Hobson was an English horse dealer who famously gave customers only one horse to pick from, hence Hobson’s Choice. The expression sums up the mayoral contests in many American cities. In Los Angeles, voters can choose between incumbent Karen Bass, whose “friend and mentor” was a Communist, or Nithya Raman, who “has been aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America” and is compared to fellow ethnic-Indian immigrant Zohran Mamdani, New York’s Mayor. As Jeff Blehar from National Review explained, “California’s election system … is rotten to its core and has reduced California politics to a mere test of activist strength between warring factions of the Democratic Party—who can turn out more ballots from homebound, largely disengaged voters, the ultimate insider’s game.” Sounds like Washington, D.C., where voters have just chosen Councilmember Janeese Lewis George as Democratic nominee for mayor in November. The District of Columbia Council of 13 has 11 Democrats and 2 supposed “independents.” Given that 92% of registered District of Columbia voters are Democrats, that means George is our next mayor. So, what are we in for? Pundits considered current mayor Muriel Bowser a moderate in her 12 years running the District of Columbia, but she was hardly that. Bowser tolerated riots and mayhem in the name of BLM in 2020, because “[t]here is a lot of distrust of police and the government.” She pushed for the District of Columbia to become a state. And Bowser created the District of Columbia’s Office of Racial Equity, with the goal of “eliminating racial and ethnic equity gaps.” This is a DEI-infused approach of blaming all disparities between ethnic groups in terms of crime, education, and wealth on racial discrimination, to the exclusion of all factors, and correcting it through preferential treatment. Bowser blew a brief increase in tax revenue on a menu of social spending that led to a projected billion-dollar budget deficit in her last year. However, she avoided fiscal ruin by raising taxes and cutting programs. Despite her electorate’s opposition to Donald Trump, Bowser also avoided direct confrontations that could have ended the city’s Home Rule, which dates back to the Nixon administration. And her administration reluctantly cleaned up a few parks that had been overrun with encamped vagrants since COVID-19. (I was hoping the one near me would reopen to taxpayers, but it has been fenced off, and its benches are now overgrown with grass … at least the rats have somewhere to play). Don’t look for such restraint and realism from Lewis George, who “has promised an aggressive approach” to relations with Trump. Lewis George is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, like Mamdani and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Today’s Democratic Party is not the one Bill Clinton ran in the 1990s. On issues from crime and immigration to welfare, the party’s present positions have moved far to the left. On abortion, many mainstream Democrats went from “safe, legal and rare” to no limits at all. On immigration, they went from the bipartisan 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act to calling for the abolition of immigration enforcement—which means open borders and no deportations. On welfare, they went from Clinton’s signature Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, to calling critics of massive Medicaid fraud racists. But if the Democrats have gone left, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are still much further to the left yet. As the City Journal explains, the DSA platform released in June commits them to “scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’” Oh, and they want to name Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state, abolish the Electoral College, and nationalize private property. Of course, individual DSA elected officials can differ with the national platform, but why call themselves DSA instead of Democrats unless they are with it in spirit? Lewis George’s career so far shows her sympathies with the DSA agenda. She opposes a curfew to keep riotous teens at home and off Washington’s streets. During the campaign, she pledged not to attend “events focused on obfuscating the realities of occupation or promoting Zionism and apartheid.” She wants Washington, D.C.—the seat of the federal government—to end all cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the branch of the federal Department of Homeland Security that is tasked with enforcing immigration law. Lewis George is a strong supporter of District of Columbia statehood. I wrote in 2024 the obvious five reasons why the federal District of Columbia should never be a state, starting with the Constitution and then the city’s failure to educate its children, or control corruption, crime, and vagrancy. If, as expected, Lewis George becomes mayor, we can expect her to double down on socialist policies that have been proven to fail, time after time, in country after country. A fifth of the city is on food stamps. Forty percent are on Medicaid. They’ll always vote, if they vote at all, to keep the taps flowing. Those of us who pay for it all are stuck with Hobson’s Choice of socialists.

Thursday morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, announcing a six-month review of American force posture and funding relating to NATO as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to build “NATO 3.0.” In 2026, the U.S. is forced by geopolitical necessity to prioritize deterring China, a monumental effort that will require a shift in resources and a change in force posture, with the U.S. moving forces and funding into the Pacific. Despite this, the U.S. has security and economic reasons to care about the future of Europe and is pushing for a revitalized and reshaped alliance in the form of NATO 3.0. It is no secret that there has been legitimate debate in Washington about America’s future role in NATO, largely stemming from Europe’s larger and wealthier nations dismissing their own national security interests since the end of the Cold War. Maintaining continued American engagement partially depends on the sovereign decisions of European allies, as demonstrations of European commitment to collective security in Europe make the case to Americans that Europeans are taking their own security seriously and that European NATO members are capable and committed allies of the U.S. in advancing shared security goals. Some European NATO members are already doing more for their own security and deserve credit. Many NATO countries, especially the Baltic states, Nordic states, Poland, and Germany, are significantly increasing their defense spending and moving toward the new defense spending target ahead of schedule while also making significant shifts in planning and force posture that demonstrate real commitment to collective deterrence. Other NATO countries, notably those in Southern Europe (and especially Spain), continue to lag behind in defense spending and serious commitments to taking more responsibility for European security. Parts of Western Europe, like the United Kingdom, meet their spending targets but have deeply concerning problems with readiness and maintenance. Improving Atlantic security through burden-sharing will serve the U.S. by positioning it to pivot to the Pacific while ensuring that its NATO allies can provide most of their own conventional deterrence and defense. The Heritage Foundation’s special report “NATO 3.0 and American Security Strategy in Europe” advocates reducing the total number of troops in Europe but moving the troops that remain east, shifting a brigade of American soldiers from Germany to Poland. At the same time, it recommends that European allies permanently station more troops in the Baltic states and to procure more airpower, warships, and strategic airlift and refueling capabilities to account for U.S. shifts to the Pacific. The American nuclear umbrella provided as part of U.S. membership in NATO is especially critical, given the huge imbalance between the large Russian nuclear arsenal and the small nuclear arsenals of the UK and France. Without the U.S., Russia would almost certainly engage in nuclear blackmail against countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland. The Heritage Foundation has therefore advocated for increasing the number of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe even as conventional troop commitments are reduced. This shift in resources and forces is not a matter of preference but a geopolitical necessity given the economic and military rise of China. The U.S. military is not currently prioritizing deterring the rise of the People’s Republic of China, although China has publicly warned about its plans to invade Taiwan and clearly seeks hegemony in Asia. A NATO in which European allies provide most conventional deterrence is one in which the U.S. has fewer security concerns in the Atlantic region and can focus on the Pacific. A militarily strong Europe capable of defending its sovereign interests is in the national interest of the U.S., and America should promote European military capability so that European allies can take the lead in their own collective defense. The stronger America’s European allies are, the safer the Atlantic world will be, and the success of this vision for NATO 3.0 is critical to ensuring that the transatlantic alliance endures to the mutual benefit of Americans and Europeans.

Leaders of Georgia’s Republican-controlled Legislature on Wednesday announced they will not redraw the state’s district maps this year despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that said race-based gerrymandering is unconstitutional. Recently, some lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly argued in favor of drawing new district lines for the 2028 elections following the high court ruling. Gov. Brian Kemp added it to the agenda for the special legislative session that began on Wednesday. However, in a statement released on Wednesday, Senate President Pro Tem Larry Walker III explained that the Legislature would not tackle the issue at this time. “We believe it is prudent to allow the judicial process to continue developing in other states and to carefully evaluate how courts rule on newly adopted district maps across the country,” he said. “With this guidance, we are confident that Georgia’s new districts will ultimately withstand legal scrutiny and that Georgia will prevail in defending its position in court.” “For these reasons, the Senate sent a letter to Governor Kemp informing him that redistricting will not be taken up during this Special Legislative Session,” Walker added. Instead, lawmakers will spend the session focusing on issues such as property tax relief, ratifying the suspension of the state gas tax, and election integrity. Lawmakers also face a July 1 deadline for whether to remove QR codes from ballots as required by a prior law. A bill was introduced on Wednesday to extend the deadline to 2028 due to administrative confusion in the middle of this year’s election cycle. Georgia began using the codes in 2020 to count ballots. The decision comes amid several legal cases that lack a verdict in Georgia, as well as in other states that have been reassessing their maps following the Louisiana v. Callais decision. The Supreme Court stated that “lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s precedents in a way that forces states to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.” Kemp has argued for the unconstitutionality of Georgia’s current district maps, redrawn in 2023, following the high court’s ruling. However, he admitted governors do not have the authority to force legislators to create new maps. The Daily Signal reached out to state Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, for comment regarding redistricting in Georgia. A spokesperson for Merritt responded, “She [Merritt] strongly believes that it should be something that the state senators come together and agree upon, when it comes to redistricting, and that should be based on the census that we conduct every 10 years, not by any personal interest.” House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican, echoed this sentiment when discussing the future of the state and what issues affect Georgians most at this time—not “partisan gain.” The debate between lawmakers has raised a discussion about the role race should play, if any, when it comes to redistricting. Walker said lawmakers will continue to monitor the redistricting process in other states, such as Alabama and Tennessee, which have sought to reconfigure their maps consisting of certain majority-Black districts. In South Carolina, legislators considered redistricting but ultimately chose to drop the matter. Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, a Democrat, noted resistance from Georgians, which he claims pressured Republicans to abandon their hopes for redistricting.

A 35-year-old woman was found wasting away to skin and bones on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, barely conscious on the floor of a fetid tent, nodding in and out amid the fentanyl haze. She died on June 17, 2026, in a hospital bed of meningitis and sepsis triggered by terminal malnutrition. Her body surrendered.  The woman was Daveigh Chase, the voice of Disney’s beloved Lilo in “Lilo & Stitch,” and the nightmare Samara crawling from the well in “The Ring.” She had millions in unclaimed residuals from her child stardom sitting untouched in accounts because she was “too far gone” on heroin and fentanyl. Her longtime manager, John Ryan, and stepsister, Gaia Brown, had hired a private investigator months earlier after videos of her on Skid Row surfaced. They raced to intervene, but by then it was too late. Talent, youth, money, love—everything the homelessness industry swears the desperate lack—none of it could save her. Daveigh Chase’s tragedy is a real and brutal case study in the lethal failure of progressive compassion. Would LA Mayor Karen Bass’s taxpayer-funded dentures have saved her?  Bass insists meth addicts “can’t succeed without teeth” and pushes public dental programs so the toothless can flash a smile at their next job interview. Give them comprehensive dental care, she says, and watch them waltz into employment and self-respect. Yet Daveigh Chase once had the perfect Hollywood smile, the perfect voice, and the perfect resume—everything Bass claims the unhoused lack—and she still ended up skeletal and septic in a Skid Row tent. A smile does not fix a brain hijacked by fentanyl. Would a job have saved her?  Progressives love to say the homeless “just need a job” and a little opportunity. Chase already had the Hollywood resume, the industry connections most Americans could only dream of, and millions in the bank. Addiction had long since burned away the last remnants of discipline, reliability, and the will to show up for life itself. Would “housing first” and a subsidized apartment have saved her?  With millions in residuals, she could have bought stability many times over. The money existed. She chose—or illness compelled her toward—the streets. Unconditional housing for the actively addicted becomes just a nicer place to use and isolate until the body gives out. Would harm reduction—clean needles, test strips, cash cards—have saved her?  Decades of that approach in California turned Skid Row into an open-air fentanyl supermarket. Chase had access to whatever she wanted on those streets. The paraphernalia didn’t restore her; it sustained the spiral that left her hospitalized for starvation before the infections finished the job. For years, blue-city progressives have peddled the soothing fiction that homelessness stems from a shortage of housing, cash, and “dignity.” California has squandered billions on unconditional apartments, dental programs, needle exchanges, and Prop 47’s decriminalization of hard drugs. The results? Exploding tent cities, sidewalks turned sewers, and a former child star with millions, still dying emaciated on camera. If these solutions work, why did a woman with millions die skeletal and septic while her residuals gathered dust?  The addicted brain is not a rational actor waiting for better incentives. It is hijacked—prioritizing dope over dignity, food, or future. Progressive policy refuses to admit this, preferring performative empathy that enables until the obituary is written. The Left’s sacred rule that we must never “criminalize homelessness” shows how upside-down the morality has become. Letting a talented young woman decompose publicly on Skid Row, muttering to phantoms, is not liberty. It is state-sanctioned slow suicide.  We commit the suicidal. We restrain the delirious. We quarantine the contagious. But the fentanyl zombie injecting in broad daylight? Her “autonomy” is sacred. Daveigh Chase was exactly the kind of person progressives insist should never end up homeless: a millionaire child star with substantial earnings, industry connections, and a devoted support network that refused to give up on her. Yet even she died skeletal and septic in a Skid Row tent. Even her own manager and family understood that only forced treatment and rehab could have saved her. They tried desperately, planning to stabilize her in Los Angeles before flying her to a treatment facility in Costa Rica, but by the time they reached Skid Row, she had disappeared. They were too late. Addiction destroyed her, while progressive ideology made sure nothing stopped it. Bass’ denture diplomacy and the endless liturgy of more tents and needles only mock her memory. How many more Daveigh Chases must waste away before progressives finally abandon their delusion?  Homelessness has become a subsidized lifestyle under their policies. This is a medical and moral emergency. Progressive policies do not merely tolerate this misery, they subsidize it with cash, housing, needles, and zero accountability. Forced treatment is not cruelty; it is the recognition that some lost souls cannot choose life until the state compels detox, medication, structure, and accountability. Anything less is performative compassion with body bags as the finale. Daveigh deserved rescue. So do the thousands still haunting our cities. The time for pretending is over. It’s time to trade platitudes for intervention—before the next viral video becomes another preventable tragedy. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Social activism among corporate elites isn’t going away, but the Trump administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission have a solution to curb the influence of Wall Street’s largest asset managers, a conservative policy group argues. The Bull Moose Project says that, in the past, the investment firms BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street amassed significant control over shareholder votes through their dominance of passive index funds and used that influence to advance environmental, social, and governance initiatives and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies while wielding outsized power through shareholder proxy voting. However, the group contends that current decision makers at these investment firms are likely to steer these initiatives in the future if they remain in positions of influence. “Many executives at these firms are major Democratic donors, and that’s their right. They may be cozying up to the current administration. But ESG hasn’t gone away,” Aiden Buzzetti, president of The Bull Moose Foundation, told the Daily Signal. The firms collectively own about one-quarter of the U.S. stock market and are the largest single shareholder in about 90% of S&P 500 companies, according to a Bull Moose Project report titled “The Corporate Voting Cartel: How to Stop Wall Street Weaponization of Americans’ Retirement Plans.” “[F]earing scrutiny from the Trump administration and Republican Congress, the Big Three have temporarily backed away from much of their overtly pro-ESG and pro-DEI voting behavior,” the report says. “But the same biased personnel remain entrenched within the firms’ stewardship teams, with the same conviction that they have every right to weaponize their customers’ investment dollars to advance radical agendas when the time is ripe.” President Donald Trump signed an executive order in December on “Protecting American Investors from Foreign-Owned and Politically-Motivated Proxy Advisors.” The order largely targeted proxy advisory firms such as Glass, Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services, which offer voting recommendations to shareholders in public companies. It did not address direct asset managers, and more action should be taken, The Bull Moose Project says. Buzzetti said he is “fairly confident” the Trump administration and the SEC will take action.  “Just as some Republican state legislatures have banned DEI and critical race theory long term, we think it’s important to block ESG for the long term,” Buzzetti said. The report names Tanya Levy-Odom, BlackRock’s head of investment stewardship of the Americas, who has authored articles focused on ESG and DEI. It also names State Street’s Americas head of asset stewardship, Holly Fetter, who discussed “wealth redistribution, economic and racial justice” in a 2018 podcast and is an advisory council member with the Clayman Institute of Gender Research at Stanford University. The firms have countered that they focus on getting the best return on investments for their customers, not on political concerns. “Vanguard does not have a house view on corporate governance nor do our funds vote in a uniform manner,” Netanel Spero, a spokesperson for Vanguard, told the Daily Signal in a written statement. “Proxy voting for Vanguard funds is managed, depending on the company in question, by the respective third-party managers, separate stewardship teams representing the two internal Vanguard investment managers, and via Vanguard Investor Choice.” BlackRock declined to comment for this story, but referenced its annual report, which said it is “legally required to make proxy voting determinations on behalf of clients who have delegated voting authority to us in a manner that is consistent with their investment objectives.” It further states proxy votes are cast on a “financial materiality-based approach and are focused solely on advancing clients’ long-term financial interests.” BlackRock also points to a report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a conservative economic group that opposes ESG. The report examined 600 investment management companies on 50 ESG proposals in 2024. BlackRock was among the 11 that received an “A” rating. A State Street spokesperson declined to comment. The Bull Moose Project report recommends the SEC issue guidance encouraging or requiring “mirror voting,” in which passive index fund managers would vote their shares in the same proportion as active investors at shareholder meetings. “Asset managers are signaling they are backing off ESG and social activism for now, but the reason we are pushing for mirror voting is because when a Democratic administration eventually takes power, they will eventually utilize that power,” Buzzetti said. The report explains under “mirror voting,” if active shareholders supported a proposal by a 55%-45% margin, passive funds would automatically cast their votes in the same ratio. “Mirror voting simply holds passive funds to their own sales pitch: mirroring the market, not distorting it,” the report notes. The topic of mirror voting came up at an early June SEC Investor Advisory Committee meeting. Among the examples cited in the report is the 2021 proxy fight at Exxon Mobil. All three asset managers voted to back the environmental hedge fund Engine No. 1’s successful effort to add two members to the Exxon Mobil board of directors.