REUTERS–The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, consistent with a stabilizing labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 206,000 for the week ended February 14, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week. Last week’s drop marked a signficant decline in claims since they jumped to 232,000 at the end of January. Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s January 27-28 policy meeting published on Wednesday showed the “vast majority of participants judged that labor market conditions had been showing some signs of stabilization.” Still, concerns over downside risks to the labor market remained. The minutes also noted some policymakers “pointed to the possibility that a further fall in labor demand could push the unemployment rate sharply higher in a low-hiring environment or that the concentration of job gains in a few less cyclically sensitive sectors was potentially signaling heightened vulnerability in the overall labor market.”  The claims data covered the week during which the government surveyed employers for the nonfarm payrolls portion of February’s employment report. Job growth accelerated in January, though nearly all the employment gains came from the healthcare and social assistance sector. Policymakers and economists say immigration policies were constraining job growth. Lingering uncertainty from import tariffs remained a drag on hiring while artificial intelligence was also adding another layer of caution, economists said. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 17,000 to a seasonally 1.869 million during the week ended February 7, the claims report showed.  The so-called continuing claims suggested that laid-off workers were experiencing difficulties finding new positions. The median duration of unemployment is near four-year highs. The lack of hiring has significantly impacted recent college graduates, who because of no or limited work history, cannot file for unemployment benefits and are not captured in the claims data. Originally published by Reuters The post US Weekly Jobless Claims Fall More Than Expected Amid Labor Market Stability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

I never imagined that an interfaith worship service would require courage to attend. But on Sept. 7 what was meant to be a sacred gathering of Jews and Christians praying side by side turned into an ordeal showing how antisemitism looks in America today: loud, aggressive, and terrifying. We planned the service carefully and respectfully. Multiple synagogues and churches agreed to come together at the Legacy International Center, a Christian venue known for hosting worship and standing with Israel. Rabbis and pastors prepared prayers. We sang in Hebrew and English, accompanied by a church praise band and an African American gospel choir. We didn’t advertise publicly; we invited only our distribution list. Nearly 500 people registered. I believed we had chosen a safe space. Then, just before the doors opened, a staff member pulled me aside and said, “They’re here.” Outside, agitators dressed in black and wearing face masks had gathered on the sidewalk, waving Palestinian flags. They laid dolls across the driveway so that guests had to drive over them while agitators screamed “baby killers” at them through megaphones. This wasn’t protest. It was intimidation, and it was aimed squarely at people coming to worship. My friend Ruth and her husband experienced it immediately. As they drove in, sirens blared and chants echoed through bullhorns. Disruptors swarmed the driveway, some holding signs with swastikas, others blocking cars with their bodies. When Ruth stopped, a masked woman jumped onto the hood of her car, banging on the windshield and screaming. Ruth was genuinely afraid for her life. Stephanie’s experience was no better. Her car was surrounded. An agitator announced her arrival and called her “super racist” and “super hateful” over a bullhorn. Another screamed at her to get out and fight. Someone struck her window and tried to shove a sign inside her car. The hostility was so overwhelming that many guests drove away altogether. Over 100 guests who registered did not attend. Marca tried to ask the agitators to leave private property. Instead, four or five people surrounded her, jammed bullhorns inches from her face, and filmed her aggressively. She escaped only because a friend physically intervened to shield her. The police did nothing to stop it. Even inside the worship venue, we were not spared. Drums pounded and sirens wailed throughout the service, intentionally attempting to drown out prayers and sermons. People left with ringing ears that lasted for days. When my friend Jake politely asked the agitators to quiet down so we could worship, they surrounded him, forced him toward a busy street, and followed him screaming, “Go back to Israel!” and “You’re a Nazi, you’re a baby killer!” The actions of those who harassed, trespassed, and sought to drown out our speech and religious liberty went far beyond anything protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment offers no protection to those physically interfering with religious worship or intimidating religious worshipers by seeking to drown out beliefs they despise. Afterward, the harassment continued online. The agitators targeted guests on Instagram for being Jewish, posting photos and trying to reveal their identities. Disruptors used CodePink channels to threaten us, promising, “we will not give them a moment of peace.”   This is what antisemitism looks like today. It is not confined to history books or distant places. It is rampant in San Diego and across the country, often masquerading as political activism while using the oldest tools of hatred: intimidation, dehumanization, inversion, and collective blame. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, adopted by the U.S. government in 2019, describes exactly what we experienced: hatred expressed through rhetoric and physical acts, directed at Jewish individuals and religious institutions, and at those who stand with them. Our free exercise of religion was deliberately obstructed. Our Christian allies were targeted too, punished for their solidarity. The consequences have been devastating. Since that day, our Alliance has been unable to hold another event. People are afraid to attend. Our membership list has been compromised. Churches that once stood ready to partner with us now fear for their congregations. We are now seeking legal protection through a federal lawsuit, for the simple right to gather, pray, and worship without fear. I have also testified before President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission in the hope that I can help raise more awareness to the hatred we face. No one in America should have to run a gauntlet of hate to attend a religious service. If we accept this as normal, we signal that intimidation works and that our Jewish communities—and those who stand with them—are fair game. I refuse to accept that. Interfaith worship should be a sign of hope, not a trigger for terror. Standing together today is how we ensure that people of faith, of all faiths, can worship in peace tomorrow. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Interfaith Worship Should Be a Sign of Peace, but Leftist Agitators Brought Terror appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Amidst reports that the United States is close to a major war with Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said his job is to make sure the military is capable of backing up the president.  “We have enormous capabilities, unlike anyone else in the world, and I think the big difference between this department and others is that we unlock and unleash our war fighters to get the job done should they have to,” Hegseth said in response to a question from The Daily Signal in St. Louis, Missouri.   “But our hope is that we never have to use that,” he added. “The president is a negotiator looking for a deal. It would be wise for Iran to see that deal.” JUST IN: I asked @SecWar about the Axios report saying a massive military operation in Iran is coming soon."We would never reveal what we may or may not do. We have enormous capabilities, unlike anyone else in the world, and I think the big difference between this Department…— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) February 19, 2026 Axios reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump is close to waging a war with Iran, and that a U.S. military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than the recent operation in Venezuela.  While Iranian leaders want to reach a nuclear deal with the U.S., they are also rushing to prepare for war if negotiations fail, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. could be ready to launch a “sustained” bombing campaign on Iran in the near future, the New York Post reported. “The world has seen over the last year plus what the president is willing to do,” Hegseth said. “When he speaks, they should listen, and when he says Iran’s not going to have a nuclear weapon, and they should negotiate that. He means it, and our job at the Department of War is to have the capabilities to back him up.”  The Trump administration has one message to Iran: come to the table and make a deal, Hegseth said.  “Two people will make this decision: the Iranians could step up and make a real deal,” Hegseth said, “and ultimately President Trump will decide if it’s a good enough deal for the American people.”  On Tuesday, Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff had a three-hour meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva, Switzerland. Hegseth echoed the message of other Trump administration officials that the talks yielded progress.  Vice President Vance told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that the talks “went well” in some ways, but “in other ways it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.” The Daily Signal asked Hegseth about Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggesting Iran could sink a U.S. war ship.  Hegseth also responded to Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying Iran could sink U.S. ships. “I feel very good about the capabilities of our warships,” he told @DailySignal. “Very good.” pic.twitter.com/Qnl5Y4mJEP— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) February 19, 2026 “I feel very good about the capabilities of our warships,” Hegseth said. “Very good.” The war secretary spoke to reporters following a stop on his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour in St. Louis, Missouri, to visit a Boeing facility.  Hegseth addressed some of Boeing’s 18,000 employees in St. Louis and asked them to build more planes at a faster pace. “When we unleash American industry, America wins,” Hegseth said. “When we compete, we win. When we innovate, we win. When we move fast, we win.”  The post Hegseth Responds to Reports War With Iran Is Imminent appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Having removed Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro in January, the Trump administration is now endeavoring to rebuild Venezuela after decades of corruption, neglect, and theft. Under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela declined from what was once South America’s richest country and among the 20 wealthiest in the world to “a failed petrostate.” Between 2014 and 2021, Venezuela’s GDP shrank by more than 70%. Today, the country’s infrastructure is in tatters, its judicial system is riddled with corruption and cronyism, and, given Venezuela’s history of expropriating private assets, many foreign investors say the country is “uninvestable.” In addition, much of the country’s wealth and savings evaporated as the nation’s currency, the bolivar, endured two episodes of hyperinflation, peaking at 234% per month in 2018, and again exceeding 150% per month in 2020. How does a country begin to recover from this? Having spent decades advising governments on how to fix their broken economies, Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke, known as the “money doctor,” says he has seen worse. “China was in a lot worse shape than Venezuela in 1979, so all these things are possible,” Hanke told The Daily Signal. But the first critical step is stabilizing a currency that has been in free fall. “If they can’t get the inflation genie back in the bottle,” he said, “nothing much really is going to happen.” When Hanke was advisor to Bulgaria in 1997, that country was likewise suffering from economic ills including runaway inflation and a banking crisis. The solution he proposed was a currency board, in which a country’s domestic currency is 100 percent backed by a foreign reserve currency, like the U.S. dollar or euro, at a fixed exchange rate. “The inflation rate was 242% per month, and we put in the currency board in July and smashed inflation immediately, down to below 10% on an annual basis,” he said. Within a year, Bulgaria’s foreign exchange reserves had tripled, short term interest rates were down to 2%, the banking system returned to solvency, and the economy was growing again. Last month, Bulgaria qualified to join the euro area.  Following this model, currency stability was similarly achieved in countries like Estonia, Lithuania, and Bosnia. Hanke had also recommended a currency board to Venezuela’s then-president Rafael Caldera in the 1990s, but those were different times. “The rule of law has deteriorated so much that I would never recommend a currency board right now,” Hanke said. Instead, he said, Venezuela should do away with the bolivar entirely and adopt U.S. dollars as the national currency. In a process called dollarization, “you essentially get rid of the central bank, get rid of the local currency and replace it with what would have been the anchor currency under a currency board,” he said. Dollarization has been implemented effectively in Panama, El Salvador, and Ecuador. Venezuela is informally dollarized, with estimates that more than half the transactions there are conducted in dollars already. Once macroeconomic stability is achieved, the government can then begin to “chip away at all these other things that have to be done,” he said. “If you look at the big reforms, like in New Zealand or Great Britain with [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, or the Chicago boys in Chile, these things didn’t happen overnight,” Hanke said. “You have to build confidence and momentum, and let the momentum carry you along opportunistically, and pick these things off one at a time.” Much of the focus since January has been on Venezuela’s massive oil reserves, though its wells are currently in disrepair after decades of government mismanagement and theft. “Chavismo has rendered the world’s largest crude oil reserves effectively worthless,” Hanke said, and to date, western oil companies have been reluctant to reinvest. In January, Venezuela’s parliament passed a new law intended to open its oil industry to private development, but it will probably have to do more to attract investment back into the country.  Venezuela must establish a credible legal system to guarantee property rights, such as the laws that Chile put in place for mining concessions in the 1980s, Hanke said. “Chile’s mining law established sound property rights and clear rules of the game,” Hanke said. “Among other things, the law mandates that if an expropriation by the state occurs, the state must pay the owner the full present value of the future cash flows from the property that has been expropriated,” as well as stipulating that foreign investors are treated the same as Venezuelans. Beyond oil, other industries that have great potential include agriculture and mining, which were also subject to nationalization under Chavez and Maduro. Venezuela has a wealth of unused agricultural land and extensive freshwater resources, but “land prices are extremely depressed under the weight of severe legal and political risk,” Hanke said. “Property rights insecurity, input-market disruption, price and exchange controls, and infrastructure decay have combined to push the sector far below its production possibility frontier.” In addition, “there are considerable reserves of gold, iron ore, bauxite, coal, nickel, and some critical materials, like coltan,” Hanke said. “But, like agriculture, mining is plagued by infrastructure problems.” For America’s part, Hanke called for a complete end to the U.S. embargo. “The first immediate action the U.S. should take in Venezuela is to remove all sanctions, and this could literally be done with the stroke of a pen,” he said. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post How to Recover from Decades of Socialism: A Conversation with ‘Money Doctor’ Steve Hanke appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration has stopped more than 4,000 firearms from going to Mexican drug cartels over the last year, and estimates it kept about 1,600 rounds of ammunition per day away from drug gangs.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, announced that since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025, it seized 4,359 guns bound for Mexico to be used by cartels and gangs.  Further, the ATF says it seized 648,975 rounds of ammunition bound for Mexico, averaging about 1,600 rounds per day.  “Illegal crime guns increasingly originate from every state in the country. This is not a southwest border problem, it is a national threat,” ATF Deputy Director Robert Cekada said in a public statement.  Trump nominated Cekada as the director of the burueau to replace outgoing director Steven Dettelbach. “ATF agents are aggressively targeting gangs, cartels, and transnational criminal organizations that illegally traffic firearms and turn American streets into war zones,” Cekada added. “We will dismantle these networks at every level, cut off their access to weapons, and hold every criminal fully accountable under the law.” Overall, the ATF said it has seized 36,277 illegal crime guns and 2.3 million rounds of ammunition from gang members, suppliers for transnational criminal organizations, and others, during Trump’s second term.  The post Here’s How Many Guns the Trump Administration Kept From Mexican Cartels appeared first on The Daily Signal.