White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the Department of War’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Leavitt said at Monday’s press briefing that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out the second strike on Sept. 2, reportedly killing two people who survived the initial attack. Leavitt addressed the strike after a Washington Post report reported Hegesth ordered the military to “kill everybody.” Hegseth denounced the story as “fake news.” “President [Donald] Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,” Leavitt said. “With respect to the strikes in question on Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.” “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” she continued. The Biden administration allowed enough fentanyl to enter the country to “kill every American, man, woman and child, many times over,” Leavitt said. “That’s why you’ve seen a drastic difference in this administration’s policy with respect to the last,” she said, “and it’s one of the many reasons the American public reelected this president and support this secretary of war in conducting these strikes.” Hegseth held meetings with many members of Congress over the weekend who expressed concerns over the strikes, located mostly near Venezuela, Leavitt said. She said the administration has also held 13 bipartisan briefings to Congress on the strikes. “There have been a number of document reviews from members of Congress to review the classified DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion and other related documents,” she said. “Twenty-nine senators and 92 representatives have reviewed those documents, which is about two thirds of those that are Democrat members, and they have been made available to all 100 senators, all 435 members of the House, and to general counsels of the relevant committees on a bipartisan basis for their review.” The post White House Defends Strikes on Venezuelan Narco-Terrorists appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Millions of Americans may soon see changes to their television programming if a decades old broadcast restriction that impacts TV station ownership is modified. The Federal Communications Commission currently caps an entity from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households, but the federal agency is considering changing that rule. The longstanding federal regulation will likely be the topic of a Dec. 17 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, where all three FCC commissioners are set to testify. The federal rule has divided Republican leaders. FCC chairman Brendan Carr has considered modifying the federal agency’s cap on commercial broadcasters in the past. “Over the decades, as the media landscape has evolved, the Commission has revisited these rules to account for new competitors and advances in technology,” Carr said in a statement released in June. “Those changes have only accelerated in recent years with the advent of online offerings. Broadcasters now compete for eyeballs with YouTube stars, social media platforms, and streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, not to mention traditional cable and satellite offerings,” the federal regulator continued. Carr went to explain that he believed the FCC had the authority to change the cap without further legislative action by Congress. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has expressed concerns about left-wing networks potentially expanding their footprints in the United States if the FCC cap is discarded. “If [lifting the FCC cap] would also allow the Radical Left Networks to “enlarge,” I would not be happy,” the president wrote in part on Truth Social, adding, “ABC & NBC, in particular, are a disaster–A VIRTUAL ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.” “They should be viewed as an illegal campaign to the Radical Left. NO EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS. If anything, make them SMALLER!” Trump added. However, the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade organization that includes major media companies, is in favor of ending the cap.  “Local broadcasters are not asking for special treatment; we are asking for the ability to compete in today’s media landscape,” NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.  “Lifting the arbitrary 39% limit, which applies only to broadcast stations, will allow station groups to invest in local journalism, sports rights and the technology that keeps communities informed during emergencies, especially in smaller markets,” LeGeyt continued. “The national cap was imposed during an era before broadband and streaming reshaped how Americans get their news, and the longer Washington delays addressing it, the harder it becomes for local stations to sustain the trusted local news and reporting that Americans rely on every day. We appreciate Chairman Carr’s recognition that empowering local broadcasters will require modern ownership rules, and we look forward to swift FCC action,” the NAP president concluded. The Daily Signal reached out to Cruz’s office and the FCC for comment. The post FCC Considers Jettisoning Longstanding Rule Limiting Broadcasters appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Parents are growing increasingly concerned about the prevalence of technology in classrooms, and the negative side effects that change is fueling among children nationwide. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools to remote learning, many have only grown increasingly reliant on technology, shifting assignments into digital forms and handing every student a computer or tablet to aid their education in the classroom. But after seeing their kids become angrier, less sociable, and less educated, parents are asking where the teachers have gone. “What are we doing with an iPad all day, for eight hours a day in our kids’ hands?” Patricia McCoy, a mother of four in Wyoming, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Honestly, it’s disturbing. They give your kids worksheets on the iPad. There’s no actual critical thinking happening because they’re given apps to replace the teachers.” Even when parents ask for additional help for their struggling children, the solution at some schools always comes back to more technology. “If your kid is struggling in math, instead of giving them tutoring, they’re going to recommend to you that your child use this app on their iPad to help teach them how to do this math,” McCoy continued. “But that app doesn’t teach them how to do the math. They enter the problem and it gives them the solution all written out and worked out, so there’s no critical thinking being done. The answer is being given to them. They have ChatGPT at the ready, and other things similar to ChatGPT, which, again, does all the thinking for them. And all they have to do is show up, log into the iPad, get the answers from one app, put it into another app and get the grade.” This has some parents wondering where the teachers have gone and whether they are teaching their students at all. “They Don’t Want to Teach” “COVID did create a lot of this, and it made it a lot easier for some of the teachers now to just place these kids in front of a screen,” Mike Maldonado, a California father of five, told the DCNF. “And it makes it easier for some of these teachers because they don’t want to teach. They’re just there for a job.” “We can’t ignore the fact that all this stuff makes it easier on the teacher, which actually, I think produces a worse result,” Jaime Brennan, member of the Frederick County Board of Education who spoke on behalf of herself and not the board, told the DCNF. “When a teacher can go online and make up an assignment using AI, now they haven’t thought. Now they’re not using their brainpower, and it’s like a trickle-down effect. We’ve already introduced screens and technology to the level that as humans, I don’t think we were designed to use, and we haven’t adapted to it very well.” Critically, Brennan said, the use of AI has prevented students from developing automaticity, the skill of memorizing basic solutions, such as simple addition, to the point that you do not even think about it, which is a foundational skill students carry on throughout their education and adult life. McCoy told the DCNF that the digital learning environment has left her youngest son academically “two to three years behind” his siblings, who did not go through this new screen-based school system. “He is drastically farther behind academically,” McCoy said. “He does what he needs to to pass, but intellectually and academically, he is years behind his two brothers and his sister at this age, and that is sad and heartbreaking as a mother to know that I probably failed my child because I went along with what the school said was going to help them.” Despite being “years behind,” McCoy’s son is on track to graduate on time. “We graduate kids who have to go to community college and take remedial math,” Brennan mentioned. “Our kids leave 12th grade and they go to 13th grade. So we’re putting out kids that are not ready to operate in the regular world.” Possessed by the Screen Not only is she worried about his education, the concerned mom has seen a noticeable shift in her son’s mood as he is forced to rely on more and more screen time. “I tried to take my son’s phone away one time, and it looked like a demon was looking back at me. My son was not looking at me,” McCoy recalled. “His eyes were completely black and cold. It was like he was a totally other person, like a drug addict, and you’re taking their drug from them. And he was 15 at the time.” Without his phone, McCoy said her son was a new person. “That week, he was a totally different person. He wasn’t overly tired and drowsy all day. He was actually interacting with the family and spending time with us. Instead of being shut down and closed off in his room, he was playing with our dogs more,” McCoy said.  Maldonado thinks these behavioral issues stem partly from the lack of human interaction children experience in increasingly screen-dependent classrooms. “Part of the problem is that they’ve lost a lot of the interaction,” Maldonado said. “This is why some of these kids I think act out, because they don’t want to listen to the teacher. There has to be that communication between two people, two humans, and not a screen where they can’t really interact and get the tone, the voice inflection of a response.” “That is a major issue,” Maldonado continued. “Without social skills, how do you function in society? And we see it all the time. Social skills are definitely learned, it’s a trait that you pick up from interacting with people when you’re young. And that’s the big thing, people don’t realize that if there’s no interaction, that person is going to be withdrawn, not just from the classroom, but from the home and from society.” The issue is especially apparent in children who were younger during the COVID year, Maldonado said. The so-called COVID babies are typically “the ones who you can see have the majority of the behavioral issues.” “It is hard to get some of these kids to actually look you in the eye and make eye contact. They don’t know human interaction,” Brennan concurred, adding that students today are not even dating as much as they used to. “I’m really concerned where that’s going to lead, and what our kids are going to be like. We’re already seeing negative impacts of kind of this disintegration, people are waiting till later to getting married. They’re not getting married.” The Price America Is Paying Meanwhile, as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) among youth increases, more data and stories are coming out revealing the tool often exposes children to inappropriate content, damages the development of critical thinking skills, and at times, drives kids to suicide by explicitly coaching them to do so. Brain scans from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed that brain engagement was severely diminished under participants who used AI compared to those who used a traditional search engine, and memory recall following assignments completed with AI tanked. Interestingly, schools that struggle with budget concerns and often fail to see promised districtwide staff raises somehow find funds to buy brand-new devices for every student—even when they already had slightly older, but still functional devices. “Most of [the money goes] to administration and fees and other things that have nothing to do with the education of our kids, or they spend it on these expensive iPads and technology that shouldn’t even be in the classrooms, and then they go to the state and say, ‘You’re not giving us enough money. We need more money,’” McCoy told the DCNF. “Well, we keep throwing money at the problem, but the problem doesn’t get better or go away. It gets worse every year. So clearly, money isn’t solving the issue on why our kids can’t read, write and do math.” “Stop spending the money on the iPads and put that money back in the classrooms instead,” McCoy continued. “Give it to the teachers.” While Tina Descovich, co-founder and CEO of parental advocacy group Moms for Liberty, mirrors the concerns of many parents, she also told the DCNF there could be a place for technology in the classroom. “I think they have to be used in a very responsible fashion,” Descovich said. “There’s so many wonderful teachers that would like to use AI in a way to help enhance their skills and teach their children better.” Moms for Liberty signed a pledge with the White House in September to help foster innovation and interest in AI with America’s youth. Brennan remains concerned that technology in the classroom prevents kids from thinking independently and may harm future skill building rather than facilitate an interest or expertise in technology. “Are you trying to keep pace with the kids who are learning to use the technology, or are you trying to create the kids who are going to develop the technology? Because those are two different things,” Brennan said. “So if we’re just teaching our kids to be technology consumers, then sure, the easy way out is to do everything on the technology. If you’re trying to keep teach kids to be the technology developers, they need to learn to think and process away from the technology. They need to have other skills that are not technology based.” Parents Still Have Power For parents concerned about the technological takeover of their children’s classrooms who feel like their schools aren’t listening to them, Descovich said that along with helping their kids at home when possible, parents should “rally with likeminded parents.” “Start educating your community,” Descovich said. “I think when parents really understand what’s happening and what the concerns are and what the risks are, they will want to take action. And when you have enough parents showing up at school board meetings and speaking about an issue we have, as we know, you definitely can make an impact, and they will listen.” Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘No Critical Thinking’: Parents Sound Alarm as Tech Begins to ‘Replace the Teacher’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Should the Trump administration or the courts determine whether an illegal alien qualifies for asylum due to threats of persecution, when the facts are not in dispute? Supreme Court justices pressured a Justice Department lawyer on that issue Monday. The case involves Salvadoran national Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, who claims he faced threats to his life from a hitman in his country. He illegally entered the United States in June 2021 during the Biden administration’s border surge.  The question before the justices is whether federal courts should defer to the executive branch’s judgment on immigration deportation cases when facts are not in dispute. In this case, the federal court deferred to the Justice Department’s determination that the case did not constitute persecution. Plaintiffs argue the courts should make that interpretation. For this reason, the plaintiffs did not focus on the hitman’s threat in the legal arguments, which seemed to perplex Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  “I actually don’t understand why a credible death threat would not always cause suffering or harm,” Sotomayor said. “Are you arguing something quite different?” Nicholas Rosellini, arguing for the plaintiffs, said, “We did not make that argument explicitly before the First Circuit.” He added in the appellate court arguments, the government argued entirely for judicial deference to the Bureau of Immigration Appeals.  “Deciding whether undisputed facts qualifies persecution under the law involves legal interpretation, not fact finding,” Rosellini told the court. “Courts have repeatedly established legal principles on things like sexual violence, religious persecution, economic deprivation, and beyond. The court did not establish those principles by pondering the term ‘persecution’ in the abstract. They interpret the law by applying the persecution standard to particular sets of undisputed facts.” Arguing for the government, Justice Department lawyer Joshua Dos Santos said the Supreme Court has spoken to the issue in the 1992 case of Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Elias-Zacarias. In that case, the high court found a Guatemalan man could not seek asylum in the United States because an anti-government guerrilla group sought to force him into military service.  Dos Santos added that Congress passed reforms of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews rules adopted by federal agencies, and the government’s standard for “persecution” is thoroughly reviewed by the executive branch.  “There’s no way, no realistic chance, that when Congress was overhauling standards of review, in OIRA, … that it was either unaware of that practice, or silently departing from it,” Dos Santos said.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned giving too much deference to the executive branch without judicial review, and pressed Dos Santos.  Dos Santos replied that the Bureau of Immigration Appeals and federal immigration judges “have expertise in looking at recurring fact patterns, and seeing all kinds of different versions of these cases, far more cases than any court of appeals is ever going to see.” Immigration judges are Justice Department officials, and not members of the federal judiciary. The same is true of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which upheld the immigration judge’s decision in this case. After the Department of Homeland Security sought removal of Urias-Orellana and his family, the family applied for asylum based on persecution. Urias-Orellana also sought protection under the United Nations’ “Convention Against Torture.” Urias-Orellana contends his association with his half-brother Juan puts his life in danger. Under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, asylum seekers who have been denied relief by the Board of Immigration Appeals can appeal to federal courts.  A federal immigration judge denied the family’s applications for asylum, and determined this did not amount to persecution, or demonstrated reasonable fear of future persecution if they returned to El Salvador. As for the U.N. anti-torture claim, the judge found he didn’t report his harassment to the police. The BIA upheld the judge’s determination. After that, the plaintiffs appealed the case to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which found it should defer to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision since facts were not in dispute. The post Who Decides Whether an Illegal Immigrant Gets Asylum for ‘Persecution?’ Supreme Court Weighs Arguments appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A three-judge panel disqualified President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer as the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, in a case pushed by the head of a liberal lawfare group, and by Hunter Biden’s former lawyer. The panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit determined Monday that Alina Habba’s appointment violated federal procedures. This upheld U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann’s ruling in August. “It is apparent that the current administration has been frustrated by some of the legal and political barriers to getting its appointees in place,” Judge D. Michael Fisher wrote in the ruling. “Its efforts to elevate its preferred candidate for U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, to the role of Acting U.S. Attorney demonstrate the difficulties it has faced.” The litigation to disqualify Habba involved Democrat lawyers opposing the Trump administration, such as Norm Eisen, the executive chairman of the Democracy Defenders Fund, who vowed to bring more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration.  Also in the mix was Abbe Lowell, the former attorney for Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.  Gerry Krovatin, a New Jersey lawyer involved in ethics cases against Republicans and Democrats in the state, also represented one of the plaintiffs. “The court’s decision affirms that U.S. Attorney Alina Habba is unlawfully and invalidly serving as the chief federal law enforcement officer in New Jersey, marking the first time an appellate court has ruled that President Trump cannot usurp longstanding statutory and constitutional processes to insert whomever he wants in these positions,” the three lawyers said in a statement. “We will continue to challenge President Trump’s unlawful appointments of purported U.S. Attorneys wherever appropriate.” The lawyers needed a client with standing to challenge Habba’s capacity to bring charges. The three lawyers represented Cesar Pina, who pleaded not guilty to wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery charges. Pina was among plaintiffs who challenged Habba’s authority to bring criminal cases.  The disqualification marks another setback for the Trump administration’s Justice Department regarding appointed prosecutors.  Last week, a federal judge dismissed criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General  Letitia James. The judge determined that Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Reuters contributed to this story. The post How Liberal Lawfare Actors Spearheaded Case That Got Trump-Appointed Prosecutor Disqualified appeared first on The Daily Signal.