DUBAI/BEIRUT/JERUSALEM/ISLAMABAD, April 10 (Reuters) – Iran said on Friday that blocked Iranian assets must be released and that a ceasefire must take hold in Lebanon before peace talks can proceed, throwing last-minute doubt over negotiations scheduled for Saturday in Pakistan. Iran’s ?parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on X that the two measures had been previously agreed with the United States and warned that negotiations would not start until they are fulfilled. There was no immediate comment from the White House. Earlier, Vice President JD Vance, who will lead the U.S. delegation, set off for the talks in Pakistan saying he expected a positive outcome. But “if they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive”, Vance added. Iran has been unable to obtain tens of billions of dollars of its assets in foreign banks, mainly from exports of oil and gas, due to U.S. sanctions on its banking and energy sectors. President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the six-week war on Tuesday, just hours before a deadline after which he had threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization. However, the truce is tenuous with Israel’s continuing bombardment of Lebanon and the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz proving key sticking points for both sides. The ceasefire has halted the campaign of U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iran. But it has so far done nothing to end the blockade of the strait, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or to calm a parallel war waged by Israel against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. Iran was doing a “very poor job” of letting oil through the strait, Trump said in a social media post. He also warned Tehran against trying to collect fees from ships crossing it. “That is not the agreement we have!” Israel has also said that its parallel campaign against militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon was not part of the agreed ceasefire. Israeli strikes continued across southern Lebanon on Friday, with more than a dozen people reported killed in various towns. One strike killed eight members of Lebanese state security forces, the country’s state media said. Originally published by Reuters. The post Iran Demands Lebanon Ceasefire, Unfreezing of Assets Before Peace Talks appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A conservative legal group wants the Trump administration to investigate the gender identity policies of a Maryland school district that lost a Supreme Court case last year over mandating LGBTQ+ books for students. America First Legal asked the Justice Department and the Education Department to investigate Montgomery County Public Schools, alleging that the school district has a policy of facilitating students’ social “gender transitions” while concealing them from parents deemed to be non-supportive. The group says that the policy “Gender Identity in Montgomery County Public Schools“ accommodates student gender transitions including changes to names, pronouns, school records, bathroom and locker room access, and overnight field trip sleeping arrangements. “The Handbook repeatedly instructs staff to condition parental involvement on whether the parent is deemed ‘supportive’ of their child’s gender identity,“ the complaint states. The Daily Signal asked the school district whether it would challenge any characterizations in the complaint. Montgomery County Public Schools spokeswoman Liliana López told The Daily Signal, “We are aware of the complaint. We will reserve comment until we have had the opportunity to review it.” America First Legal contends these actions by the school district could violate parental rights under the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a 1974 law that gives parents the right to inspect school records and control their disclosure until their child reaches 18. “Montgomery County Public Schools has constructed an elaborate system designed to keep parents in the dark about some of the most consequential decisions affecting their own children,” Ian Prior, senior counsel for America First Legal, said in a public statement. “Federal law and the Constitution are unambiguous: Parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children and to access their children’s education records. MCPS’s policies turn both of those principles on their head,” Prior continued. Last year, the Supreme Court sided with a group of parents against the school district in a 6-3 decision in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. The court granted the parents a preliminary injunction as their lawsuit continued, allowing them to opt their children out of reading explicit books in school with gender and sexual content. The school district reportedly reached a settlement in February with the parents, agreeing to pay them $1.5 million and to allow them to opt their children out of reading such books in the future. America First Legal’s 13-page complaint alleges that the school district violates the Free Exercise Clause by excluding parents from critical decisions about their children’s identity and well-being. It further alleges violations of free speech and the Equal Protection Clause, saying the school district discriminates against parents who disagree with gender ideology. The post Complaint Alleges Maryland Schools Concealed Student Gender Identity Changes From Parents appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL — Members of the House Freedom Caucus say they are going to reject any legislation they see as granting mass amnesty to illegal aliens. In statements made to The Daily Signal on Wednesday, three members of the caucus said they will not allow such a bill to be enacted. The members specifically called out the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act of 2025, introduced in July by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., which would grant legal residence to certain illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States since at least 2021. The bill has bipartisan support, with more than two dozen co-sponsors. “The DIGNIDAD Act is a mass migration bill that gives mass amnesty to millions,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal. “It stops President Trump from deporting illegal aliens swiftly.” Other Freedom Caucus members echoed Gill’s criticism, saying they oppose any legislation that they believe rewards illegal immigration. “I will not reward illegal aliens with citizenship because they provide cheap labor to the wealthy donor class,” Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal. “Doing that makes us no better than the Democrats. Dignity for Americans, not for illegals.” Fine added that he “will never vote for amnesty.” Other members also expressed their opposition to such legislation. “The correct amount of amnesty for foreign invaders is zero,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said. “Illegals don’t get to break our laws and then get rewarded with staying in our country. I want every last one of them deported now.” Rather than receiving legal residency, the lawmakers said illegal immigrants should face mass deportations. “I don’t care if you got here last week, last month, last year, or 30 years ago,” Fine said. “If you came here illegally, you’re going home. The most important thing we should be doing in this country is mass deportations.” Freedom Caucus members also argued that the Salazar proposal is deeply unpopular among House Republicans and GOP voters. “It’s a massive betrayal of everything voters elected us to do,” Gill said. “Voters demand mass deportations, not amnesty.” “There are about 20 Republicans who have co-sponsored the bill—less than 10% of the conference,” Fine added. “I think they would have a very difficult time getting anywhere near a majority of Republicans on board.” Salazar and another co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., have pushed back against those claims in recent days, arguing that the DIGNIDAD Act should not be labeled an amnesty bill. “Calling the DIGNITY Act ‘amnesty’ isn’t just wrong,” Salazar wrote on X, responding to Gill’s criticism. “It’s a deliberate distortion, and it exposes just how little you know about the bill. This is enforcement first: zero tolerance for criminals, permanent border security, and hard-earned requirements to step forward and face the law, so American workers are protected, not undercut.” Lawler defended the bill during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “One Nation with Brian Kilmeade,” calling it a bipartisan effort to address the nation’s broken immigration system. The proposal, Lawler said, would “get people out of the shadows” by granting legal status, short of citizenship, to long-term undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years, remained crime-free, paid taxes and fines, maintained employment, and avoided public benefits. Despite those assurances, Fine suggested the Freedom Caucus will remain opposed to the legislation and any similar measure. “Freedom Caucus members like me are willing to say no amnesty, period,” he said. “Others want to get along and manage the decline politely. I think it’s important to be clear with my constituents: I will never vote for amnesty. Never.” Salazar and Lawler did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. The post EXCLUSIVE: Freedom Caucus Members Say They Will Reject All Amnesty Proposals appeared first on The Daily Signal.

While Democrats have recently branded voter ID requirements as a form of “Jim Crow,” a black Republican former delegate in Virginia is flipping the script in condemning state Democrats’ redistricting ballot initiative. Under Virginia’s current congressional map, adopted after the 2020 census, two districts have a majority-minority voting age population. However, the Democrats’ proposed redistricing maps would dilute those populations. AC Cordoza, who was the sole black Republican in the state’s House of Delegates before losing his reelection campaign in November, condemned Democrats as “completely hypocritical.” “These are southern Democrats, who are using their power to disenfranchise African American voters, and minority voters,” he told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday. “Tell me how that is not the definition of Jim Crow, and they can’t do it.” “They just can’t, ’cause it is, and they know it is,” Cordoza, who served two terms in the House of Delegates, added. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups have condemned Cordoza’s Justice for Democracy PAC for sending flyers opposed to the redistricting ballot initiative. The flyers state, “Just like Jim Crow, they want to silence your voice.” Phillip Thompson, executive director of the National Black Nonpartisan Redistricting Organization, condemned the mailers as “juvenile, foolish,” as well as “tone deaf and completely cynical.” Yet Thompson acknowledged that the new maps do indeed weaken minority voting blocs. “The proposal maintains one distinctly black-influence district while dispersing black voters among other districts,” he noted. The new maps “may solidify Democratic support but are not necessarily structured to enhance black political influence.” Why Cordoza’s Claim Holds Water According to the Virginia court records for the congressional maps adopted in 2021, the voting-age population in the 3rd Congressional District was 41.96% white, 45.37% black, and 7.37% Hispanic. The 4th Congressional District also had a majority-minority voting-age population, with 45.18% white and 54.82% minority voters. The black voting-age population of 42.14% and the Hispanic voting-age population of 8.26% together form a minority-influence district that meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. By contrast, the proposed 3rd Congressional District has a 45.1% white voting-age population, larger than the 41.17% black voting-age population. Combined with the 7.19% Hispanic voting-age population, the two-minority bloc still reaches less than 50% of the district’s voting-age population. The proposed 4th Congressional District has an outright white majority voting-age population, at 50.7%. The black voting-age population (38.9%) and Hispanic voting-age population (6.04%) no longer match the white population. While the Supreme Court is considering two cases about the racial requirements for redistricting in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the act’s requirements remain the law for now. The NAACP’s Virginia chapter endorsed the maps as a response to Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas and other states. Those efforts came after the federal government concluded that the 2020 census overcounted the populations of Democrat-leaning states and undercounted the populations of Republican-leaning states. “When Black communities lose the ability to elect candidates who represent our needs, our entire democracy suffers,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement endorsing the redistricting effort. “The NAACP will continue to fight, in Virginia and across the nation, to make sure our maps—and our democracy—reflect people.” Yet Thompson, the leader of the black redistricting organization, noted that “most of the announced Democratic candidates for the newly established districts are white, and most of the institutional support, money and endorsements have been directed toward these candidates.” He acknowledged that “some black Virginians have expressed frustration with the maps, questioning why at least one of the new districts was not drawn to better represent regions that could support black candidates.”  Cordoza, the Republican former delegate, picked up on that theme. “I’d rather them just come out and say, ‘We want power, we want a power grab,'” he told The Daily Signal. “I want them to say it. We all know it.” The post Virginia Democrats’ Redistricting Measure Is ‘The Definition of Jim Crow,’ Former Delegate Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.  JACK FOWLER: Pam Bondi has been given the boot as attorney general. Do you have any thoughts on that, Victor?   VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Well. I don’t know the intricacies. She’s very pleasant. She’s very close. She’s a very good, nice person. She had a good record in Florida, but she came in late because of the Matt Gaetz misadventure.  And so they needed somebody and I think Trump expected two major task forces for her. One was fraud.   Elon Musk said that from the very beginning when they were doing the DOGE, and the DOGE, I thought there would be indictments, you know, left and right from what they found out. And there haven’t been.   So the very idea that J.D. Vance … he’s a lawyer and that’s really good, but he’s not an attorney in the sense of a prosecutor. The fact that he’s leading a commission and it’s not a Senate, like a Harry Truman investigation during World War II, but that shows you, there hasn’t been people at DOJ.  There should be a very high, famous prosecutor who should be doing that. I’m gonna have a federal task force on fraud. We give this money to the states and that hasn’t happened.   And then the other thing is all the Left says, “Well, you can’t conflate the AG and the president. They have to have a firewall. How dare you?”  Come on. Who do you think Bobby Kennedy was? He was the attorney general when John Kennedy [was president]. You’ve seen those pictures about every five minutes. They’re walking together. He didn’t do anything unless John Kennedy [was involved].  Who do you think John Mitchell was? He was the bond lawyer for Richard Nixon. Who do you think Eric Holder was? Why do you think that he said he was the wingman? The wingman of Barack Obama? Why do you think he defiantly refused a congressional subpoena? And he knew he had complete exemption in a way that Steve Bannon, for example, or Peter Navarro didn’t, because he knew what Obama would say.He would back him.   So. They needed somebody, what I’m getting at, independent, but to investigate the misuse of the federal government to go after people. And people are getting frustrated.   They didn’t do anything with the IRS under Obama that went after targeted groups on their political affiliations, right before an election.  They didn’t do anything for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They didn’t do anything for [James] Clapper and [John] Brennan lying under oath.  If anybody believes that James Comey, for 245 times, an FBI director said he didn’t remember or didn’t know while under oath, and that’s not lying?  They should have indicted Joe Biden’s ghost writer when he said to Robert Hur, “I just erased that subpoenaed oral transcript. I was worried about hacking, so I just took it upon myself to destroy federal evidence.”  When they were doing the [Robert] Mueller investigation, they were missing all sorts of FBI phones. Remember that? They turned them over, and they said, “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody erased them.”  And when Andrew McCabe said, “Don’t worry. He’s not going to be elected. We need an insurance policy.” They had it all.  John Durham was a very good guy, and he was very thorough, but it was just a nothingburger. And so, people got really frustrated. They got really frustrated when Fani Willis got up in that stand and lied her head off that, “Oh, it’s a black thing that I use cash. How dare you suggest they should have receipts.”  Or she used federal monies for at-risk use to go after Trump, or that crazy Alvin Bragg shoehorning or bootstrapping or whatever you want to call it, a minor federal offense into a state mega felony. It wasn’t even an offense.  So what I’m getting at, there were all these indiscretions and nobody in the Justice Department ever seriously did anything about them.   And yet, when there were Democrats in power, my gosh. I’m not asking the Republicans to appoint a Fani Willis, or an Alvin Bragg or a Jack Smith or Letitia James, but my gosh.  I think people get very frustrated, Jack, because they saw all of that lawfare—get him off the ballot, raid his home. They’re not asking for that. They’re not saying we should be like that, but what they’re saying is these Democrats did all that.  It was all illegal. It was all politically inspired. We’re not asking to go down to their level. We’re just asking to hold the people who did something wrong accountable. And we are not doing that at this time. We’re not doing that.   The Democrats said when we get back in power, hello. I’m Susan Rice. We’re gonna go after all of you. I’m James Carville, and I just say you better be careful because as soon as you get back in there, we’re gonna get the Trump family. We’re gonna get the Trump family spouses.  FOWLER: And Victor, if I may, a backdrop to this, too. It’s not Bondi’s fault, but you see these judges in Minnesota who are giving these pathetically tiny sentences to these terrible fraudsters.  How come these people are getting away with it?  HANSON: Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right. I think sometimes the administration’s not communicating well. There were two big issues. They weren’t the biggest, but they were big issues when he got reelected.  One was, are we going to finish the wall? And the second is, why don’t we, you know … Leonard Leo, he had a falling out with Trump and all the problems he’s had.  He’s gone off in a strange direction, I guess. But he did get these people appointed.  So why have we, I don’t know. I have no idea whether we have the same amount, fewer amount. The Democratic opposition is more rabid than the first. I don’t know.  But it does seem like we’re not getting all of these federal judge billets filled quickly with conservatives, and time is running out because if they lose, they’re never gonna confirm them.  They could be Thomas Jefferson, and they wouldn’t confirm.  So we need to get the judges appointed, audited, confirmed, and we need the wall all the way to the canyons of East Texas, the whole thing.   It’s 2,000 miles. I guess there’s 400 or 500 miles that the terrain makes it impossible. But we should then cover that with sophisticated electronic surveillance, et cetera, et cetera, and then just build this wall all the way. And we’re not doing it.  At least we’re not being told we’re doing it. That would help people during the midterm to be apprised of that.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s Base Wants Accountability—So What Happened at Pam Bondi’s DOJ? appeared first on The Daily Signal.