The persecution of Eastern Orthodox Christians became a flashpoint between members of Congress on social media this week as the Russo-Ukrainian war drags on. On Monday Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., publicized an email from the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist that invited recipients to take part in a “Legislative Day of Action on Capitol Hill in support of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” on November 18.  Replying to a screenshot of the email and a story in The Hill about the topic, Wilson wrote on X, “The Russian Orthodox Church is not a separate religious organization but an extension of the Russian state. Evangelizing is illegal in Russia and Christians are targeted and killed in Ukraine. Members should not entertain this intelligence operation.” The posting prompted some substantial pushback from fellow public officials who expressed concern for Orthodox Christians being persecuted. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate was banned by the Ukrainian Parliament in August 2024, and one does not have to look far for reports of abuse of the church’s clerics and members. “It is both alarming and disappointing that [Wilson], instead of responding to a request for help on behalf of imprisoned Ukranian [sic] Orthodox members currently being held in Ukraine, chose to turn this into a press campaign against them,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., wrote on X. “Mr. Wilson—with whom I have no personal issues on foreign affairs and who is currently a vocal advocate for Ukraine, even wearing a Ukrainian flag nearly every day—should remember that his first priority is to his own country. His second should be ensuring that American taxpayer dollars are not used to imprison Orthodox Christians simply because the word ‘Russia’ appears in their church name,” the Florida congresswoman continued. “In December, I will be hosting numerous members of the Orthodox Church from across the country alongside several Members of Congress. More to come on this.” “It seems like a rather bigoted smear to say that every Russian Orthodox Christian is a spy,” former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., posted in response. “One of the largest OCA parishes in America is in Greenville, SC. These are Americans, most of them converts. Calling for the investigation of these good Christians? That’s actual Soviet stuff,” South Carolina State Rep. Thomas Beach said in response to Gaetz on X. “Really ugly smear of Orthodox Christians as agents of a foreign power. This is beneath the office,” Beach added in a response directed to Wilson. Wilson subsequently responded to his initial post on the subject stating that his comments “pertain ONLY to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.” The South Carolina congressman’s public remarks come as the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches four years, and Eastern Orthodoxy has seen a surge in the United States.  My comments pertain ONLY to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) operating under the umbrella of the Moscow Patriarchate. Patriarch Kirill has advocated for mass murder and persecution of Christians and served decades as KGB. Most Orthodox… https://t.co/vZIECn1wMS— Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) November 18, 2025 Pan-Orthodox bishop and clergy did end up visiting Capitol. Catherine Whiteford, a co-chair of the Young Republicans, posted on social media about a group of them meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who is himself an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. Whiteford told The Daily Signal that “The [Ukrainian Orthodox Church] has publicly condemned the Russian invasion—calling it ‘the sin of Cain‘—and expressly blessed the faithful to defend their Motherland. In May 2022, at the Council of Feofania, the UOC removed all references to the Russian Church from its charter, ceased commemoration of Patriarch Kirill, and affirmed its fully self-governing status.” “Regarding Rep. Joe Wilson’s recent post on X and his subsequent clarification: as an Orthodox Christian and as a leader in the Young Republican movement, I found his statements deeply troubling,” Whiteford told The Daily Signal. “It was inaccurate, dangerous, and inconsistent with American principles. Mischaracterizing the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) as an arm of a foreign state—and denying its status as a legitimate Church—mirrors the same rhetoric used to justify repression of the UOC in Ukraine,” Whiteford continued. “Such language endangers the religious liberty of all Orthodox Christians in the United States and fosters a climate in which citizens are viewed with suspicion because of their faith. I urge my colleagues in the Republican Party to reject this kind of rhetoric and to uphold our longstanding commitment to religious freedom,” she concluded. The Daily Signal reached out to Wilson’s office for comment. The post Christian Persecution in Russia-Ukraine War Becomes Flashpoint for GOP appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Whence cometh the conviction, in America and even more in Britain and Europe, that open borders is the only moral immigration policy? Of course, not everyone believes that, and many who do stop short of saying so. But the contrast between the rhetoric and policies of the first two decades of the century and those that have prevailed since President Donald Trump’s election is unmistakable. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, like the George Bushes, professed to want to enforce immigration laws. They decried the flood of illegals that crested in the prosperous decade before the financial crisis, and afterward saw with relief that the flow of illegals slowed. As I wrote recently, careful projections of the illegal population estimate that it peaked at about 12 million in 2007, fell to about 10.5 million in 2019, then increased by about 4 million during the Joe Biden administration, which essentially opened the borders to the point of paying for illegals to live in New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, two short blocks from where Jamie Dimon’s JPMorganChase was constructing its $3 billion office tower. The impetus for this policy came from something other than the usual elite economic argument that, as population growth is slowing, advanced countries need more workers to maintain economic growth. That something else can be summarized in the phrase “Orange Man Bad.” If Trump wants to stop people at the border, then we shouldn’t stop anyone there. There is another element here, seen more prominently in Europe. And that is the conviction that barring people from your country who are different, in ancestry or customs, from the preexisting population is invidious discrimination. Immigrants to the United States over the past half-century have come mostly from Latin America and Asia from countries that to varying degrees share religious orientations, market economic norms, and cultures of literacy and numeracy with most Americans. It’s likely true that a flood of mostly illegal immigrants, like those welcomed by the Biden administration, will tend to have a higher proportion of violent migrants than among legal immigrants. And a higher proportion of arrivals with adversarial attitudes toward American mores, traditions and government. But that is a problem orders of magnitude greater in Britain and Europe, where very much larger shares of immigrants, from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, are Muslims. Many are quite ready to assimilate to European mores. But many—especially the floods welcome by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel starting in 2015—are not. They want to impose their religion and their culture on the host society, and elite leaders of such nations have been willing to let them do so. An example is the scandal of Britain’s “grooming gangs,” often long-settled immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, who sexually abuse and enslave adolescent working-class English girls. For at least two decades, this oppression has been largely ignored by Britain’s political parties, local and national police forces, national press, and certainly by the TV-set-owner subsidized BBC. This oppression of women and violation of human rights is virtually unknown to American liberals, as the liberal talk show host Bill Maher has pointed out with appropriate indignation. Nor are they aware, despite mention of the practice, that Britain has been arresting thousands of citizens for social media posts that are thought to hurt immigrants’ feelings. European elites, in government and the press, have suppressed news of immigrant violence, even when directed at women and gays. Both center-right and center-left governments have professed themselves unable to reduce the flow of immigrants with cultural attitudes adversarial to European norms. They profess they must obey rulings by international courts and agencies whose personnel are immune to democratic checks. Political parties that campaign for restrictions on immigration are treated as pariahs with which established parties must never allow in coalition governments. This includes Britain’s Reform party, which currently has huge poll leads, and France’s Rassemblement National, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, was blocked from running by a dubious court decision. But her 30-year-old deputy, Jordan Bartella, appears more popular than other parties’ leaders. Germany’s AfD, which is currently tied in the polls, is treated with particular scorn by the two main parties, which, between them, capture less than 50% in polls. Within AfD’s ranks are some with nostalgia for Germany’s Nazi past, and the nation’s leading parties deserve respect for their longstanding commitment to renouncing Nazism and making reparations for the Holocaust. But it’s not apparent that AfD’s policy of restricting the inflow of immigrants, or those of Eastern European democracies like Poland and Hungary, which are decried by unelected European Union leaders, is the moral equivalent of Nazism. Excluding people with different cultures and attitudes from your country is not the moral equivalent of murdering all your Jews. Those leaders who treat the two as morally equivalent are captive to bad ideas. They have been taught to divide the world into oppressors and the oppressed, to cast immigrants as virtuous victims and their own citizens as culpable oppressors. They have been instructed to see colonialism not as a limited chapter in history but as its dominant theme, and to treat its harms as a kind of second Holocaust. From these delusions, most ordinary Americans, including recent legal immigrants and their offspring, and large numbers of ordinary Britons and Europeans, seem happily immune. Perhaps in time, their common sense will dissuade the elites of their “luxury belief” in open borders. 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 Enforcing Immigration Laws Is Not the Moral Equivalent of the Holocaust appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump-trashing elitist media erupted in outrage when President Donald Trump told ABC White House reporter Mary Bruce she was a “terrible person” and “terrible reporter” and ABC was “fake news.” Bruce was throwing hardballs at Trump and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. It’s easy for reporters to tout Bruce as a courageous journalist just doing her job. But they all ignored the other half of the equation: Is this what she did with President Joe Biden? The easy answer is, “A thousand times no”—as in you could probably list a thousand times she repeated everything Team Biden told her to say. Exhibit A came from a Fox News scoop on Sept. 30. Emma Colton reported on a rare Biden press conference on April 26, 2023, in the Rose Garden. Biden had a note card including a thumbnail photo of Bruce, her name, outlet and then two questions. The first concerned his re-election bid: “2024: How do YOU view the path forward? How do YOU think about YOUR place in history?” Bruce’s actual question was similar, if more direct: “You’ve said questions about your age are legitimate and your response is always ‘just watch me,’ but the country is watching, and recent polling shows that 70% of Americans … believe you shouldn’t run again. What do you say to them?” If Bruce told Team Biden in advance what she was going to ask, how does she now pose as fearlessly holding presidents accountable? In fact, Bruce relentlessly repeated Biden happy talk about his mental fitness. In February 2024, when special counsel Robert Hur declared he would not indict Biden for improperly keeping classified documents before he was president because a jury wouldn’t find him mentally fit, Bruce underlined everything was just fine, fine, fine. “Biden’s legal team in a letter saying, quote, ‘We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate,’” she repeated. Then she added her own supportive spin: “But overall, George, I have to tell you, the image that you get of the president that you take away largely mirrors that of his public persona. He staunchly defends his handling of classified material, has detailed recollection of events from years ago. He is very conversational. He even jokes with the committee. And, yes, he does go on some—some lengthy tangents and tends to ramble, as Joe Biden does.” Days later, when the White House physician Kevin O’Connor released a report on Biden’s health, Bruce sounded like state-run TV. Biden’s “doctor says the president is fit to serve” with “no new health concerns over the last year,” and no “mental fitness test” was done because O’Connor “didn’t think it was necessary and the White House argues the president passes a cognitive test every day just by doing his job.” How does that look now? Dr. O’Connor took the Fifth rather than testify to the House Oversight Committee this year, but Bruce didn’t report on that. Then Biden delivered what became his last State of the Union speech, screaming into the House chamber, and Bruce was typically promotional: “This was a feisty speech that, at times, felt more like a rowdy campaign event than a traditional State of the Union address … the president trying to show voters he is ready for a fight and has what it takes to serve another four years.” Team Trump has every reason to call ABC “Fake News,” since it’s become the very worst network for skewing all its coverage to favor the Democrats. Biden & Co. never called Mary Bruce a “terrible reporter.” She gave them everything they wanted. 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 ABC’s Mary Bruce Wasn’t a Courageous Reporter on Declining Biden appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Even self-described far-left State Department employees are happy about Secretary Marco Rubio’s latest move to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to an unofficial State Department Reddit page reviewed by The Daily Signal. “I’m a believer in DEIA and pretty far to the left,” one person who claimed to be a foreign service member wrote on Reddit. “However, the way it was practiced in DoS was completely performative and was actively discriminatory.” The Daily Signal found the post on a Reddit page for “individuals who work for or aspire to work for the U.S. Foreign Service.” The Reddit is not endorsed or supported in any way by the U.S. State Department. The posts refer to Rubio offering restitution to State Department employees who the Trump administration found were denied promotions during the Biden administration for not meeting new DEI standards. Roughly 295 employees who were marked down for not showing they would “seek diversity in staff” will now receive pay increases, administrative promotions, and letters of commendation, Rubio said. “I heard multiple country teams and hiring panels give preference to based on DEIA categories and had better qualified people lose out,” one post from someone claiming to be a Foreign Service officer says. “For example if the top choice for a position was a white male and the second was a POC, we were told by leadership to go with the POC specifically for DEIA.” “The scoring for promotion was also crazy,” the post continued. “I had a direct report regularly spewing racist and sexist crap. I went through the EXTREMELY painful process to hold that person accountable. I also terminated a local staff for racist actions and held trainings for my staff on multiculturalism and respectful workplace. I was also a EEO coordinator and dealt with numerous issues there. I got a 3.5. My friend organized a multicultural lunchtime potluck and a GLIFA happy hour (in a country that is extremely open and friendly to LGTBQ+) and got a 4.5. That kind of BS is what gave the right-wing ammo to point at the excesses of DEIA and completely destroy the idea of DEIA in the department.” Another person posted that he or she was not affected personally but had a co-worker who was passed over due to DEI considerations. “I was not affected personally by the changes announced yesterday, but I have at least one coworker who claims they would have been promoted in 2024 had they scored higher on the DEIA precept,” the post said. Another self-proclaimed Foreign Service officer identified himself or herself as “a big supporter of diversity initiatives that are actually implemented correctly.” “I was recommended but not promoted in 2023. In 2024 I was mid ranked,” the person posted. “In one of those years (can’t recall), when we got the breakdown of scores, all of my scores were above the promotion average, but I had an abysmal DEIA score, despite documenting efforts. I don’t qualify for the administrative action announced unless I happen to be one of the 13 mentioned at the end – I’m guessing those are specifically identified BFFs. But I am very happy for everyone who is getting promoted after throwing out the ludicrous DEIA score. It is well deserved.” A State Department political appointee told The Daily Signal they were “glad to see that employees from both the left and the right saw how crazy the DEI policies were at the State Department.” The post Even Far-Left State Department Employees Celebrate Rubio’s Anti-DEI Move appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a euphemism for a rigid racialist theology. It deductively postulates that a large percentage of the population is oppressed by racism and sexism, mostly by white males. DEI makes no allowance for the class or wealth of the alleged victims or their supposed victimizers. So once that rigid party line is set, it cannot account for tens of millions of affluent and privileged non-white Americans or like numbers of poor and non-privileged whites. Absurdities and ridicule must then follow. One example is the spectacle of former First Lady Michelle Obama on her current book tour. Mrs. Obama cannot finish an interview without whining about the racism she allegedly encountered as the once most influential and powerful woman in the United States. According to Michelle, she was not given the exemptions that other white first ladies received. She did not get enough free stuff for the First Family. She had to hire three stylists daily to straighten her hair to meet “white” expectations—as if also Asians and Hispanics do not have straight hair, or many whites do not have hard-to-comb curly hair. Indeed, she now claims blacks cannot even swim because of white-induced pressures to maintain dry and straight hair. Because her DEI creed ignores class and wealth, Michelle has no idea how absurd she sounds. She and husband, former President Barack Obama, own three estates in addition to their former Chicago home, together valued somewhere around $40 million. Their net worth is estimated at between $70 million and $100 million. They fly private, surrounded by a throng of Secret Service guardians. The more Michelle clings to the fossilized dogma of unchanging racial victimization, the more she becomes ridiculous or offensive. Trump Derangement Syndrome is another rigid ideology that deductively mandates that Donald Trump is evil and thus must be exposed as such by any means necessary. Sometimes, such Pavlovian hatred so blinds the Left to evidence that it becomes oblivious to its own suicidal choices. Take the “Epstein files.” For four years, the Joe Biden administration had no desire to release any names that appeared in the thousands of the infamous Jeffrey Epstein’s emails and text messages under its control. To the extent that Trump’s name leaked out of the files, most had agreed on the mostly innocuous circumstances of the references. There was not just a lack of evidence that Trump was ever entrapped by the spider-like Epstein’s blackmail webs. In fact, eventually, Trump ostracized Epstein well before he was convicted and jailed. Had he been compromised, the Democrats—who raided the Trump home, tried to de-ballot him, and used lawfare to drag him into five different local, state, and federal courtrooms—would have released the files in a nanosecond. So when Trump continued the prior Biden policy of keeping the files private, the Left mindlessly shouted that the hated Trump must be hiding his own culpability. They shrilly demanded that he release all the files—without a second thought about the reasons why their fellow Democrats had previously kept them private. So a compliant but cagey Trump has begun releasing the trove of documents. The evidence does not reveal any new Trump bombshells. Instead, there are lots of new references to the Democrats, like the former Harvard President Larry Summers. A Democrat member of Congress, Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, is exposed in the files as a partisan, compliant tool of the predator Epstein. In her hatred of Trump, the files show Plaskett texting for live prompts from the odious Epstein as he tutors her on how best to coax a congressional witness to demonize none other than Trump. Was there not a single cool Democrat head who could have seen where the party’s obsessions with Trump were headed? Similarly, Democrats embrace climate-change orthodoxy—regardless of the obvious contradictions and paradoxes that follow. Climate change religion exposes Democrat grandees like the shore-residing Obamas, the jet-setting Al Gore and John Kerry, and the multi-estate-owning Nancy Pelosi. All fly on private jets. They heat and cool with fossil fuels their various energy-guzzling huge homes—while demanding hoi polloi turn down their air conditioners or give up their diesel pickups. But even green guru billionaire Bill Gates has become conflicted and a climate apostate. Why? Wind and solar “renewables” will never supply left-wing techies like Gates the additional 100 gigawatts of electrical generation per year that they need to fulfill their lucrative artificial intelligence dreams. Nor does climate orthodoxy make allowances for vastly more U.S. oil and gas production to supply a left-wing, but energy-short Europe, or to flood the world with cheap energy to bankrupt Vladimir Putin’s oil and gas exporting Russia. The problem with a party line is that it is deductive, not inductive. Ideology makes facts fit dogmas, rather than evidence leading empirically to conclusions. So inflexible cults like climate-change orthodoxy, DEI, and Trump Derangement Syndrome make their adherents look utterly ridiculous. (C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Embarrassments of Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.