Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has announced that Alan Armstrong, an energy executive, will fill the vacant Senate seat left by Markwayne Mullin until the end of the year. Armstrong, 63, has never held public office and is the executive chairman of Williams Companies, an energy firm that specializes in natural gas. Mullin’s seat was left open Monday night after he was confirmed to lead the Department of Homeland Security. ? CONFIRMEDMarkwayne Mullin has officially been confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. ?? pic.twitter.com/P0L2Bjv00W— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 24, 2026 “Alan’s story, as you guys get to know him, reflects the very best of Oklahoma, our values, our work ethic and our pursuit of the American Dream is the life well of the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt said at a press conference in Oklahoma Tuesday morning. The governor claimed Armstrong is “thoroughly aligned with President Trump on energy policy. Few people have done more to champion the America first agenda to keep Oklahoma at the center of domestic production so that we can deliver clean, reliable and affordable energy to American citizens.” In his capacity as a businessman, Armstrong has dealt closely with the Trump administration, especially Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, on American energy dominance through natural gas. ? Sec. Chris Wright: "We'd love to get a permitting reform bill through Congress… This is a unique thing about President Trump — that I believe he can bring together a coalition from both parties to support permitting reform…"pic.twitter.com/EQ6XspVsVk— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) March 20, 2026 He is bringing his background in natural gas and energy to Washington and plans to focus on permitting reform. “There’s a lot of things in terms of supporting Republican agenda, I think there’s a lot of important policy issues that stand before us, I’ll be in support of that. But I think the area I actually can bring the most expertise and leadership to is permitting reform,” Armstrong said. Stitt consulted Senate leadership before making the appointment. According to Stitt, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., requested someone who could work across the aisle to get permitting reform done.  “We can’t have a country that picks and chooses,” Stitt said describing the problem he sees with permitting in the United States. “When you do everything right and you get those permits, we can’t let a new administration come in and kill projects.”   “I have every confidence that Alan will bring the same integrity,” Stitt continued. “Bring the same integrity as his work ethic and love for Oklahoma that he’s shown his entire career. He will fight for our values, defend our freedom, and champion policies that strengthen families, create jobs and secure America’s future,” Stitt said.  President Trump is delivering historic permitting wins across the federal government.Today, following President Trump's leadership, I announced that the @FCC will vote soon on a proposal to eliminate needless NEPA review processes and unleash America's builders. pic.twitter.com/XG2kGAq4YE— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) July 16, 2025 Armstong did admit he feels slightly unprepared for taking on this role unexpectedly.   “I’m a little bit like I’m stepping off into the abyss with not exactly sure what I’m getting into, but I’m confident I got great team around me, great support around me, and I really do look forward to making a difference for the short time that I’m in the Senate,” Armstrong said.   Since Mullin’s seat was up for re-election in November 2026, Armstrong will serve in the U.S. Senate until January 2027. Under Oklahoma law he is required to sign an affidavit, upon being sworn in, that he will not run for election. Armstrong will be sworn-in at the Capitol Tuesday afternoon. The post Oklahoma Governor Reveals Markwayne Mullin Senate Replacement appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A bipartisan group of 20 Texas state senators wrote a letter to the state’s U.S. senators demanding stronger protections for children online. The coalition says that a U.S. House bill meant to protect kids online is too weak. The Energy and Commerce Committee recently marked up the Kids Internet and Digital Safety, or KIDS Act, which contains a version of the Kids Online Safety Act which the legislators say is “considerably weaker” than the Senate version. The letter urges Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz “to support legislation that includes a duty of care and balanced preemption language, such as the Senate version of KOSA, to ensure that states retain the ability to protect children online effectively.” Ltr to Sen Cruz Cornyn re Preemption Language (3.20.26)Download This comes days after the White House introduced its National Framework for AI which, if passed by Congress, would replace the 50-state patchwork of AI laws with one national standard. The House version of the Kids Online Safety Act “removes the duty of care to prevent online harm to children,” the letter says. “It replaces it with broad preemption language that prevents states from enforcing any laws that conflict with federal provisions,” the state lawmakers wrote. The KIDS Act, with KOSA included, would invalidate any state law that “conflicts with” its provisions. That could invite Big Tech to litigate against child protection laws, according to the Alliance for Secure AI. Under the KIDS Act, platforms are not specifically required to protect against suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and “addictive use.” The sponsor of the KIDS Act, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said in a recent statement that under the bill, “platforms must maximize protections for children and teens.” He added that the legislation mandates “robust enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission—and states attorneys general.” Guthrie’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., said the House version of KOSA is a “gift to the Big Tech companies” and a “slap in the face” to those seeking strong guardrails. Led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the Senate version, on the other hand, “includes a duty of care to protect children online and contains preemption language that respects states’ rights,” the letter states. “The online landscape evolves rapidly, and states must retain the flexibility to respond,” the letter says. “Thirty-eight state Attorneys General have supported the Senate version of KOSA because it includes a duty of care and allows states to provide stronger protections for children.” The post EXCLUSIVE: Texas Lawmakers Demand GOP Fight for Stronger Child Protections Against AI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

TOWNHALL—Iran’s efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz have made gas prices rise to the point where they may threaten President Donald Trump’s affordability agenda. Whether the closure is short or long, consumers are feeling the pain, just as the latest economic figures show an economy that is sputtering and can use a boost.  But the president can help absorb the disruption and deprive Tehran of its goal to push our economy into reverse by cutting a deal on planned global tariff increases. The Strait of Hormuz has been a key bottleneck for oil exports from the Gulf region, with roughly one-fifth of global oil flows being impacted by the threat of Iranian missiles, mines, and drone strikes through the narrow waterway. The economic situation is becoming increasingly precarious as energy stockpiles worldwide quickly dwindle and prices rise in response to the choked-off supply that is not easily substituted. This explains why in recent weeks we’ve seen the fastest rise in gasoline prices in three decades.  Without sufficient defensive naval assets, including minesweepers, to safely protect and escort oil and liquified natural gas tankers through the strait, commercial shipping there has largely ceased. Trump has sought military assistance for this task from other nations, but it has not been forthcoming, even though they would benefit from the resultant low energy prices as we would. This presents the dealmaker-in-chief with a tremendous opportunity to address multiple problems at once by negotiating on tariffs.  After the Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s across-the-board tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president immediately reimposed them at a 10% rate using another authority, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. He later announced he would raise the rate to 15%, but the administration has not yet implemented the increase.  Before hiking import duties, Trump can offer to take the higher rate of 15% off the table in exchange for commitments from our trading partners and allies to increase short-term global energy output in concrete ways. This would include releasing energy reserves, increasing production, and especially providing military assistance for protecting commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.  The importance of energy markets to the modern economy simply cannot be overstated. Not only do we depend on energy for everything in our daily lives, but energy is increasingly used for what might be called non-energy purposes. Oil and natural gas are the source of seemingly everything: fertilizers, car parts, pharmaceuticals—you name it. Countless products, from the screens where most of us read our news to the synthetic fibers in clothing, come from oil and natural gas. That means if energy prices rise, the price of just about everything else in the economy starts rising too. After four years of Bidenflation and given anemic gross domestic product growth this past quarter, American families can ill afford this additional burden. Cooperation from other nations through energy production and military assistance would go a long way in securing energy flows and stabilizing markets, which in turn would put downward pressure on prices. Reducing the across-the-board tariffs, planned or already enacted, is a powerful bargaining chip in making that happen, and by itself would give consumers and producers certainty that prices were not going to continue to rise for a plethora of goods.  But Trump can go even further in helping reduce energy prices by dropping certain other tariffs, too. The 50% steel and aluminum tariffs, imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, have increased costs for oil and natural gas drillers who heavily depend on imported pipes and tube steel. Suspending these tariffs would increase the number of wells that can be profitably drilled at today’s prices. Drilling more wells and increasing extraction would bring more energy to market and put downward pressure on prices, while making America and her allies less dependent on hostile foreign powers. The president who perfected the Art of the Deal can easily make this pitch. If the world helps us, we’ll help the world. By inducing trading partners to do their part in helping to secure stable and cheap global energy supplies, most people win, except Iran and its allies. Originally published by Townhall We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post A Tariff Ceasefire in Time of War Would Help Everybody appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2023, he warned that humanity was on an unsustainable path and that “the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.” He explicitly linked overpopulation and consumption to climate disruption, claiming it was already killing people.  Ehrlich recently died at 93, and the media offered respectful tributes to his 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb,” yet almost no outlet asked the glaring question: why should anyone trust predictions from a man whose most famous forecasts were spectacularly wrong? In fact, all of his doom predictions were wrong—similar to the climate doom predictions of today. Ehrlich predicted mass starvation would kill hundreds of millions in the 1970s and 1980s, that England would cease to exist by 2000, and that the U.S. would face widespread famine. None of that happened. Instead, the population doubled to 8 billion.  Prosperity soared. The Green Revolution—powered by better seeds, fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers, and fossil-fuel-enabled agriculture—fed billions more people than Ehrlich believed possible. This same pattern of failed apocalyptic forecasts now dominates mainstream climate information. For decades, prominent voices have warned of entire nations underwater, no snow in the U.K., mass extinctions by 2010, and permanent global famine with timelines that have quietly slipped while humanity has thrived. The media never holds these climate doomsters accountable, just as it spared Ehrlich while continuously going back to the same people for more of their failed predictions and never asking why we should believe them in light of their spectacular failings.  The data reveals the opposite of collapse. According to Our World in Data, deaths have instead plummeted by ten times from both famines and climate disasters compared to historical highs, contradicting Ehrlich’s dire vision.  While tragic events still occur, in recent decades the long-term mortality rates have plunged to historic lows. Billions are living longer and better lives than ever before thanks to our civilization providing reliable, affordable energy for billions through fossil fuels. The more energy a society has, the better its citizens’ lives. Climate doomsters tell us that crops will fail, and people will die from rising seas.  Annual deaths now average roughly 40,000–50,000, a tiny fraction of historical levels on a per-capita basis, thanks to early warning systems, better infrastructure, and increased wealth, on top of the fact that weather disasters and hurricanes are no more frequent than historical norms, while some, like tornadoes, are arguably on the decline.  Crop yields have exploded; since 1961, global wheat yields have risen 225%, corn nearly doubled, rice production has increased 146%, and cereal production has grown 3.5 times (a rate faster than that of population growth), leaving the world better fed than ever before.  Climate alarmists tell us food prosperity will reverse sometime in the future if we don’t kill our economies and lifestyles today, never mind that many crops see far greater production in the warmth than the cold, need less water, and tolerate heat better. For this reason, greenhouses add CO2.  Most ironically, the planet itself is getting greener. In a landmark 2016 NASA study, using decades of satellite data, they found that between a quarter and half of Earth’s vegetated lands showed significant greening over 35 years—roughly 70% of this effect was driven by CO2 fertilization.  The very gas vilified in climate narratives is acting as plant fertilizer on a planetary scale, adding greenery equivalent to two continents, while enhancing ecosystems and regrowing forests the size of Texas and greening dry areas of the world.  None of these trends, from fewer famine deaths and fewer disaster deaths to record harvests and a dramatically greener Earth, fit the climate narrative of inevitable doom. Yet when Ehrlich claimed civilization was doomed on national television, “60 Minutes” lobbed softballs instead of demanding accountability for his failed track record. The media does this repeatedly with climate alarmists: failed predictions are memory-holed, new ones amplified, and positive data ignored. This isn’t journalism; it’s narrative protection. By shielding serial predictors like Ehrlich and today’s climate doomsayers from scrutiny, outlets don’t just mislead the public—they push policies based on fear rather than evidence, even as humanity has repeatedly defied the collapse narrative.  Paul Ehrlich was wrong about the population bomb. Many climate prophets are repeating the same mistake with the climate bomb. Before we upend economies and living standards based on their latest forecasts, the media owes us something it rarely delivers: an honest examination of the actual track record.  Data, not dread, should guide the climate conversation. The world is not ending. In fact, on the metrics that matter most, we are doing better than ever. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Paul Ehrlich’s Failed Doomsday Predictions Expose the Media’s Climate Alarmism Double Standard appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Mobile billboards are being deployed Tuesday morning at the three Washington, D.C.-area airports amid the Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has led to long security lines at airports across the nation. “You’re waiting in line because millions skipped it. Tell Chuck Schumer: Fund DHS,” the billboard reads, referring to the millions of illegal aliens that Customs and Border Protection reports entered the United States during the Biden administration. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is the Senate Minority Leader. The billboard includes a number and a QR code to call Schumer’s office. Republicans and Democrats failed to reach an agreement on DHS funding last month, sending the department into a partial shutdown starting Feb. 14. Many DHS employees, including Transportation Security Administration workers, are not being paid during the shutdown. The placement of the mobile billboards is strategic because many senators will be using D.C.-area airports at the end of the week to fly home for a two-week recess over the Easter and Passover holidays. Democrats have demanded reforms to immigration enforcement policies, such as requiring federal immigration officers not to wear masks during enforcement operations, to be part of a deal to fund DHS. However, Republicans have refused to accept the demands. “Democrats are willing to take the airlines hostage if it means showing their radical base they’re fighting on behalf of illegal aliens,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, the group funding the billboards. “Unfortunately, it looks like that tactic has spooked some Republicans,” Howell continued. “We’re doing this on behalf of the majority of Americans who want to see immigration law enforced with mass deportation.” A deal is reportedly on the table that Trump is considering backing, and which could gain bipartisan support in Congress to fund DHS. The deal would fund the agency, but only part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, excluding funding for the enforcement and removal operation arm of ICE. “Under the Biden administration, millions of illegal aliens flooded across our borders, including record numbers of national security threats and dangerous criminals. Now, congressional Democrats are fighting to return us to the same failed policies that shielded those illegal aliens and allowed them to settle in communities around the country,” Joe Chatham, director of government relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said. “Americans deserve to have our laws enforced and DHS fully funded, not held hostage to radical demands aimed at undermining immigration enforcement,” Chatham added. ICE is currently funded through the Trump-backed Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed last summer, but immigration enforcement supporters have expressed concern over separating ICE funding from a DHS funding bill for fear of additional hurdles to fund ICE’s work in the future. The majority of Americans support the deportation of illegal aliens, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. The poll found that 61% of respondents said they “support deporting unauthorized immigrants.” “Young Americans have been generationally burdened through unaffordable housing, costly public services, pay depreciation in blue-collar jobs, and crime in the communities we live in. The old corporate-friendly approach to immigration doesn’t solve these issues,” Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation, said. “Only mass deportations will substantively improve the quality of life for my peers.” The post EXCLUSIVE: Why the Long TSA Lines? New Mobile Billboards at These Airports Aim to Explain appeared first on The Daily Signal.