Missouri continues to be a key battleground in the redistricting wars after the state supreme court handed Republicans a victory, allowing a congressional map approved by the state legislature last year to go into effect. The state’s high court rejected Missouri Democrats’ attempt to overturn maps adopted by the Missouri Legislature. The legal challenge centered on whether a petition for a referendum should automatically suspend the implementation of the maps. The state high court win, however, doesn’t halt a potential referendum on the map. Rather, the court rejected the Democrats’ attempt to prevent the map from going into full effect while a referendum is pending. HUGE NEWSAnother redistricting victory in Missouri! https://t.co/BsV2Eovw2d— Chairman Joe Gruters (@ChairmanGruters) May 12, 2026 It’s the latest in a string of redistricting court losses for Democrats. The Missouri state court decision was sandwiched between rulings by the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court that struck down a congressional map favorable to Democrats. Eight states, including California and Texas, have conducted mid-decade redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. “The RNC successfully invested in defending Missouri’s lawful congressional maps and won,” Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters told the Daily Signal in a statement. “This ruling is another major victory for Republicans, the rule of law, and Missouri voters.” The new map that redraws part of the Kansas City area could net Republicans an extra U.S. House seat in November. Republican lawmakers had a proposed 7-1 map as early as 2022, but moderate leadership in the legislature killed it, said former Missouri Republican House Speaker Tim Jones. The question now is whether voters can repeal a congressional map, said Jones, an attorney. “It was a unanimous decision at the Supreme Court to uphold the map, but what the Supreme Court didn’t rule on is whether you can referendum a map,” Jones told the Daily Signal. “We have frequent ballot referendums in the state backed with massive amounts of money from outside the state,” Jones continued. “What the legislature, the secretary of state, and the attorney general argue is that you can’t referendum a map any more than you can referendum a budget; otherwise, it would never get done. There are certain things in the purview of the legislative process. It’s an open legal question, but I think it’s pretty dangerous to say you can repeal a legislative map with a referendum.” Democrats and supporters of the referendum accuse the secretary of state of delaying certification of the referendum, which they say surpassed the required threshold for signatures. “The Secretary of State’s own data confirms what more than 305,000 Missourians already made clear: this referendum is sufficient, and the people have a right to vote,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, in a public statement after the court ruling. “A sufficient petition suspends the law the day it is turned in,” he added. “Unnecessary delays by politicians do not change this fact. If he continues to delay, then he is moving forward under a map that has been suspended by the people.” In a post on X last week after the state court decision, the Missouri Democratic Party contended there was “misinformation” about what the court decided. “The Supreme Court unanimously said ‘it is impossible to say’ which map is in effect until the number of sufficient signatures is known,” Missouri Democrats noted. “By Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ own data, we have enough signatures from Missourians to force a vote.” · The Supreme Court unanimously said “it is impossible to say” which map is in effect until the number of sufficient signatures is known.· By Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ own data, we have enough signatures from Missourians to force a vote.— Missouri Democrats (@MoDemParty) May 14, 2026 The Missouri Democratic Party did not respond to inquiries for this story on Tuesday. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins issued formal guidance to local election authorities statewide following the court’s ruling, instructing them to continue election preparation activities—including candidate filing, ballot programming, and precinct assignments—based on the congressional districts established under House Bill 1 known as “Missouri First Map.” “As Missouri’s chief elections official, my priority is protecting the integrity of the elections process,” Hoskins said in a public statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides important guidance, and we are directing all local election authorities to follow the letter of the law and proceed under the provisions of House Bill 1.”

Miami-Dade County is home to one of the largest Cuban-American communities in the U.S., but this May 20, most Americans will not realize they are observing what was once Cuba’s Independence Day. That matters because Cuba’s story has over time become an important part of America’s story. Long before the communist revolution of 1959, Cuba and the U.S. shared one of the closest relationships in the Western Hemisphere. Our economies, ports, families, and cultures were deeply intertwined. Havana was once among the most American-connected cities in Latin America. Cuba was not an abstract foreign country to Americans. It was a close neighbor and natural partner only 90 miles from Florida. Then everything changed. Fidel Castro did not merely seize power in Cuba. His murderous and oppressive communist regime aligned itself with the Soviet Union and transformed the island into the ideological export hub of anti-American Marxism throughout the Western Hemisphere. The loss of Cuba did not stay in Cuba. Today, the regime is both a threat to democracy abroad and a direct strategic threat to the U.S. For decades, Havana helped normalize and spread revolutionary movements, left-authoritarian politics, anti-American agitation, and destabilizing leftist networks throughout Latin America. The damage did not manifest as Cuban troops or Cuban agents. The greater damage came from what Cuba inspired, trained, legitimized, and sustained across the region. Castroism later echoed throughout the hemisphere in different forms. Regardless of superficial differences, Cuba supplied the model, mythology, training ground, and an adaptable playbook for anti-American left-authoritarian politics: Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the Kirchner political machine in Argentina. In each case, the playbook was similar: weaken institutions, demonize markets, romanticize state power, and blame the U.S. Over time, this approach eroded countries across the hemisphere, creating fertile ground for corruption, drug trafficking, cartel violence, economic collapse, and weakened state capacity. It also opened the door for hostile foreign actors like China, Russia, and Iran to deepen their influence in America’s neighborhood. Americans should not ignore reports of military cooperation and drone capabilities developing barely 90 miles from our shores. Many Americans today look at border chaos, human trafficking, fentanyl flows, collapsing states, and anti-American regimes across parts of Latin America as disconnected problems. They are not. The hemisphere’s long cycle of instability did not emerge in a vacuum. In many ways, it began with the export of Castroism after 1959. All of this is why freeing Cuba is not merely a Cuban issue. It is an America First issue. America First does not mean ignoring our hemisphere while crises metastasize near our shores. It means recognizing that instability close to home eventually reaches the American homeland economically, politically, socially, and culturally. A desperate regime positioned at America’s doorstep is not merely tragic; it is dangerous to our nation. As someone who grew up in south Florida, I have seen firsthand how Cuban-Americans understand this better than almost anyone. This is because they have lived it. Cuban-Americans did not arrive in America confused about communism. They arrived understanding its consequences intimately. They understand the cruelty of a regime that shoots down civilian aircraft carrying innocent Americans over international waters while allowing ordinary people to starve as connected elites cling to power and wealth. It is therefore unsurprising that many in Miami-Dade recoil when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani flirt with ideas Cuban exiles spent generations escaping. The people of Miami-Dade County—and those spread across south Florida—can tell the story. Despite the generational suffering that haunts the many Cuban-American families who call Miami home, our metro area is not defined by grievance or victimhood. It is defined by patriotism, entrepreneurship, faith, family, and upward mobility. The same Cuban exiles who fled dictatorship helped build one of America’s most dynamic metropolitan economies because they believed deeply in the American Dream and understood what happens when freedom disappears. No community is better positioned to explain this reality than Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade, an American metro area, is relatable to other Americans in a way Cuba alone may not always be. Through Miami-Dade, Americans can see the human reality behind authoritarianism: families separated, businesses destroyed, freedoms stripped away, and lives rebuilt through liberty and opportunity in the U.S. It is no coincidence that Miami-Dade, once considered a Democratic stronghold, has shifted politically in recent years as more residents rejected the failed ideological patterns they or their families once fled. The Cuban-American story is ultimately not just a Cuban story. It is one of the strongest affirmations of the American experiment in modern history. Today, there are signs that America may finally be approaching the Cuba question with renewed strategic clarity. President Donald Trump’s empowerment of Secretary of State Marco Rubio—a homegrown Miami-Dade legend—reflects something larger than politics. It reflects an understanding that the people who escaped authoritarianism in our hemisphere may understand its dangers most clearly. On this May 20, Americans should remember that Cuba was once one of America’s closest partners in the hemisphere. One day, with freedom restored, it can be again. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Sometimes evil isn’t just banal. It’s direct, open, and unrepentant. That was the case on Monday afternoon as three “credentialed” journalists showed up to cover the Luigi Mangione trial in New York and revealed that they were happy he allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. The self-described “Mangionistas”—and dedicated fans of democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani—were unrepentant in their embrace of assassinations as a reasonable form of political action. They not only reveled in Thompson’s death, they also took shots at his family too. “F— Brian Thompson,” said a woman who the New York Daily News identified as Ashley Rojas based on the press credentials dangling from her neck. “That’s all I want to say. F— Brian Thompson. F— his mom.” Lena Weissbrot, who appeared to be dressed up as a cross between Beetlejuice and Luigi, but the one from the Mario Bros., said that Thompson’s son was better off with his father dead. “His children are better off without him. They need to learn to not be like their dad. And enjoy the blood money, kids,” she said. She then compared Thompson to Osama bin Laden. “He’s responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden, and I remember Americans celebrating when Osama bin Laden was killed,” Weissbrot continued. “It’s not like we don’t understand heroic violence, or, like, when violence is good.” The Mangione superfan kept going. “I mean, why do we protect the Second Amendment so much—is it to allow people to shoot up schools, or is it to protect our democracy?” she said. The New York Post, always quick with the clever headlines, called them “the ghouls next door.” Bloodthirsty Luigi Mangione fangirls unapologetically celebrate CEO’s assassination: ‘F—k Brian Thompson,’ ‘His children are better off without him’. Read today's cover here: https://t.co/WAbr1HDQiD pic.twitter.com/TtsBt751qM— New York Post (@nypost) May 19, 2026 Many others took to social media to condemn the hateful women and noted that they were given press credentials by the Mamdani administration. What you're about to watch is two members of the "press" credentialed by Mayor Mamdani, openly endorsing the heinous and evil assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Ashley Rojas and Lena Weissbrot are their names, and they deserve to be famous:Rojas: "I'm saying… pic.twitter.com/ub69hrtbqg— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) May 18, 2026 The comments were so vile and potentially damaging to Mangione’s case that his lawyer chimed in to denounce them. “These individuals do not represent the views of Luigi, nor the tens of thousands who have shown their support from around the world,” his attorney said in a statement. “The only people who speak for Luigi are his attorneys. We condemn these vile and irresponsible statements that have no place in the discourse around these cases.” The New York Times reported that the city is now reviewing their press credentials, which were given to them by the Mamdani administration. Though I’m honestly glad the American people saw this display, as heinous as it was. There is a not inconsiderable number of Americans, mostly on the left, who are so pathologically hateful toward their political opponents that they openly call for and celebrate their murder. We saw this in spades after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Countless videos of seemingly normal professional people publicly danced with glee when they heard the news. It’s not hard to imagine the same reaction and then some if one of the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump had been successful. It seems like on the left, calls to kill those who disagree have been virtually normalized. Heck, the current Virginia Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones won an election after it was discovered that he sent text messages fantasizing about the death of the Republican Speaker of the House and his children. Some of this is surely a version of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Many on even the “mainstream” left have been driven psychologically over the edge in recent years due to their inability to make the Bad Orange Man go away. But this goes deeper than just run-of-the-mill pathological hatred. This is baked into an ethos that equates political correctness with moral correctness, and political incorrectness with something so terrible that it justifies stripping the individual of even the most basic rights. There is clearly an increasing number of people on the left who believe it is not just politically expedient but noble to outright kill people who carry out or represent policies, or business practices, or really anything else they oppose. The only thing stopping them is force or fear of consequences. This is assassination culture, for lack of a better phrase, as many noted on X. It's astonishing how many ascendent figures on the left are cartoon-villain evil. They cheer real-world death and wish horror upon their enemies and even upon random anonymous people who land on the opposite side of any ideological debate. https://t.co/YrfsK8dnFg— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) May 19, 2026 From Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah: Assassination Culture Kills https://t.co/IzXjhOAM68— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 19, 2026 It’s hard not to see this as an emerging and dangerous pattern leading us toward a deeper political and cultural crisis. “Mainstream” Democrats call for the obliteration of constitutional institutions that stand in their way, their base calls for blood, and a handful of their activists extract it. The mentality of these assassins or those who glorify them is they don’t think they should be bound by the law, or society, or anything else. The justice of their cause makes any action they take on its behalf a morally correct pursuit. It’s hard to create any kind of compromise or carry on “normal” politics with people who have such a mentality. The attitude is one that leads to anarchy and civil war. That seems to be what some of these folks foolishly crave. But one way or another, it shouldn’t be dismissed as a phenomenon relegated to a few extremists and weirdos. This is a very real and significant part of modern American politics that very much threatens the future of our free society.

Georgia voters on Tuesday cast their ballots to choose their parties’ nominees for U.S. Senate, governor and lieutenant governor. Aside from incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, the Peach State has new nominees to represent voters in the November general election. Governor’s Race Georgia’s top two candidates for both parties will head to their state’s runoff elections on June 16 after failing to clinch at least 50% of the vote. On the Republican side, the contested primary came down to a narrow margin between billionaire philanthropist Rick Jackson and President Donald Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Jackson received 33% of the vote, while Jones came in at 39%. Their primary runoff election is scheduled for June 16. After polling even in April, the race reached a decision point after Jones pressed Jackson over his history on illegal immigration, including illegal workers allegedly employed by Jackson’s landscaping companies. “You claim to be tough on deportation, but you’ve got illegals working in your backyard as we speak,” Jones said. “Who’s the real Rick Jackson?” Jackson denied the allegation, saying he is not aware of his employees’ immigration status. The third candidate in the race, Brad Raffensperger, came in at 14%. Raffensperger campaigned on having been the first secretary of state to require photo ID for all forms of voting and to expand polling locations while holding counties accountable. He has highlighted his record of “modernizing” the state’s election system, including implementing an auditable paper ballot system and expanding voter control over election security, according to his official website. On the Democrat side, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who has the endorsement of former President Joe Biden, won over 56% of the vote, making her the Democrat nominee. Republican Senate Candidate In the race for Republicans to unseat Ossoff in November, Rep. Mike Collins and former college football coach Derek Dooley will head to the June runoff election. Collins, who received the endorsement of Trump-endorsed candidates, such as Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz, ran on a strict border enforcement campaign. Collins, who gained 41% of the vote, gained popularity among House Republicans in 2024 after he introduced and passed the Laken Riley Act, which enhanced border enforcement operations throughout the country. “I have proven that I can deliver for the state of Georgia,” Collins said. “I can even do it with bipartisan legislation. And I never compromise my conservative values.” Named after the Georgia nursing student killed during a morning jog by an illegal immigrant previously released by the Biden administration, the Laken Riley Act mandated the federal detention of non-U.S. nationals who are arrested, charged, or convicted of specific offenses, including theft, burglary, larceny, shoplifting, or assault of a law enforcement officer. Dooley, who claimed 30% of the vote, ran on being loyal to Trump and being a Washington outsider. “I want to win our Senate seat back,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who endorsed Dooley, told voters at a local bike and coffee shop just days ahead of Tuesday’s primary. “We haven’t done so well in U.S. Senate races here in the state of Georgia in the last several cycles, and we have one more opportunity to try to get one of our Senate seats back. And we’ve got to have the right person to do that.” At a recent campaign event, Kemp argued that Dooley’s status as a political outsider could give Republicans their best chance at reclaiming the seat. “My goal here is to win our Senate seat back,” Kemp said. “We need a political outsider to do that.” Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, the third candidate in the race, came in at 25%.

The front line in the fight over AI runs through Utah. In Box Elder County, a remote valley near the Great Salt Lake, residents are fighting a proposed AI data center, which would be one of the largest ever. Some 4,000 people filed formal objections over its water use. Developers pulled their application but say they plan to try again. Utah isn’t the only such battle. Across the country, data centers are hitting local resistance. In Northern Virginia, residents oppose new power lines and substations. In Florida, a massive project collapsed after local pushback. In rural America, landowners are rallying to stop projects they once would have welcomed. Even state lawmakers are getting nervous. Some now talk about outright bans on new data centers.   On the surface, residents are protesting the use of water, power, and land. But there have been thousands of data centers built in the past without much fanfare. Why are so many Americans suddenly so opposed to data centers in their area? Critics of these campaigns argue that this is the result of dark and even foreign money. Investor Kevin O’Leary has claimed these campaigns are funded by China, which stands to gain the most from a slowdown in AI development in the U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently said that these protests “are not organic and local. Some of this is foreign-sourced dark money” that used to be spent on climate change protests. This isn’t idle speculation. The American Energy Institute has found evidence that foreign sources (many in Europe) have spent some $39 million on the campaigns. Still, as a political fact, the local hostility to these data centers is real. And some of the complaints make sense. Large language models such as Grok, Claude, and ChatGPT are not just software. They need “compute,” that is, hardware, infrastructure, and energy. In other words, they need data centers and their prerequisites. Building and sustaining data centers requires large spaces, massive construction projects, and stacks and stacks of servers using advanced GPUs, which draw as much power as a small city. To stay cool—which they must—data centers need either water or cooling systems that use even more electricity. They raise concerns about noise and air pollution. Take just one of the examples above: electricity. Prices have climbed fast in recent years and data centers have played a role in this. The Department of Energy estimates “that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume approximately 6.7 to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028.” Next, AI lacks the intuitive appeal of, say, farms, rockets, and car factories. It doesn’t help that many tech entrepreneurs speak of AI as a threat to all that is good and holy. “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” Elon Musk said at an MIT conference way back in 2014. “You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like … yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn’t work out.” Finally, among conservatives at least, Big Tech companies such as Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook), don’t exactly enjoy stellar reputations. They overwhelmingly support left-wing causes. They also targeted and censored conservatives and heterodox voices during the lockdowns. Is it any wonder that their sudden appeal to patriotism seems cynical? As Mike Cernovich put it on X: Facebook is firing Americans, hiring H-1B's, funding the far left, but if you don't want them to have an infinite data center, then you support China. That really is the slop being pushed right now, in some cases people are being paid to post it. https://t.co/O1N2sJ4Wd6— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 18, 2026 Data centers are a concrete symbol of an industry that, in the mind of much of the public, is opaque, scary, and led by oligarchs who often seem hostile to everyday Americans. This makes them ideal targets for public anger. The Disastrous Data Center Bottleneck Alas, none of this changes the fact that a data center bottleneck is a looming disaster if we want to stay ahead of the Chinese Communist Party. Today, the U.S. leads the world in artificial intelligence and in compute. The U.S. has eight times more capacity than any other country. American spending on data centers was about $425 billion in 2025. Some $52 billion was spent just on construction. And still, demand is expected to triple between now and 2030. China is behind the U.S., but it has far fewer local veto points. If our rival in the Far East needs more land or water, it takes it. If it needs more electricity, it can build another coal-fired power plant without worrying much about local critics or fussy environmentalists. Separation of power, local control, and public input distinguish us from the one-party autocracy in China. We don’t want to lose the very things that make our country better than China. If we limit our own ability to train and deploy advanced AI, however, we could quickly lose our edge and even our status as the unique rival to Chinese hegemony. AI is not a quirky side gig of lefties clustered on the east and west coasts. It is the most powerful general-purpose technology of our age—perhaps of any age. Like electrification, internal combustion engines, and computers, it will touch every other industry and sector. And right now, it is advancing so quickly that staying even six months ahead of China could prove decisive. If the U.S. falls behind in the AI race, it will probably not be because we lacked the expertise or the energy resources. It could be because, in 2026, we could not find a way to preserve the virtues of our constitutional republic while opening the data center bottleneck.