Some 9,000 flights set for this weekend have already been canceled in anticipation of Winter Storm Ferm. The storm, which meteorologists say could cause as much damage as a hurricane, will likely knock out power and impede travel both in the sky and on the roads for millions. Currently, there are about 140 million Americans under a winter storm warning, ranging from New Mexico to New England. The Weather Channel, though, says that ultimately 230 million people could be affected by Winter Storm Fern. More than a dozen states have already issued states of emergency, it noted. “Take this storm seriously, folks,” the National Weather Service posted to X on Saturday. “Moderate to major impacts are expected from the Central US through to the Northeast today through the weekend.” The NWS said to expect “hazardous to impossible driving conditions” and urged folks in affected areas to “avoid travel if at all possible.” “Widespread closures and disruption to infrastructure may also occur,” it added. “Stay weather aware.” Take this storm seriously, folks. Moderate to major impacts are expected from the Central US through to the Northeast today through the weekend. – Hazardous to impossible driving conditions are expected. Avoid travel if at all possible. – Widespread closures and disruption to… pic.twitter.com/bR76NpsrEy — National Weather Service (@NWS) January 23, 2026 The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore told The Daily Wire on Friday that much of the country will experience three different types of precipitation from the storm: snow, sleet, and freezing rain. “In Dallas, they’re gonna have multiple precipitation types,” he said. “They’re going to start to snow, maybe go to freezing rain, and then end with the snow again. Nashville starts to snow, sleet, freezing rain, then ends as snow or freezing drizzle. Washington, D.C., starts to snow, heavy snow, goes to sleet, then freezing rain, maybe even a little rain just east of D.C., and then back to cold behind this cold front.” Ice, though, could be the most dangerous form of precipitation. “You can have power loss with a 1/4 inch of ice,” Cantore explained. “You can get more extensive power loss with a 0.5-inch [of ice]. Severe widespread power loss with 3/4 of an inch, and once you get over one inch of ice, now you’re talking about bringing the lines down and trees down.” Related: America’s Favorite Meteorologist Breaks Down This Weekend’s Wild Weather Forecast

Conservatives are used to being called names: racist, sexist, transphobic, and the list goes on. Typically, these charges are rooted in policy differences: If you oppose DEI and racial quotas, the Left will call you racist. If you oppose men competing in women’s sports, you’re a transphobe. These labels are weapons used to advance political narratives, and typically deserve the same attention as an unhinged, all-caps comment in your X feed. They should be ignored. Yet when it comes to sexism, conservatives should consider how their messaging makes the sexist charge stick with women who otherwise might join our movement. Conservative leaders aren’t misogynists, but particularly when speaking to and about women, they are sometimes tone deaf. Take the issue of marriage and family life. For good reason, conservatives frequently trumpet evidence showing the benefits of marriage and family formation. Children raised by married parents enjoy a long list of benefits. Married women and men are less likely to live in poverty, have better health outcomes, and report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than their single counterparts. This is important information for the public to have. Yet efforts to raise awareness about the benefits of marriage and family formation frequently come across as denigrating childless or unmarried women. Conservatives may think they are countering nihilistic TikTok influencers and gender studies professors who seem driven to convince impressionable young women that marriage and children are the enemies of good mental health, while an OnlyFans career offers true fulfillment. Yet the persuadable women most likely to hear conservatives’ counter messages are women who already recognize the benefits of marriage and children, but who find themselves outside those institutions nonetheless. Today, nearly 20% of women over age 45 are childless. According to a Pew survey of childless adults, nearly 40% admit that they once wanted children. That’s almost certainly an understatement since many childless adults likely don’t want to admit, even to themselves, that they regret missing this irreplaceable part of the human experience. Additionally, about one-quarter of children are being raised by a single parent. Those single parents don’t need to be told how much easier it would be to have another adult helping to give their kids all the love and support they need. They live it every day. Touting the benefits of a happy family life can seem not so much instructive as rubbing it in. Done wrong, this messaging risks not only alienating childless and unmarried women, but all of those who love them. When women hear that messaging, they don’t solely think about how it impacts them, but also the people they love and worry about the most: their dear best friend who hasn’t found a husband; their beloved, recently divorced sister juggling kids’ schedules and costs. Married women with children will reject those who they see as dunking on their loved ones. Conservative leaders should also keep this in mind when addressing work-life issues. Of course, parents should know how vulnerable children are in those first months and years of life, and why investing time in them is so beneficial. Yet, when done wrong, those messages can sound like attacks on working women — many of whom would love to downshift their careers but feel like they can’t afford to do so. It is certainly true that facts don’t care about your feelings. Political leaders must make policy decisions grounded in clear-eyed reality. Yet it is also true that feelings are often unmoved by facts. That is why, when communicating about sensitive and deeply personal issues, policy leaders must be careful in how they communicate those realities, because poorly chosen words can do far more damage than good. Republicans do not want to be seen as a party that only values married mothers or only women as mothers. The party also welcomes single women, widows, lesbians, and divorcees — any woman — so long as she shares the core conservative beliefs that personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets are the foundation of a flourishing country. Republicans should be succeeding in winning women over. Democrats have spent recent years denigrating the very concept of womanhood — as if being a woman is a costume that you can put on and take off. Conservatives took the lead in defending women as a distinct group worthy of equal opportunity and protection under the law. Women saw this and recognized conservatives as the champions of common sense and core women’s rights. Conservative policies are fundamentally pro-woman: Women thrive in a safe, secure society with a robust economy offering plentiful opportunities for people to pursue their own visions of happiness. This policy vision needs to be communicated carefully, in a manner that shows that women — all women, not just married mothers — are valued and can find a home in our movement. * * * Carrie Lukas is the president of the non-profit Independent Women’s Forum. Follow her on X at @carrielukas. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Longtime Daily Wire readers are no doubt familiar with Xi Van Fleet — an activist, scholar, and survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Xi has done more than most to shed light on the horrors of Chinese communism and to sound the alarm about the rising threat of socialism in the United States. We were proud to publish her scathing portrait of Zohran Mamdani and her five-part series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.” Today, we’re honored to bring you an exclusive excerpt from her forthcoming book “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.” Co-authored with Chinese dissident Yu Jie, the book explores how American academics, writers, and politicians helped Communist China become a global superpower. In the excerpt below, Xi and Yu examine three little-known American journalists who helped sell Mao’s lies to the world — and warn that Xi Jinping is working to do the same with American journalists today. — Tim Rice *** Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, and Anna Louise Strong — three Americans from the Midwest — were collectively known in China as the “Three S’s,” the leading Western journalists who made an immeasurable contribution to the Chinese communist cause, with Snow regarded as the most influential of the trio. In 1984, the Smedley-Strong-Snow Society of China was established under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to honor their contributions. The society organizes commemorative events, preserves archives, and promotes research on their roles in advancing the Chinese Communist movement. And all three of the S’s were individually featured on postage stamps issued in China. Because Smedley and Strong were openly Communist and connected to the Communist International, their work was often dismissed in the West due to its overt ideological slant. Snow, by contrast, was seen as an independent voice. This perceived neutrality gave his work greater credibility in the West, making it arguably more deceptive and dangerous. Today, the CCP is actively seeking new “Snows” for Xi Jinping’s “new era,” those who can fulfill a similar role as Edgar Snow in promoting China’s narrative on the global stage. In 2021, the CCP media outlet China Daily launched the Edgar Snow Newsroom, aimed at recruiting foreign reporters to engage in propaganda work for the CCP. Evidently, there is no shortage of candidates for the CCP to choose from. The widespread popularity of the work of the Three S’s can be attributed to the historical context of the 1930s. During this time, the United States was still recovering from the Great Depression, which had deeply shaken confidence in capitalism. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal introduced socialist policies, reflecting a broader leftward shift in American society. Interestingly, Edgar Snow noted in Red Star Over China that Mao Zedong held a favorable view of President Roosevelt, even expressing interest in learning about FDR’s New Deal. Mao was likely inspired by FDR’s large-scale government initiatives aimed at rapid economic transformation. In this historic environment, writings that glorified and promoted Chinese Communism unsurprisingly found a receptive audience among American readers, who were increasingly exploring alternative economic and political ideologies. Later, Edgar Snow’s 1936 visit to China and extensive interviews conducted with Mao Zedong  marked the beginning of the CCP’s campaign to cultivate allies among American influencers, particularly journalists and writers. From there, the party steadily expanded its network of “old friends” to encompass government officials, military leaders, politicians, policymakers, and, eventually, the upper ranks of major corporations and business elites. One might argue that these influencers were merely deceived by the Chinese Communists. But the truth is far less forgiving: they were deceived because they wanted to be. They saw not what was real but what they longed to see. They heard not the truth but what confirmed their ideals and fed their convictions. Though they came from diverse backgrounds, they shared one defining trait: a left-leaning political orientation, ranging from liberal sympathizers like Edgar Snow to committed communists like Agnes Smedley and Anna Louise Strong. History has shown, time and again, that the ideological leap from liberalism to communism is often alarmingly short. These bleeding-heart liberals helped legitimize and elevate a regime that would go on to unleash unimaginable human suffering. Safely removed from the consequences, they never lived under the tyranny they helped glorify. Many never paused to reflect on the reality that every word they wrote in praise of the Communist Party came at the cost of real human lives — millions of them. Words can kill, and the pen can be as deadly as any bullet. This tragic chapter of history must not be forgotten. *** Xi Van Fleet and Yu Jie are authors of the forthcoming book “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.” The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

In 2026, Britain will hit three grim milestones. First, it will see the number of deaths exceed the number of births for the first time in modern history. Second, a third of the babies conceived will be aborted. Third, the number of migrants in its population (10.9 million) will roughly equate to the total number of children aborted (10.7 million) since the procedure became legalized in 1968. In other words, by ending unborn lives on an industrial scale, the native British population has created a demographic vacuum it now plugs with immigration, and in doing so, has brought itself to the brink of quiet obliteration. For Brits, the question of abortion is no longer only an ethical one. A nation that does not reproduce itself must import its future. That is not a moral judgment on immigrants, but a mathematical reality. A critical shortage of young people means a critical shortage of recruits for the armed forces, workers in critical industries, and taxpayers to fund defense, healthcare, pensions, and other social services. If it cannot “grow our own” workforce, it must import one from elsewhere. Of course, relying on mass immigration to plug a demographic hole of our own making is not a neutral solution. It carries serious national security implications. As has been clear in recent years, weak, strained border controls, over-used and under pressure, give way to criminal gangs, swept in undetected alongside the key workers we need. Yet while Right-wing politicians fall over themselves to condemn mass migration, hardly anyone in Westminster will risk breathing a word about the abortion crisis that has brought our nation to the point of requiring large-scale human importation. Meanwhile, Members of Parliament recently voted to exacerbate abortion culture by decriminalizing the procedure up to birth. Britain is a prime example of why the abortion debate, though emotive and divisive, is worth having. Though some Americans may roll their eyes at the March for Life or the pro-life rhetoric being championed by Republicans, they’d do well to look overseas at a nation which has let abortion destroy them. The consequences of abortion, of course, are not only macro-economic. The loss of life alone is devastating, in the case of every child. Broadly, our collective failure to focus on family has left Brits lonelier and more depressed than ever. And as for those women who have undergone an abortion, physical complications, mental health struggles, and silent grief ripple through our healthcare system and society. “Pro-choice” psychology professor David Fergusson published evidence that women who have abortions are significantly more likely to suffer from anxiety, suicidal ideation, and drug and alcohol abuse. Pretending this is a “cost-free” procedure helps no-one. What makes Britain’s situation especially tragic is that it was avoidable. Marriage – one of the greatest proximate predictors for adults to have children – is punished by the UK tax system, discouraging family formation and making it harder to depend on one salary. In the workplace, motherhood is treated as a liability. Poor maternity leave provision and the constant push of government-sponsored “free childcare” pushes women who do have kids back into taxable desk jobs, rather than encouraging them to invest in time at home with their children. All the while, the culture champions the idea that babies are inconvenient competitors to the luxuries of modern life. Abortion is the far cheaper, easier policy option in many ways. But in the long-term, it leads to a nation collapsing from within. This is why abortion is no longer just a moral issue, but one of national survival. A society cannot abort a third of its future generation and expect to remain intact. Britain is not simply declining, but aborting itself out of existence. America should take note, and continue to fight for a culture supportive of bringing babies into the world. Once a culture decides children are optional, the future becomes optional too. * * * Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Hollywood rarely gets veterans right, portraying returning soldiers as caricatures or perfect heroes. “Sheepdog,” which opened nationwide on January 16, doesn’t have that problem. The film is intent on showing the reality of the veteran experience from all sides — something the film’s writer, director, producer, and star, Steven Grayhm, says came at a cost. “It was hard. It was really hard,” Grayhm told The Daily Wire in an interview reflecting on the film’s 14-year journey to the screen. “We could have cut corners early on that would have made our lives easier. And we would never have been able to live with ourselves. We never bent the knee, and we never kissed the ring.” “Sheepdog” is about Army combat veteran Calvin Cole, who is court-ordered into treatment and into the care of a VA trauma therapist in training.  “Things become even more complicated when Calvin’s father-in-law, a retired Vietnam Veteran, shows up on his doorstep having just been released from prison,” a description of the film reads. “As Calvin’s plan to run from his past becomes even more challenging, he learns through the support of his community, tough love and compassion, that he must put himself back together again for his family and for himself.” The film is personal for Grayhm, whose grandfather was a Polish farmer captured by the Nazis during World War II and held as a prisoner of war for five years. After being widowed, he moved in with Grayhm’s family. “I had bunk beds in my room,” Grayhm recalled. “So I slept on the top, but I would fall asleep to his stories at night. Some of them were hard … but he did share his being liberated by the American and Allied troops. As a young boy, that’s ingrained in you. That goes into the DNA of who you are.” His grandfather’s influence laid the foundation until a chance encounter planted the seed that would lead to “Sheepdog’s” creation. In 2011, Grayhm’s car broke down three hours north of Los Angeles. He said his conversation with a tow truck driver is a major source of inspiration for the film.  “He opened up about his life, the challenges in his marriage, being a father of three, financial hardship,” Grayhm said. “Then he began to share all the different medications that he was on … tethered to his post-traumatic stress from multiple military deployments.” Grayhm recalls listening without speaking. “He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I’ve never told my wife. I’ve never told a therapist,’” Grayhm said. “And that lit the spark. The teachable moment was to sit and listen without prejudice.” The idea that it was easier for a veteran to speak to a stranger than to his own family stuck with the filmmaker. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him weeks after,” he said. “I thought there had to be more men and women like him suffering in silence.” That summer, Grayhm and co-star Matt Dallas, who plays Calvin’s best friend in the film, embarked on a nationwide road trip to interview veterans and families. Along the journey, they found many similarities in the stories. The result is not a traditional war movie, Grayhm said. “‘Sheepdog’ is not a post-traumatic stress movie,” he said. “It is a movie about post-traumatic growth.” He went on to say that too many films in this genre portray veterans as broken beyond repair. “My character has been to hell and back, but he’s not broken,” Grayhm said of Calvin. “He doesn’t feel sorry for himself.” He said Hollywood wasn’t biting, at least not without totally changing the vision. “I cannot tell you how many rooms we were laughed out of,” Grayhm told The Daily Wire. “They said, ‘These movies don’t make money. Nobody cares about these stories.’” When someone did show interest, it always had stipulations. “We started getting script notes to sanitize the story,” he said. “They wanted to turn my character into some paranoid guy having visions … almost a thriller. That’s not the truth.” Instead, Grayhm made the project independent, raising private equity out of Texas and filming on a tight budget. After making the rounds on the festival circuit, the film just opened in 500 theaters nationwide. The authenticity extends to the cast. Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen (“Sideways”), who plays trauma therapist Dr. Elecia Knox, is a Gold Star family member. “She knew the stakes were very high,” Grayhm said. “She bared her heart and soul.” “She has this speech where she says, ‘You were willing to give your life for your country. Now maybe you should try living for it,’” Grayhm recalled. “You could hear a pin drop. She did it in one take.” Grayhm says he has just one goal for “Sheepdog.”  “If we can save a single life with this film, it will be the greatest Hollywood success story,” he said. “There are currently five million veterans not accessing their VA care,” Grayhm added. “Sometimes walking through that front door can be the longest we’ve traveled.” For civilians, the film serves two purposes. First, it’s a glimpse into what a veteran is going through. And second, it’s a chance to appreciate the freedom they’ve been given. “The one percent is defending and protecting the other ninety-nine percent,” Grayhm said. “Just being aware of that matters.” “Sheepdog” is currently showing in theaters.