'There is a major flaw in his plan'

President Donald Trump is looking forward to proceeding with his agenda after the Supreme Court on Friday granted the administration’s request to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions by federal judges. “We can now promptly file, proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide,” Trump said at a press briefing Friday. Trump thanked Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas for their 6–3 ruling on federal injunctions. The Supreme Court struck down a lower court injunction blocking the Trump administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship, laying out clear rules for courts utilizing universal injunctions going forward. The case, Trump v. CASA, concerned universal injunctions that lower court judges had issued pausing Trump’s executive order interpreting the 14th Amendment as not guaranteeing what is known as “birthright citizenship.”  The justices ruled that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” “These judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” Trump said. “In practice, this meant that if any one of the nearly 700 federal judges disagreed with the policy of the newly elected president of the United States, he or she could block that policy from going into effect.” Trump is “grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem, and they’ve made it very simple,” he said. Some of the executive orders that faced federal injunctions that the Trump administration will now be able to move forward with include cutting some federal funding to sanctuary cities, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing wasteful spending, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries, and more. Trump especially thanked Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion. “I just have great respect for her. I always have. And her decision was brilliantly written today, from all accounts,” the president said. The post Supreme Court Rebuffs District Judges’ Injunction Hurdles to Trump’s Agenda appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In one of its final decisions this term, the Supreme Court has affirmed the right of religious parents to follow their faith in making decisions about their children’s public school education. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court sided with parents who asked that they be notified and given the chance to opt their children out of instruction that violates their faith on matters of sexuality. The case originated in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the school board requires certain pro-LGBTQ storybooks to be incorporated in the English language arts curriculum for all students, including those as young as five. The board had millions of books to choose from, but it picked these books specifically to influence students’ thinking about sexuality and to challenge parents’ traditional views. How do we know? The board told teachers so, and it even described ways for them to accomplish these goals. The pushback predictably included parents, but teachers and administrators also balked, questioning the efficacy and age-appropriateness of this scheme. Initially, the board said that parents would be notified when this controversial material would be used and allowed to opt their children out. Like most school districts, Montgomery County provides for parents to opt their kids out of all sorts of things, including the use of sex education curriculum. Then, without explanation, the board abruptly canceled this accommodation policy and took the opposite position—making participation in pro-LGBTQ instruction mandatory for even the youngest students and telling teachers not to notify parents at all. With the Justice Department’s support, a group of religious parents sued. Their particular faiths differed, but they agreed that exercising that faith included guiding their children in matters of sexuality. By not only blocking them from doing so, but also imposing its own sexual ideology, they said, the school board violated their First Amendment right to exercise religion. The parents said they would likely prevail on the merits and, therefore, asked for a preliminary injunction ordering that they be notified and allowed to opt out in the meantime. The district and appeals courts denied their request by utilizing a very narrow concept of what burdens religious exercise. Nothing short of the government compelling someone to abandon their religious beliefs, they said, can burden the exercise of religion—a standard that reduces the “exercise” of religion to little more than private religious beliefs or perhaps formal religious worship. The First Amendment prohibits an “establishment of religion” and protects the “free exercise” of religion. The Constitution’s framers thought of religious establishment narrowly and religious exercise broadly. Now, though, judges have turned the First Amendment on its head. They see religious establishments that do not exist and, as the lower courts did in this case, ignore the very real ways in which the government interferes with religious practice. In a 6-3 vote Friday, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and granted the parents a preliminary injunction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito explained that the right to exercise religion includes the parents’ right to direct the religious instruction of their children. Putting parents on the sidelines while schools impose their own sexual ideology on students obviously interferes with that right.  As Alito explained, “the Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children.” Many parents have no choice but to send their children to a public school, a decision that should not require them to surrender their constitutional right. The bottom line, Alito wrote, is that “government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, distorted the parents’ position the same way the lower courts did. She mischaracterized them as demanding notice and an opt-out “of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs.” The parents never took that position. Instead, they objected to instruction that poses a “very real threat of undermining” those beliefs and the parents’ right to direct their children’s religious instruction. The fact is, as Alito pointed out, these materials are “unmistakenly normative,” designed to promote certain values and beliefs and to discourage others regarding sexuality and gender. The threat to parents’ ability to guide their children’s instruction on such sensitive matters is obvious. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has never adopted the narrow, crabbed view of religious freedom that the lower courts and Sotomayor did in this case. The First Amendment, Alito wrote, is not as “feeble” as Sotomayor claims. It protects us against much more than compulsion to abandon our religious beliefs. The Constitution gives parents a general right to direct their children’s upbringing and education and, separately, a specific right to exercise religion. This case arose where those rights intersect, and the Supreme Court’s decision strengthens both of them. The post Supreme Court Ruling Means Parents Can Follow Their Faith in Raising Children appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Boston University professor is “spreading disinformation” about the results of funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Brian Mast.   “I am deeply concerned that Boston University is serving as a platform for the weaponization of academia, where federally funded professors are spreading disinformation about the ongoing reorganization of USAID and its consequences,” Mast, R-Fla., wrote in a letter to Melissa Gilliam, president of Boston University.   In the three-page letter, Mast claims Brooke Nichols, an associate professor at Boston University and an infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist, is spreading “dangerous hysteria” through standing up a webpage called the “Impact Counter.” The dashboard is intended to track the effects of federal government funding cuts to humanitarian organizations and initiatives.   Using modeling research, the Impact Metrics Dashboard estimates the number of lives that have been lost to sicknesses such as malaria, tuberculosis, and pneumonia as a result of “funding changes for aid and support organizations,” according to the platform.   The dashboard, which is referenced on Boston University’s website, claims 100 people die every hour due to the cuts in government funding for humanitarian work, and more than 119,000 adults and nearly 250,000 children have died as a result of the cuts.   “Unfortunately, hidden behind Dr. Nichols’ claim is an erroneous set of assumptions based on inaccurate information,” Mast wrote to Boston University’s president.   Mast contends that “Dr. Nichols wrongly calculates malnutrition-related deaths by dividing total federally appropriated funding by average per-child treatment cost, ignoring that not all funds directly reach treatment and that potential reach isn’t the same as actual impact.”  In modeling the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding freeze, Nichols bases her projections on a “an opaque and flawed layered modeling approach,” the Florida congressman argues. “The primary model uses outdated data and draws on five other models from separate studies, without clearly addressing their limitations or explaining how they interact.” The dashboard “has become no better than a Russian bot farm or [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda,” Mast says. “Boston University is creating a breeding ground for far-left activists to exploit academia for political gain, which undermines the legitimacy of these institutions.”   Neither Nichols nor Boston University responded to The Daily Signal’s phone and email requests for comment by the time of publication. Under the leadership of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration has begun restructuring the work of USAID. In February, “all USAID direct-hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs” were “placed on administrative leave globally,” according to the USAID website.   According to Mast, Rubio has “set forward a policy that hinges on maintaining the lifesaving work USAID was doing around the world.”   “The restructuring of USAID rids the stench of bloated D.C.-based [nongovernmental organizations], streamlines programmatic implementation, and focuses our foreign assistance with American national security priorities,” the lawmaker wrote.   The changes made to USAID funding “puts an end to USAID-funded drag shows, electric buses, and vanity climate projects in unstable regions,” he said, adding that USAID continues “the lifesaving work USAID was designed to do and enhances the State Department’s ability to strategically leverage foreign assistance.”   Mast closed his letter with a series of questions to Gilliam, including:   What institutional safeguards does Boston University have in place to prevent federally funded research from being used as a vehicle for political advocacy?  What standards does the university apply to differentiate between legitimate academic inquiry and politically motivated activism, especially when the subject matter involves sensitive global health outcomes?  “These far-left institutions are draining their credibility,” Mast told The Daily Signal.   “These are the same schools that allowed Hamas terrorist sympathizers to take over their campuses,” he said, referring to pro-Palestine protests and demonstration at schools such as Boston University, Harvard, and Columbia. “Now, they want to go after President Trump and Secretary Rubio for putting American interests back into our foreign policy. It’s time to set the record straight.”  The post EXCLUSIVE: House Panel’s Chairman Calls Out Boston University on Claims of ‘Weaponization of Academia’  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The death of longtime U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has triggered a high-stakes political scramble in Northern Virginia, as both parties prepare to nominate candidates Saturday ahead of a rare special election Sept. 9. Virginia Republicans and Democrats will hold “firehouse primaries”—primary elections run by the political parties instead of the state—to determine their candidates.  Virginia’s 11th district, centered around Fairfax, has been a reliable Democrat stronghold since the early 2000s. In the 2024 general election, Connolly beat his Republican opponent, Mike Van Meter, with twice as many votes. The district also leaned heavily Democrat in the presidential race, favoring former Vice President Kamala Harris over President Donald Trump by a similar margin. Chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee Aaron Yohai told The Daily Signal, “Democrats in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District should vote for the future they want for our country.” Despite the district’s blue lean, Republicans see the open seat as an opportunity to regain control in the U.S. House. Eleventh Congressional District Republican Committee Chair Rosie Oakley told The Daily Signal, “The margin in the House of Representatives is very narrow, favors Republicans, but by a very narrow margin, so it’s an opportunity for us to increase that margin by adding that seat.” Oakley said that Republicans are “super excited” for the special election because it will be the first time since 2009 that a Republican candidate has not been up against a Democrat incumbent. Democrat candidates include a Virginia state senator, a former Venezuelan congressman, and Connolly’s former chief of staff. Republican candidates include Van Meter, a taxpayer advocate, and several military veterans. The parties will announce their nominees after this weekend’s voting. Candidates will then have just over two months to campaign before the September special election, which could serve as a barometer of voter turnout and party strength ahead of the 2026 congressional midterm elections. The post Scramble Begins for Control of Former Dem Congressman’s Seat as Virginia Heads to Special Election appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made good Friday on his promise to fight wokeness in the U.S. military—including retroactively, when it comes to left-wing activism that dates back to Barack Obama’s presidency. In a recorded speech on Friday, Hegseth announced that the USNS Harvey Milk would henceforth be known as the USNS Oscar V. Peterson, after a World War II-era U.S. Navy Medal of Honor recipient.  “We are taking the politics out of ship-naming,” Hegseth said after the announcement. The 2016 naming of a Navy replenishment oiler after Milk, a Korean War-era Navy veteran who left the military on an “other than honorable” discharge, had long been a subject of political controversy, given Milk’s left-wing political activism and relationship with a teenage boy. Peterson, by contrast, is a Medal of Honor recipient who died from injuries sustained during the Battle of the Coral Sea against Japan in World War II in May of 1942. “We’re not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration,” the defense secretary explained.  “Instead, we’re renaming the ship after a United States Navy congressional Medal of Honor recipient. As it should be,” Hegseth said.  Peterson was a chief watertender on the USS Neosho, which sustained heavy damage during the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the battle, Peterson acted heroically to successfully keep the ship afloat. His Medal of Honor citation reads in part: “Lacking assistance because of injuries to the other members of his repair party and severely wounded himself, Peterson, with no concern for his own life, closed the bulkhead stop valves, and in so doing received additional burns, which resulted in his death.” “People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in,” Hegseth noted in his announcement.  Peterson left behind a widow, Lola Peterson, and two sons, Fred and Donald. For unexplained reasons, Lola Peterson received her husband’s medal and certificate in the mail, rather than through the customary ceremony. Nor was her husband initially given a grave marker as his body was buried at sea.  The U.S. Navy partially rectified those oversights in 2010 when Fred Peterson received his father’s medal at a memorial service. Peterson’s widow had died in 1991, and son Donald passed away about 18 months before the ceremony. A marker was also placed for Oscar Peterson in Richfield Cemetery in Idaho, where his widow had moved with her sons after his death.  Now, the Navy has gone further, by commemorating the military hero by naming a ship after him. “His spirit of self-sacrifice and loyalty, characteristic of a fine seaman, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country,” concludes the citation for Peterson’s Medal of Honor. The post Hegseth Announces Renaming of Navy Vessel Obama Admin Had Named After Gay Icon appeared first on The Daily Signal.

At its 2025 summit this week, NATO announced a new military spending target of 5 percent—something President Trump referred to as a “monumental change” for America and its allies, praise that has been echoed by other foreign dignitaries. At the summit, alliance members pledged to allocate 3.5 percent of gross domestic product annually to defense and to devote an additional 1.5 percent to military-relevant infrastructure and security. On its face, this is a historic pivot from the 2 percent defense targets set at the 2014 Wales Summit, especially considering that over the past eleven years, European allies and Canada spent an average of just 1.6 percent of gross domestic product on defense. The announcement is encouraging, and the new spending target is exactly what my colleague Jordan Embree and I argued for in our recent Heritage Foundation Backgrounder.    However, a hard truth remains: NATO allies have run a defense deficit for over a decade. Even with these new and impressive benchmarks, it will take years for many countries to erase the accumulated shortfall. >>> Read the Pollard/Embree Report—NATO’s Underspending Problem: America’s Allies Must Embrace Fair Burden Sharing As our report indicates, European NATO members and Canada have collectively underfunded their militaries by more than $828 billion since the 2014 Wales Summit, when the 2 percent gross domestic product target was reaffirmed following Russia’s invasion of Crimea. That sum is not abstract; it represents real gaps in procurement, readiness, and warfighting capacity. Germany alone accounts for nearly $250 billion of that shortfall. Italy and Spain account for $150 billion each, while Canada underspent by $80 billion. So, how long would it take each country to erase its accumulated deficit under different gross domestic product spending scenarios? Even assuming an immediate shift to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product for defense, Germany would require four years to simply make up the deficit. Italy and Spain would need five to six more years, while Canada would also require at least three. This illustrates the core challenge of NATO’s new pledge: targets alone prove insufficient without long-term accountability. Under the new agreement, allies have until 2035 to meet the 5 percent threshold. But defense procurement cycles and force modernization timelines operate on far shorter horizons, and as the last decade shows, deterrence depends on material investment today—not investment a decade from now. >>> Read the Pollard/Embree Report—NATO’s Underspending Problem: America’s Allies Must Embrace Fair Burden Sharing Fortunately, with the specter of a revanchist Russia on their doorstep, policymakers are making real progress. Over twenty NATO members now meet or exceed the 2 percent threshold, up from just three in 2014. Poland leads Europe at over 4 percent of gross domestic product, and Baltic states have maintained high levels of spending relative to their size. Noteworthy in the new agreement is the 1.5 percent infrastructure target. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that energy, transportation, and industrial infrastructure are not auxiliary concerns—they are primary targets. But many of Europe’s civilians remain underprepared for high-intensity conflict. Hardened roads, redundant rail lines, and protected ports are essential for rapid reinforcement. >>> Read the Pollard/Embree Report—NATO’s Underspending Problem: America’s Allies Must Embrace Fair Burden Sharing Nor can the cyber domain be overlooked. In another report called, “A Case Study of Russian Cyber-Attacks on the Ukrainian Power Grid: Implications and Best Practices for the United States,” I detailed how hackers infiltrated the industrial control systems of power plants in 2014. Since then, NATO’s adversaries have only gown bolder and more sophisticated. Today, cyber threats, now supercharged by AI, have become as consequential as kinetic ones. Only through collaborative defense in this area will NATO be able sustain both military and civilian resilience against both hostile nation states and symmetric actors. Until now, these investments have been lopsided. Since 2014, the U.S. has averaged defense spending near the new 3.5 percent threshold, but most European allies have hovered just around 1.6 percent. The American taxpayer cannot be expected to continue acting as NATO’s insurer if others treat U.S. spending like a subsidy allowing them to continue financing bloated welfare states. >>> Read the Pollard/Embree Report—NATO’s Underspending Problem: America’s Allies Must Embrace Fair Burden Sharing The new 3.5 percent and 1.5 percent standards must become America’s baseline metric for fair burden-sharing. NATO’s Article 3 obliges each member to “maintain and develop” its own capacity to resist armed attack, not to outsource it. Ultimately, The Hague summit’s outcome reflects growing recognition that rebuilding deterrence and repairing credibility requires more than lofty declarations—it requires concrete, sustained material investment, and the political will to match. Preparation—not promises—is the true foundation of deterrence. If NATO leaders follow through, not only in rhetoric but also in budget, the alliance will be stronger for it. But if what’s past is prologue, only vigilance will ensure that actual numbers match the narrative. The post $828 Billion Short, NATO’s Path Back Starts With 5 Percent—and a Long Memory appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Is Nut Zero on the Way Out?

President Donald Trump held a press conference Friday to celebrate the latest victory handed down by the Supreme Court that could stop the weaponization of federal courts.After SCOTUS upheld a ban on state Medicaid funding going to Planned Parenthood and also ruled that parents are entitled to a preliminary injunction to have children excused from LGBT in-school lessons, it seemed hard to imagine that more impactful legal victories would come down the pike.'The Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.'In a 6-3 ruling, however, the Supreme Court was split down ideological lines when it ruled that the president's executive orders could no longer be delayed for months or possibly years on end upon the whim of one individual.The decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. seemingly put to bed the ability of a single federal judge to grant a nationwide injunction on an executive order, the Democrats' most powerful tool of law in recent years."The injunctions before us today reflect a more recent development: district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority.Justice Barrett added that "these injunctions — known as 'universal injunctions' — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts."President Trump held a press conference at the White House in celebration, where he called the decision a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law."RELATED: Supreme Court upholds ban on Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood — (@) Trump remarked that SCOTUS has effectively struck down the "excessive use of nationwide injunctions" that he said interfere with the normal functions of the executive branch.Indeed, the injunctions had become an often-used tactic by judges appointed by Joe Biden and other Democrat presidents, even in recent weeks.Just two weeks prior to the SCOTUS decision, a judge blocked the deportation of a Palestinian activist, while just last week another Biden appointee prevented requirements that passports accurately reflect the holders' sex."It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly," Trump continued. "And instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation."The president explained to reporters that in practice, all it took was an injunction from any one of the nearly 700 federal judges to stop the policy of the executive branch.Attorney General Pam Bondi further illustrated how often the liberal judges were exercising this power.RELATED: MASSIVE VICTORY: SCOTUS sides with parents; Alito nukes LGBT indoctrination campaign — (@) Bondi revealed that out of 94 federal judicial districts, just five of the districts accounted for 88% of the nationwide injunctions."Think about that," Bondi told the press room. "Ninety-four districts, and 35 out of the 40 opinions with nationwide injunctions came from five liberal districts in this country. No longer. No longer."The president stressed the ability to work very quickly with his administration and thanked the conservative judges for seemingly allowing him the ability to do so. He then wasted no time in announcing which cases his legal team would be pursuing, and he immediately pointed to "ending birthright citizenship." — (@) Birthright citizenship was "meant for the babies of slaves" Trump stated from the podium, not for "people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.""It was meant for the babies of slaves, and it's so clean and so obvious. ... Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason."While SCOTUS did not determine whether Trump's executive order to rescind birthright citizenship was constitutional, the severe limitations on injunctions likely mean the order could go into effect in the interim, until a final ruling by the high court. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Supreme Court has ruled that South Carolina has the power to block Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics — and liberals have once again taken an opportunity to fire off pro-abortion messages as if their lives depend on it.“I’m happy to have a conversation, a back-and-forth, a civil discussion about the merit of the pro-life argument, but when the other side is literally screaming, screaming, literally screaming, and having an epic meltdown over less babies being killed in the womb,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments, “we’re past reason.”The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centered on whether low-income Medicaid patients can sue under Section 1983 in order to choose their own qualified health care provider.South Carolina had blocked Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which the organization argued violated a federal law. However, in a 6-3 decision, the Court did not side with Planned Parenthood — and now all states can block Medicaid from funding Planned Parenthood clinics.While federal law already prevented Medicaid from funding abortions, Planned Parenthood had a loophole.“Planned Parenthood will tell you they just offer health care, they’re just here for women’s reproductive health, it’s all health care,” Gonzales says.“And so, the way that this defunds Planned Parenthood, this law, is that Planned Parenthood receives 33% to 43% of its total revenue, that’s $2.03 billion dollars, from the government each year,” she explains, “Medicaid reimbursements account for about 75% of that funding. So if you do the math, that’s like $600 [or] $700 mil.”“But about 50% of Planned Parenthood’s patient visits are covered by Medicaid. That’s 5 million annual visits,” she continues, noting that the left is now acting as if their access to health care has been cut.“There are federally qualified health centers that are nationwide. There’s, I think, like, 1,300 centers that serve 13 million-plus patients. You’ve got county and city public health clinics that accept Medicaid, and I mean, they do all this while not killing babies,” she says, adding, “It’s almost like the left’s argument on killing babies is entirely disingenuous and evil.”Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.