Recently, the world witnessed the assassination of Charlie Kirk with the gruesome video of the incident circulating online in real time. National attention quickly zeroed in on the assassin and in that process a powerful image surfaced.  The image was that of a young Tyler Robinson sitting in front of a laptop. Dressed in Avengers pajamas and surrounded by what appears to be Christmas candy, Robinson’s lips are curved in a soft smile as he clicks on the keyboard. “Almost forgot Tyler,” Tyler’s mother captioned the photo, “He can totally avoid us now that he got all of the computer accessories he’s been wanting.” Today, that little boy is a 22-year-old man who sits in jail awaiting trial, accused of murdering Charlie Kirk in front of the world. As a mother, this photo broke my heart. It serves as a chilling reminder of what a truly dangerous, radicalizing, and lonely place the internet can be.  The photo of a young Tyler is indicative of the rapid rise of the internet, which has been detrimental for children’s socialization, critical thinking, and safety. Many children are substituting in-person experiences and relationships with online platforms and a manufactured “community.”    Reports indicate America’s youth are spending more time socializing on Instagram, TikTok, and Discord than in-person and that 31% of teens find conversations with AI “companions” more satisfying than conversations with real friends. This human replacement affects nearly half of American teenagers, who are online “almost constantly.”   These trends have ensured that most American teenagers are, as sociologist Sherry Turkle aptly says, “forever elsewhere” — living online instead of in the moment during their most formative, vulnerable years. Instead of learning how to think or interact in real-world scenarios, children are encountering potentially dangerous strangers and ideologies online without any meaningful guardrails. Indeed, 72% of popular gaming sites allow anonymous sign-ups and self-declaration of age, meaning that predators and other bad actors have the capability of texting, video, and audio calling minors on these sites without being easily traceable.   The consequences of this are unimaginable.    Just look at the online platform Discord, which is used by a third of teenage boys in the U.S. In 2023, Discord was allegedly involved in 35 cases of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault. Discord also allegedly played a role in 165 cases where adults used the platform for sextortion, and to spread Child Sexual Abuse Material.    In addition to sexual exploitation and grooming risks, experts have warned that Discord has been used to spread extremist or nihilistic content. Moreover, multiple suspects in “high-profile mass shooting events” used Discord to announce their plans—including Robinson, who allegedly confessed to Kirk’s murder in a Discord chat. Discord and another gaming site, Roblox, came under fire earlier this year when a mother alleged that her son committed suicide after being groomed and coerced into sending explicit pictures on the platforms.  Ideological activists often use online platforms as echo chambers for radical ideas that they push on susceptible group members. Impressionable children joining chat rooms and ‘groups’ on these sites for community are often met with mature or even dangerous ideas and content they lack the experience or maturity to understand.  For example, young girls turning to platforms like Reddit and Tumblr for acceptance or support with eating disorders have been told by online “friends” that they must be transgender, some even pressured into permanent life-altering surgeries as minors. Similarly, a 17-year-old boy with no prior confusion about his gender was manipulated online into thinking he was ‘pansexual,’ and ‘gender-fluid.’ Children may also be encouraged to adopt violent rhetoric due to popular online streamers that openly call for violence against political figures or perform dangerous stunts on platforms like Twitch.  The real-world impacts of these virtual interactions are destabilizing our culture today. Children are more depressed, anxious and risk-averse than ever before. Too many online interactions and not enough in-person socialization are undoubtedly fueling this crisis. In the absence of meaningful guard rails or outright internet abstinence, parents may never know what their children are doing online, who they are interacting with, or whether their children number among the many casualties of online grooming, exploitation, and radicalization. In the absence of learned, real-world consequences and healthy civil discourse, many children are growing up reliant on what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “experience blockers“—digital devices or platforms and the insufficient or negative habits they teach them. Compounding the loss of real-world experience and socialization, children are encountering a whole host of radical ideas, extremist or inappropriate content in online echo chambers that lack nuance or counterbalance. They train children to hide behind screens, enjoying the comfort of anonymity as they shamelessly engage in extreme or heated conversations they would likely not have the courage to engage in face-to-face. As parents, it’s our duty to ensure that online platforms are used carefully with proper guardrails (or not at all), and not as an excuse for children to “totally avoid” meaningful relationships in their lives. Among the most meaningful skills we can equip our children with is their ability to respond to adversity and live in, engage with, and enjoy the real world. The first step to this is removing the screens. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Parenting in a Digital World: A Heartbreaking Image and Its Warning appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office twice asserted that a slate of alternate electors contesting the 2020 election was legal before bringing criminal charges on the matter in the heat of a presidential election in 2024, based on memos referenced in court filings. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump pardoned the alternate electors among more than 70 people involved in challenging the 2020 election. However, Kaul—and other Democrat prosecutors—vowed to continue the state prosecutions.  The two assertions from Kaul’s office undermine the forgery and fraud case brought by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, according to defense filings by Jim Troupis, a former state judge and veteran Republican election lawyer who was charged last year with forgery for advising the alternate electors. Troupis settled the case in 2024 with no admission of wrongdoing. The change, of course, from the state came after U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith secured a grand jury indictment against Trump in the federal election case in August 2023 and additional charges a year later. The indictment alleged in part that Trump was engaged in a conspiracy to assemble “fraudulent slates of electors.” First, on Dec. 1, 2020, Kaul said alternate Republican electors could meet and vote. The point of his argument was that the Wisconsin Supreme Court did not have to rush a decision on the election challenge before Dec. 14 when the state electors met to count votes.  So, the attorney general argued in a filing that also included the names of three assistant attorneys general, a ruling after Dec. 14 meant there was “zero risk” a separate slate of pro-Trump electors wouldn’t be counted if a recount or court rulings reversed the election outcome. “There is no reason to invalidate the existing certificate of ascertainment or to enjoin the commissioner or the governor from certifying electors, because the issuance of a certificate of ascertainment does not impair the petitioners’ ability to obtain a meaningful recount appeal,” the memo from Kaul and assistants said. Dec1-2020Download The attorney general added, “There is also no necessity for their recount appeal to bypass the procedural requirements … because, contrary to their suggestion, neither federal nor state law requires their recount appeal to be completed before December 14, 2020.” “As long as the Court does not interfere in the way requested by the petitioners, there is zero risk that Wisconsin will have no electoral votes on December 14,” the attorney general memo added. “The procedure prescribed by Congress accommodates petitioners’ right to a meaningful recount appeal.” More than a year later, Feb. 9, 2022, the attorney general’s office advised the Wisconsin Election Commission that the alternate slate of electors meeting and voting didn’t violate the law. Law Forward, a liberal legal group, alleged to the Wisconsin Election Commission, that the alternate electors violated the law. The commission solicited an opinion from the Wisconsin Department of Justice on the matter. In response, the attorney general’s office issued a memo rejecting those complaints. “Nothing in either statute prohibits or otherwise limits a party from meeting or otherwise casting electoral votes during a challenge to an election tabulation,” the February 2022 memo to the commission said.  The complaint alleged the Wisconsin pro-Trump alternate electors “met in a concerted effort to ensure that they would be mistaken, as a result of their deliberate forgery and fraud, for Wisconsin’s legitimate presidential electors.” On that point, the attorney general’s office asserted: “The record does not support this allegation. Before and after the December 14 meeting, the respondents publicly stated, including in court pleadings, that they were meeting to preserve legal options while litigation was pending.”  Feb9-2022-WECDownload Kaul’s office did not respond to requests for comment.  Although legal experts have argued the Trump pardon on state charges were symbolic, Troupis argued the Justice Department should intervene in the case.  “The United States Department of Justice must take action—civil rights investigation and intervention—to stop these ongoing prosecutions of those who worked with President Trump,” Troupis wrote in an op-ed published on ConservativeHQ.  Because of his pending legal case, he referred questions to the opinion piece.  “On December 1, 2020 the Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, in writing, explicitly advised us and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Trump should use them,” Troupis wrote.  Troupis added: “It gets worse. Kaul’s own office wrote an official letter in 2022 noting that use of Alternate Electors has a long history and it was certainly not “fraud or forgery” (the charges he now makes).” In May 2022, Law Forward led a lawsuit against Troupis claiming that the meeting of Republican electors in 2020 was a public nuisance and a conspiracy. In March 2024, to avoid more legal costs, Troupis and legal adviser Kenneth Chesebro settled the civil case with no admission of wrongdoing, but an agreement from both not to participate in alternate elections in future presidential elections.  Separately, in December 2023, the Wisconsin alternate Trump electors settled a case, admitting their vote was “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results” and agreed they would not be presidential electors in future elections with Trump. In June 2024, in the lead up to the presidential election, Kaul held a press conference to announce he filed a criminal complaint for forgery against Troupis and other Trump supporters in Dane County Circuit Court.  “The criminal complaint in this case alleges that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to present a certificate of purported electoral votes from individuals who were not Wisconsin’s duly appointed electors,” Kaul said when announcing the criminal complaint. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to protecting the integrity of our electoral process.” Law Forward defended the charges. The defendants’ assertion that the Wisconsin attorney general blessed the use of alternate electors “distorts the facts,” argued Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward. “The [Wisconin] DOJ opinion letter referenced here expressed a line-attorney’s opinion that the scheme did not clearly violate either of two specific statutes administered by the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Mendell told The Daily Signal in a statement. “But the letter also expressly allows that the scheme might violate other Wisconsin laws, including other Wisconsin election laws.” Law Forward specifically referenced a paragraph from the February 2022 attorney general letter that says the attorney general was not addressing every aspect of Wisconsin law. “This memorandum does not address other potential violations of law, such as election fraud under Wis. Stat. § 12.13 or matters that the Complainants have raised to other authorities or discussed in the media, such as forgery under Wis. Stat. § 943.38, false swearing under Wis. Stat. § 946.32, falsely assuming to act as a public officer under Wis. Stat. § 946.69, simulating legal process under Wis. Stat. § 946.68, misconduct in public office under Wis. Stat. § 946.12, conspiracy, aiding, or attempt to commit such acts, or any other matter outside the scope of the complaint,” the portion of the attorney general’s 2022 memo highlighted by Law Forward says. The the first paragraph of the attorney general’s letter says, “this memorandum concludes that thecomplaint does not raise a reasonable suspicion that respondents violated Wisconsin election law.” Also in December 2020, alternate slates of Republicans electors voted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Democrat prosecutors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada also brought charges. Presidential pardons typically can only come for federal offenses. Nevertheless, in the pardon statement, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin argues presidential election functions are federal even if the charges came under state law. “Notwithstanding that fact, these prosecutions are attempts by partisan state actors to shoehorn fanciful and concocted state law violations onto what are clearly federal constitutional obligations of the 2020 Trump campaign: the establishment of the contingent electors, the actions attendant to their roles as presidential electors, and their duties under established historical and legal precedent to exercise their responsibilities as electors—all of which are functions of federal—not state—law,” Martin argued.  The post Did Wisconsin Democrat AG Undermine His Own Case Against Alternate Trump Electors? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In Part One of “Congress’ Week of Crazy,” we laid out the wild happenings last week on the Democrat side of the aisle, from a congresswoman indicted for stealing $5 million to a congresswoman who was texting with Jeffrey Epstein like they were teenagers to six Democrats who skated up to the edge of sedition. But it wasn’t just Democrats who were mischief-plotters and tabloid fodder. Republicans had plenty of their own drama. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Sudden Exit Stage Left That peach of a Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned the political world Friday night by announcing she was quitting Congress, effective Jan. 5, 2026. Her decision came days after President Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement of the controversial congresswoman in the wake of a series of erratic moves challenging the president, including over the Epstein files. Greene’s also recently been sucking up to hostile media, including the ladies of “The View.” My message to Georgia’s 14th district and America.Thank you. pic.twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) November 22, 2025 In her resignation letter Greene compared herself to a “battered wife” and complained that she felt unwelcomed in Washington and disliked by both sides of the political aisle. As President Harry Truman famously said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” In the case of the Georgia representative, I suppose it would be “dawg.” Adding to the campy flavor of it all: Trump responded to the news by saying Greene “went bad” and her resignation was “good for the country.” He then spent the weekend insisting Greene is a “nice person.” Now the question remains: Does Greene become a John Bolton who turns and makes a mint as an anti-Trump commentator? (Which will now mostly go to lawyers.) Or is she an Elon Musk: an emotional, colorful, controversial figure who soon enough finds herself back in the Trump camp? In the biz, they call this a cliffhanger. Rep. Cory Mills: Ethically Challenged Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Why? Apparently to avoid a censure vote, The Daily Signal’s Jacob Adams reported. Rep. Kat Cammack, also of Florida, colorfully complained House leadership tabled a censure vote on Del. Stacey Plaskett to protect Mills from a censure vote. “This backroom deal s— is swampy, wrong and always deserves to be called out.”According to a statement from the Ethics Committee, their investigation into Mills will look into: “allegations that [Mills] may have: (1) failed to properly disclose required information on statements required to be filed with the House; (2) violated campaign finance laws and regulations in connection with his 2022 and 2024 election campaigns; (3) improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel; (4) received special favors by virtue of his position; (5) engaged in misconduct with respect to allegations of sexual misconduct and/or dating violence; and/or (6) misused congressional resources or status.”   Wait. “Sexual misconduct and/or dating violence”? How’s that get ranked #5? Jimmy Hoffa wasn’t buried like that little tidbit. Mills denies any wrongdoing. Rep. Dan Crenshaw: What Happened in Mexico Didn’t Stay in Mexico Also denying wrongdoing: Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw is denying a report by Punchbowl News that House Republicans revoked his traveling privileges for three-months after an “alcohol-related incident” during an official trip to Mexico. No, he did not trash a hotel room or run naked through the streets. Or even butcher “Yellow Rose of Texas” at a Tijuana karaoke bar. Crenshaw says the incident was “literally me doing a toast with the Mexican generals.” According to the story, a Mexican official made a “crude joke” that made a woman present uncomfortable. Crenshaw then toasted the comment. Crenshaw insists he wasn’t banned from travel, saying a planned trip was nixed by the government shutdown. Why We Can’t Mock From booze to bye-byes, criminal busts to buddying up with Jeffrey Epstein, it was a week for the books on Capitol Hill. It’s tempting to mock, but millions of us are about to head off to see family for Thanksgiving. Though it is a good bet our families won’t be stealing $5 million bucks or texting pedophiles, can we honestly say we won’t have our own dramas, downfalls, and delicious gossip? Overindulgence? A family mutiny? Battles over relationships with the wrong people? I didn’t think so. May your Thanksgiving be as blessed as Nancy Pelosi’s bank account. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Congress’s Week of Crazy, Part Two: GOP Has Its Own Drama appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Just by living in 21st-century America, you have a lot to be thankful for. You live in the richest country in the history of the world—and one of the freest. Despite what the left claims, the benefits of wealth aren’t limited to the 1%. The amenities most people take for granted—a vehicle, washing machine, hot water on demand—would have been unimaginable luxuries for most of human history. Among poor families in America, significant majorities have air conditioning systems, televisions, microwaves and smartphones. We’ve come a long way from what the Pilgrims had to celebrate at the first Thanksgiving. Over half of the settlers had died during the previous winter. The remaining settlers were grateful for a harvest that would help them survive the upcoming winter. Today, most people are concerned with how many servings of turkey they can eat while still having enough room for pumpkin pie. It’d be impossible to list all the changes over the last four centuries that have turned scarcity into opulence. The bravery and sacrifice of members of the military are near the top of the list. So is the fossil fuel industry. You didn’t have to hunt your turkey, kill it and clean it. A farmer did that on a farm powered primarily by fossil fuels. A truck powered by fossil fuels drove it to your supermarket. Your supermarket used fossil fuels to keep its lights on, its freezer cold and its credit card readers humming. You used fossil fuels to drive there and buy it. That’s true even if you have an electric car, because electric cars plug into an electric grid mostly powered by coal and natural gas. Fossil fuels will also heat the oven used to cook your turkey. The lights you turn on during Thanksgiving dinner, the TV you use to watch football and the dishwasher you use to clean up all run primarily on fossil fuels. Renewable energy gets all the publicity, but wind and solar power generated only about 14% of the nation’s electricity in 2023. Fossil fuels generated 60%, with nuclear and hydropower generating over 24%. When the Pilgrims got cold, they had to chop wood and burn it. Today, you push a button on your thermostat. Going to see family? Airplanes use fossil fuels. The iPhone you use to FaceTime Grandma wouldn’t exist without the power provided by fossil fuels. This doesn’t mean fossil fuel companies are perfect. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t externalities to fossil fuel production, although it’s hard to take environmental alarmists seriously after decades of failed predictions. It doesn’t mean that someday a different fuel source, like nuclear power, won’t replace fossil fuels. But without fossil fuels, Thanksgiving dinner and everything else in American life would look entirely different—and not in a good way. Happy Thanksgiving. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Give Thanks for the Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official called for introspection, humility and transformation at the agency in an email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) following a report by career staff that the deaths of 10 children may be attributed to the COVID-19 vaccine. “At least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” FDA Chief Medical Officer and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad said in an email sent to staff Friday afternoon. “For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” Prasad said. “Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death. In many cases, such mandates were harmful. It is difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines.” The finding—and the fact it would not have been uncovered without President Donald Trump’s appointee, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, at the helm—provokes important questions about the direction and culture of the agency, wrote Prasad, Makary’s handpicked deputy. “Why did it take until 2025 to perform this analysis, and take necessary further actions? Deaths were reported between 2021 and 2024, and ignored for years,” he wrote. The report on suspected COVID vaccine deaths in children has not been released. An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment. The report amounts to a wake-up call, Prasad said. He called for a transformation of his own center’s mission, a crusade likely to face severe counterwinds from the pharmaceutical industry and some of the agency’s longtime vaccine reviewers. He, in turn, issued an ultimatum to these staffers. “Never again will the US FDA commissioner have to himself find deaths in children for staff to identify it,” he wrote. “Some staff may not agree with these core principles and operating principles. Please submit your resignation letters to your supervisor.” Earlier this year Prasad assigned career staff at the FDA Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance (OBPV) to assess reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a surveillance program tracing vaccine side effects, according to the email. Prior to joining the FDA, Makary and Prasad tracked reports of vaccine-induced myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—which occurs most frequently in young, healthy boys and men. FDA officials assessed whether the COVID vaccine caused the deaths reported in VAERS against a subjective scale ranging from certain to unlikely, Prasad wrote. The 10 detected deaths had “likely, probable or possible” attribution. Only highly motivated physicians complete the tedious process to submit VAERS reports, thus the figure is likely an underestimate, Prasad said. The COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers were due to conduct more safety studies, but FDA has not enforced its own requirements. The FDA cannot answer the question of whether the COVID-19 vaccine killed more healthy kids than it saved because it lacks reliable data on the absolute risk reduction in severe disease and death in healthy children, Prasad said. “The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” he wrote. “It is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.” “I suspect the answer is cultural and systemic,” he continued. “I have no doubt that many vaccines have saved millions of lives globally, and many have benefits that far exceed risks, but vaccines are like any other medical product. The right drug given to the right patient at the right time is great, but the same drug can be inappropriately given, causing harm. The same is true for vaccines.” Prasad said the FDA should not lower its standards with the goal of further incentivizing the growth of the $30 billion vaccine market, pointing to the enormous profits of the COVID-19 vaccines and the fact that vaccines do not face generic competition. Other forthcoming changes at CBER include changes to vaccine approvals in pregnant women, requiring more clinical trials rather than relying on laboratory studies testing antibody levels, revamping the annual flu vaccine rollout and studying the impact of administering multiple vaccines at the same time. Prasad’s email amounts to a scathing critique of his predecessor, former CBER Director Peter Marks, who in 2021 pushed the agency to approve annual COVID boosters even for the young and healthy and to issue a full approval of the COVID vaccines, paving the way for higher-ups in the Biden White House to issue vaccine mandates, according to a 2024 congressional investigation. Marks’ push prompted the resignations of the agency’s two top vaccine reviewers, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause, who later told congressional investigators that they felt pressure to cut corners. “Some have felt the CBER director should override reviewers to approve gene therapies that do not work because of patient demand. When these products later result in post market deaths, it is difficult to take corrective action. I favor approving products with benefits that exceed risks,” Prasad wrote. Prasad’s changes tackle the post-pandemic plummet in public confidence in the FDA. Just 37% of Americans trust the FDA to act independently without outside influence, according to an August 2025 Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Just 27% of Americans rated the work of the FDA as “excellent” or “good” in an October 2025 Gallup poll. Still, the mission has been rocky for Prasad, who faces opposition both from career staff who bristle at his criticism of the status quo and biotech investors wary of stricter standards. His tenure was disrupted and prematurely ended when the White House fired him following a smear campaign by The Wall Street Journal editorial board and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer. That smear campaign coincided with the FDA temporarily halting shipments of Elevidys, a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy made by Sarepta Therapeutics. Prasad resumed his position after Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lobbied the White House to reinstate him, according to press reports. The FDA did not pull Elevidys from the market but added a black boxed warning to the drug limiting the therapy to ambulatory patients four years of age and older on Nov. 14. Prasad has been routinely undermined by leaks. In the summer of 2025, Tracy Beth Hoeg, a senior advisor for clinical sciences to Makary and Prasad, began investigating the VAERS reports. She soon concluded the deaths attributable to COVID vaccination were real, according to Prasad’s email. Hoeg organized a meeting to discuss her research with the FDA’s OBPV and Office of Vaccines Research and Review; however, details were soon leaked to the press. “Some staff present who leaked portrayed the incident as Dr. Hoeg attempting to create a false fear regarding vaccines,” Prasad wrote. Prasad lambasted the leaks in the email. “I have no doubt that individuals who are providing media outlets with slides, emails and personal anecdotes believe they are doing the right thing,” he said. “Unfortunately, this behavior is both unethical, illegal, and, as this case illustrates, factually incorrect.” Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post FDA Chief Medical Officer Demands ‘Introspection’ by Staff After Report Tracing 10 Children’s Deaths to COVID Vaccine appeared first on The Daily Signal.