On the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, the leader of the Virginia Senate budget conference decided to start firing on her political opponents from her fortified bunkers on the hill she has occupied, while the governor tries to take the political beach from her and her allies with covert operations. Here’s where the fun begins. Saturday, rather than spend time sharing stories of locals who were part of the landing operation in France 82 years ago, Senate conference leader Louise Lucas took out her social media flamethrower. In response to a post by Sen. Scott Surovell decrying the suggestion of a “DC-style continuing resolution,” the Senate president pro tempore wrote, “we had a meeting with ‘Data Center Diva’ [Gov. Abigail Spanberger] and she agrees with ‘Amazon Don’ (House Speaker Don Scott) who doesn’t want to impact the richest corporations in America!” She would also call the governor “CIAbigail.” (Don’t feel bad, I was jealous that I hadn’t thought that one up, too.) Interesting demagoguery from a group that calls for impeachment for every post where the president calls someone a “loser.” Here’s where I want to bring up an exposé that made headlines last week in Politico, The Hill, the New York Post and Fox News, based on research conducted by a group called the Bitcoin Policy Institute. The expose ties the campaigns against American data centers and AI to a nexus of the Chinese Communist Party, Shanghai billionaire Neville Roy Singham, the Russian TV network RT, and nonprofits led by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker. If Lucas thinks “CIAbigail” (still envious) and “Amazon Don” Scott are being influenced by these “wealthy companies,” it only seems fair to bring up who it is that is paying for the anti-data center movements like the one Louise “Left-Eye” Lucas and her co-conspirator from the House, “Left Hand Luke” Torian, are threatening to crash Virginia’s budget for. Then, down on the beach, we find this story filed by political consultant Ben Tribbett, who goes by “NotLarrySabato” on X: Tribbett was one of candidate Spanberger’s chief strategists during her campaign for governor but has fallen out of favor after Spanberger’s chief of staff, Bonnie Krenz-Schnurman, sued him for defamation in February, alleging that he used his platform to spread rumors about her child’s parentage. Krenz-Schnurman’s suit claims he did this because his maps were not used in the now-failed Virginia redistricting effort. Sure, it sounds like high school drama, but you would be dispirited to realize how much of what goes on in government actually is like that. The point being, the governor seems to be ready to trade in the institutional memory of the Virginia Democrats for ones who won’t overturn her vetoes (and make up nicknames for her). We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

The Department of Justice moved to denaturalize 17 individuals accused of concealing their histories of serious crimes, such as sexual abuse of a minor, wire and bank fraud, and sale or distribution of illegal drugs. The Trump administration will revoke the citizenship of individuals from Somalia, China, Colombia, India, Haiti, and other countries under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The law says a certificate of naturalization can be revoked if naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation. “American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said. “If you come here and break our laws, and lie in your immigration proceedings, you forfeit that privilege.” Immigrants must face consequences for lying about their past crimes, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “When criminal aliens exploit the naturalization process by breaking the law, there are consequences,” Blanche said. One of the 17 individuals, Abdikadir Ali Kadiye, a 54-year-old from Somalia, allegedly lied about his identity on his visa application, according to the Justice Department. Beginning in 1997, he initially sought admission into the United States under the identity of Liban M. Degel, claiming that he was married with no children. An immigration judge denied his application for immigration benefits, so he submitted a second application under a different identity. He admitted that he used two identities for admission after his naturalization, the Justice Department says. Fernando Cristancho of Colombia, an ordained Roman Catholic priest, entered the United States as a religious worker, but used his position to sexually groom minors, the Justice Department stated. He abused a minor parishioner from when the victim was 11 to 13 years old. He later admitted to the crime and pleaded guilty to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor. The denaturalization complaint filed against Cristancho says he hid his ongoing crime from immigration officials. The DOJ says he illegally obtained naturalization by concealing his crimes and misrepresenting his illegal sexual activity. Ronnie Price, a 40-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago, lied in the naturalization process about committing statutory rape against a 16-year-old girl. Price told immigration officials he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested, he falsely testified about this, and he concealed facts that would have uncovered his criminal activity, according to the Justice Department. Victor San Shing Kwok, a 50-year-old from China, sought admission to the United States under the identity of Xin Cheng Guo in 1994. After his application was denied, Kwok sought admission to the United States by marrying a U.S. citizen. In his application to adjust his resident status, Kwok did not disclose the prior denial of his application for an immigration benefit and his pending order of removal, the DOJ denaturalization complaint says.

A House panel is asking the vice president’s anti-fraud task force to investigate alleged retaliation against whistleblowers by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration in the state’s massive welfare fraud scandal. On Sunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., sent a letter to Vice President JD Vance, chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, asking for an executive branch review of the committee’s findings in the new report, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion.” The report, released Monday, includes testimony and documents showing that state officials continued payments to what turned out to be fraudsters. Despite warning signs of fraud, the state made the payments because of concerns about accusations of discrimination and used private investigators to look into whistleblowers. The report says that Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison appear to have known about the fraud problems as early as 2019. The committee and staff interviewed nine current and former Minnesota state officials. “Whistleblowers within DHS [state Department of Human Services] have alleged that Governor Walz not only knew about this fraud, but that he retaliated against whistleblowers, ‘spen[ding] millions on surveilling staff and hiring private investigator (sic) or law firms to silence staff,'” the report says, “Then Temporary [DHS] Commissioner Shireen Gandhi confirmed in her testimony that DHS usedoutside entities to investigate DHS staff.” Letter to JD Vance to accompany MN reportDownload At least 65 people have been convicted in Minnesota welfare fraud cases. The 200-page House Oversight report details how failures to prevent fraud resulted in an estimated $300 million in federal child nutrition funds and potentially $9 billion in Medicaid-related funds being lost or placed at serious risk. The report asserts that Gov. Walz’s administration officials “prioritized managing political and media fallout over addressing known fraud vulnerabilities.” “The state’s consistent failure to act decisively in the face of known fraud allowed brazen criminal schemes to flourish and diverted resources away from the vulnerable populations these programs were intended to serve,” Comer’s letter to Vance says. Walz and Ellison testified to the committee in March about the fraud and defended the payments, and said they did not know about the fraud scandals at the time of the payments. “Therefore, the committee encourages the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud to direct the appropriate executive branch agencies to conduct a thorough review of all of Minnesota’s social services program integrity measures, oversight processes, reimbursements, and enrollment from 2019 to the present,” Comer’s letter continues. MN Fraud Final Staff ReportDownload State officials identified program deficiencies with Feeding Our Future, the most notable recipient of child nutrition assistance, and other nonprofit entities receiving pass-through federal funds. Despite identifying these problems, state agencies continued to allow hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to flow to programs involved in fraud, according to the report. The report asserts that Minnesota state agencies had clear authority to suspend or stop payments to providers suspected of fraud without requiring independent direction from courts or law enforcement agencies. However, agencies still failed to act. “Despite Governor Walz’s claims, our investigation concluded that law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, never directed Minnesota state officials to continue payments to suspected fraudulent providers—even in instances where state officials knew a provider was committing fraud,” Comer said in a letter to Vance. “Instead of trying to stop widespread fraud, Governor Walz’s administration retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials, diminishing job duties, and threats of surveillance,” Comer wrote.

John Adams once said the American Revolution began not on a battlefield but “in the minds and hearts of the people.” Among those who lit the fuse was the influential Boston preacher, Rev. Jonathan Mayhew. His 1750 sermon on the limits of obedience to government became, in Adams’ view, one of the founding texts of American liberty. Preaching on the centennial of King Charles I’s execution, Mayhew argues in his “Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission” that political resistance can be a righteous defense of a people’s natural and legal rights. He develops the case in light of Romans 13, where St. Paul writes, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. … Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur condemnation.” At first, the passage seems to forbid rebellion against any government. Many loyalists read it that way. However, Mayhew argues that St. Paul was describing just rulers who, as the apostle writes, “are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” Thus, “Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle,” writes Mayhew. A key purpose of government is to “punish evil doers,” as Mayhew says, and defend the innocent. But if rulers are “partial in their administration of justice,” and the innocent fear punishment as much as the guilty, then “the main end of civil government will be frustrated.” So, Mayhew asks, “what reason is there for submitting to that government, which does by no means answer the design of government?” Christians cannot, in good faith, obey a government if its commands are at odds with God’s higher law. This point has been widely accepted throughout the history of Christian teaching. Mayhew takes this logic a step further. It’s not only that we are under no obligation to obey an unjust government—we also have a duty to resist it. “[I]n such cases, a regard to the public welfare, ought to make us withhold from our rulers, that obedience and subjection which it would, otherwise, be our duty to render to them.” Consider the context in which Romans 13 was written. At the time, Mayhew notes, St. Paul was concerned with those who believed they were exempt from civil authority altogether—namely, Jewish converts to Christianity who believed they were exempt from Gentile rule, and Gentile converts who believed Christ had freed them from temporal powers. Given those circumstances, the apostle’s strong call to obey civil authority needn’t imply “the doctrine of unlimited submission and passive obedience, in all cases whatever.” Had St. Paul been addressing those who believed they should obey civil authority except in cases where it violates God’s law, then the non-resistance interpretation might have been more credible. Mayhew draws an analogy to children’s duty to obey their parents. In rare cases, children may rightly resist parents (e.g., parents ordering a child to kill his siblings). Likewise, citizens have a duty to obey civil authority. And yet they can, and should, resist a ruler if his commands are unjust and destructive of the general welfare. “It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery.” While Mayhew may have been theologically unorthodox for his day, his views on political resistance reflected a pre-existing Christian tradition that emerged around the 16th century. Spanish Jesuits like Francisco Suarez developed arguments for resisting tyranny that built upon earlier teachings of just law and just war. And similar ideas emerged in the Calvinist tradition. The influential “Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos,” published in 1579 under the pseudonym Junius Brutus, made the theological case for resistance.  A key question is how far Mayhew’s revolutionary logic extends. Revolution is, after all, a grave matter. As the Declaration of Independence notes, “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”  Resistance to tyranny—like just war—requires proper authority, just cause, and right intention, and it must be undertaken only as last resort, with reasonable probability of success, and proportionate outcome. These are matters of prudence. And some of the founders, like John Dickinson, opposed revolution against Britain on prudential grounds. Other founders believed these conditions were exhausted by the time they declared independence. We may dispute some particulars of Mayhew’s assessment. For instance, was King Charles I’s execution so clearly justified as Mayhew suggests? Still, his sermon clarified a principle of lasting influence: submission is owed to just authority, not to tyranny. Mayhew helped form the moral imagination of the colonists and laid the groundwork later used, if more cautiously, by figures like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in declaring independence. As Adams later remarked, Mayhew was a “transcendent genius” who “threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—More nonprofits are urging the software company Benevity—which hundreds of companies use to allow employees to donate their time and money to charities—to stop systematically blacklisting conservative nonprofits. Twelve organizations first sent a letter to Benevity in October following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The new letter, sent Monday and exclusively provided first to the Daily Signal, will feature three new signatories: Turning Point USA, PragerU, and Focus on the Family. “Charitable giving programs should empower generosity, not enforce political conformity,” Douglas Napier, executive chairman and CEO of 1792 Exchange, which helped organize the letter, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ “Benevity must immediately end its use of Southern Poverty Law Center’s defamatory ‘Hate List’ and ‘Hate Map’ to block mainstream charitable organizations like Turning Point USA and Focus on the Family.” “1792 Exchange’s research found that hundreds of major corporations rely on Benevity’s platform, making this a critical moment for corporate leadership to reject ideological gatekeeping,” Napier added. “Benevity must completely remove any use of the SPLC filter, adopt a viewpoint-neutral process, and restore full access to the organizations it has unjustly excluded.” “For far too long, major corporations have been relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nefarious ‘Hate List’ to decide what organizations and charities their employees may give to as part of their corporate giving programs,” Paul Batura, vice president of communications at Focus on the Family, told the Daily Signal. “These entities have been relying on a distorted definition of ‘goodness.’” “In fact, citing and sourcing the SPLC is the equivalent of a company promising clean water drawing their water from a polluted or toxic aquifer,” Batura added. “It’s our privilege to join the 1792 Exchange’s growing coalition in urging companies to stop making decisions and recommendations based on information from the SPLC.” Benevity Keeps Using SPLC The issue gained renewed salience after a federal grand jury handed down 11 criminal charges against the SPLC for allegedly funding the very hate groups it tells donors it exists to “dismantle.” The Daily Signal reached out to Benevity last month to see if the company would disavow the SPLC in light of the indictment. “Benevity is not directly affiliated with the SPLC,” the company’s spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “Benevity clients have the option to use the list of nonprofit organizations included on the SPLC’s annual Hate Map to determine nonprofit eligibility within their programs. The use of this option is not a default setting and is at the sole discretion of clients.” According to its website, Benevity connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them. It says it has managed $16 billion in grants and 99 million employee volunteer hours. In 2023, more than 2.3 million people donated through the Benevity platform, representing $3.2 billion. “Benevity’s denial that it defaults to the SPLC filter is hard to square with its own history,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told the Daily Signal in response to the Benevity statement. Benevity’s former CEO, Kelly Schmitt, delivered a PowerPoint presentation in 2021 explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.” Scott added, however, that “the real issue isn’t how the SPLC filter is used, it’s why this list is used at all.” Critics have said the SPLC trades on its history of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to smear conservatives. The center publishes a “hate map” that plots parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, conservative groups like Turning Point USA, and Christian groups like Focus on the Family alongside chapters of the Klan. In 2012, a convicted terrorist told the FBI he targeted a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, for a mass shooting. Four months after the SPLC added Turning Point USA to the “hate map” last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly murdered Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, aiming to silence his “hate.” According to 1792 Exchange, 252 companies using the Benevity platform exclude conservative groups by using the SPLC list as a screening tool. The Letter “We, the undersigned organizations, urge Benevity to immediately end the use of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate Map’ and ‘Hate List’ in determining which nonprofits are eligible for corporate charitable giving and employee matching programs,” reads the letter, now signed by 15 groups. “By relying on these partisan designations, Benevity legitimizes a severely biased blacklist that inspires violence, urges discrimination against mainstream organizations, and undermines the spirit of charitable giving,” the letter adds. The list of signatories includes Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Family Association, the Center for Christian Virtue, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Do No Harm, the Family Policy Alliance, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, GenSpect, Moms for Liberty, Partners for Ethical Care, PragerU, Turning Point USA, 1792 Exchange, and Them Before Us. Benevity Open Letter v2Download