The State Bank of India has announced it is opening a new branch in Frisco, Texas, with critics raising concerns about Indian workers sending remittances back to India with minimal fees. The branch is expected to open in mid-September and will be located off Coit Road. The Indian population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is estimated at about 230,000, with many being in the U.S. on H-1B visas. The population increased by 20% from 2020 to 2024 as the federal government continued approving H-1B visas. The bank’s website states that customers can send remittances—money foreign workers send back to their home countries—with zero transfer fees.  Online customers can send up to $50,000 per day, while mobile customers can send up to $25,000 per day, according to the bank’s website. There is no stated limit for remittances sent from a branch. The bank specializes in remittance services to India and Bangladesh.  Employees at the bank speak multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Punjabi, and other Indian languages. State Bank of India is headquartered in Los Angeles and has multiple branches across California. The institution is also backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits of up to $250,000 per depositor. The new Frisco location has drawn criticism from those who say the services could be used to evade American laws. According to an article by Ammon Blair, a senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure & Sovereign Nation Initiative, the United States is losing at least $200 billion annually from remittances leaving the domestic economy and supporting foreign economies. “Through the lens of gray-zone conflict, remittances are not neutral financial transfers. They function as an asymmetric economic weapon, weakening U.S. labor markets, eroding the rule of law, and stabilizing regimes that act contrary to American interests. In gray-zone conflict, the rule of law itself becomes contested terrain,” Blair wrote. Blair also told the Daily Signal that the bank is bringing the remittance issue directly to Texas. “This is not simply another community bank entering a growing suburb,” Blair said. “SBI California is a subsidiary of State Bank of India, which is controlled by the Indian government.” Blair said India received an estimated $129 billion in remittances in 2024, but there is little information about whether the funds came from lawful earnings or how much was transferred through digital channels. “That lack of visibility is the problem,” Blair said. “At scale, they move billions of dollars earned in the United States into foreign economies, supporting households, businesses, financial institutions, and governments abroad rather than recirculating in the communities where the income was generated.” Blair also raised concerns around the zero-transfer fees SBIC is offering. He told the Daily Signal that Texas should require a “clear, upfront disclosure of the total transaction cost, including the exchange-rate spread.” At the state level, Blair says Texas needs to address the issue through a “constitutionally sound approach.” “Texas can focus instead on conduct occurring within the state: banking compliance, consumer protection, deceptive pricing, fraud, identity theft, unlawful employment, public-benefit theft, money laundering, tax evasion, and organized crime,” he said. “Texas law already gives the banking commissioner authority to examine an interstate branch maintained by an out-of-state state bank and respond when that branch violates applicable Texas law. “ “The Legislature should determine whether that authority is sufficient and whether additional reporting, examination, subpoena, referral, or enforcement powers are necessary,” he added. At the federal level, Republican U.S. Rep. Keith Self of Texas told the Daily Signal that he filed legislation to address the issue by imposing a tax on foreign remittances. “I am fighting to protect America’s financial system because foreign remittance schemes—including zero-fee transfers from banks like the State Bank of India—are being used to evade our laws and cheat American taxpayers,” Self said. “That’s why I introduced the Foreign Remittance Accountability and Transparency Act (HR 5978), pushed to block illegal aliens from our banks (HR 8836), and am demanding we raise the excise tax on remittances sent abroad by foreign nationals to 50%. It’s time to end this exploitation and put American taxpayers first.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said U.S. criticism of Canadian efforts to stop the “terrible scenario” of spreading forest fires in his province and choking smoke across a broad swath of the United States was “absolutely unacceptable.” “We’re trying to get through this,” Ford said on Saturday, adding that if the situation were reversed and the U.S. were facing wildfires, “we’re going to be down there to support our neighbors.” President Donald Trump blamed what he called incompetent Canadian forest management for the smoke and said on Friday he would add the “incalculable cost” of dealing with the pollution to existing tariffs on Canadian goods. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ford’s remarks. Ford said at a press briefing that 655,000 hectares (1.6 million acres) of forest were burning across Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.  “My heart breaks for the people who have lost their homes or their camps and their businesses,” Ford said, adding he has told his ministers there is “no limit” on spending to protect people across the province.  Trump’s Softwood Lumber Tariffs Ford suggested that if Trump wanted Canada to clear its forests, he should drop U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber. If Canada were able to ship its softwood lumber to the U.S. without tariffs, “that would resolve a lot of the issues we face right now,” Ford said.  Federal Emergencies Minister Eleanor Olszewski said late on Friday that the Canadian Armed Forces would use aircraft to evacuate residents of Fort Hope in sparsely populated northwestern Ontario, where some of the most intense fires are burning. The region has few roads and relies heavily on air travel. Thousands of people have already evacuated to cities farther south in Ontario. Major forest fires have become a regular occurrence in Canada, home to some of the world’s largest forests. Climate experts say rising temperatures have led to drier timber and increased fire risk. More Favorable Weather Expected The federal Natural Resources Department said on Saturday 69 new fires were reported overnight in Canada, raising the total to 955. The total area burned is almost 11,000 square miles (28,500 square km), well below the five-year average. But winds have carried the smoke south of the Canada-U.S. border, prompting authorities to issue air quality alerts and health warnings in parts of the United States. As of 8 a.m. ET (1200 GMT), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow site rated the air quality as “unhealthy” in an area including southern Ontario, eastern areas of Ohio and West Virginia, most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, much of Virginia and all of Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C.  Parts of western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, were rated “very unhealthy.” AirNow predicted that the air quality in those areas would improve during the day.  Smoke from the Canadian fires will have only a minimal impact on Sunday’s soccer World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium, forecaster AccuWeather said on Friday. Wildfire activity in Ontario has started to slow over the last 24 hours and “much more favorable weather” is expected over the next few days, according to Mike Harris, the Canadian province’s natural resources minister. Reporting by David Ljunggren and Maria Cheng in Ottawa; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; editing by Sergio Non, Ros Russell, Rod Nickel

Professional associations drive progressive bias into college classrooms, and this needs to stop. Accreditation is not just a tiresome administrative routine. It’s a seal of approval that drives access to student loans, official diplomas, and occupational licenses. The Trump administration’s work to reform accreditation should give lawmakers new energy to challenge progressive orthodoxy.  Start with the American Psychological Association. The APA is the professional organization representing clinicians and educators in the field. Yet it also accredits university psychology departments. Most states require psychologists to have a degree from an accredited program.  The APA’s accreditation standards push diversity, equity, and inclusion into the classroom. In 2025, the Trump administration began putting accreditors under pressure to stop abusing their power, and the APA announced it was suspending the worst of its DEI standards. But while the organization froze the use of racial preferences in admissions, it kept the rest.  Even worse, specialist divisions within the APA are still pushing DEI in the form of racial preferences and even antisemitism. For example, the president of Division 39, the APA section representing psychoanalysis and psychologists, graduate students, and allied mental health professionals, openly advocates for intersectionality, a Marxist theory of victimhood that underpins DEI.  In their 2027 Spring meeting announcement, Division 39 officials quoted Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist active in the mid-20th century. Fanon wrote widely in support of violent methods to force social change. In “The Wretched of the Earth,” Fanon wrote, “Use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence.” Division 39’s call for research proposals at the conference suggests presenters consider topics such as white supremacy, proximity to whiteness, critical race theory, power, structural violence, and more.  This event and call for proposals represent the kind of radical progressive bias that university psychology departments often replicate. For example, Yale’s psychology department has a Committee on Racial Equity and Justice. Its website features a long “anti-racist” screed dating to the 2020 race riots.  The advocacy group Do No Harm, which exposes identity politics in medicine, recently reminded the APA that the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce has warned the association about racial bias within its ranks. Last December, Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., wrote that his committee “is gravely concerned about antisemitism at the APA” because “Jewish APA members have reported being harassed and ostracized by their colleagues within the APA and at APA events because of their Jewish identity.”  Walberg’s letter notes that APA’s divisions, such as Division 39, are supposed to follow APA guidelines—like the suspension of DEI in accreditation standards. But Walberg said the requirements “have not been consistently followed.” The chairman quoted remarks from an APA division president who said, “Zionism is a mental illness,” wanted to “destroy Zionism,” and called Israelis “genocidal f—-.”  Such bigotry has no place in higher education—or anywhere else. Yet these sentiments are common in academia, and accreditors steer university programs to emphasize such distasteful activism.   At the state level, lawmakers should prohibit colleges from following any DEI standard that conflicts with state laws banning DEI. They also should require universities to change accreditors frequently to spur competition on quality. Florida and North Carolina have already adopted these policies.   The problem in several fields, though, is that the program-based accreditors have a monopoly. Clinical psychologists need the APA. Lawyers in most states need the American Bar Association. State laws and regulations must change to break these monopolies.  Competition at the institution level is starting to build. University systems in several states have created a new accreditor. The U.S. Department of Education has been streamlining the approval process to let more accreditors compete. The Trump administration’s anti-DEI executive orders and cancellation of grants with DEI are working. And some colleges are already switching accreditors.  Some accreditors have suspended DEI standards for now, but they may just be waiting for the next left-of-center administration to reintroduce them. Meanwhile, their divisions are still embracing prejudice while exerting considerable influence on colleges.   This pressure limits the range of ideas discussed in the classroom and keeps college campuses in a cycle of ideological conformity. Progressive associations are also flouting civil rights laws. Policymakers have solutions that would protect the pursuit of truth and equality under the law—and citing the APA as a bad example is a place to start.  

DUBAI—The U.S. said it had completed an eighth straight night of attacks against Iran after earlier announcing that two U.S. military personnel were killed in Jordan, while U.S. allies in the region reported more Iranian attacks on Sunday. The U.S. and Iran have intensified attacks as an interim ceasefire deal signed a month ago has unraveled and a struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz has deepened, raising the risk of a return to all-out hostilities. Israeli officials said Israel was preparing to receive more U.S. refueling aircraft after the recent escalation, and ahead of a possible expansion of U.S. military operations against Iran. U.S. Central Command said the latest airstrikes, beginning at 6 p.m. ET (2200 GMT) on Saturday, were designed “to further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan.” Central Command later said it had completed its wave of attacks, hitting Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities. The conflict, which began when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28 hoping to disable its nuclear and missile programs and degrade its regional proxies, has led to major disruption to energy supplies and fears over global inflation. Gulf States Come Under Fresh Iranian Attack Iranian reports said the U.S. carried out an attack near Sirik in southern Iran, and near Shadegan, close to the border with Iraq. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization condemned a U.S. attack on the site of a nuclear power plant under construction in Darkhovin, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was investigating reports of an overnight attack, noting that the plant was in the very early stages of construction. In response to the latest strikes, Iran carried out a drone attack that targeted U.S. military assets and equipment at Kuwait’s Al-Adiri camp and Ali Al Salem Air Base, Iranian state TV reported early on Sunday. Both bases have been targeted as part of Iran’s attacks against U.S. assets and allies in the Gulf since last week. Kuwait’s Electricity Ministry said a desalination plant had been attacked for the second day running, causing a fire. Kuwait’s armed forces said earlier they had again intercepted Iranian missiles, after a sustained Iranian attack on Saturday. Bahrain’s air defenses also intercepted an Iranian attack on Sunday, its state TV reported. Sirens sounded in Jordan, where the military said it had shot down three Iranian missiles. The Israeli military said it had detected the launch of missiles from Iran towards the Jordanian city of Aqaba, on Israel’s border. In recent days both sides have taken aim at shipping traffic, with the U.S. saying it is enforcing a naval blockade on Iran and Tehran saying it targets vessels violating its rules on navigating the Strait of Hormuz, which usually handles one-fifth of global oil supply. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Sunday four vessels had attempted to transit the strait via an “unsafe route” with U.S. backing after ignoring IRGC warnings. It said two had abandoned the attempt while the other two were involved in an “accident”. It did not elaborate. Deaths of 2 U.S. Service Members Central Command said the deaths of two of its service personnel had occurred on Friday and that a third U.S. service member was missing in action. The announcement brought the number of U.S. service members killed since the war began to 16, while more than 420 have been wounded. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.” Iran’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that 50 people had been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes on the country over the past three weeks alone. Overall, thousands have been killed and several million internally displaced in the conflict, mainly in Iran and in Lebanon, where a war between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah was reignited. In a written statement carried by Iranian state media late on Saturday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said U.S. actions had shown that U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature was “utterly worthless and devoid of credibility”. The statement warned of “even heavier costs and further humiliation” for the United States. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Khamenei’s whereabouts remain a mystery. He has not been seen in public since before his father and predecessor as supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran on February 28. Reporting by Nayera Abdallah and Eman Abouhassira in Dubai; additional reporting by Enas Alashray and Hatem Maher in Cairo, Michael Martina in Washington; writing by Lincoln Feast and Gareth Jones; editing by Aidan Lewis

After a victory in the battleground state of North Carolina, the Republican National Committee has pending litigation against six other states to stop U.S. citizens who never lived in those states from voting in their elections. The RNC has sued battleground states Arizona and Nevada; blue states such as Colorado, New Jersey, and Virginia; and the red state of Nebraska over laws allowing non-residents to vote. These cases are narrowly focused on closing state loopholes that allow people who never lived in a state to vote by absentee ballot. “If you’ve never lived in a state, you shouldn’t be voting in its elections,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told the Daily Signal in a statement. “The RNC already put a stop to this unconstitutional loophole in North Carolina, and we’re taking Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and New Jersey to court to do the same,” he said. “We’ll keep fighting to ensure elections are only decided by legal residents.” The Federal Voting Assistance Program lists 38 states that allow some form of voting by residents who never lived in a state. Typically, the states allow an American residing abroad with parents living in that state to vote by absentee ballot. “In some states, U.S. citizens who were born abroad—and have never resided in the United States—are eligible to vote absentee. If your state is not listed, contact your election office to check whether you’re eligible,” the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s website says. The lawsuits are not related to longstanding rules that allow military personnel or diplomats to vote absentee. The RNC says it strongly supports the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. To ensure standing, the RNC is teaming with either the state party, a candidate, or both in the litigation for each state court. An RNC official told the Daily Signal that it is reviewing other states that could be violating their own constitutions on voter eligibility. The committee already has launched more than 160 active election integrity cases across 36 states. In June, the Wake County Superior Court struck down a North Carolina law allowing people born overseas who never lived in the state to vote in the state’s elections, a court victory for the RNC against the state’s elections board. In Nevada, the RNC joined the state’s Republican Party and Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state Jim Marchant in challenging a provision of the state’s law that allows certain people who have never lived in Nevada—and in some cases have never lived in the United States—to vote in the state’s elections. The existing policy allows people to vote based on either the past residency of a parent or legal guardian. Plaintiffs assert this violates the state’s constitution, which states that voters must have “actually, as opposed to constructively” resided in Nevada to be eligible to vote. Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the lawsuit “an attack on the voting rights of eligible U.S. citizens living abroad.” He also said reversing Nevada’s existing law could affect military families. “They risk everything to defend our freedoms, including the fundamental right to vote, and Nevada has a responsibility to protect their access to the ballot and the rights of the families who serve alongside them,” Aguilar, a Democrat, told the Daily Signal in a statement. “Children born overseas should not be punished because their parents served, worked, or were stationed outside the United States,” Aguilar added. “Nevada will not turn its back on military families simply because their service took them away from home.” The attorneys general’s offices in Colorado, Nebraska and New Jersey declined to comment for the story because it is pending litigation. The offices for the secretaries of state for these states did not respond to inquiries for this story.  The offices of attorneys general or secretaries of state in Arizona and New Jersey did not respond. In Virginia, neither the state Board of Elections nor the office of the attorney general responded to inquiries.