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 Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.  Jack Fowler: Victor, let’s conclude with a couple of crime [stories]. I think crime was just mentioned before, and I have a bevy of things here, but I just want to mention a few and get your take on this. We brought it up in prior podcasts, the Democrat Party being the party that almost loves crime and criminals.  In Colorado, four Colorado Democrats blocked a Senate bill which would have required jail time for child rapists. They’ve—I’ll mention their names, these Democrats—Adrienne Benavidez, Nick Hinrichsen, Katie Wallace, and Mike Weissman. Do humans do this? They do there. In New York, I’m holding today’s New York Post for those who can or are watching this on YouTube.  Albany, that’s the capital of New York, there’s a bill being put forward there that would parole—this is David Berkowitz, by the way, the Son of Sam. He’s in prison. And under this law, anyone that’s 55 or older who has served 15 years would have immediate recourse to a parole hearing and hearings every two years.  And there’s also some legislation about letting people out after a certain age period. And I thought I had—I have like 10 other criminality—oh, the last criminality one is in California. It’s in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Unified School District has come to a settlement with the teachers union.  Let me see. If a union teacher sexually abuses a student in Los Angeles, they have unlimited job security. They just get sent to a new school. This is an agreement that LA’s education officials have. I mean, this is sick.  Victor Davis Hanson: The subtext is that the epidemic is not what you would think, a bunch of bald, obese white guys chasing beautiful 16-year-old girls around the desk.  It’s sophisticated, supposedly sexually experienced teachers, feminine, female, that are having sex with boys to fulfill that old 1950s jock-type idea that it’s not really sexual. It’s initiation—harassment.   You know, the idea being, if you said in my high school class to a bunch of guys, the hot Mrs. Smith, who’s 28, is going to have sex with you at 15 or 16, they would say, “Oh, yeah,” you know. But that’s what one of my—I bring that up because that’s what they’re going back to. You know what I mean? That attitude that maybe these women are mentors or groomers or something.  And it’s really sexist because if it was an older male, unattractive, trying to coerce a woman, they wouldn’t do that. But maybe they would under this statute.   I don’t know whether it’s epidemic or it’s just in the news all the time of these young women in their 20s who are teachers that are having sexual relations with young men. And where does it come from?  I think it’s part of—it started with the idea that pederasty that was in the gay world of, you know, Harvey Milk was accused allegedly of having a live-in person who was under the age of 18. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think people in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon wanted to rename the—didn’t they want to rename the USS Harvey Milk, a logistic ship?  Fowler: Yes.   Hanson: I don’t know if they did for that reason.  But there are a lot of people, I think there’s a person in the California Legislature, gay guy, who wants to water that down because they feel there’s a long romantic literary tradition in the West, partly in the public schools, which are the private schools in Britain and in Europe. Tea and Sympathy, right? Yeah.  But also same-sex grooming.  Fowler: Gay.   Hanson: Yeah, what the Greeks called the erastes, the active older man, and the eromenos. And that tradition that was imbued with philosophical seriousness, supposedly—that was the idea. And it’s kind of scary.  What I’m getting at is the— Fowler: I think it’s one of the pluses, by the way, Victor.   On the flag, I think that’s—that man-boy love is now one of these plus, plus, pluses. Yeah.  Hanson: Well, you know what? What’s so funny is that in the ’70s and ’80s, it was the Democratic Party that really—it was not the libertarian Republicans as much. They were moralistic, much more moralistic. I should say moral, not moralistic, but they were not driving these laws about the age of consent.  It was the Democrats—remember that it was the children, it was Hillary. We have to save the children. And they were really going after any sexual activity under the age of 18 in most states. And now it’s just they’ve come 180 degrees. It’s now, well, who are you to say that the person isn’t old enough to give an age of consent?  You know? And I think it comes from the idea they feel that it’s oppressing the gay community somehow, that they can’t date young boys. Because that’s the people who are the most advocate of the pederasty, which is a Greek word. It just means pais, the word for boy, and then eras—erao, the verb, and erastes, the noun, loving a boy.  Pedophilia is a little different. That is termed with under the age, I think, of 12, pedophilia. But—or that’s love for a child, and over the age of 12, given the etymology, it’s sexual acts with a child. But in our world, we call pedophilia, I think, the worst crime because a person’s not even at puberty yet. That was the distinction.  But it’s funny how the Democrat—this new Jacobin party—they want to destroy all of these norms that they used to say were so important, you know? Remember about abortion? I think that abortion should be—here’s Bill Clinton—I think that abortion should be, you know, legal and rare, he said that. Now it’s legal and common.   Fowler: Safe, legal, and rare. Yeah. Right.  You know, this stuff with the teachers, with moving the teachers around or just moving them to another school—this is the same group of people that various states, the Left, extended the laws in order to go after priests. And I’m not defending priests here who were engaged in—but to say, oh, the Catholic Diocese was bad because the priest did this, and he abused this boy here, and they moved him to another parish, and that’s bad.  Now, it doesn’t matter if it happened 50 years ago, we have to go after them. Meanwhile, if you’re a teacher, it’s OK to move you around if you—well, they’re not done yet—molested a kid.  Hanson: They may feel that liberation theologists in the church have certain dispensations because they’re trying to groom people in national liberation theology and things happen. Who knows what they’re capable of?  They’re a very fluid mindset, the Left, and whatever is necessary or whatever is convenient. They don’t believe in absolutes or norms or unchanging human nature. And so they come up with all these—I mean, I never, if we had this discussion 10 years ago, 15, we wouldn’t even know what a transgendered person was.  It was some clinical description called a transsexual that affected 0.0001 of the population. Christine Jorgensen from the 1960s who changed hers. And all of a sudden, it became 30% of the kids at Ivy League schools were saying they would like to transition.  So as I keep saying, every bad idea starts in the faculty lounge. And from the faculty lounge to the American popular culture is about two years.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The Center for Christian Virtue is prepared to pursue legal action after the group’s proposal for displaying three crosses on top of its building was rejected by the city of Columbus, Ohio. The unanimous decision against CCV, a 501(c)(3) family policy organization in downtown Columbus, was made on April 28 by six members of the city’s Downtown Commission, which laid out their objections in a staff report. It’s a move that Aaron Baer, the CCV president, called “frustrating.” “Our team took great care to design artwork that fully complies with the city’s code and design standards. That’s why this decision is so troubling,” Baer told The Daily Signal. “The Columbus Downtown Commission didn’t just reject artwork, it rejected a clear expression of faith.” In a statement released on Thursday, Baer said he believes the city’s decision “raises serious First Amendment concerns,” and added that CCV looks forward to “working with the city to correct this and ensure that religious expression is treated fairly in Columbus.” In an interview with The Daily Signal, however, Baer said the commission was “very unclear” in why they rejected the group’s proposal, adding that “certainly legal recourse is not off the table here.” “We want our legal team involved to evaluate this to make sure we can properly avail ourselves of our rights,” he said. According to Baer, the crosses constitute artwork consistent with the city’s Downtown Design Guidelines. However, the report by the commission states “the application is inconsistent with the guidelines due to the style of sign proposed along the Broad St. corridor,” as well the rooftop location and number of graphics proposed. “Maybe they’re not artwork to them, but to us, there’s nothing more beautiful than things that display the love of our Savior,” Baer said. “I think for a lot of Christians this is resonating because all we’re trying to do is avail ourselves of our basic American freedoms, and the city is making us jump through all of these hoops to do that. It’s just frustrating.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., on Sunday urged the Trump administration to cut off federal funding to the University of Michigan after a professor appeared to praise anti‑Israel student activists who illegally set up a campus encampment following Oct. 7, 2023. “It’s unacceptable for any university professor to praise chaos that glorified America’s enemies, justified violence, and terrorized Jewish students,” Scott wrote Saturday on X. “If this is what Americans are paying for, it’s time to cut them off COMPLETELY.” According to the university’s website, the University of Michigan received at least $1.17 billion in federal taxpayer funding during fiscal year 2024. Scott’s remarks followed comments by University of Michigan professor Derek Peterson during the school’s spring 2026 commencement ceremony, in which Peterson publicly praised pro‑Palestinian student activists who had participated in the now‑dismantled encampment. “Sing for the pro‑Palestinian student activists, who have for these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza,” Peterson said during the ceremony. University administrators previously determined that the encampment posed a safety risk to the campus community and violated university policies. The encampment also resulted in vandalism of campus property, according to reporting by The College Fix. “In recent days, encampment participants have also received numerous outreach attempts from U‑M administrators and DPSS leadership, asking them to leave,” campus police said in a statement at the time. “The encampment posed safety risks, both to participants and the community at large, and its presence was in violation of policies and regulations. Its removal was important to help maintain the safety and security of the U‑M campus community.” After the encampment first emerged, the homes and private property of several university regents and administrators were vandalized, The College Fix reported. In June 2024, the front of Jewish Regent Jordan Acker’s law office was spray‑painted with the phrases “free Palestine” and “divest or f— off.” In October 2024, then‑University President Santa Ono’s home was vandalized with the words “intifada,” “coward,” and “divest.” In March 2025, Provost Laurie McCauley was targeted when protesters broke a window at her home and spray‑painted “free Palestine,” “divest,” and “no honor in genocide,” according to ABC News Detroit.

A federal judge appointed by President Joe Biden, with an activist past, last week blocked the Trump administration’s termination of protected status for Yemeni immigrants to the United States. Before serving on the bench, Judge Dale Ho of the Southern District of New York, who once jokingly said he has been caricatured as a “wild-eyed sort of leftist,” was a lawyer for both the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he litigated against voter ID laws and against verification of citizenship for voter registration. On Friday, he temporarily halted the Department of Homeland Security from terminating the temporary legal status of about 3,000 Yemeni immigrants. The termination was set to take effect next week. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about ending temporary protected status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria. “They are ordinary, law-abiding people who have been granted status to be here because the Government has repeatedly determined, in accordance with the TPS statute, that Yemen is subject to an ongoing armed conflict, and that, due to that conflict, requiring them to return would pose a serious threat to their safety,” the judge wrote in a 36-page opinion. From 2013 to 2023, Ho was the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, where he supervised voting rights litigation. He was the first ACLU lawyer to be appointed directly to a federal judgeship since Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to the Asian American Bar Association of New York. From 2009 to 2013, he was assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 2018, he successfully litigated against a Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. In 2020, he argued against a Trump administration policy not to count illegal immigrants in the U.S. Census. After Biden nominated Ho in 2023, the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group, cited his past litigation against voter ID laws and against allowing the Census Bureau to confirm citizenship. During his Senate confirmation in 2023, Republicans brought up Ho’s past comments, including a 2013 interview in which he described himself as a “wild-eyed sort of leftist” and said he is “accused of sometimes seeing racial discrimination everywhere I look.” Ho told senators he was only describing a caricature others have of him and would be an impartial judge.

Last month, the Justice Department targeted a central hub of the Left’s cancel culture machine that weaponized the federal government under President Joe Biden. Just over a week later, Democrats received a “whistleblower” report claiming that the DOJ rushed the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. To my eyes, this looks like a deep state operation to undermine the government’s case and prop up the SPLC’s flagging reputation. A federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges for sending money to “field sources,” members of the very white supremacist groups the center claims it exists to dismantle. The SPLC did not deny funding members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, but insisted the funds were part of an informant program that it used to prevent violent attacks. Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., told the media they sent letters to Kevin P. Davidson, acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, claiming some insider information that’s rather convenient for their narrative. They cited “whistleblower information” in stating that Singh ordered Davidson’s office “to rush through the indictment of the SPLC, despite serious concerns about the strength of the case.” ‘Systematic Flaws’ Raskin and Scanlon mentioned “systematic flaws” in the indictment. They accused Singh of attacking “a preeminent civil rights organization, the SPLC, for the ‘crime’ of attempting to study, investigate, and expose white nationalist groups.” The Democrats noted that the FBI also uses paid informants, and they echoed the SPLC’s claim that it fed information to the FBI that it received from informants. “Should the FBI itself be indicted as a co-conspirator?” they asked. Raskin and Scanlon suggested the DOJ brought the case because “the SPLC has publicly opposed and exposed numerous organizations that support the president and do his bidding—like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters—and called them hate groups.” The Democrats insinuated that Trump is on the side of the KKK. “No one is accusing the Trump administration of working for the white nationalist groups, but they do seem to have the same enemies,” they wrote. Big Problems With the Democrats’ SPLC Defense When reached for comment, Davidson told The Daily Signal that he has yet to receive any letter from the Democrats. “As I have not received a letter, four days after the media received it, I will simply state that the evidence in the case supports every word in the indictment and I look forward to litigating the case in court,” the acting U.S. attorney told The Daily Signal. That doesn’t exactly sound like a man who harbors “serious concerns about the strength of the case.” In fact, Democrats should be the ones harboring serious concerns about the SPLC’s ability to defend itself. The indictment doesn’t just claim that the SPLC paid “field sources” inside the KKK and other white nationalist groups—it also states that the SPLC was supervising the “racist postings” of an organizer of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. Raskin and Scanlon also failed to mention that, while the SPLC reportedly did hand over some information from “field sources” to law enforcement, it kept the program secret. Perhaps the largest omission, however, involves the fact that the SPLC doesn’t just face charges for allegedly misleading donors—it also faces charges for lying to banks. If the indictment correctly quotes the key financial documents—and neither Raskin nor Scanlon suggests it does not—the Justice Department has the SPLC dead to rights on bank fraud. A Deep State Effort? Last year, an RMG Research poll found that 75% of Washington, D.C.-area federal employees who made at least $150,000 a year and who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 would disobey a lawful Trump order if they consider it bad policy. While many of these bureaucrats may have left the government since then, it stands to reason that someone with this mindset might be behind the Democrats’ letter. After all, the SPLC had a rather large footprint in the Biden administration. SPLC leaders and staff cultivated relationships with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the FBI cited the SPLC in targeting “radical-traditional Catholics,” President Biden appointed an SPLC attorney to a top federal judgeship, and SPLC staff briefed DOJ prosecutors. It stands to reason that some left-leaning Justice Department holdovers from the Biden administration might be none-too-happy to see the SPLC facing an indictment. ‘The Right Side of History’ Raskin and Scanlon didn’t just go public to condemn the indictment—they did so to make a statement. They suggested the SPLC is on the “right side of history” against the Trump administration. With all due respect, they only think so because they cherry-picked the data. Sure, the SPLC did noble work in the beginning, but it has long since transformed into a far-left smear factory. Its “hate map” doesn’t just include the KKK and the Proud Boys—it also includes mainstream conservative and Christian groups, including Moms for Liberty, the Family Research Council, PragerU, Defending Education, and even Turning Point USA. Perhaps Davidson didn’t get the letter because the Democrats thought twice about sending it. They should take a closer look at the indictment and ask if they really want to be defending the SPLC.