It doesn’t look like a political rally. There are no podiums, no party banners, no policy papers in sight—just trending sounds, pastel filters, and 30-second clips filmed in dorm rooms and bedrooms across America.   But on TikTok, politics isn’t debated so much as curated, stylized, and performed. And as millions of young users scroll through algorithm-fed activism, a deeper question emerges: Who is really shaping the political instincts of the next generation—and to what end.  On Jan. 22, 2026, TikTok signed a deal to sell part of its U.S. operations to a joint venture primarily controlled by American investors. This deal allows U.S. investors more control over the TikTok algorithm and app decision-making.   However, the results of the sale have not eliminated the major problems within the structure of the app. Some areas of concern are embedded in the essence of the app, and these issues cannot be ignored.   Conservative Hesitation   For many conservatives, the debate over TikTok is no longer about viral dances—it’s about sovereignty, security, and the formation of the next generation.  The Heritage Foundation has published research highlighting concerns over data privacy, foreign influence operations, and the vulnerability of young Americans to algorithm-driven content manipulation.   Jeff Smith, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, commented on the danger of TikTok. “It isn’t just another casual theft of priceless American IP or a debilitating monthly cyberattack,” Smith said. “This time, American children are on the front line. One online monitoring group found TikTok was pushing harmful content on eating disorders and self-harm to ‘vulnerable teens’ every 30 seconds.”    For many, TikTok represents not just a tech debate, but a test of whether U.S. policymakers are willing to confront the potential harm to society posed by a social media outlet.   An Added Threat: Political Activism   In addition to the security risks, the pushing of harmful material on teens, and the algorithm-driven manipulation, there is new area which has risen in popularity and presents young people with an additional obstacle for their generation’s development: the rise of “aesthetic” activism.    There was a time when political engagement meant town-hall meetings, ballot drives, and the solemn perusal of a newspaper editorial page. Today, it often begins—and sometimes ends—with a 15-second TikTok clip, complete with a catchy audio loop, quick cuts, and a hook that feels more like entertainment than engagement.   This phenomenon, increasingly dubbed political aesthetic activism, is reshaping how young Americans encounter politics: not through policy papers or public forums, but through scrollable snapshots of rhetoric, opinion , and cultural cues.  There’s no denying TikTok’s power. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about 48% of TikTok users ages 18-29 say they use the platform to keep up with politics or political issues—far more than older age groups.   Nearly half of those under 30 also say they look to TikTok for general news, and 84% say they see humorous posts referencing current events at least sometimes. These shifts matter, especially as young people spend a significant portion of their media time immersed in platforms designed to hook attention, not necessarily cultivating understanding.   At first glance, this new medium appears to have some virtues. Creators are breaking down issues like voter registration, tax policy and civic participation in ways that might seem accessible to viewers who wouldn’t crack open a policy brief. But let’s be clear about what political aesthetic activism really is. It is political engagement shaped by algorithms, optimized for emotional impact more than explanatory depth. Bits replace context, catchphrases replace nuance.    Research suggests that much of what works on TikTok—emotionally charged content and bite-sized commentary—often reinforces prior views rather than fostering deep reflection. This way treats politics as entertainment—and entertainment’s first loyalty is to attention, not accuracy, depth or democratic responsibility.  That dynamic has real consequences. While younger users are far more likely to consume political content on TikTok, most aren’t actively posting or seeking out policy discussions—they’re encountering snippets amid dance videos, memes, and trend challenges. The Danger of Algorithm   Even more concerning is the quiet narrowing effect of the algorithm itself.   TikTok’s “For You” page is designed to learn quickly what keeps a user watching—and then deliver more of it. The result can be an ideological echo chamber built not by conscious choice, but by code.   A young user who lingers on a few progressive-leaning videos may soon find their feed saturated with similar content, rarely encountering serious conservative perspectives.   The reverse is also true. Unlike traditional media, where readers at least know which publication they are consuming, TikTok blurs the lines between entertainment and information, making it harder to recognize bias. Young Americans may not be choosing between competing ideas at all—they may simply never see them.   Conclusion   What began as lip-syncs and lifestyle trends has evolved into something far more consequential: a platform where political identity is curated, packaged, and sold through aesthetic performance.   The rise of political aesthetic activism on TikTok, reflects a culture increasingly shaped by optics over substance. For conservatives already wary of the platform’s ties to China and its data practices, this trend adds another layer of concern. If TikTok can shape how a generation thinks about policy, patriotism, and power—all while operating under the shadow of a foreign adversary—then the dangers extend well beyond privacy. They reach into the cultural and civic foundation of the country itself.  The post The Rise of Political ‘Aesthetic’ Activism on TikTok  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” with Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. This show was filmed prior to the start of Operation Epic Fury. Jack Fowler: Victor, your thoughts if we don’t take action because Iran is, despite what happened a few months ago, the bombing of the enrichment and the nuclear facilities, they are constructing new facilities even deeper in some other mountain. But is there any doubt in your mind that if Iran goes unchecked for the next months or years, that there will not be a catastrophe from them having nuclear capability? Victor Davis Hanson: No, you can’t negotiate with them because their whole currency is lying, and they’re fanatic ideologues. And they have a supernatural view of what’s going to happen, and they’re on the right side of Cosmic Divinity and all of these ideas. I think [former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani in a disputed statement, but I think it was accurate, said that Israel was a one bomb state, and that was the advantage that you got half the Jews in the world in one place, where all you needed was one bomb. So you can’t negotiate. I think their strategy, to tell you, was kind of a Muhammad Ali “Rope-a-Dope” where they were going to ride it out. And then [President Donald] Trump would be gone in three years, and people would be angry, and you’d get a Joe Biden, or better yet a type of puppet of the Left. But better yet, you would get an [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or a “squad” member, or a [Gavin] Newsom or [Kamala] Harris, and then you’re home free to get the bomb. Because they would not do anything. That was the strategy. I think it would’ve worked actually if Trump had let him off the hook. So now the question is the domestic support. When the statue [of Saddam Hussein] fell in April of 2003, I think most polls showed that George Bush had a popularity rating of between 80% and 90%. There was a controversy over the carrier flag “Mission Accomplished” because there was a little bit of terrorist activity. I was in Washington at the Naval Academy, and I remember distinctly that Chris Matthews, I was watching CNN, who ended up despising Bush, was a big critic. He said, “We’re all neocons now,” on the air. And then I remember Andrew Sullivan, who was sort of a chameleon in his political views, but mostly started out as, I guess, a British conservative, but ended up very left-wing. He was all for it. There was a guy who did little green footballs. Remember that little podcast? I knew the guy. He was a nice guy. I rode a bike with him once and he was all in, and then all of a sudden the insurgency came. And the American casualties started and everybody adopted. And then there was a Vanity Fair on the neocons that they felt had been the architects, Richard Perle, David Frum, Bill Crystal, and all of them, had adopted, I guess you would call it my beautiful war and your lousy occupation. And the scapegoat they focused on was [former Secretary of Defense] Don Rumsfeld. If you just get rid of Dom Rumsfeld, everything will be okay. What I’m saying is that domestic support will depend on how many American casualties, how quick is it over, and how effective are the results. If it is over within three weeks, and there’s a revolution and they have some type of transitional government, unlike Iraq, then everybody’s going to say, I was for it all along. Even the ones that were against it. If, on the other hand, they start shooting down planes or they hit an American base or they take out a frigate or something, they get a lucky shot on a carrier, and we don’t get a change and we stop, then everybody said I was never for it. That’s the way people react, and the base is going be very tricky because the MAGA base, remember it was predicated on no forever wars. And no optional wars in the Middle East in reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq. And already Tucker Carlson, as you pointed out, I think in an email to me, has already said that Donald Trump’s war was evil. And he crossed the Rubicon because, remember, during the Dominion voting controversy, right after Jan. 6, when Dominion forced the Fox Corporation to settle for hundreds of millions of dollars, and they had the interrogatories and the messages. One reason I think they wanted to settle is because the discovery phase of that lawsuit was going to show a lot of internal communication and outtakes and stuff. But Tucker, do you remember? He was there, and he said, I really hate Donald Trump and I hate him. If you think about it, his first, I’m trying to remember, but I think I’m pretty accurate. This administration has nothing that can show, so he was a diehard critic. Then he came back into the fold, and he was credited with, along with [Donald Trump Jr.] to get JD Vance, who he felt was a kindred spirit. Kind of neo-isolationist and his son Buckley went to work for him. And that was sort of the veneer of the MAGA base. And then there were people like Candace [Owens] and the Fringe and [Nick] Fuentes and etc. But he’s already come out against it now and said it’s evil. So, he’s basically saying Donald Trump is evil. And this comes on the heels of Candace Owens coming out with a documentary about Charlie Kirk’s wife, “Bride of Charlie” or something. Fowler: Yeah, like the Bride of Frankenstein. Yeah. Hanson: So, I think that fringe, those people are isolating themselves from the Trump movement, if I could say that. So, I don’t think he’s going to get a lot of popular right-wing opposition. He’ll get opposition no matter what happens. No matter what happens, from AOC, the squad, Jasmine Crockett, all the candidates that are running for office. And you’ll have [John] Fetterman. I think he’s already said that he thought this was a good idea. You’ll see a guy like him or Mark Penn, a reasonable Democrat understand why [Trump attacked]. Ben Rhodes is already saying that this was a disaster. And this is the guy who was the architect of the disastrous Iran [nuclear] deal. Fowler: Well, we were going be slaughtered because of the death of [Iranian General Qasam] Soleimani, right? Hanson: We’ll see. Again, I think the base will stay with him. I think independents will stay if it’s successful. And I think the Democrats are in a holding pattern, and they’re hoping—I’m not saying that out of maliciousness—I think they actually hope that it won’t work, even though that would put American lives at risk. Because from what I can read today, and again, I’m speaking on Saturday, what they’re posting, it’s not just that it was a mistake, but it’s wrong. It’s evil. You know what I mean? Well, if it’s evil, then you want it to stop, and then you want to destroy evil. But if you think the Americans, I don’t know what Tucker means when he says it’s evil. If there’s Americans in the way of fire, if you believe it was an evil decision in the sense of wrong, then you might say, I disagree with the decision, but now that it’s made, I want Americans to prevail and be safe. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post ‘Their Whole Currency Is Lying’: Why You Can’t Negotiate With Iran appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Supreme Court Monday vindicated parental rights, upholding an injunction against California’s gender secrecy policy, which mandated that school staff hide a student’s claimed transgender identity from parents unless the student expressly consented to reveal it. “This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, said in a statement responding to the decision Monday. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.” “The court’s landmark reaffirmation of substantive due process, its vindication of religious liberty, and its approval of class-wide relief together set a historic precedent that will dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country,” Jonna added. Challenging the Gender Secrecy Policies The Thomas More Society sued on behalf of teachers in the state who feared punishment if they refused to lie about a student’s gender identity. Parents and other teachers joined the lawsuit, challenging the Escondido Union School District’s policy of hiding students’ gender identities from parents unless students consented to reveal them.The teachers also sued the California Department of Education, which has a similar policy. While a district court judge issued a permanent injunction blocking the schools from enforcing gender secrecy policies, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit granted the school district and the state a stay of the injunction. Elizabeth Mirabelli, the teacher suing in a key gender secrecy case (Thomas More Society) The Supreme Court’s Parental Rights Ruling The Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion vacating the 9th Circuit’s stay when it comes to the parents. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have ruled in favor of the parents and the teachers, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor would not have taken up the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined. Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. The court’s unsigned opinion recounted the story of two parents who didn’t know their eighth grade daughter publicly identified as a boy until after she attempted to commit suicide and was hospitalized. Months after her daughter left the hospital, she returned to the hospital after further risk of self-harm. Their daughter attended a different school for ninth grade and once again identified as a boy; that school also hid her gender transition, expressly rejecting the parents’ wishes. The daughter is now receiving psychiatric care. The court concluded that “the parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim.” California’s policies “substantially interfere with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children,'” the court ruled, citing Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case in which the court ruled that parents have the right to opt their children out of receiving LGBTQ+ instruction. “The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,” the court ruled. “California’s policies violate those beliefs” and impose an “unacceptable” burden on them, the opinion stated. “Indeed, the intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here—unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition—is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud.” California claims that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy, but the court ruled that “those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.” The court also found that the parents would likely succeed in claiming the state violated their due process rights. “Under long-established precedent, parents—not the state—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’ The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health,” the opinion stated. The court found that “the denial of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights during the potentially protracted appellate process constitutes irreparable harm.” The court also noted that the district court’s injunction permits California “to shield children from unfit parents by enforcing child-abuse laws and removing children from parental custody in appropriate cases,” thus allowing for the key interest of protecting children while protecting parental rights. Justice Kagan faulted the court for issuing an emergency ruling after receiving “scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute,” and without holding an oral argument or debating in conference. Mirabelli v Bonta SCOTUSDownload Wrapping Up the Parental Rights Case The court did not uphold the right of teachers to refuse to lie to parents—the key issue at the beginning of the case—but the ruling here only applies to the injunction; it does not resolve the overall case. That said, lower courts will follow the Supreme Court’s lead and uphold the fundamental rights of parents against gender secrecy policies, making the case a pivotal victory for parental rights. The post Supreme Court Upholds Parental Rights Against California Gender Secrecy Policy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

REUTERS—The Department of State on Monday called on Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, amid U.S-Israeli strikes against Iran. Mora Namdar, the State Department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs, said U.S. citizens should leave using available commercial transportation “due to safety risks.” The warning came after the department, in recent days, updated its travel advisories for several countries in the region to recommend against travel. Monday’s advisory applies to Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, announced earlier on Monday that its personnel had departed the site “due to a threat.” The State Department has also activated an inter-agency emergency task force to manage the situation and coordinate the United States’ response to the conflict, a U.S. official said. On Saturday, the United States and Israel carried out a barrage of strikes on various targets in Iran, killing many top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Tehran responded with its own strikes at multiple U.S. and Israeli sites across the regions. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the conflict had been projected to last four to five weeks but that it could go longer. The conflict, which has launched the region into war, leaving scores of people dead, has resulted in a spike in energy prices as Iranian officials threatened to fire on any ship that tries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for the world’s oil supply. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are expected on Tuesday to announce U.S. steps to mitigate the rising energy prices, according to Washington’s top diplomat, Marco Rubio. “We anticipated this could be an issue, and Secretary Wright and Bessent will begin to roll out those steps, starting tomorrow, to mitigate, to mitigate against the impact that could have,” Rubio said ahead of a briefing congressional leaders about the strikes. Originally published by Reuters The post US Urges Citizens to Immediately Depart Over a Dozen Middle Eastern Countries appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released full video of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimonies about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  The depositions for each before the bipartisan panel lasted 4.5 hours. Hillary Clinton was deposed last Thursday. Bill Clinton was deposed on Friday, the first time a former president has been compelled to testify before Congress. Clinton said he first flew on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and took trips to Asia, Africa, and Europe. Clinton said his former treasury secretary, Larry Summers introduced him to Epstein. He said that Epstein was interested in funding brain research and other humanitarian work. “He knew I was planning to set up a global network to provide lots of AIDS medicine to as many people as possible as quickly as possible,” Clinton said of Epstein.  https://t.co/vfQBa9d4S1— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) March 2, 2026 Clinton said his relationship with Epstein ended when the humanitarian team expanded.  “A lot of other people who might do better, and who really cared about the work, came forward,” Clinton said  The former president said Epstein “never asked me anything untoward.” He later added, “There was nothing that I saw when I was around him. It made me realize he was trafficking women.” During the Democrats’ questioning, Clinton was asked if he was aware of President Donald Trump’s interaction with Epstein.  “I don’t want to leave the impression, since there was no follow up question, he never, the president never, this was 20-something years ago, never said anything to me to think he was involved in anything improper with regard to Epstein, he just didn’t,” Clinton said.  Hillary Clinton was asked how she felt about photos of her husband in the pool at the home of Epstein, which were published in batches of the Epstein files released by the Justice Department. The former secretary of state replied she was not there to provide opinions.  This is a developing story The post Video Shows Clinton Recounting Epstein Meetings, Comments on Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.