Happy Ma’s Day! Really, I don’t think I ever called the woman who bore me “Mother” or “Mom.” But what I would call her is one of a kind.Like so many moms, Helen borrowed heavily from the “Official Book of Motherly Mantras.” For example, I stood perpetually accused of “Air Conditioning All of Oxon Hill” when I’d leave a door open during summer. My room was also routinely compared to a “Pig Sty”—though I’m fairly confident that Dad’s Jersey Girl never set foot on a farm. And, of course, all debate was quelched with a stern “Because I Said So.” However, Ma had a way of speaking all her own, still retaining her Jersey attitude even 40, 50, 60 years after moving to the warm gentility of Southern Maryland. She scribed her own Book of Ma. Ma on Gifts and Holidays Ma had little use for gifts. She was minimalist before minimalist was cool. Ma cleared the house of trinkets and items with the efficiency of the U.S. Army clearing out Venezuelan soldiers. Try asking her what she wanted for her birthday, Christmas, or Mother’s Day, and she’d make a face. “Nuthin’. Every Day’s the Same as the Next.” You’d push. “C’mon. You gotta want something.” Another face. Another mantra: “If I Can’t Eat It, Wear It, or Spend It, I Don’t Want It.” Ma on Booze In her later years, my nephew cracked the code that would get Ma to come to … and stay … at family functions. Have a martini ready when she arrived, plus a promise from my brother-in-law to take her home the minute she wanted to go. Me? I wasn’t into alcohol. I was into soda. A Cokehead, you might say. I could gulp down half a gallon a day, which would infuriate my mother when she’d have a rare craving for Coke and find the fridge and pantry empty. In response, Ma took to hiding soda in her bedroom closet. My form of youthful rebellion? Sneaking some of that soda, like a thief siphoning off gasoline. Responded my Ma, “Why Don’t You Drink Beer Like Other Kids?!” One day, years after I’d switched to drinking diet soda, was buying soda any time I wanted, and lived 3,000 miles away, I came home for a visit. Ma asked me to get something out of her closet. I went. Tucked deep in the corner was a 2-liter bottle of Coke.“Ma, what are you doing? I don’t drink Coke anymore.”“Not Taking Any Chances.” Ma on Dating Ma was clear and blunt when it came to any topic under the sun … except for some reason, my dating habits. For example, she never expressed how much she adored and respected my college girlfriend and hoped we would be married. (Well, until about a week before she married someone else. “Now you tell me?!”) I eventually learned Ma’s love language was cooking. If she urged someone to have dinner, that was the sign I’d picked a winner.However, I also learned her not-so-love language. I’d introduce her to some new woman, then later ask, “How’d you like her?”  She’d respond with the mantra, “I Never Judge on First Impressions.”This, I eventually came to understand, meant, “My first impression is … LOSER.” There was one exception to the rule. She absolutely did not like that I was close to a particular woman from the neighborhood. Let’s call her Wendy. Ma calls me one day in California and offers to pay to fly me home for a visit. “Sure!” I say.“Only one condition. You don’t see Wendy.”“What if I pay half and see her once?” I joked.My mother turned into Tommy Lee Jones from “The Fugitive.”“I Don’t Bargain.” Ma on Children When it came to children, my mother would act the curmudgeon. I say “act” because one suspects even after decades it was hard for Ma to experience grandchildren and great-grandchildren without my father being there with her. When asked why she wasn’t the typical cooing, doting, “Please let me babysit”-type grandmother, she’d say, “I Raised My Kids.” Not that she didn’t love her grandkids and great-grandkids and was proud of them. She just put it in her own way in another of her mantras: “Anyone Can Procreate. But Getting a Degree is a Real Accomplishment.” Toward the end of her life, Ma greatly warmed up to her growing number of great-grandchildren. She lit up talking about one newcomer so brightly she nearly burnt my retinas.Which is why I believe this Ma’s Day she’d be tickled to know her first great-grandchild—she’s got a nursing degree, Ma—just gave birth my mother’s first great-great-grandchild.The generations roll on. Emily is now a mother herself, on her way to becoming a “ma.” She will quote from the same Official Book of Motherly Mantras and eventually craft her own Book of Ma. Meanwhile within little baby Addie is the blood of my mother. In fact, in an adorable picture posted for her one-month birthday, I swear I can see Ma’s eyes in that precious and beautiful round face. A look that says, “Be warned: I’m gonna do things my way … and I’m not gonna suffer fools.”And that’s my prayer this Ma’s Day: that Ma’s newest descendant will have the same strength, honesty, heart, and humor as that smart mouth from Jersey.  Oh, and won’t steal soda. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Brittany Baldwin, executive director of the White House Task Force 250, previewed an upcoming event designed to tell the story “of God’s hand in America throughout 250 years, and to rededicate our nation as one nation under God.” Rededicate250, scheduled for May 17, will feature speeches from politicians and faith leaders reflecting on God’s faithfulness throughout American history. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R‑La., will lead the rededication. “It is a powerful statement that the Trump administration celebrates our Judeo‑Christian roots and the fact that that has enabled our society to flourish in a plethora of ways, including respecting religious liberty of Americans of all religions,” Baldwin said. The event will include video messages from President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as a talk from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on George Washington as a leader and man of God. Asked what viewers can expect from Trump’s video, Baldwin said he will likely discuss the role religion has played throughout the country’s history and the importance of Americans of faith continuing to strengthen the nation. “I think he’ll most likely talk about how religion has always played an important role in our country, and how we need Americans of faith to continue to strengthen and sustain our country, and that under his leadership they’re no longer being persecuted, but instead are being embraced and strengthened,” she said. The event will also feature musical performances by various choirs and individual artists. Participating college choirs include Hillsdale College, Liberty University, and Grand Canyon University. Rededicate250 will recount God’s hand in American history while acknowledging “the miracle still in our midst,” Baldwin said. “You’ll have a couple people testify to personal testimonies of God still working,” she said. “And then the final section will be a new birth of faith and freedom.” The event will conclude with a worship concert by Christian artist Chris Tomlin. Americans will be able to participate both in person and virtually. “First, they can attend the event, and we would welcome their attendance,” Baldwin said. “If they’re not able to attend in person for whatever reason, they can join through their own church or faith community.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Trump administration is advancing policies to reduce the burden of child care costs on low-income families, The Daily Signal has learned. The Administration of Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, will issue a combination of new rules and guidance to states in order to empower parents in their children’s day care options.  “We want to address what is a major cost crunch for a lot of families with young children,” a White House official told The Daily Signal. “Child care eats up a pretty significant chunk of a family’s budget. In some cases, it can compete with the cost of rent or a mortgage, student debt. It’s a significant payment.”  The new child care policy package seeks to reduce regulations so providers can run their businesses more efficiently, so they could pass the savings on to American families. For instance, the guidance will eliminate degree and credit-hour requirements for teachers, shifting instead to competency-based standards. Mandatory staff-to-child ratios and group-size limits will be replaced so that parents can make those choices for themselves.  The Trump administration’s goal is to increase parent-directed child care by restoring flexibility to states and encouraging greater use of vouchers. “We want to encourage choice and competition for parents through the promotion of voucherization, and we want to ensure that to the maximum extent possible, faith-based and community neighborhood-based providers, including home-based providers, are able to participate in these programs on equal footing,” the official said. Licensing restrictions can hold back faith-based providers, according to the official. The guidance aims to put faith-based providers on equal footing with larger ones. “[Licensing restrictions] operate as a form of regulatory capture from some of the larger center-based child care providers in ways that can box out faith-based providers that just don’t have access to the same resources, don’t have as much capital, or the same pool of labor to necessarily be able to tap,” the official said.  The notice of proposed rule making will be finalized in the next week. Governors and state legislatures will also receive letters urging them to carry out the reforms in a way that benefits local residents.  While Congress holds the majority of the power to impact child care costs, ACF is able to amend regulations and the administration of federal programs, including Head Start, Child Care and Development Fund, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.  The Trump administration is also working to support stay-at-home parents through the guidance. Currently, the work requirements for married couples under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program are stricter than they are for single parents, making it more difficult for low-income parents to choose to stay home with their kids. Through subregulatory guidance, ACF will clarify for states that married couples can share the work requirements.  “There are a lot of families, particularly low-income families, who may not necessarily want to drop their child off at a center-based child care provider, or any child care provider, and would prefer to stay at home,” the official said. “We’re trying to increase the amount of flexibility that low-income families can receive to have a part- or full-time stay-at-home parent to watch their child within the home.”  The guidance eliminates the 7% co-payment requirement on federal child care programs and encourages states to maximize lawful transfers from TANF and Social Services Block Grants into the Child Care and Development Fund in order to expand access to the fund’s vouchers and reduce waitlists.  “We want to also clarify that federal law does not require states to disadvantage state-law-approved child care models, just so long as basic health, safety, and integrity standards are met,” the official said.  The policy package has been a collaborative effort between the Office of Management and Budget, the White House, and ACF. The president’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposed a set of reform principles for Head Start, and the policy changes are consistent with those, the official said.  Alex Adams, assistant secretary for ACF, told The Daily Signal in April that he has cut 36,000 pages of regulation.

Are America’s college students doing to themselves what the Chinese Communist state does to its citizens? An Ivy League professor—an old-fashioned liberal who actually cares about free speech—recently warned me about what’s happening in classrooms like his. He encourages class discussion of the great books he teaches in class—but students are afraid to speak, not because they’re afraid of the professor but because they fear each other. Communist regimes have tried to stamp out dissent for more than a century. Tyrants and totalitarians have always tried to sow suspicion among their subjects, turning friends, neighbors, and even family members into informers against anyone who won’t conform to the party line. That’s the scenario in George Orwell’s dystopian classic “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and it’s the intention behind China’s insidious “social credit” system today. What Orwell never imagined, though, was that young men and women in a free society would one day willingly impose “political correctness” on their peers—and use the 21st century’s decentralized social media to do it. Students, the professor told me, are afraid to be recorded on their classmates’ cellphones talking about politics and political philosophy—the subjects he teaches—and don’t want to disagree with their fellow students about anything because the person they’re arguing with might belong to a “disadvantaged” group. It’s not only what you say that’s dangerous, but whom you say it to. A young man getting into an argument with a young woman, or a white student with a black student, is not a “good look” on social media, and a classroom conversation runs the risk of leading to an online inquisition. Conservative students, who often have to face ostracism for their dissenting views, might be less intimidated than liberals and progressives, who aren’t used to not fitting in. All too many liberals have also been conditioned from a young age, both at home and in school, to believe that good-faith argument about serious subjects is inherently offensive—you might hurt the feelings of the person you’re arguing with. Better to remain silent, even if the professor urges you to speak up. Communists in the 20th century used very heavy-handed tactics to punish dissidents, but the more groups like the independent, Catholic-inspired labor unions of Poland’s Solidarity movement were harassed, the more they resisted. What’s terrifying about the new self-imposed social control in America is that it’s more effective using less coercive and more decentralized techniques. And the effect is a kind of brainwashing, no less than what Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, suffers in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love at the end of “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Once young men and women get used to censoring themselves and their defensive crouch becomes permanent, they don’t need to be punished anymore: their thoughtcrimes will have been stopped before they can begin. This American-style social credit system is what happens when pervasive technology combines with an ideology that claims to be about compassion and tolerance—but that really uses those noble-sounding principles as a pretext for enforcing submission. That part Orwell did anticipate: There’s a reason Big Brother’s inquisition is called the Ministry of Love. Anecdotes aren’t data—maybe my professor friend has just had an unusually passive set of students for the past 10 or 15 years. Yet plenty of other indications support what he tells me. A study published in Science last month by researchers at Stanford University, for example, found one-third of American teens prefer turning to AI for “serious conversations” rather than engaging with another human being. This was a study of artificial intelligence’s people-pleasing bias—it tells users what they want to hear. It doesn’t argue, contradict or hurt anyone’s feelings, “even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors,” the study’s “editor’s summary” noted. “The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement,” the report’s abstract concluded. That might be said about today’s liberalism as an ideology, too—it may sound agreeable and nice, but adopting it leads to harm, including the psychological damage that politically left-wing people report experiencing at much higher levels than conservatives. Fragility, bitterness, timidity—these are the fruits of the orthodoxy America’s elite has embraced, and which its children enforce against outliers with vigilante zeal. The victim mentality has become an excuse for bullying. And rather than confront it, many young people find it easier to make friends with an AI. Social isolation is socialism’s greatest ally, while the kinds of community the Communists could never stamp out, not with all the power of Soviet tyranny, are the secret to freedom’s survival. Something as simple as a robust debate in class strikes a blow against Big Brother—and Little Brother with his snooping cellphone. 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.

Fox News continues to celebrate America’s 250th birthday with the upcoming release of a new book by “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. In her book “All American Patriotism,” the author offers a collection of stories and photos highlighting the nation’s greatness as seen through the eyes of family, friends, and co-workers. “It’s a love letter to the country, but it was also great to learn so much about my Fox family who I love and feel so blessed every day to be a part of,” Campos-Duffy told The Daily Signal. Rachel Campos-Duffy’s new book, "All-American Patriotism," is the powerful reminder we need — stories from the Fox News family, stunning photos of our natural wonders, anthems, and founding documents that celebrate who we truly are, with a foreword from Erika Kirk… pic.twitter.com/r2BFB42kxY— Fox News Flash (@FoxNews_Flash) April 14, 2026 Set to be released on May 19, “All American Patriotism” includes a foreword by Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA and the widow of the late Charlie Kirk. It also features personal reflections from her husband, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and many of Fox News Media’s favorite TV personalities. A few names readers will recognize include Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt, Jesse Waters, Sean Hannity, Bill Hemmer, Dana Perino, and more. Their chapters deliver heartfelt, personal stories of what America means to them and their families. “As America celebrates her 250th birthday, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that we’re facing an identity crisis. My hope is that this collection of stories from patriotic members of my FOX family reminds us of who we are,” Campos-Duffy said in a press release. “We are the descendants of conquistadors, pilgrims, rebels, freedom-loving revolutionaries, Indian chiefs, pioneers, outlaws, emancipated slaves, missionaries, and rugged cowboys,” she continued. “As we mark our 250th anniversary, may these stories serve as a celebration—of the people, the resilience, and the spirit that have made us the greatest nation in human history on the face of the Earth.” The book launch comes as the Duffy family participates in “The Great American Road Trip,” a limited five-part series showing all 11 members of her family taking a cross-country road trip. “To love America is to see America,” Duffy tells President Donald Trump in the show’s trailer. To love America, you have to see America. Join @SecDuffy and his family on The Great American Road Trip, a five-part series ahead of America’s 250th birthday. Watch the trailer now: https://t.co/NAxFgtXduY pic.twitter.com/Cky1tRbF42— The Great American Road Trip (@USARoadTrip250) May 8, 2026 The book follows “All American Christmas,” published by Campos-Duffy and her husband in November 2021. Both are part of book-publishing deals between HarperCollins and Fox News Books. Fox News Books has sold more than 3.6 million copies of national bestsellers since its founding in 2020. “All American Patriotism” is available for preorder and will launch on May 19. Came out of FOX studio last night to a BIG surprise – our book plastered outside the building!! Thanks everyone for supporting our book & sending me your favorite Christmas memories. Keep sending – I really read them! All American Christmas is available at https://t.co/2D54EULKw9 pic.twitter.com/KBi2i7GvuA— Rachel Campos-Duffy (@RCamposDuffy) November 24, 2021