The Left and the Right’s reactions to the events of this week provide a telling insight into why the Right has a hold on the culture, and the Left, decidedly, does not—from the tragic shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school to Taylor Swift’s engagement announcement. On today’s episode of “Problematic Women,” we begin with the tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota. We share what is currently known about the crime and how some Democrats have chosen to respond, including attempts to minimize “thoughts and prayers” and to politicize the tragedy. We also highlight the data showing how President Donald Trump’s recent crime crackdown in Washington, D.C., has led to real results—fewer carjackings and robberies, and even nearly two weeks without a homicide. Speaking of Trump, his marathon three-hour Cabinet meeting on Tuesday ran longer than “The Godfather.” We sat through the entire thing, so you don’t have to, and we break down the biggest takeaways, from Trump’s surprising stance on Chinese student visas to his pushback on Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s call for “nonviolent resistance” to potential National Guard presence in Chicago. And of course, the biggest pop culture story of the week (and possibly the year) is that pop singer Swift and NFL tight end Travis Kelce are engaged. Travis’ father, Ed, shared a statement on the two’s “shared values, strong work ethic, and future family goals,” raising the question: Will Taylor and Travis’ new domestic era inspire a marriage and/or baby boom in America? Gen Z activist Isabel Brown joins as our Problematic Woman of the Week, bringing thoughtful commentary on the issues that matter in politics and pop culture. This article was originally published Aug. 30. The post How the Left Is Losing the Culture, From Tragedy to Taylor Swift appeared first on The Daily Signal.

EL PASO, Texas—Since the start of 2025, border security measures have cost the Mexican cartels more than $1 billion, according to estimates by the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol in Texas. “We’re hurting them in the pocketbook,” interim Border Patrol Chief for the El Paso Sector Walter Slosar tells The Daily Signal.   In recent years, Slosar says he can recall days when as many as 2,700 illegal aliens were arriving at the border daily, but now, Border Patrol is encountering about 40 illegal aliens a day in the El Paso Sector, which includes the two westernmost counties in Texas—Hudspeth and El Paso—and all of New Mexico.    The criminal cartels control much of the Mexican side of the southern border and force illegal aliens to pay them to either be guided to the border or smuggled across. In 2021, a House Homeland Security Committee report found that the cartels made an estimated $13 billion on human smuggling alone. The cartels charge migrants varying amounts, based upon factors such as where they are from, if they have family in the U.S. with financial means, or if they have a criminal record.   Border Crackdown Has Cost Mexican Cartels Over $1 Billion | @Virginia_Allen5 Since the start of 2025, border security measures have cost the Mexican cartels more than $1 billion, according to estimates by the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol in Texas.“We're hurting them in… pic.twitter.com/9N437EEnbK— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) August 29, 2025 With the change in border policies under the Trump administration, “smuggling fees are going through the roof,” Slosar says. “They used to get two or three attempts per smuggling payments. Now they’re getting one. If they get returned, they’ve got to pay again, so it’s really slowing down that volume.”   In fiscal year 2021, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 1.5 million illegal aliens at the southern border, compared with fewer than 450,000 so far in fiscal year 2025, which ends Sept. 30.   Because Border Patrol only has so many agents, the volume of illegal aliens arriving at the border is “always our Achilles heel,” Slosar said.   In recent years, criminal organizations used mass migration numbers as a tool to occupy agents and keep them away from areas of the border where cartels might be smuggling people or drugs.   “But the policies that take illegal immigration, illegal border crossing … seriously as a crime [have] been what’s really supported us,” he said of the recent changes.   The illegal aliens who are still crossing the border into the El Paso Sector are largely single adults from Mexico, Guatemala, and Ecuador, Slosar says, and are “attempting to enter with a nefarious purpose.” The difference at the border now compared with what it was in recent years, Slosar explained, is that illegal aliens “are running from the Border Patrol” and agents are “chasing them down, whereas [during] the previous three, four years, they were looking for us. They knew they were going to be able to come in. They knew they were going to be able to stay. The criminal organizations made sure that they were able to come across, use the asylum laws as a way to stay here, [and] have a court date years in advance. But right now, catch-and-release—it’s over.”   The current border is the “most secure border we’ve ever had,” Slosar says. There are hundreds of ports of entry across the U.S. and opportunity to come to country the legal way, Slosar says, adding that criminal organizations and foreign terrorist organizations continue “to solicit and entice persons to attempt to enter the country illegally.”   The Trump administration has made border security one of its top priorities. On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump acted to stop the flow of illegal immigration through ending “catch and release,” designating some criminal cartels as terrorist organizations and declaring a national emergency at the southern border.   In July, Trump signed into law the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill, which allocates $165 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, including $46.5 billion to complete border wall construction, $3.2 billion for “new technology,” and $2.7 billion for “new cutting-edge border surveillance,” according to the DHS.  Slosar says his goal for his agents is “to be able to come in, do their job every day with the right equipment, with the right technology, and be able to put bad people in jail and protect the American public.”   This was originally published Aug. 29, 2025. The post Border Crackdown Has Cost Mexican Cartels Over $1 Billion  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

I won’t say his name. I won’t say his name because that’s what the 23-year-old monster who opened fire on innocent children at Annunciation Catholic Church during a Mass in Minneapolis on Wednesday wanted. I won’t say his name because his final gasp—his suicidal wish—was to take the life or do bodily harm to as many helpless, innocent children as possible before taking his own. Or have the police take it for him. I won’t say his name—either of his names—even as some members of the media grapple with the gender identity of this monster. I won’t say his old name, or his new one. Much will be written trying to comprehend why this hate-filled monster did what he did. But it won’t help. The nature of the evil that brought darkness and death into that Catholic church this week is unexplainable. Changing our gun laws won’t stop this kind of evil from darkening our public places and sacred spaces, and tightening up our mental health laws won’t either. But has anyone at the highest ranks of media and journalism pondered the notion that what these deranged monsters want is to leave this Earth in a blaze of glory, with the world focused on?them? With the media itself a collaborator? The words of the 26-year-old monster who murdered nine people before taking his own life at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College in 2015 revealed a disturbing trend in America: mass-shooter suicides. Suicides that would have never been national stories without a body count. Here’s what he posted about another deranged gunman—the man who took the lives of two journalists in Roanoke, Virginia—before his shooting spree: “A man who was known by no one is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.” The post was removed. The killer’s words, his motivation and intention, still haunt. And still kill. The 23-year-old man I won’t name expressed similar thoughts in his final post—his video manifesto—making several references to the young monsters in Columbine whom he not only admired but emulated. One of the heroes in that Oregon incident, Sheriff John Hanlin, refused to give the mass murderer what he wanted. “I won’t give him the credit he sought with this horrific act,” Hanlin told the press. “You’ll never hear me mention his name.” Hanlin was right. It’s the names of the?victims?we should know, not the evil gunmen. Eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel’s life was cut short by the monster I won’t name. “We will never be allowed to hold him, talk to him, play with him and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming,” his father Jesse told reporters. Ten-year-old Harper Myoski’s life was also cut short by the monster I won’t name. “Our hearts are broken not only as parents, but also for Harper’s sister, who adored her big sister and is grieving an unimaginable loss,” her parents told a local TV station. NoNotoriety.com is a website dedicated to?not?giving mass killers the attention they crave. The site, launched after the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting in 2012, expressed the wishes of many of the victims’ families. “In an effort to reduce future tragedies, we challenge the media, calling for responsible media coverage for the sake of public safety when reporting on individuals who commit or attempt acts of rampage mass violence thereby depriving violent like-minded individuals the media celebrity and media spotlight they so crave.” It’s not some obscure theory. In 1987, four teenagers in Bergenfield, New Jersey, entered a car in a garage after making a suicide pact, starting the engine and dying minutes later of carbon monoxide poisoning. The national media descended in full force. My dad was the superintendent of schools in that town at the time, and the media’s appetite for the gruesome details was insatiable. “The vultures,” a school board member called them. Townies agreed. A rash of similar suicides soon erupted nationwide, leading?The New York Times?to run a front-page headline that put media coverage on call: “Pattern of Death: Copycat Suicides Among Youths.” “Hearing about a suicide moves those teenagers at risk closer to doing it themselves,” David Shaffer, then-head of the Suicide Research Unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, told The New York Times. “The news coverage of teenage suicides can portray the victims as martyrs, and the more sentimentalized it is, the more legitimate—even heroic—it may seem to some teenagers.” The phenomenon led to a 1994 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention titled “Suicide Contagion and the Reporting of Suicide.” “Nonfictional newspaper and television coverage of suicide has been associated with a statistically significant excess of suicides.” Add three decades and the impact of social media and 24/7 cable news to the mix, and add a twist—mass shooting suicide—and you may wonder why no members of the media are talking about their role in these events. One of the best movies of 2014 was?”Nightcrawler.” Jake Gyllenhaal starred as a photographer whose specialty was getting photos at the scene of an accident or crime and selling them to local news stations. By movie’s end, Gyllenhaal’s creepy character was a?participant?in the news, causing a shootout that would never have happened but for his presence. An overwhelming majority of Americans deplore journalists for profiting from human grief. And many of us wonder if these mass-suicide shootings would happen as often if the media didn’t aid and abet the ambitions of these evil killers. Here’s hoping the media leaders follow the advice of NoNotoreity.com and Sheriff Hamlin. If you want these publicity-seeking monsters to stop doing what they’re doing, stop rewarding them. Stop giving them the notoriety they so desperately crave. And stop pointing fingers at the Second Amendment, and start looking at the First instead. The government shouldn’t prohibit you from publishing the names of these mass murdering monsters; your conscience should. Originally published by Newsweek. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Attention Media: Stop Publishing the Names of These Mass-Murdering Monsters appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Testicle tanning.If you remember anything from Tucker Carlson’s 2022 documentary “The End of Men” — apart from my captivating monologue about the evils of “soy globalism” and why weak men make hard times — it must be the scene where an anonymous right-wing bodybuilder stands atop a rock in the desert, his arms and legs spread in the famous “Vitruvian Man” pose, a red-light machine both illuminating and obscuring his modesty.If broscience is about anything, it’s experimenting for yourself and trusting what your body tells you.It was a striking image, for sure, and the producers of the documentary wanted it to stand as the weirdest and most wonderful of all the weird and wonderful things we “broscientists” are doing to reclaim our masculinity and enhance our health. They also wanted to trigger libs.And trigger libs they did.Big D energyThe usual suspects — Joy Behar, Stephen Colbert, VICE magazine, George Takei, Cenk Uygur of "The Young Turks" — all lined up to bash Tucker and everyone else in the documentary for believing that shining red light on your testicles can make them produce more testosterone. How absurd, they cried. What nonsense!But their hate only made us stronger. The infamous pose went mainstream: Even this year’s hit reboot of “The Naked Gun” got in a few pointed sight gags at its — and our — expense.Yes, it all probably does seem absurd and nonsensical. But the truth is that it’s anything but.First of all, we know light stimulates and governs important processes in the body. This is an established fact. Indubitable. The formation of vitamin D, for example, depends on the interaction of sunlight and cholesterol in the skin. People who don’t go out in the sun and don’t eat enough vitamin D in their diets get rickets, or, in less extreme cases, experience depressive symptoms and hormonal imbalances, including reduced testosterone.Blue statesExposure to light and darkness governs the body’s circadian rhythms — aka the body clock — which are responsible for regulating, among other things, the secretion of hormones and processes of growth and recovery. We evolved as diurnal beings, following the natural cycles of the day and night, for 200,000 years before electric lighting and screens came along.This is why constant exposure to blue light, which tricks the body into thinking it’s experiencing perpetual day, is so incredibly bad for you. Rat studies suggest chronic blue-light exposure could even cause early puberty, which is another reason for parents out there to limit their children’s phone, computer, and TV use.RELATED: All-natural tallow: Everything your skin needs — without the hormone disruptors North Idaho Tallow CompanyBoost belowA key study for the benefits of testicular exposure to light dates from 1939, when researchers found that exposure of the testes to UV light could increase urinary concentrations of a testosterone metabolite by “nearly 200%.” That’s no small boost.Sadly, the early promise of this study was not seized upon. The science of testicular light exposure was stillborn, strangled in the crib — choose your metaphor.Chick magnetIn the intervening decades, it was left to industrial farmers to pick up the torch. Industrial farmers are always looking for diabolical new ways to increase the growth of the animals they’re torturing. At some point, they decided to start experimenting with exposure to different frequencies of light, and they found some very interesting results. Chickens reared under constant blue light had higher testosterone levels, and birds reared under constant green light were significantly heavier with more muscle.Of course, these are chicken and not human studies. Nevertheless, they illustrate an important principle: Different kinds of light can have different physiological effects.In the redRed light is now being treated as a serious object of study for its potential health benefits, although there aren’t any studies, as yet, of its effects on testosterone production, at least that I know of.It’s being used to promote skin rejuvenation and anti-aging, for example. One study showed significantly improved skin complexion and texture, and reduced wrinkles, after 30-60 treatments. Red light appears to increase the body’s production of important skin proteins, including collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid. Red-light therapy also markedly reduces acne symptoms and accelerates wound-healing.Red light also stimulates the growth of hair follicles and increases hair thickness and growth. Red-light combs and hats have already been approved for use by the FDA.There’s even clinical evidence that red light shined on the brain improves cognitive function for dementia sufferers and people who have suffered mild traumatic brain injuries.Don't knock itSo consider this one a bit of a punt. I think there’s every reason to believe red-light therapy increases testosterone, especially when the light is directed at the testes.I’ve got a red-light machine. I point it at my testes. It makes me feel good. I’m inclined to trust that feeling. If broscience is about anything, it’s experimenting for yourself and trusting what your body tells you.There are a variety of red-light machines on the market, ranging from the reasonable to the very expensive. Top of the line are the JOOVV models, which cost up to thousands of dollars. (There are plenty of Chinese alternatives on Amazon at much lower prices, but I can’t vouch for their quality.)One thing you can do, if you want to experiment, is pick up a red 250-watt chicken brooder bulb for less than $20 and put it in a lamp. Et voilà: You have a red-light machine. It won’t necessarily be set to the precise wavelengths being used in red-light therapy (630-660 nm for red light and 810-850 nm for near-infrared light), but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of doing this.Just don’t get the lamp too close. Trust me: There's a fine line between tanning and toasting.

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A genetic study has finally solved the mystery of the worm inside mezcal bottles. While speculation ranged from butterflies to weevils, DNA analysis revealed that all sampled larvae came from a single moth species, Comadia redtenbacheri. This insect is a traditional delicacy in Mexico, believed to offer health and even aphrodisiac benefits. The Mystery of [...]