The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro weighed in late on Friday after the United States launched retaliatory strikes on Iran, saying that President Donald Trump’s latest move was proof that the “peace through strength” foreign policy was back. Shapiro responded to the news that American forces had targeted “Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites” on Friday afternoon, responding to an Iranian attack on a Singapore-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz that took place one day prior. Shapiro laid out what exactly had transpired in the hours leading up the the the U.S. response, and noted the Trump had quickly made it clear he “couldn’t allow” Tehran to violate the agreement. He went on to say that the president’s reaction was proof of a “shift” in the thinking within the administration, and that the “peace through strength” foreign policy — often touted by the late President Ronald Reagan — was back: “A President Trump 1.0 foreign policy.” United States Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a statement at the time, saying that American forces would remain in the area to make sure that Iran obeyed the terms laid out by the ceasefire agreement. “CENTCOM forces continue to provide safe passage coordination and support to commercial vessels transiting the strait,” the command said. “The U.S. military remains present and vigilant to ensure all aspects of the agreement with Iran are adhered to, obeyed, and in full force and effect.” Vice President JD Vance also responded to news of the retaliatory strike, saying that the United States had every intention of holding to the terms of the ceasefire agreement, but would not stand down if Iran moved in violation of the deal. “Violence will be met with violence,” he said.  

Joe Biden opened the border. Donald Trump closed the border, and the Supreme Court just ruled that is okay. The Left and the legacy media are going insanely crazy. They say the Supreme Court is now a Right-wing tool as an evil stand-in for vicious racism. Yesterday, two Supreme Court decisions came down, both 6-3. It was the Republican appointees on the Court versus the Democratic appointees. The first decision concerned people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. The other had to do with the Trump administration labeling countries like Syria and Haiti as dangerous for the purposes of deporting people here on temporary protected status. Before we get to the content of these decisions, we first need to understand what the Supreme Court does. Why is that important? Because the Left wants the Supreme Court to be a thing it is not. They yell at the Supreme Court when it doesn’t do what they want. What is the Court supposed to do? It does not make policy, good or bad. It does not decide what the policy is, good or bad. That’s why we elect a Congress and a president. It’s why the Supreme Court is an unelected branch of government: its job is to interpret what the law means and decide what the law says. It doesn’t get to say, “We read the law. That was bad. Now we’re overturning the law and putting a new law in its place.” Going back to the 1930s, the Left decided the Supreme Court ought to act as a super-legislature, a group of really smart people who can simply rewrite policy they don’t like into good Left-wing policy. In fact, what they want is for the Supreme Court to say that when the president or Congress does Left-wing things, that’s legal. When the president or Congress does Right-wing things, that’s illegal. But that’s not the job of the Supreme Court. And yesterday, the Supreme Court did its job. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with what the Trump administration actually did at the US-Mexico border or with Haitian migrants. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to agree or disagree with such action. The question is, under our Constitution, who has the authority to do what? The Supreme Court said that the Trump administration acted within its legally defined purview and that it could not simply overrule it based on whether it liked it or not. If you don’t like the policy, elect a different Congress or a different president. These things became Supreme Court cases because of a long history of bad legislation. And then presidents take advantage of bad legislation, which is the story of congressional-presidential relations since Woodrow Wilson. Congress would pass vague laws. Presidents would take advantage of that in order to maximize their own power. Let’s start with the first decision. It was called Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. In 2016, the Obama administration set up a process called metering. There was heavy migration at the southern border, as you recall, and until 2016, if you were a non-citizen seeking asylum at a port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, you crossed into U.S. soil and then had to wait in line for inspection. At that point, we had a legal duty to listen to you. And most people would come and claim asylum. They would claim they couldn’t return to their home country due to a specific threat. That is a different thing from temporary protected status; asylum requires you to show that you face a specific threat. You can’t just say, “I want to come here because my home country sucks.” In order for that to be adjudicated, you would come, wait in line for inspection at a port of entry, and once you were on American soil, we had a duty to actually listen to your asylum claim. Toward the end of the Obama administration, there were so many people arriving at the border trying to get in that the government approved something called a metering policy, under which border agents would basically stand at the border and say, “Don’t come in. You don’t have travel documents or a visa. The port of entry is full. Come back later. You stay there.” Why did they do that? Because the law says you only have to process people who are in the country. If you don’t come in, we have no legal duty to process you. The first Trump administration expanded and formalized the metering policy, and then the Biden administration rescinded it. And then they went even further. They said, “Welcome to the border. Claim asylum and say the magic words, ‘I fear for my life, and I can’t go back to my home country,’ and we’ll let you basically run around in the United States and stay forever.” So the Trump administration, Part II came in and said, “No, no. No metering policy back in place. You’re going to wait over there, and we will not process you. The border is closed. It’s not a matter of whether the ports of entry are full. You’re not coming in. Period. And if you’re not on American soil, we have no duty to you. “ If you don’t like that policy, you can vote for Democrats to go back to the Biden way of passing laws. Or you could rewrite the law so that people who apply for citizenship have to remain in Mexico, the Trump “Remain in Mexico” policy. Or theoretically, you could rewrite the law so that everyone who applies for citizenship, no matter where they are, has to be given an asylum hearing, even if they don’t come into the United States, and we don’t have a duty to house them. There are a bunch of ways you could do this. But that’s what Congress exists for. The role of the various branches of government is important. You elect people to change the policy. The Supreme Court is here to interpret what the law currently says, not what it should say or who should be elected. The plaintiffs in this case are a group of non-citizens. They were trying to get into the United States, and they say that their rights were violated because their asylum cases were never heard, because they were in line, and that is as good as being in the country. They never entered the United States. They were turned away at the border. In a decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court said, “No. ‘In the United States’ means in the United States. You’re not in the United States if you’re waiting on the other side of the border.” Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence, which said something further: that Congress has no power to force the president to bring aliens into the country. He said the Constitution allows Congress the power to regulate who doesn’t get to come in. But the Constitution does not specify a certain number of people who must be allowed into the country. Also, said Thomas, the people in this case are neither naturalized nor on the path to naturalization. You have no rights under the U.S. Constitution if you do not live in the country, if you are not on the path to naturalization, or if you’ve never entered the country. In the more controversial case involving Haitian migrants, the only reason it reached the Supreme Court is that Congress passed an incredibly vague law that handed tremendous authority to the president. And then various presidents deliberately abused the law in various ways. In 1990, Congress passed something called the Immigration Act. One of the provisions of the Immigration Act is something called Temporary Protected Status. The idea is, you come to the United States on a travel visa, you’re tooling around, and suddenly your home country goes nuts. There’s a coup, terrorists take over; you could be given temporary protected status by the executive branch. At the time, Congress designated one country and one country only, El Salvador, as a country where things were so dangerous that you didn’t have to be deported back to your home country, even if you were, for example, overstaying your visa. So what happened? Over the course of decades, the list of countries that became dangerous expanded, and the borders opened. The Obama and Biden administrations used TPS to radically change immigration law. They would open the borders, bring in a bunch of people from crappy countries, label all those home countries dangerous, and now those people could stay forever. The average temporary protected status holder in the United States has been here for 20 years. So the Trump administration said, “It’s supposed to be temporary. It’s in the word temporary.” Democrats are saying, “No, no, no, the focus should be on ‘protected.’’’ There are now 17 countries from which people are protected from going home. The Trump administration came in and they declared that a bunch of these countries are no longer dangerous for the purpose of deporting people. Those countries include places like Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Yemen, South Sudan, Haiti, Syria, Somalia, and Ethiopia. I want to be clear about what’s factual and what’s not factual. Many of these countries are wildly dangerous; Haiti is one. It is the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere by a long shot. Five thousand and five hundred people were murdered in Haiti last year alone. Sex trafficking is rampant. Gangs basically run the place. It is now a hellhole. But here’s what happened. Democrats are claiming that temporary protected status is a one-way ratchet; a president can legalize vast swaths of illegal immigration by labeling a country dangerous. But then a subsequent president cannot relabel that country unless there’s a showing that the country is not dangerous. The question is what tools did the Trump administration have under the law? According to stats from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS as well as the Congressional Research Service), in 2010, there were between 50,000 and 70,000 Haitian TPS holders. Sixteen years later, there were between 330,000 and 350,000 Haitian TPS holders. And remember, all these people have kids, and those kids are natural-born citizens of the United States. So the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not the president can label Syria and Haiti non-dangerous for purposes of deportation. So Justice Alito wrote, “In these cases, we consider whether respondents who challenge the termination of temporary protected status for aliens from Syria and Haiti are entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation. We hold they are not. The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims and allows ‘no judicial review’ of any determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation.” You might not like how the Trump administration is using the law, but the law says what the law says. If Congress wishes to designate Haiti as a country covered by TPS in law, it can do so. They can define how long people can stay; they can define how people are deported. But that’s not what they did. In this law, Justice Thomas said that Congress barred all judicial review of TPS termination decisions, including constitutional claims. Courts are obliged to simply give effect to the ordinary meaning of the law. Democrats are going to call Republicans cruel. Republicans are going to say, “We should not be taking in hundreds of thousands of people illegally and then backfilling that with a TPS designation.” The Court isn’t the problem here. If you don’t like the law, change the law. Attacking the Court for simply interpreting the law as written is ugly stuff.

On Thursday, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) interrogated nutrition awareness advocate Gina Plata-Nino about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars covering sugary drinks and her organization’s conflicts of interest with food companies. Plata-Nino is the SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center, according to the organization’s website, and her job is to “wield her expertise to raise awareness about the importance of SNAP in helping tens of millions of families put food on the table.” At a hearing for the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Gill asked Plata-Nino whether taxpayer dollars should be used to buy sodas. She replied, “Taxpayers’ money should be utilized to ensure that individuals have access to the food that they need to survive.” “Do they need sugary sodas to survive?” Gill asked. “Some of them do, who have low blood [sugar] issues, who may have kidney issues,” Plata-Nino responded. “Is that right? You think they need Coca-Cola to survive? … Do you think that’s the most appropriate use of our tax dollars?” he asked. “I am not a physician but medical records and expertise do show that in some circumstances,” Plata-Nino said. “You were just citing the health needs, apparently, of the American people,” Gill said. “So, do the American people need Coca-Cola to survive?” After a brief pause, she responded, “I did not say that,” adding, “I will not answer for individuals and their choices.” He pressed Plata-Nino again, “I think most people can rationally say you don’t need Coca-Cola to survive. Wouldn’t you agree?” She dodged Gill’s question, saying, “I agree that we have a hunger crisis and that we need to address it, ensuring that individuals have the food resource that they need.” Gill then had Plata-Nino state what SNAP stands for: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and then asked what is nutritional about Coca-Cola. “I am not a nutritionist,” she replied. “I am a food security expert in ensuring that individuals have the food resources that they need.” He denied the need for expertise, saying, “This is a common sense question, and all of these have been common sense questions. I’m just asking you — is there a nutritional value to sugary sodas? It’s a yes or no question.” “I’m not an expert. I will have to look at the dietary guidelines,” Plata-Nino said. “Are you that ideologically dug in that you want our tax dollars paying for sugary sodas, that you will not, in a straightforward way, admit that sugary sodas are not healthful for the American people?” Gill said. “A lot of our tax dollars are spent on soda, which is why I’m asking about it … Do you believe that perhaps drinking sodas every day is healthy?” “The worst health outcome is hunger,” Plata-Nino declared.  “Do you satiate hunger with Coca-Cola?” he asked. “I did not say that,” she said. He then moved his questioning to asking about her Food Research and Action Center’s funding. “Is your organization funded by soft drink makers?” Gill asked. “I am not in charge of development, but no,” Plata-Nino said. “Is your organization funded by organizations that make money from food stamps?” Gill questioned. “I can’t comment to that,” she replied. “Does General Mills fund your organization?” he said. “I don’t have access to that information,” Plata-Nino replied.  “I do, it’s right here,” Gill stated, holding up a paper from FRAC’s website listing General Mills, along with major soda retailers such as  Amazon, Instacart, National Co-op Grocers, Albertsons Companies Foundation, and the Walmart Foundation, as their sponsors. “They do fund your organization. Do they profit off of food stamps?” “Retailers are the major beneficiaries of [our organization],” she confessed. “Do you think that’s a conflict of interest? … They’re profiting off of your advocacy,” Gill declared. Plata-Nino remained visibly silent, refusing to affirm whether funding of General Mills was a “conflict of interest.” The congressman smiled and concluded his time, saying, “I think that most people think that’s a conflict of interest. I know you don’t want to answer.” The subcommittee later said in a statement that the hearing had found that “SNAP integrity is undermined by waste, fraud, and abuse.” The Trump administration has recently been focused on preventing abuse of SNAP dollars to fund unhealthy lifestyles. Citing evidence from the Economic Policy Innovation Center that soda is the #1 product bought with SNAP dollars, the Trump administration has allowed five states to block SNAP money from buying candy and sugary drinks, a policy that an Obama-appointed judge ruled unconstitutional Tuesday. 

WASHINGTON — Rep. Brandon Gill’s (R-TX) Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses is turning its attention to one of conservatives’ biggest cultural and legal battles: diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in corporate America and higher education. The House Oversight Committee task force will hold a hearing on July 1 titled “Combating DEI in American Institutions,” examining discriminatory hiring, admissions, and employment practices that have been repackaged under the banner of diversity initiatives. The hearing comes as the Trump administration continues its broader effort to dismantle DEI programs throughout the federal government and pressure private institutions to abandon policies that discriminate on the basis of race and sex. “Fortune 500 companies and universities that enact discriminatory DEI policies are intentionally depriving qualified Americans of employment and academic opportunities in favor of race and sex-based discrimination,” Gill said in a statement provided exclusively to The Daily Wire. “Even worse, these companies and universities attempt to disguise their illegal DEI programs by renaming them and inventing new ways to discriminate against applicants and employees,” he continued. “Congress must do its part to bolster the Trump Administration’s actions to eliminate race and sex discrimination. I look forward to hearing from witnesses on ways to eliminate these unfair practices.” The hearing will feature testimony from Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez, Independent Women’s Senior Policy and Legal Analyst Inez Feltscher Stepman, and America First Policy Institute Vice Chair of Education Opportunity Michael Shires. According to the committee, lawmakers will examine how DEI initiatives have evolved after a series of court rulings and executive actions targeting race-based policies. The task force argues that many universities, corporations, and other institutions have simply rebranded existing programs while continuing to engage in what they describe as unconstitutional discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin. The hearing represents the latest step in Gill’s newly created task force, which House Republicans launched earlier this year to investigate what they characterize as institutional abuses and constitutional violations across government and major American institutions. Previous hearings have focused on fraud within Ohio’s Medicaid waiver program and what Republicans described as the weaponization of the U.S. immigration system under the Biden administration. With DEI now in the task force’s crosshairs, Republicans are expanding their oversight beyond government agencies and into private corporations and academia, two sectors conservatives have long accused of embedding ideological discrimination into hiring, promotion, admissions, and workplace policies. The hearing also dovetails with the Trump administration’s broader campaign against DEI. Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has signed executive actions aimed at eliminating diversity mandates throughout the federal government while directing agencies to scrutinize race-conscious policies that could violate federal civil rights laws. Republicans contend that despite those actions, many institutions have continued operating substantially similar programs under different names or through alternative administrative structures. Wednesday’s hearing is expected to explore potential legislative options to reinforce the administration’s efforts and further restrict the use of race- and sex-based preferences in employment, education, and other public-facing institutions. The hearing, titled “Combating DEI in American Institutions,” will begin at 10 a.m. EST on Wednesday.

New York City’s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed ahead with his promised rent freeze on Thursday — but that could just be the setup for a far more dramatic move. Mamdani’s new rent freeze could be setting landlords up to fail — and creating a stash of new “city” properties on which to build. In May, Mamdani alluded to resurrecting the controversial Third Party Transfer (TPT) program, which would allow the city to effectively confiscate private property under certain conditions. “For buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards.” If apartments are seized, Mamdani said they could be transferred to community land trusts, non-profits, or “even the tenants themselves.” NOW: Mamdani says his admin will transfer ownership from bad landlords to non-profits. “For buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants… pic.twitter.com/YHhzGWPgWh — Brecca Stoll (@breccastoll) May 26, 2026 Under New York City’s controversial TPT program, the city can foreclose on buildings whose owners owe back property taxes, water charges, or have violated New York City’s housing code.  The TPT program was paused in 2019 after backlash from property-rights advocates and elected officials, but the New York City Council is currently considering legislation that could restart the program. In addition to rent freezes, Mamdani promised to “crack down” on landlords who were not managing maintenance requests or had other tenant complaints. “Expense items are not proportional to the income the properties generate,” landlord Lav Bauta told the New York Post. Bauta’s firm, Zion Equities, owns about 800 New York City rent-stabilized units and manages 4,000 apartments. “Rent-stabilized properties incur the same, or greater, expenses as their fair-market counterparts: insurance, wages, supplies, elevator service, utilities, etc. There is no support or control mechanism to cap expenses while incomes have been capped.” Former Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged these concerns during his tenure. “What we will never do is sell New Yorkers on an idea that would ultimately leave them in worsening housing conditions,” Adams said as mayor. “Rent may be on the rise, but so are deteriorating housing conditions — including inadequate heat and heating breakdowns, mice and rat problems, mold, and leaks — especially for New Yorkers in rent-stabilized housing.” Worsening housing conditions are expected to emerge as landlords incur higher costs due to inflation. Mamdani’s rent freeze was voted into effect on Thursday after the Rent Guidelines Board approved rent freezes for both one and two-year apartment leases. The board approved the measure in a 7-1 vote affecting all rent-stabilized apartments. About one million apartments are affected out of New York’s 2.32 million renter-occupied apartments. “It may be hot outside, but the rent is freezing,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “This is a historic victory for New York City tenants. I’ll continue working to deliver a more affordable city by building and preserving affordable housing, lowering building operating costs like insurance and ensuring tenants know their rights.”  Before Mamdani’s 0% rent increase, landlords were able to raise rent by 3% for one-year lease renewals and 4.5% for two-year leases. Mamdani appointed a majority of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets the annual rent adjustments for rent-stabilized apartments. Mamdani had previously said he would only appoint members to the board if they agreed with his “freeze the rent” vision.  Starting October 1, landlords of rent-stabilized apartments will not be able to make that choice for themselves. The freeze is in place for two years, but in an earlier interview, Mamdani signaled he would be interested in extending the freeze. “We need to freeze rents for rent-stabilized tenants for four years,” he told New York magazine before he became mayor.