If the FBI has time to spare after harassing mothers at school board meetings, it may want to look into the groups participating in, and funding, the pro-Hamas disturbances at universities across the country. Clearing out Columbia University on Tuesday night doesn’t mean the job is done. Yes, some protests have been peaceful, engaging in constitutionally protected speech. But, unlike the concerned parents who simply decided to get more involved in local politics, the groups behind the protests—violent and peaceful ones—want to dismantle society. And things could turn even more violent this summer. Authorities—not just the Federal Bureau of Investigations, but law enforcement at all levels—have presumably been keeping tabs on who’s taking part, who broke the law, who are the nonstudents sneaking into university property to agitate, etc. If they haven’t, Congress ought to weigh in. The arrests in New York and Los Angeles, where police entered UCLA early last Wednesday, will furnish the identities of many. Other technology, such as police drones that flew over the encampments, and the geofencing that tells authorities who used a phone within a space, should also help. Most importantly, law enforcement must investigate who is funding these well-organized and well-orchestrated protests. This is particularly the case if it is a foreign power such as Iran or its terrorist proxy Hamas (which, again, would mean Iran). And if the funders are domestic, aiding and abetting violence across state lines is a federal crime. We already know that some of the street protests have been organized by the ANSWER Coalition, which claims credit for a march in Washington, D.C., that it says brought out 400,000, many bused in from other states. (ANSWER stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.) The ANSWER Coalition is a fiscally sponsored project of Progress Unity Fund, a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization with a long history of promoting society’s most radical causes.  The Progress Unity Fund is closely tied with the Workers World Party, described by Discover the Networks as a “Marxist-Leninist vanguard” party. Capital Research Center notes that “ANSWER’s director is Brian Becker, who is also [a] key figure within the Party for Socialism and Liberation, yet another communist group that split from the Workers World Party in 2004.” This leftist party says U.S. democracy is a “façade.” Progress Unity Fund has received money from the far-left, deep-pocketed Tides Foundation, according to Influence Watch. ANSWER, according to Research Gate, also gets money from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which is also very far left and very wealthy. ANSWER organized the march in Washington, D.C., with American Muslims for Palestine, which gives guidance and financial support to Students for Justice in Palestine. According to Columbia professor Shai Davidai and many others, the Muslim group has strong links with Hamas. Students for Justice in Palestine, which also has supported Hamas and posts poisonously antisemitic tweets regularly, has organized and led many of the campus protests. In our recent book “NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It,” Katharine Cornell Gorka and I describe Students for Justice in Palestine as having been so vile in its support for Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and gang rapes of Jewish women in Israel that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “ordered the Florida universities to disband SJP chapters.” Students for Justice in Palestine receives funding from American Muslims for Palestine but is itself a fiscally sponsored project of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation, another far-left funder. When you visit WESPAC’s website, you find a photo of earnest activists holding up a sign that reads “Another World is Possible.” This is a well-known slogan used by organizations that despise capitalism but think they must cloak their communism. Ryan Mauro of Capital Research Center, whose work tracking these networks is invaluable, emailed me to say that the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation “funds various revolutionary far-left/anti-Western groups.” But because it acts as Students for Justice in Palestine’s fiscal sponsor, there’s no transparency. “All donations transit through WESPAC and they aren’t required to publicly reveal anything about that relationship,” Mauro said. But we can get a sense, from other disclosures, of who funds both WESPAC and American Muslims for Palestine. Mauro tells me that those who have given to the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation include the Elias Foundation ($100,000); the Sparkplug Foundation (about $100,000); Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($80,000); George Soros’ Open Society ($40,000); and the Groundswell Foundation (about $32,000). The Zakat Foundation, meanwhile, has given $25,000 to AMP. How influential have these groups and their NextGen Marxist ideas on decolonization, the “oppressor vs. oppressed” paradigm, and anticapitalism been on protesters? We can get a sense from the three spokesmen who faced the media Tuesday at Columbia University before the NYPD dislodged them from Hamilton Hall. They have been much derided, but their background is instructive. The main spokesperson was Johannah King-Slutsky. According to Jordan Schachtel of The Dossier, King-Slutsky is a doctoral candidate at Columbia, where she studies “theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens.” She wrote in her now-deleted Columbia bio that her goal is to “write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism.” Another spokesperson was Cameron Jones, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, a virulently antisemitic far-left group. It receives funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Open Society Foundation, among others.  The third spokesperson was Maryam Alwan, a leader at Students for Justice in Palestine. There has to be enough here for the FBI, Congress, and other leaders to investigate who has been organizing and funding these protests—before they metastasize and further endanger society. Published originally by the Washington Examiner The post FBI Should Uncover Who Organized, Funded Radical Student Encampments appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona declined to answer questions about whether he would let boys fight his daughter in sports or undress in front of her in bathrooms at a Tuesday hearing. President Joe Biden’s administration released a finalized rule in April that extends Title IX protection to encompass “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” but it does not address transgender athletes. Cardona refused to answer the questions from Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, saying he would not comment on rules related to athletics that his department has not yet proposed. “Would you force your daughter to undress in the bathroom with boys, who are also undressing?” Owens asked. “I am not going to be commenting on athletics rules that we haven’t proposed,” Cardona answered. Owens pressed Cardona for a “yes or no” answer but the secretary declined to provide one, saying he would “be happy” to discuss Title IX. “If your daughter was reported, she felt uncomfortable in a boy’s presence in a bathroom or locker room, would that be considered by your administration to be discrimination or bigotry?” Owens followed up. Cardona again declined to provide a “yes or no” answer as Owens pressed him. “Girls have now entered in contact sports of boxing and wrestling. Would you allow your daughter to physically fight and get beat up by a boy who called himself a girl?” Owens asked. “Yes or no.” “Be happy to, once we finalize our regulations on Title IX athletics, to come back and have a conversation with you,” Cardona said. The Biden administration is currently working on a rule that would restrict schools from imposing a “one-size-fits-all policy” that allegedly discriminates against transgender athletes. Nearly 25 states have enacted legislation prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in female sports. “The new Title IX regulations increase protections to all students, and increase protections for women,” Cardona said. “This is why American parents are really concerned about this administration. You cannot answer a basic question that makes common sense,” Owens retorted. “I’ll say this. I know how to protect my girls.” The education secretary has a daughter and a son. Cardona also repeatedly refused to answer questions on whether there are physical differences between men and women at an April hearing. “Would you agree that women are physically different from men?” Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris asked him. “I see where you’re going with this,” Cardona responded before the congressman interrupted him. Harris then asked the question again, to which Cardona repeated his answer, adding, “I would love to talk about how we can work together to support the students,” before Harris cut him off once more. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Biden Education Secretary Refuses to Say If He Would Let Boys Fight His Daughter and Undress in Front of Her appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The New York Times has released a trove of raw government data on the unaccompanied alien children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. Among over 10,000 pages of information is data on the number of children who crossed the border into America without an adult and then were handed over to someone other than a family member.  From January 2015 through May 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released tens of thousands of minors who crossed the border illegally to sponsors who weren’t an immediate or distant relative, raising concerns about human trafficking and forced labor.   “More children are crossing the border on their own than ever before, and thousands are ending up doing dangerous, illegal jobs,” New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier wrote on X in a thread sharing the numbers with the public.   The Times sued the government to gain access to the records, which reveal more than 550,000 minors crossed the border illegally between 2015, halfway through Barack Obama’s second term as president, through May 2023, about two years and four months into Joe Biden’s presidency. From 2017 through 2020, Donald Trump was president. The data includes when each child arrived in the U.S., each child’s sex and country of origin, date released to a sponsor, relationship to that sponsor, and the ZIP code where the sponsor lives.   The data reveals that 37,088 unaccompanied alien children were released to an “unrelated sponsor,” 24,253 of which were released during Biden’s presidency between Jan. 20, 2021, and May 25, 2023.   “Americans have the right to know that criminal cartels are bringing unaccompanied minors into our country as a result of President Biden’s failed border policies,” Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., told The Daily Signal. “The president must answer to the American people as to why he has failed to secure the border and been unable to protect these children from harm.” The minors have been released to sponsors across all 50 states and a map created by the Times shows where the children, at least initially, were sent.   A data map created by The New York Times shows where unaccompanied alien children have been released within the U.S., per 100,000 residents. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for placing unaccompanied alien children with a sponsor in America.   According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, it released children, in order of preference, to a “parent; legal guardian; an adult relative (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent or first cousin); an adult individual or entity designated by the parent or legal guardian (through a signed declaration or other document that ORR determines is sufficient to establish the signatory’s parental/guardian relationship); a licensed program willing to accept legal custody; or an adult individual or entity seeking custody when it appears that there is no other likely alternative to long term ORR care and custody.”  In 2023, the Times reported that although the Department of Health and Human Services checks on all unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally “by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors,” data obtained by the newspaper “showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children.”   In response to the data published by the Times, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., told The Daily Signal: “President Biden’s border invasion is not only endangering every American, but it is leaving illegal alien children subject to trafficking and forced labor at the hands of the Mexican cartels.” “Instead of passing phony, nonbinding resolutions about President Biden’s refusal to use his existing authority to close the border,” Good said, “Republicans should have insisted on HR 2 being included on a must-pass legislative vehicle.”   The House passed HR 2, the Secure the Border Act, in May 2023. The bill would reinstate Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, end the “catch and release” policy, and resume construction of the border wall begun by Trump and stopped by Biden. The Senate has yet to take up the bill.   The New York Times reported on much of the released data and stories of unaccompanied alien children in several reports from February to December 2023. Those stories and the raw data may be found here.   The post Where Are Unaccompanied Alien Children Going After Crossing Border? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As police finally clear the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University appeases its protesting occupiers, the Democratic National Convention set for August in the Windy City ticks ever closer.  Unsatiated protesters may have been cleared from some of their camps at college campuses, but the more lucrative target of national Democrats’ gathering to renominate President Joe Biden has many worried that the protests may only be getting started. Although the two Chicago universities caved weakly to the strange demands of the anti-Israel protesters, Biden has not been well-received by the pro-Hamas youth. The agitators’ slapping Biden with the nickname “Genocide Joe” and their joining pro-Israel protesters at UCLA and University of Alabama in chants of “F— Joe Biden” led many to suspect that stormy weather is in store for a left-wing political convention that is little more than three months away. Biden’s unpopularity with radical groups on the political and cultural Left has been largely attributed to his attempt to “split the baby” by backing Israel in its war against Hamas while criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s methods, placing conditions on aid to America’s biggest Middle Eastern ally, and sympathizing with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protesters. Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, slaughtering 1,200, torturing or raping many first, and taking over 200 hostages. Ever since, the Israeli military has targeted the adjacent Gaza Strip—where Hamas is the elected government and uses civilians as shields—with the goal of “eradicating” the terrorist group. The Biden administration has warned Israel not to invade Rafah, the southern region of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, where the last four regiments of Hamas are believed to hold dozens of hostages, including five American citizens. Anti-Israel protesters have set up encampments on public and private university campuses around the nation, often trespassing and vandalizing on campus as well as  intimidating, obstructing, and entrapping Jewish students.  Although the published rationale for these protests varies from encampment to encampment, most center on the rage of left-wing students that their university is doing business with businesses that do business with (or appear to do business with) Israel. Protesters at the University of Chicago and Northwestern demanded full-ride scholarships for Palestinian students, HIV tests, medical supplies for treating combat wounds, dental dams, Plan B, and other contraceptives. Northwestern reportedly “paid off” some protesters by agreeing to give scholarships to five Palestinian students and special pay to Palestinian staff for two years. School administrators also agreed to reestablish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility that would allow students and staff to shame the university officially for accepting “Israeli or Israel-adjacent endowments,” and to allow protesters to continue their encampment until at least June 1. Now Northwestern is facing a lawsuit and two civil rights complaints over concessions to the leaders of the  anti-Israel encampments. The plaintiffs claim that Northwestern failed to “fulfill a modest core promise” to students that all “student peers and faculty will be governed by rules” by looking the other way when certain groups participated in antisemitic harassment. Although the encampment at the University of Chicago was cleared by police Tuesday morning, students and faculty members have proclaimed their willingness to be arrested while “protesting for Palestine.” Given the inflammatory support for these anti-Israel protests from far-left House Democrats such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Andre Carson of Indiana, and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, it’s unlikely that organizers of the Democratic National Convention would be able to discourage these anti-Israel protesters from setting up camp outside United Center for the duration of the convention Aug. 19 to 22. One need not look back too far to recall the upheaval at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Vietnam War protesters tangled with police was upheaved by protesters against the Vietnam War.  At the time, 56 years ago, Illinois Gov. Samuel Shapiro, a Democrat, honored a request from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, also a Democrat, to deploy the Illinois National Guard to help provide convention security. It is unlikely that today’s mayor, Democrat Brandon Johnson, would ask for the Guard to be deployed. In a press conference Friday, Johnson told reporters that “individuals who wish to demonstrate … work within parameters.” But the mayor declined to outline what “parameters” meant, or whether he would request police or Guard assistance. If such a protest turned out to be as violent as the “Summer of Love” in 2020, in which entire city blocks were burned by Black Lives Matter-inspired rioters, then this Democratic National Convention could turn very nasty very quickly. Last month, representatives of 75 organizations gathered in Chicago to plan disruptions at August’s convention.Joe Iosbaker, a leader of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, told a screaming crowd: “This is Chicago, [expletive] it, we’ve got to give them a 1968 kind of welcome!” The post Nightmares at Chicago Universities Set Stage for Nuclear Democrat Convention appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Social Security trustees released their annual report on Monday, and the outlook is bleak. Social Security has morphed far beyond its original intent, and absent congressional action, everyone who is of Generation X or younger will not receive a single full benefit, and even those already in retirement will experience significant benefit cuts. To prevent benefit cuts for even the most elderly who rely on Social Security for their entire income, Congress will have to act. Determining the best pathway for reform, however, requires understanding some crucial facts about Social Security. Fact #1: Social Security’s retirement fund will run dry in nine years. The Social Security trustees project that the Old Age and Survivors Insurance, or retirement program, will be insolvent in 2033. At that point, Social Security benefits will be limited to the amount of Social Security payroll taxes that come into the program. Technically, insolvency means that the notional trust fund (which currently consists of IOUs that the federal government issued to the Social Security trust fund when it borrowed payroll-tax revenues to fund non-Social Security spending) will have no more money—or IOUs—left to be reclaimed. Fact #2: 21% automatic benefit cuts will ensue. Because Social Security is a self-financed program, it cannot spend more than it takes in. Consequently, unless Congress reforms Social Security, benefits will be reduced by 21% across the board beginning in 2033. That will equal a loss of about $4,600 for the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 per year from Social Security. Beyond 2033, payroll taxes will cover a declining share of scheduled benefits, and benefit reductions will rise to 31% by 2098. Fact #3: Social Security has $22.6 trillion in unfunded obligations. Social Security’s combined Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance programs have accumulated $22.6 trillion in unfunded obligations, which is effectively the additional amount required to maintain Social Security’s current benefit levels over the next 75 years. That amounts to $172,000 for every household in America. Fact #4: Large tax hikes would be required to prevent benefit reductions. To prevent any benefit reductions, the Social Security trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%. That estimate may be too conservative, however. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately to 17.5% to maintain current benefits. Those estimated tax hikes would add between $2,500 and $3,800 in annual Social Security taxes for a median household with about $75,000 of income. When Social Security was established, it started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised the program would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks. In addition to the basic facts presented in the trustees’ report, understanding some common misconceptions about Social Security can help Americans assess the best options for reform. Misconception #1: Social Security is a retirement savings program. Today, not a single dollar of workers’ Social Security payroll taxes is saved. Decades ago, a significant portion of workers’ payroll taxes were designated to the Social Security trust fund and earned interest (because the money was lent to the federal government to finance deficits in other, non-Social Security government spending). Since 2011, however, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has collected in tax revenues, and every dollar of workers’ payroll taxes has gone straight out the door to current retirees. Thus, Social Security is not a retirement savings program, but an intergenerational income-transfer program.    Misconception #2: Social Security is a good deal. Social Security was a good deal for early generations of beneficiaries who received far more than they paid into the system. Social Security continues to seem like a good deal to many people because a $2,000 monthly benefit check is very noticeable, whereas workers never see the 6.2% Social Security tax that employers pay on their behalf and with automatic deductions and direct deposit of paychecks, many workers don’t notice the 6.2% taken from those paychecks. Moreover, most workers have no idea what they could have received if their payroll taxes had instead been put into a personal retirement account. My colleagues and I at The Heritage Foundation estimated that the average worker could receive three times as much from a personal retirement account, compared to what Social Security provides. Even minimum-wage workers could receive 40% more from a personal retirement account. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) Misconception #3: Making everyone pay their “fair share” of Social Security taxes would fix the program’s shortfalls. To increase Social Security revenues, some lawmakers have called for subjecting all earnings (and potentially unearned income) to Social Security’s 12.4% tax. Currently, Social Security’s tax applies up to $168,600 of earnings in 2024. The current cap is already 2.5 times as large, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as the original earnings cap. Social Security’s tax cap also functions as a benefit cap. Since benefits are a function of the income on which workers paid taxes, the tax cap prevents very wealthy individuals from receiving very large Social Security benefits. Eliminating the Social Security tax cap entirely would only solve about half of Social Security’s shortfalls. Since eliminating Social Security’s tax cap would bring the top federal income tax rate to 51.8% and the top combined state and federal income tax rate to 65.8% (in 2026 and beyond), this would leave little room to raise taxes to cover the federal government’s regular deficits or Medicare’s more than $50 trillion in shortfalls. As Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute noted, “even 100% tax rates on million-dollar earners would not come close to balancing the budget, and seizing all $4.5 trillion of billionaire wealth—every home, car, business, and investment—would merely fund the federal government one time for nine months.” Social Security’s outlook is dismal, and the politics of reform are even worse. But the good news is that Social Security truly is solvable. By slowly shifting to a system of universal benefits, modernizing outdated features, and adding an ownership option, policymakers can preserve Social Security, improve benefits for those who need them most, and increase all Americans’ lifetime incomes.   The post 4 Cold, Hard Facts From Social Security Trustees’ Report—and 3 Common Misconceptions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name.   Beginning in February the 114-year-old organization, launched to develop skills and character in boys and young men, will be known as Scouting America. The name change reflects the “organization’s ongoing commitment to welcome every youth and family in America to experience the benefits of scouting,” the group said Tuesday in announcing the name change. “Though our name will be new, our mission remains unchanged: we are committed to teaching young people to be prepared—for life,” Roger A. Krone, president and chief executive officer of the organization, said. “This will be a simple but very important evolution as we seek to ensure that everyone feels welcome in scouting.”   The name change comes about five years after Boy Scouts of America began accepting girls into the program.   Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, “currently serves more than 176,000 girls and young women across all programs, including over 6,000 who have earned the rank of Eagle Scout,” the organization said.   Traditionally, younger boys first became Cub Scouts before graduating to Boy Scouts, while girls became Brownies before graduating to Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts began allowing openly gay youth to participate in 2013, then openly gay leaders in 2015.   “Scouting America provides a welcoming, safe environment where youth can become the best version of themselves by learning from and respecting each other,” Krone said in Tuesday’s statement. “I encourage everyone to join us and experience the benefits of scouting.”    The rebranding of the Boy Scouts to Scouting America follows the organization’s challenges in participation during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.   “I hope that men who benefited from the Boy Scouts in their childhood will now recognize that the organization they loved has ceased to exist,” Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) “The Boy Scouts have a long and proud history, but the organization lost its way 20 years ago when it surrendered to sexual revolutionaries,” Richards said. “No doubt the leaders who made that compromise thought they were saving the organization. Instead, they set it on a pathway to destruction. That pathway led, inevitably, to this moment, where even the difference between female and male, girl and boy, must be dissolved.” In 2021, The Associated Press reported that membership in Boy Scouts of America programs fell from 1.9 million in 2019 to 1.1 million in 2020 and continued to fall in 2021. Today, according to the group’s website, the scouting organization has over 1 million members ranging in age from 5 to 21.   Scouting America is intentionally branding itself as an organization for all youth. By contrast, Girl Scouts of the USA maintains that although its organization is aimed at girls, it allows transgender youth to participate.   In 2018, a year after the Boy Scouts began admitting girls, the Girl Scouts filed a lawsuit claiming the Boy Scouts was damaging its recruiting efforts and had created branding confusion. The case ultimately ended in a settlement.   The rebranding for the Boy Scouts comes as more than 130 million Americans have participated in the organization’s programs since its founding in 1910.   This report was updated within 24 hours of publication to include the comments from Jay Richards. The post Boy Scouts Announce Name Change appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Wisconsin is one of the most fiercely contested battleground states in this election cycle, but it lacks federal transparency requirements for voter registration imposed on most states, according to a lawsuit by an election watchdog.  Minnesota, generally a solidly blue state although it saw a razor-thin margin in the results of the 2016 presidential race, also doesn’t make its voter rolls available to the public, the lawsuit contends.  Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity advocacy organization, announced the litigation last week, alleging that the exemption of six states from a provision in the National Voter Registration Act violates the principle of equal state sovereignty.  “No state should be exempt from transparency,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a written statement. “All states should be treated equally under the law and no exemption should allow certain election officials to hide documents relating to voter list maintenance activities.” In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “Motor Voter Law,” which allows Americans to register to vote when they get a driver’s license.  The federal law also requires states to update voter registration lists to ensure that dead people or those who have left a jurisdiction no longer are listed.  For accountability, the law says that states must “make available for public inspection and, where available photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” However, Congress carved out an exception to the transparency requirement for seven states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine, and Wyoming.  The reason was that the seven states offered same-day voter registration or, in the case of North Dakota, didn’t require voter registration.  After briefly stopping same-day voter registration, Maine lost its exemption from the disclosure provision of the federal law.  The new complaints, filed in two federal courts, contend that the exemptions from U.S. law violate the principle of equal state sovereignty by treating the remaining states differently. Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing Minnesota and Wisconsin first.  “This lawsuit is the first step to bringing the National Voter Registration Act’s transparency requirements to all 50 states,” Adams said.  The Wisconsin lawsuit names Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe as the defendant. The Minnesota litigation names Secretary of State Steve Simon as the defendant.  A Wisconsin Election Commission spokesperson declined comment for this report, but pointed to the applicable portion of state law, which says the commission and local governments can decide the cost of obtaining voter information. “The commission shall establish by rule the fee for obtaining a copy of the official registration list, or a portion of the list. … The amount of the fee shall be set, after consultation with county and municipal election officials,” a portion of the law says.  The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.  The litigation cites the Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the high court reaffirmed that all states enjoy equal sovereignty and determined that if Congress treats states differently, it must be “sufficiently related to the problem [the statute] targets” and must “make sense in light of current conditions.” Public Interest Legal Foundation’s complaints argue that Minnesota and Wisconsin grant and remove voting rights through voter registration and maintenance of that voter list. So, they argue, Congress’ goal of making the process transparent should apply to both states.  Thirteen of the 20 states that offer same-day voter registration are still subject to the federal transparency requirements, the litigation notes. The post These States Withhold Voter Registration From Public That Most States Are Federally Mandated to Disclose appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Florida filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s administration Tuesday after it released a rule barring health care providers from discriminating based on “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” The Department of Health and Human Services released the rule on April 26 as a part of the Affordable Care Act and bans health care and insurance providers receiving federal funding from denying care because of a patient’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody of Florida announced that her office had filed a lawsuit against the department for attempting “to force Florida to violate its own law” barring doctors from performing sex-change procedures on minors, according to a press release. “Florida passed a law to protect our children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries. Now, Biden and his federal bureaucrats are trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children,” Moody said in the press release. “These rules trample states’ power to protect their own citizens and we will not stand by as Biden tries, yet again, to use the force of the federal government to unlawfully stifle Florida’s effort to protect children.” .@JoeBiden is trying to force Florida to violate our own state law that protects children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries, but we are fighting in court to stop his unlawful power grab.https://t.co/jjnpvvvewg pic.twitter.com/f2O6Bg6Klv— AG Ashley Moody (@AGAshleyMoody) May 7, 2024 Nearly half of the states in the country have passed legislation banning sex-change medical procedures for minors. In May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a bill barring the “mutilation” of minors through sex-change surgeries and the prescription of puberty blockers for patients under 18. The lawsuit argues that doctors who “refuse to provide experimental, sterilizing, ‘gender-change’ interventions to persons suffering from psychological distress—including minor children,” will be at risk of losing their jobs due to the administration’s new rule. If allowed to take effect, Florida claims that the guidance would also “override” the state’s laws on the matter and “go far beyond the limits of Section 1557 and Title IX.” HHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘We Will Not Stand By’: Florida Sues Biden Admin to Block New Trans Health Care Rule appeared first on The Daily Signal.

China is intentionally advancing a climate agenda for its own gain, and America is allowing it to happen, according to a senior research fellow for international affairs at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. China has “taken advantage of the United States, because we’ve had this very driven climate agenda,” Heritage’s Erin Walsh says. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) The development of solar energy, for example, began in America, and then the Chinese developed it further, and now China controls the “entire supply chain, so you can’t be involved unless you’re purchasing some goods from China to make your solar panels,” Walsh explained, adding that the same is true for wind turbines, and for batteries and electric vehicles. Right now, with respect to EV batteries, “they’ve got the dominant control of the supply chain.”  The more the U.S. and other nations move toward use of wind and solar energy, and electric vehicles, the further China’s economy benefits and the more America’s economy and national security are put at risk, according to Walsh. Walsh joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss her work on Heritage’s new project, “Chinese Handcuffs: How China Exploits America’s Climate Agenda.”  Listen to the podcast below: The post How China’s Climate Agenda Threatens US appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The latest inflation numbers show 3.5% annual growth for consumer prices, still well above pre-pandemic levels. That means millions of families are struggling to get back to where they were in 2021. This should come as no surprise, since excessive deficit spending from Washington remains much too high. In 2023, the federal government spent $6.1 trillion (roughly $47,000 per household) and ran a staggering $1.7 trillion deficit. Yet the Biden administration seems determined to make this worse, consistently choosing policies that increase deficits in pursuit of its ideological agenda. The country can’t afford such reckless spending. The economy would run smoother with lower deficits. Too many elected officials, however, either don’t know this or don’t care. They view the federal government as an enormous piggy bank. The Biden administration has aggressively used the swamp’s enormous budgets to fund leftist causes through grants. Here are five examples of such grants that the administration has approved since December 2022. 1. $45 million for a “diversity and inclusion” scholarship in Burma. Not content with pushing the diversity, equity, and inclusion fad in America, the Biden administration is also subsidizing it globally. Burma (also known as Myanmar) has serious problems, including a badly flawed judicial system, rampant corruption, and high poverty due to a lack of property rights and heavy government interference in the economy. A $45 million DEI scholarship will do nothing to address those problems. 2. $3 million for “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil. Not content with creating a “climate corps” in America, the administration gave a grant to an organization based in the Netherlands to promote DEI-infused environmental activism in Brazil. As with Burma, this grant focuses on niche, far-left concerns rather than the genuine problems facing South America’s largest country. 3. $125 million to racialize public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has faced growing criticism in recent years for its politicized and unconstitutional response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its promotion of gender ideology, and more. CDC’s $124.9 million grant to the National Network of Public Health Institutes threatens to further damage the already-frayed relationship between public health groups and the American people. The network’s “racial justice competency model” is rooted in critical race theory, which claims that any outcome gaps between racial groups must be caused by systemic racism. A fixation on addressing “inequities” means forcing the ideology of critical race theory on the medical system, which is the last thing America needs. 4. $573,000 to anti-Israel group for fighting “disinformation.” The Biden administration has embraced the Left’s crusade against “disinformation,” which is often code for censoring contrary opinions. This approach also applies to foreign policy, as the State Department has provided grants to many organizations working abroad. A problematic example of this: two grants worth over $573,000 to the Virginia-based organization MENAACTION, which says it focuses on the rights of youth in the Middle East. Key members of this group have parroted disinformation themselves, repeating false claims made about Israel’s fight against Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs the Gaza Strip. So not only are anti-disinformation grants of dubious value to begin with, but these grants seem likely to spread rather than restrain disinformation. 5. $288,563 for “diverse” bird-watcher groups. Proving that nothing is safe from the reach of DEI-mania, the National Science Foundation approved a grant for having ornithological societies (bird aficionados) create “affinity groups” based on identity characteristics. Rather than being based on serious evidence of bigotry or discrimination—as though bird-watching groups are nests of racists—it’s instead predicated on some members who lack “a sense of community or feel their voices are not being heard.” Such vibes-based concerns might be worth addressing with internal meetings. However, the federal government has absolutely no business getting involved, especially when the gross national debt is $34.6 trillion. Wasteful grants are impossible to avoid when the federal government has grown to such a bloated mess. However, the Biden administration has made this worse by green-lighting absurd projects such as these. As Congress starts work on legislation to fund the federal government in 2025, legislators should examine the agencies and programs funding these grants when they look for places to find savings for taxpayers. The Biden administration certainly won’t. Distributed by Tribune News Service and originally published by msn.com The post 5 Examples of How Congress Wastes Your Money Amid Inflation appeared first on The Daily Signal.