light on the issue for the governor if she were to reach out to them. Rather than waiting for her Cheshire grin to vanish, let’s lay it out. First, I spoke with former state Sen. Chap Petersen, a Democrat from Fairfax County, and asked him if diving headfirst into the redistricting vote contributed to the decline in her support. “I think it was a mistake—I felt like it was really a bad mistake for her to start her administration that way on such an openly partisan issue.” Petersen said. “You know, I think when she got started, she ran successfully as a moderate Democrat, someone that was going to work with both sides, work across the aisle,” he added. “She got elected with a very large majority, which I think reflected that, and she got dragged into this redistricting issue, which she had not run on. [Redistricting] had not been part of her platform, and I think that was a mistake.” Other partisan issues Spanberger downplayed on the campaign seem to be the crux of Spanberger’s flailing popularity. Twenty gun ownership-restricting bills have already passed the Virginia General Assembly during Spanberger’s term. Democrats also proposed a massive expansion of items open to sales tax, which didn’t make it through, but it’s the thought that seems to count with Virginia’s voters. And while Democrats propose new taxes, little progress has been made on the affordability issue. Even more problematic for Democrats, in Richmond and in Washington, is polling that suggests “no” will carry the day for Virginia’s April 21 redistricting referendum. Redistricting failure would be yet another sign that Virginia’s Democrats seemed to have awakened the sleeping elephant that sat out the 2025 gubernatorial election. Coupled with the tattered coattails of the governor, it does not bode well for Virginia playing a major role in flipping the U.S. House of Representatives for Democrats. And things seem poised to get worse for the governor’s affordability agenda. Stephen Haner is a policy analyst for the Thomas Jefferson Institute, and after a lifetime spent on both sides of the lobby, he correctly predicted that if Spanberger rejoined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Virginians would be paying more for their electricity. “It’s going to be a big number” he said, “And it’s going to be far more than it was when we were paying it three years ago—on a typical bill it was $3 or $4. So, we were paying about $15 or $16 a ton at the end three years ago. It is now $25 or $26 a ton, and it’s going to keep going up because in 2027 they’re reshuffling all the rules. They’re eliminating a lot of the allowances.” The proposed budget creates a new category for “large consumers” of energy (namely, data centers). Nevertheless, the rates on consumers are going up anyway. I asked Haner if data centers are really making the average Virginian pay more for their electricity. “Nobody really sort of put RGGI and the data centers together either, but again, their raw material is electricity,” he replied. “So RGGI raises the price of their electricity and their raw materials as well. That [means] they’re going to be paying a huge amount of this money when the time comes.” Just like all of us. On April 6, the Virginia Mercury reported that state officials “expect the commonwealth to participate in the program’s September (RGGI) auction once regulations to reestablish the CO2 budget trading program are finalized. Dominion Energy plans to petition the State Corporation Commission in June to add the cost of those credit auctions back onto ratepayer’s bills.” Later that day, the Virginia Public Access Project exposed that the governor, who said on the campaign trail she does not take donations from corporate entities, accepted a $100,000 contribution from Dominion Energy for her inaugural fund. Perhaps the party that ran on affordability has forgotten that believability may be their bigger problem. The post Spanberger’s Problem Isn’t Affordability. It’s Believability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For more than a decade, American politics has undergone a decisive shift thanks to President Donald Trump. This shift places the economic interests of middle- and working-class families squarely at the center of national policy. Early in his tenure, Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to eliminate regulations that deny consumers the benefits of a competitive marketplace. The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern railroad merger stands in stark contrast to this effort, so it should come as no surprise that there is growing concern from around the country. Seven state attorneys general in Republican states, led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen, are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to provide greater scrutiny of the merger. This follows letters from nine Republican state attorneys general led by Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee, Brenna Bird of Iowa, and Kris Kobach of Kansas. Additionally, more than 50 Republican state legislative leaders from across the country have expressed serious reservations about this $85 billion consolidation.   Vice President JD Vance captured the essence of this thinking during his comments to a conservative audience with his statement warning about the dangers of monopolies, arguing “it’s bad for liberty, and it’s bad for prosperity.” This is a return to foundational conservative principles about dispersed power, genuine competition, and economic opportunity for working-class Americans. Real conservative jurisprudence, from the trustbusting of Theodore Roosevelt to the consumer welfare standard articulated by Robert Bork, has always recognized that protecting competition at times requires challenging consolidation. Consider who gets hurt when railroad monopolies are allowed to tighten their grip. It’s the farmer in Iowa who can’t negotiate better rates to ship grain. It’s the factory worker in Ohio whose plant closes because shipping costs make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive with foreign countries. It’s the small business owner in rural America who faces take-it-or-leave-it pricing from the only railroad serving his region. These are the Americans who helped put Trump and Vance in office, and Republicans are right to fight for them. The attorneys general correctly warned that concentrating “too much power in too few hands” risks squeezing out American manufacturers, farmers, and consumers. When four railroad companies already control 90% of freight traffic, adding more consolidation doesn’t enhance competition. Far from it. It only fuels market distortions and monopolies that harm the overall economy.  This unprecedented and costly railroad merger would be particularly devastating for workers and producers here at home. The deal would favor intermodal container shipments that can pivot to trucking, benefiting foreign-made goods while U.S. manufacturers moving chemicals, grain, steel, and bulk commodities would be locked into paying increased rates to one railroad with nowhere else to turn. Foreign competitors would get flexibility while American workers get higher costs and worse service. That’s not “America First.”  Free markets thrive on competition, and increasing monopoly power in any form is the first step toward losing both liberty and prosperity. In line with this broader movement toward enhancing competition, the Surface Transportation Board has advanced important reforms aimed at dismantling the entrenched barriers that have long stifled competition in the freight rail industry. The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger represents exactly the kind of consolidation that Republicans should oppose. Vance is right: We must defend the working Americans who depend on competitive markets to earn their livelihoods. The fact that Republican state leaders and the conservative legal movement recognize this truth once again proves that the Republicans are focused on delivering for the working class. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Conservative Leaders Are Right: The UP-NS Rail Merger Is a Bad Idea appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This year’s midterm elections aren’t just about who wins in November; they’re about who wins fights over gerrymandering taking place right now. Nowhere is the battle fiercer than in Virginia, a state where voters just six years ago approved a constitutional amendment to take partisanship out of congressional redistricting. Now Democrats want to make an exception to the rule Virginia voters approved by a nearly two-thirds majority in 2020: They want this year’s congressional map to be drawn up by their own state legislators, erasing the districts set up by the bipartisan board established by the amendment just a few years back. It’s no surprise when a state like Texas or California that leans overwhelmingly toward one party indulges in partisan gerrymandering. But Virginia is a purple state, and its congressional representation—six Democrats, five Republicans—currently reflects that. Yet, if Democrats get their way on April 21, they’ll be able to seize 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats for themselves, in the most brazenly unjust reapportionment seen anywhere in decades. This isn’t about making a blue state bluer or a red state redder; this one’s an effort to manufacture a virtual monopoly for one party, depriving millions of the other party’s voters of their representation. One thing the sheer audacity of this move suggests is that Democrats nationwide aren’t quite as confident as they pretend to be about winning the midterms fair and square. If they expect voters coast to coast to repudiate President Donald Trump’s GOP in a landslide, why resort to such extreme measures in a place like Virginia? Either Democrats are more worried than they let on, or they want to do more than just win—they want to annihilate their competition. They’re proving far more ruthless than Republicans, who balked at the opportunity last year to redraw Indiana’s congressional map from a 7-2 partisan split to a nine-seat GOP sweep. What Democrats are attempting in Virginia is tantamount to legalized election theft, if voters are unwise enough to approve the amendment they’re pushing. There’s a political cost for this attack on small-d democracy: Gov. Abigail Spanberger, for one, is paying a price in her polling. She was elected by a whopping 15-point margin last year and was soon touted as the Democrats’ new face of moderation, which is why she was the party’s choice to respond to Trump’s State of the Union address this year. Yet her approval ratings are already poor, with a Washington Post survey at the end of March finding 47% of those polled gave her a passing grade, while 46% disapproved of her performance in office so far. The numbers are similar to polling on the amendment to give Virginia’s Democrat-controlled legislature the power to draw the congressional districts for the midterms: 50% say they approve, 47% disapprove. The amendment can pass with a simple majority, but if the polls are right, Democrats have no margin to spare, and early voting reports so far indicate there’s particularly strong turnout in Republican areas of the state. The early vote is outpacing early voting in last year’s gubernatorial election, too. Arguably, the amendment shouldn’t be on the ballot at all: it’s faced several legal challenges, with the state Supreme Court ultimately deciding the April 21 election can proceed even while doubts about its legality remain to be settled later. The very wording of the amendment is illegal, Republicans contend, since state law specifies the text accompanying the measure “shall be limited to a neutral explanation,” while the amendment itself is tendentiously worded as an attempt to “restore fairness.” Who wouldn’t vote to restore fairness? The campaign for the amendment has been a master class in deceit and manipulation, with even news outlets in the deep-blue D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia noting the copious use of “pink slime” techniques by the “Yes” side. Those techniques involve propaganda disguised to look impartial—like a made-to-purpose publication branded as The Virginia Independent, which the Arlington-based news site ARLNow.com describes as “a partisan newspaper advancing Democrats’ arguments.” That slime has been flooding into voters’ mailboxes, including mine. Maybe my blue suburb hasn’t been a target of whatever efforts the Republicans are making—though the other possibility is that the GOP just isn’t trying as hard. Texas kicked off the latest wave of redistricting ahead of the midterms, as Republicans there looked to widen their advantage over the Democrats. Yet as the divergent examples of Indiana and Virginia show, it’s the Democrats who are more hellbent on winning, even if they have to turn state constitutions into confetti to do it. Politics is a test of wills, and if Republicans fail this one, they’ll almost certainly fail in November, too. COPYRIGHT 2026 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 Virginia: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering appeared first on The Daily Signal.