House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was “delighted” when he learned Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, is running for Senate.   “I think it’s one of the greatest things that’s happened to the Republican Party in a long, long time,” Johnson, R-La., said.   “I want her to have the largest, loudest microphone that she can every single day, and we look forward to having that election down there,” the House speaker added.   Crockett, who is viewed as a member of the Democrat’s far-left cohort, officially announced her bid for Senate on Monday. The Texas lawmaker has made a number of claims in the past which Republicans no doubt plan to use against her.   During an interview with Vanity Fair last year, Crockett indicated she thinks Latino voters have a “slave mentality” when it comes to their view of immigration policy. She also recommended tax exemptions for black people, has called Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “slave patrol,” and has referred to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is in a wheelchair, as “governor hot wheels.”  Republicans appear poised to paint Crockett, and her rhetoric, as the face of the Democratic Party, and while it is unlikely Crockett can pull out a Senate win in deep red Texas, the margin of her support, or lack thereof, may prove to be a critical indication of the nation’s political temperature.   On this week’s edition of “Problematic Women,” we discuss what Democrats, and Republicans, will be watching for during Crockett’s run for Senate. Also on today’s show, we break down what you need to know about Charlie Kirk’s latest, and last, book, “Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.”   And some celebrities and podcasters continue to attack Erika Kirk—we discuss why. Plus, Time has named its person, or persons, of the year. Is the magazine’s choice accurate?   All this and more on this week’s edition of “Problematic Women” with special guest and Daily Caller reporter Ashley Brasfield.   The post Is Jasmine Crockett a Force for GOP to Fear? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc dissect the effort to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and the Biden administration’s effort to drum white conservative males out of the service. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., announced Wednesday his intention to file articles of impeachment against Hegseth, for “Murder and Conspiracy to Murder and Recklessness and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information.” The first charge is in connection with a Sept. 2 military strike on a boat believed to be carrying drugs to the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and, of course, President Donald Trump have also faced impeachment calls this week from House Democrats.   Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from 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.  Sami Winc: What do you think about these impeachments? They’re obviously not going to go through. So, what’s the point? Victor Davis Hanson: Why are they doing it? They don’t control the House. It’s just a way. Now you mentioned these guys’ names, and now I know them. That’s what it’s for. Our listeners heard their names. That’s it.  They’re not going to get an impeachment majority vote. And there’s no way in the world they’re going to get 60 senators to vote. No way for a conviction. So, I would ask them, “What would be an impeachable offense if you’re Pete Hegseth?” He took out 30 boats. Let’s say there were seven people on them, right? He didn’t kill anybody, but 20 people were killed in this kinetic operation.  Barack Obama killed over 550. I haven’t heard Pete Hegseth joke about it. Let me just ask the two congressmen this question: I’m Pete Hegseth. You know, I didn’t think I was good at killing, but I found out I’m well suited for it. And then he’s going tell to a big audience, all the media in Washington, all the marquee media in America, he’s going to say, I just want to make a joke. Anybody want to date my daughters? It’s called  P-R-E-D-A-T-O-R, Predator drone strike. Be careful.  So, what are [Hegseth]’s crimes? Well, he came in, and they were 45,000 recruits short in the military, and they had drummed out between 8,000 and 8,500 people for not getting the mRNA vaccination. Aside from the question of whether that was a wise move, most of those people had had COVID by that time. So, they had a natural immunity. And we know now that the natural immunity is as good or better than the boosters or whatever. Speaking to someone who had both Moderna and I’ve had four cases of COVID, two serious and two not as bad. And then, they were letting in 10,000 people a day across the border without any audit. So, they were telling the U.S. military, you’ve got to get an experimental, unproven Moderna or Pfizer vaccination, but the people coming from Latin America or all over the world, they don’t have to. They’re more entitled than you are.  So, he solved that problem. There’s no recruitment crisis. Why are you raising your hand?  Winc: Because I want to say something about that. They undoubtedly felt in the military under [President Joe] Biden that they could get rid of people that were politically right-wing if they said people who did not get vaccinations, because the majority of the people that were against either vaccinations or the lockdown tended to be the right wing. So that was probably more the goal than anything else.  Hanson: This is what they did. This is what they did intentionally. [Former Secretary of Defense] Lloyd Austin and Joe Biden. And to an extent, Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken. They said to the military, how do we get rid of these conservative people in the ranks? Well, they are more likely, as you said, not to get vaccinated. Let’s get rid of 8,500. These were some really good veterans, great people.  Then they said, well, let’s really push the trans, gay, DEI agenda. Let’s run commercials of women pregnant in air suits. Let’s have trans shows on military bases. Let us have, we won’t call them quotas, that’s illegal, but we will have racial quotas and gender quotas. And let’s have women in combat units regardless. We’ll lower the standards. What was all the purpose of that? They said it was for inclusivity and diversity. No, it was to target a particular type of soldier. And that soldier fits a profile. Let’s just take today’s potential recruit, 18. His father fought in the Gulf War. His father fought in Vietnam. His father fought in Korea. His father, or grandfather, fought in World War II. His great-grandfather fought in World War I. That was the type of demographic that volunteers to go into the military, especially the Army. And I say this until I turn blue in the face, but if you go in and try to decipher Pentagon websites or Pentagon-related—and they do not want to talk about this—but if you look at it, they have every DEI stat you can imagine. How many colonels are black? How many women are in combat units? The dead? That’s hard. How many people died by race? But if you can find that, and I have found it, it’s about 72 to 74% in Afghanistan and Iraq. So let me just summarize. They came in and said we do not like these recruits. And we’re going to keep in your face DEI, in your face vaccination, and we’re gonna insult them on radical abortion, and we’re gonna get rid of them. And then they said, well, these people constitute white male rural, Southern, you know what I’m talking about, our suburbs, they constitute about 35%, 70%, 67%—I know they inflate, there’s multiracial, all that—but say 67 to 70% are white and half of that. So, you’re talking about 34 to 35% of that pool was dying at double their numbers. And yet that was the one they targeted to get rid of them. And they did. They just quit. 45,000 of them. Then you go to the Pentagon websites, and you think who is not being recruited? And you can see it, that was 90% white males. Then you talk to retired officers and generals, and they email you or they’re angry at you or they trash you if you say this, and they have me.  Then you ask them why the shortfall? They will give you every answer except the truth. They will not say that white males die at twice their numbers in the demographic, and we try to alienate them through these social programs. They’ll say, people are too fat. They have too many tattoos. They’re on drugs. They’re out of shape. We have to compete with private enterprise. It’s all a lie. And he solved that problem, Pete Hegseth. There is no shortage now. All of them are back. And he solved the problem as well of if you want to smuggle drugs into the United States and you’re in Latin America, we have a wall across the southern border now and there’s zero entry, then you have to come by sea. And he was waiting for them. And they kill 75,000 people a year through imported fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs.  [Hegseth is] compared to what? I think George W. Bush ordered targeted assassinations of about 50 people. He never killed a U.S. citizen. Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have not killed more than 30 or 40 people, maybe more in Iraq in the first term or Syria. And they have not, to our knowledge, killed a U.S. citizen. And the very people who joked about it under [Barack] Obama are now wanting to impeach him. And then the final thing he’s done very good: He’s broken up the idea that you only buy major weapons systems from Raytheon or General Dynamics or Lockheed or Northrop. These are all great companies. The people that run them are great, but they’re very expensive. $14 billion carriers, $75 million planes, $170 million fighters. So why not a million drones? Why not a million robotic drones on land? Why not a million drones in the ocean? Why not cheap missiles that people carry on their back? So, that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to break up that monopoly and get on the shelf practical quantity as well as quality.   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: Impeach Hegseth? You Should Be Thanking Hegseth appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As Congress works to reach a deal addressing the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, President Donald Trump revealed abortion funding is a “factor” in the decision. The Daily Signal asked Trump Friday night if he would assure Republicans he won’t propose or accept a health care deal that continues to allow abortion funding under Obamacare. “We’re going to look into it,” he responded. “We’re going to look into a lot of things. That’s one of many factors.” “What we do wanna see is the money go to the people, not the insurance companies,” he added. I asked @POTUS if he will assure Republicans he won't propose or accept a healthcare deal that continues to allow abortion funding under Obamacare. "We're going to look into it. We're going to look into a lot of things. That's one of that's one of many factors," he told… pic.twitter.com/mjCNpCg8dD— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) December 12, 2025 Obamacare is currently exempted from the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding abortions. Republican senators have said they will not support a deal without the Hyde Amendment in place. “Our members are very concerned, obviously, and with good reason, to ensuring that the Hyde protections apply to Obamacare policies,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. House Republicans released their health care package on Friday. The bill includes Hyde protections to cost-sharing reduction funds that prohibit paying for abortions except to save the life of the mother or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. The commitment of many Republicans to oppose a health care deal that funds abortion puts negotiations with Democrats in a precarious place, as Democrats are expected to oppose any deal that excludes abortion funding. “It’s a nonstarter,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., told NBC News. The pro-life movement is throwing its weight behind ensuring the health care deal includes Hyde protections, with Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America telling The Daily Signal her organization “will continue to oppose any health care plan that does not include that safeguard.” She said that is where the majority of senators are going to land as well. “We’ve seen many pledges of the importance of pro-life policy in the health care space,” Pritchard said. The post Trump Weighs If Obamacare Deal Should Include Abortion Funding appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—An estimated 2,000 Afghan nationals admitted to the United States following the deadly 2021 pullout of American forces from Afghanistan have ties to terrorism, according to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard made the astonishing revelation during an interview on Fox News Friday morning, following a tense House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted national security risks to the homeland. The Center Square previously reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General released a report in January 2022 that admitted thousands of Afghan evacuees who entered the U.S. following the American military evacuation in August 2021 were not properly vetted. “[The DoD] found that Afghan evacuees were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) using all DoD data prior to arriving in CONUS,” the report said. The report also noted, during an “analytic review, NGIC [National Ground Intelligence Center] personnel identified Afghans with derogatory information in the DoD ABIS database who were believed to be in the United States.” The 2022 report affirms Gabbard’s concerns that some individuals admitted to the U.S. under the Joe Biden administration may pose a national security risk. “The vast majority of them were not properly vetted. They certainly were not vetted at anywhere near the standard that we require under this administration of allowing people into our country. And of that number, we know that there are at least 2,000 who are here who have ties to or are known or suspected terrorists,” Gabbard told Fox News. During the Biden administration, nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals were admitted to the U.S., including Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who is accused of shooting two National Guard members, killing one just blocks from the White House on the eve of Thanksgiving. While there have been no formal terrorism charges brought against Lakanwal as of yet, the attack is being investigated for alleged terrorism. It has been described as a terror attack by high-ranking officials such as Gabbard and Noem. During the interview, Gabbard stated that, through the National Counterterrorism Center, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, the agencies will work together to re-vet “every single” Afghan individual admitted during the Biden administration, underscoring the threat to national security. “We’ve got to realize what’s happening here within the context of the greater threat that we face. We know that al Qaeda and ISIS continue to actively plot attacks against our homeland. And so when you look at the spread of the radical Islamist ideology and the propagation of it, you look at active plots, and they’re looking for people who can carry out those plots,” said Gabbard. In July, The Center Square asked border czar Tom Homan about the report and whether the Trump administration would investigate the individuals who had not been vetted. Homan vowed the Trump administration would thoroughly vet Afghan refugees and would be doing things the “right way” by revisiting the vetting process. “We’re going to re-vet them because we don’t think the last administration properly vetted them. …This administration will do things the right way, we’ll make sure everyone is vetted properly,” said Homan. After last month’s shooting in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump vowed to pause migration from certain countries, including Afghanistan. Originally published by The Center Square. The post Gabbard: 2,000 Afghan Refugees In U.S. Have Ties to Terrorism appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson. Each administration, at some point in its first or second year, has a strategic assessment, a strategic strategy of what the United States’ economic, diplomatic, political, and military objectives will be in foreign affairs. Ours just came out. And one of the more controversial sections—which I think, otherwise, was a pretty sound strategy—was simply saying that our partners, the founders of Western civilization, the Europeans, are in dire trouble. And then the authors of the strategic assessment said they face “civilizational erasure.” Well, you can see what that did to the Europeans. Nothing is more humiliating or makes the Europeans angrier than we upstart Americans—who our founders came from Europe and many of us did as well—to be lecturing the Europeans on what they’re doing wrong. So, they’re very angry at us. But why are they angry at us? Because the assessment outlined why Europe’s in trouble. Its radical green proposals, their New Green Deal version is much more deleterious than ours. They have ample amounts of gas in the North Sea and oil. They have gas, natural gas, in France and other places. And yet, they’re hell-bent—if I could use that term—on wind and solar that’s costly and unreliable. The result is Europe is not competitive in the world economic market, and the EU has lost its place in world gross domestic product rankings. It’s gone way down. It used to be along with the United States, the two preeminent economic powers in the world. But it’s lost its share of world GDP by a substantial margin in just 20 years. Its fertility rate is not as—ours is 1.71, 1.75. That’s very worrisome. Theirs is 1.39. They are shrinking and aging. And more importantly, their borders are open. They have 45 million people coming in from the Middle East, predominantly. And unlike us, they don’t have a history with the melting pot. There’s no fluidity in classes, as we have. So, it’s very hard for them to acculturate, assimilate, and integrate immigrants, especially when they come in illegally and from—let’s be honest—mostly from the Middle East. So, you have the force multiplying of Islam. At least the people who come across the southern border legally and illegally have a shared Christian tradition. But Europe does not have that experience with illegal immigration. And they’re disarmed. They had not been spending 2% until President Donald Trump jawboned them. They say they’re gonna get to 5%, but if you look at their budgetary expenditures and incomes, it seems almost impossible. And now they’re facing a Russian juggernaut that is, you know, moving west, in Ukraine, toward them. And so, all of this was calibrated by the United States. But here’s what I think got them very angry. The United States’ attitude was not—in this report—you should have done this. You bad, you. We don’t like you. No. It was more, we should be brothers. We should be equal brothers. You, Europe, is the foundation of the West. Greece. Rome. The Pope. The Renaissance. The Enlightenment. All of this majestic culture came from you. And we are an offshoot, an offspring of it. And we wanna partner with you. And we wanna be equals with you. So, please can you just consider stopping the censorship, opening up discussion, and maybe reassessing your energy, your military, your immigration issues and policies. And get back in the game with us in a 50/50 fashion. They got very, very angry about this. But here’s what makes us angry about their anger. Europe is, sort of, the proverbial one-eyed Jack, the card that you only see one eye and you flip over and maybe there’s something quite different on the other side. What do I mean by that? There are 32 NATO nations in the alliance. Outside of the United States and Canada, 30 of them are in Europe. There are 27 European Union members. The European Union members and the European NATO members are like this. They’re almost the same nation, overwhelmingly. And 90% of the cases belong to the EU and NATO. But here’s the one-eyed Jack metaphor: NATO members say, yes, we want to prepare ourselves against Russia. Yes, we made the 2% investment of GDP and military expenditures. Yes, we want to go to 5%. Yes, we want the United States, by all costs, to be our leader. We used to pay 16%, 18% of our budget. We want to integrate more with you. And we’re so happy that you’re with us again. And Donald Trump is “daddy.” Flip the card over. Now we’re talking, these same people, now are not talking as NATO members in dire need of military assistance from the strongest military power in the history of civilization. They’re talking as EU globalists and utopians. Don’t lecture us. We can censor X. We can censor Facebook. We don’t have a First Amendment. We don’t allow unfettered speech, like you do. We don’t have a Second Amendment, like your rowdy cowboyism back there. Oh, by the way, we’re much stronger on DEI, even than you are. And, as Angela Merkel once said, chancellor of Germany, “Yes, we can. We can do it.” We can integrate millions of people who are from the Islamic world into our cultures. Don’t lecture us about that. And oh, yes, we will rearm in our own fashion. And as far as our foreign policy, we don’t understand you people. We feel that Israel is a settler colonial power. Which it isn’t. And we side with Hamas or Hezbollah. Or we have a very different attitude about Iran. We have peaceful solutions. We are not Neanderthals. So, how are we Americans supposed to deal with Europe when we see this morbidity? And we see it because it’s here in the United States. So, all this report was basically saying, if you look at the subtext, we have a problem with fertility. We have a problem with immigration. We have a problem with green tyranny. We have a problem with DEI. We have a problem with pacifism. But, unlike you—we didn’t say this—but we’re dealing with it. We have a counterrevolution. All we’re asking of you is to consider the voices of dissent in your own continent. Maybe they’re on the right track. Maybe, like us, they have discovered that this system is toxic that both us in America and you in Europe have experimented with. We’re both Westerners. And let’s stop this DEI, open borders, pacifism, green energy, and get back in the global game because we have China, we have Iran, North Korea, and Russia as enemies. And we wanna be partners. So, we’re just offering you advice. And please don’t play this double game where, in terms of military assistance, all of a sudden we’re saints here in America, you NATO face says, but in terms of culture and sociology and politics, we’re Satans. We’ve caught onto that a long time ago. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump Wants to Work With Europe to Stop ‘Civilization Erasure’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.