Six days after Islamic terrorists murdered thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001 — as many victims remained unaccounted for, and as rescue workers continued cutting through the rubble — George W. Bush spoke at the Islamic Center of Washington. The president stated that the terrorist attacks, although they were committed by Islamists in the name of Islam, had actually contradicted the fundamental tenets of the faith, because, as he put it, “Islam is peace.” Bush also affirmed that Muslims in the United States “love America just as much as I do.” Ask any historian, and they’ll tell you that Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech — delivered five months later, at the State of the Union — was the defining neoconservative speech of the era, the one that launched the global war on terrorism and established its objectives. But that’s not true. It’s actually not even close to true. The real goal of the neoconservative movement, from 2001 onward, was spelled out at the Islamic Center of Washington by George W. Bush, as Ground Zero was still smoldering.  That speech made it official: Neoconservatives were not going to defeat anti-American evil abroad. Instead, in response to 9/11, they would accelerate their efforts to import this evil into the United States, on the theory — which they maintained in public, with a straight face — that foreigners from the Middle East were just as American as anyone else. To be clear, Bush did not simply make the claim that al-Qaeda — along with millions of Muslims all over the world — had misunderstood the Quran’s call to murder non-believers. Bush went much, much further than that. He declared that Muslims from foreign countries, most of whom advocate for sharia law, are just as American as you are. What happened next is almost never talked about, although it’s one of the most important — and catastrophic — developments in the history of America. We didn’t pause or end Muslim immigration to the United States. We increased it dramatically. I want you to stop and really pay attention to what I’m about to share. Here it is: Virtually the entire current Muslim population in the United States came here after 9/11. This is a chart from DataHazard: @fentasyl Credit: @fentasyl/X.com/DataHazard In the 1990s, there were between 500,000 and 1 million Muslims in this country. Now there are more than 4.5 million. Put another way, in this country, the Muslim population has more than quadrupled since 9/11. Guess what’s happened to the Christian population in Iraq during that same period — the country we were supposedly liberating? It went from 1.5 million to around 200,000. They were ethnically cleansed. They were terrorized and killed, or forced to leave. Meanwhile, some of our most important cities — the centers of our economy — were flooded with Muslims. We were told to welcome these people and give them refuge from their third-world hellholes because, after all, they’re just as American as we are. So how have things turned out, exactly? Nearly 25 years after 9/11, after several decades of unfettered neoconservatism and liberalism, what does New York City look like today? As of 2024, more than 20% of the voters in New York currently struggle to speak English. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s from a document prepared by the “Office of Immigrant Affairs” in the mayor’s office: “22 percent of New Yorkers … are considered to have Limited Language proficiency.”  Think about that for a second. One in five New Yorkers can’t speak the English language. One in five people in our largest and most important city cannot speak our language. Pick a random person on the street, and there’s a good chance you won’t even be able to have a conversation with them. Nor will you have any shared culture or history whatsoever. You will have nothing in common with this person — this “American.” Overall, 38% of the population of New York wasn’t even born in America. And of course, roughly 35% of these foreigners are unemployed and completely dependent on the government for survival. They are contributing nothing to this country or its economy.  This is a demographic replacement that, under administrations of Bush and Obama, was sold to the American people as a clear positive. After all, who wouldn’t want more hard-working, peace-loving future Americans to move to this country and contribute their talents and work ethic to the advancement of Western civilization? That particular outcome was never going to happen. Instead, we have imported so many foreigners who despise this country and Christianity in general that the next mayor of New York City is almost certainly going to be a Muslim socialist from Uganda who openly mocks the victims of 9/11. To that end, the other day, this Muslim socialist, whose name is Zohran Mamdani, delivered his closing argument in the mayor’s race. Watch: Zohran through tears: “My aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab.” Yes, she was the real victim of 9/11 pic.twitter.com/aILr4JtVvF — Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 24, 2025 Credit: @greg_price11/X.com This is a line that Mamdani has trotted out in other contexts, as well — including a video that his campaign put out, in which he complains that Muslims have been forced “to endure hatred and bigotry in the shadows.” So he really thinks this is a compelling argument. He’s saying it’s horrifying and sad that his aunt’s tummy felt funny when she wore a hijab on the subway, shortly after Islamist terrorists murdered thousands of Americans and destroyed one of the most recognizable landmarks in the entire country. And not only that — he’s blaming us for his aunt’s feelings. He’s not blaming the Muslim terrorists. It’s our fault. Mamdani’s aunt is the real victim here.  This is that Norm Macdonald tweet in real life. Credit: @normmacdonald/X.com The one where he says, “What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?” This is, essentially, the closing argument of the Mamdani campaign. You can watch Mamdani’s full remarks, and he never really gets around to mourning the thousands of Americans who were slaughtered at the hands of al-Qaeda, or explaining why they died and who killed them. He also never gets around to articulating any actual harm that his aunt supposedly suffered. You’d think, if this were really a bigoted white supremacist hellhole, that someone would’ve actually done something to his aunt. It wouldn’t all be in her head. But that didn’t happen. Nor did it happen to anyone like Mamdani’s aunt. First of all, the story is almost certainly made-up for political reasons. We all know that. It’s completely unverifiable. It makes no sense. Additionally, there are now reports floating around that Mamdani has just one aunt, who lived in Tanzania during 9/11, according to her LinkedIn, and who doesn’t wear a hijab in photographs posted on social media. Credit: @TrinityMustache (Trinity Votes Blue)/X.com. (LinkedIn. Devex.com) Whatever the truth may be, don’t expect The Washington Post or “PolitiFact” to look into this, for obvious reasons. Mamdani is a sociopath. They know it. That’s why they support him in the first place. And to be clear, he’s not just lying about his aunt here. In that campaign video I mentioned earlier, Mamdani tries to claim this is broader than his aunt. He says that Muslims are constantly antagonized in this country. Watch: The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated the same as any other New Yorker. And yet, for too long, we have been told to ask for less than that, and endure hatred and bigotry in the shadows. No more. pic.twitter.com/B7BWrifQ1f — Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 25, 2025 Credit: @ZohranKMamdani/X.com There’s a lot to go over here. Mamdani constantly runs down this list of grievances that Muslims supposedly have against our country. A country that they have flocked to in record numbers. But the complaint about “random screening” is always the most incredible. In reality, to this day, they make sure to screen elderly white disabled grannies at TSA just as much as they screen military-aged Arab males named Mohammed, even though 0% of the global terror threat comes from the former and 100% comes from the latter. This country has bent over backward for the Zohran Mamdanis of the world. Muslims have been treated far better here and have been far more welcomed than any white American Christian would be in any Muslim country. In fact, Muslims have been treated better in the United States than they’re treated in many Muslim countries. There wasn’t any sort of campaign of persecution and oppression against Muslims after 9/11. In fact, the government went absurdly out of its way to avoid even the impression of such a thing. Our government responded to 9/11 by apologizing to Muslims, and then importing millions of them into our cities, and letting them build their mosques and blast their call to prayer over the loudspeakers at 5:00 in the morning. That’s the kind of “persecution” they’ve endured. The persecution of being welcomed here and given literally everything they want with virtually no pushback whatsoever. And for all that effort, we don’t get even so much as a thank you in return. Instead, they whine and complain and denounce and accuse us. And work every day to subvert our country and destroy everything that made us great. In response, you’ll often hear leftists argue that “hate crimes” against Muslims supposedly went up after 9/11. And they’ll show you this chart of “reported hate crimes.” Credit: @rowanfornow/X.com There are about a thousand different problems with their argument here. First of all, as we’ve discussed many times, “reported hate crimes” are a meaningless category. The idea of a “hate crime” itself is meaningless, but a “reported” hate crime is even more meaningless. A reported hate crime is when someone calls the police and claims someone did something mean to them. It’s not an arrest. It’s not a prosecution. It’s not a conviction. It’s a report. For example, if Mamdani’s aunt called the police and said someone yelled at her for wearing a hijab, that would count, even if it wasn’t true. So by the definition of “hate crime,” roughly 95% of the hate crimes are just flat-out fake. They’re either misinterpreted by the victim, or the victim himself called them in, to get sympathy.  And even given this definition — which is extremely overbroad — there were still fewer than 500 hate crime reports involving Muslim victims, across the entire country, in the aftermath of 9/11. So there was one hate crime report for every five people who burned to death, or jumped out of a burning building, or died in a plane crash on 9/11. And we’re supposed to be horrified by these numbers. Compare those figures to other religious groups, and the narrative falls apart even further. Source: FBI Credit: FBI Uniform Crime Reports Using the FBI’s numbers, from 2001 to 2012, hate crimes against Muslims were reported roughly as often as hate crimes against Christians (including Catholics and Protestants). Jews are at the top of the list. The category of “other religions” and “multiple religions” together reported more hate crimes than Muslims.  If you get back to the hate crime chart, you’ll notice even more issues. It’s pretty clear from the trajectory here that, after the spike in reported “hate crimes” post-9/11, reports of hate crimes against Muslims plummeted, then went flat, for the rest of the decade. And that’s remarkable because, again, the Muslim population exploded during this period. So you’d think that the raw number of hate crimes against Muslims would go up, simply as a matter of statistics. But the number didn’t go up. In fact, it went down. And it stayed down. The point is — no, there was no epidemic of criminal violence against Muslims after 9/11. There was no legitimate reason for anyone to be afraid of wearing a hijab. But even if Muslim women were afraid of wearing a hijab on the subway — that would actually be completely rational. When Islamists commit mass murder in the name of their religion, it’s entirely reasonable to feel uncomfortable if you go out in public, days later, showing off an unmistakable sign of your submission to Islam. It would be weird if we lived in a society where that wasn’t the case. When members of a religion slaughter thousands of us, and then point to supposedly holy texts that explicitly validate their approach, then basic survival instincts dictate that we take a closer look at people who adhere to that particular religion. Meanwhile, if you look at hate crime convictions, instead of reports, you’ll find that, according to the DOJ, there have been around 200 “anti-Muslim hate crime convictions since 9/11.” That’s it. A grand total of 200 convictions, over more than two decades. That includes everything from making threats to vandalism to murders. (And there were just three murders in this category, out of the 200 total “hate crimes.”) Already, you can see how minuscule these numbers are when you consider the fact that we’re a country of 340 million people. But just for fun, let’s put that number in context. By one estimate, in the same time period, since 9/11, there have been at least 160 actual, confirmed Islamic terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland. Not “reports” of attacks. Actual violent attacks by Islamists in the United States. So if you’re going to try to make the argument that “Islamophobia” is a real thing, then by the exact same token, you need to agree that Islamist ideology is a much, much bigger deal. Of course, the truth is that there was no rash of “Islamophobia” after 9/11 or whatever. Instead, what’s happened is that we’ve imported millions of people who openly despise this country and its forefathers— including Mamdani’s father, who believes that Hitler was inspired by Abe Lincoln. (He also wrote in his book that we should consider suicide bombers as “soldiers”). Watch: Zohran Mamdani’s father was ethnically cleansed by Ugandans in 1972, along with 80k other Indians. The Brits took him in as a refugee. Americans gave him a scholarship and a professorship. And he’ll never forgive us for it. https://t.co/gOcH3vrSWP — Roman Helmet Guy (@romanhelmetguy) October 26, 2025 Credit: @romanhelmetguy/X.com Mamdani’s entire family needs to be denaturalized and deported. That’s what it takes, at this point. This is a guy who was forced, along with his entire family, to leave Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin. He wanted the entire Asian minority gone, and he gave them 90 days to get out of the country. (This is the same dictator, by the way, who uttered the infamous line, “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”). As they forced nearly 100,000 Asians out, Ugandan soldiers robbed, beat, sexually assaulted, and killed many Indians. So this was a very desperate time for people like Mamdani’s father. They would have easily been killed or forced into poverty. But Britain took them in, along with many other refugees. Ultimately, Mamdani’s father was welcomed into America, where he became a well-paid professor at Columbia University, where his wife would become a millionaire director working on Disney movies, and where his son would ultimately become a theater kid writing school essays about “white supremacy.” So, Mamdani and his family and his fellow Muslims have not been persecuted at all in the slightest. They have not faced hate crimes at a rate any higher than any other religion, and in fact have faced them at a lower rate than several other religions. They have been nothing but welcomed, tolerated, and celebrated. One of the very first things the President of the United States did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, while the rubble was still smoldering, was step on stage and talk about how wonderful Muslims are. And yet, through all of this, across thousands of public speeches and interviews and debates, here are two words we’ve never heard Zohran Mamdani say: “Thank you.” As in, “Thank you, America, for opening your arms to me. Thank you for allowing me to come and reap the benefits of a nation that nobody in my family or my home country or my religion has any hand in building. Thank you for continuing to welcome us even after co-religionists attacked you. Thank you for giving me everything, while I have given you nothing in return. Thank you for taking me in, and taking in my people, and supporting us and feeding us and housing us, and taking food out of your own children’s mouths to put into ours. Thank you.” Zohran Mamdani has never said that, or anything like it. And every year, we welcome millions more foreigners into this country who will never say that, or anything like it. You teach your children to say please and thank you, and yet we import millions who have never said it, and will never say it, and demand more even as they show no gratitude or appreciation for what they’ve already been given. Mamdani is their poster child. He has no spirit of humility or gratitude at all. He takes from us and then scolds us for not allowing him to take more. He sits down at our table uninvited, eats more than anyone else — doesn’t even use a fork — complains that he wasn’t served better food, and never says thank you. Not once. And we, as Americans, are sick of being treated this way. This was always going to be the result of decades of uninterrupted immigration from countries that are fundamentally incompatible with our own, at a cultural and religious level. It was always going to be the outcome of decades of false rhetoric, promising that Islamists are somehow just as “American” as anyone else. This is what “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” have in common. Sooner or later, both ideologies — which are supposedly polar opposites — guarantee that anti-American foreigners will start running in our elections. And although they can barely speak English, they will eventually out-vote Americans. And then, without firing a shot, they will conquer the very city they attempted to destroy on 9/11. Barring a miracle — barring a realization that eluded New Yorkers, and most of America’s political leadership, for decades — that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

In a moment ripped straight from the sidelines at Talladega, Governor Kathy Hochul claimed on Monday that when a crowd of New Yorkers began chanting “Tax the rich!” at a rally for mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, all she’d heard was, “Let’s go Bills!” Hochul gave the implausible explanation when she was asked about the chanting and whether she would stand firm on not raising taxes despite Mamdani’s repeated calls for higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers — and on corporations that do business in the city, whether they are located within the city limits or not. WATCH: Kathy Hochul oddly drags Buffalo Bills into ‘tax the rich’ chant that overwhelmed her appearance at Zohran Mamdani rally https://t.co/tTLLtrO6Nv pic.twitter.com/1vBIiNrzL6 — New York Post (@nypost) October 27, 2025 “Given the reception that you received last night at Zohran’s rally where people were chanting, ‘Tax the rich, Tax the rich,’ are you going to hold the line on raising taxes even if it means losing an endorsement or getting a primary challenge?” the New York Post’s Stephen Vago asked. “I couldn’t hear what they were chanting,” Hochul claimed, before adding, “I thought they were saying, ‘Let’s go [Buffalo] Bills.’ I wasn’t sure. When you’re up there, I heard some noise. I heard a lot of cheers. But later on it became clear to me that there’s a — I know there’s a passion for that.” Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now. Hochul left out the fact that she was in New York City at the time — where they have two NFL teams — and therefore a little over six hours away from Buffalo, New York, by car. She went on to say that she really hoped Democrats could harness the “energy” behind those cheers in order to win back control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) shot back, “The #BillsMafia won’t forget. What a trainwreck @KathyHochul is every single day.” The #BillsMafia won’t forget What a trainwreck @KathyHochul is every single day. https://t.co/dBgS5giRI2 — Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) October 27, 2025 Others pointed out how similar that moment was to the time the “Let’s go, Brandon” chant was born — when NBC reporter Kelli Stavast heard a crowd of NASCAR fans at Talladega chanting “F*** Joe Biden” and claimed she believed they’d been chanting “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer on winning driver Brandon Brown.

He’s a man

Clear dividing line

'The goal is to reach all sides'

Longtime Senate chaplain Barry Black delivered a stern prayer Monday, telling the Senate there are “no gold medals” for extending the federal government shutdown. “When our children and grandchildren want to know what we were doing in the 119th Congress during the famous shutdown, may we not have to give these answers: I helped set a new record for keeping the government closed,” the Rev. Black prayed, adding: “I failed to appeal to the better angels of my nature. I forgot Matthew 7:12, which states, ‘Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and prophets.’” "When our children & grandchildren want to know what we were doing 119th Congress during famous shutdown may we not have to give these answers: I helped set new record for keeping government closed …No gold medals are given for breaking shutdown records"– Senate chaplain Black pic.twitter.com/5KHY8hfo8p— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 27, 2025 The current shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, is the second-longest federal government shutdown ever.  Black, who has served as the Senate’s chaplain since 2003 and who will turn 77 on Saturday, is a Seventh-day Adventist and previously served as chief of chaplains of the U.S. Navy. He continued, “Lord, remind our lawmakers that no gold medals are given for breaking shutdown records, but a crown of righteousness is given to those who take care of the lost, last, and least.” This is not the first time that Black has exhorted lawmakers to end a shutdown. During a 2013 shutdown, he prayed for God: “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.” The post WATCH: Senate Chaplain Scolds Lawmakers for Government Shutdown in Prayer appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The warnings aren’t new. For year, think tanks, the government, and the media have all raised concerns over America’s lack of military readiness. Solving the crisis could hinge on government contracts, one expert says.    “U.S. military readiness has been degraded over the last two decades due to a variety of challenges,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office wrote in a report back in March.   gao-25-108104Download The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Index of Military Strength concluded that “U.S. does not have the necessary force to address more than one major regional contingency and is not ready to carry out its duties effectively.”   2024_IndexOfUSMilitaryStrength_ASSESSMENT_POWER_ALLDownload And on Monday, Politico warned that the “U.S. doesn’t have enough weapons for a major conflict.”   As Politico noted in its report, and as Heritage’s research associate for national security and European affairs, Jim Fein, concurred, manufacturing is a major issue. But Fein told The Daily Signal that the issue goes a step beyond defense manufacturing companies simply not making enough weapons and “comes down to government orders.”  Government Contracts   “The U.S. government orders weapons on a year-by-year basis, and most of the time roughly at or below current manufacturing capacity,” Fein explains. “In order to get added capacity, orders need to be above capacity, [which is] basic supply/demand economics.”  “It isn’t just a problem with prime contractors,” he added, noting that production can’t expand without well-functioning supply chains for both raw materials to intermediate components.  “The companies that make these intermediate parts are often small, and have a more difficult time acquiring capital to make investments, especially without a contract,” he said. “Even if prime contractors increased their capacity, their supply chains are inadequate and require investment that will only come about once they have contracts and a long-term demand signal.”   Warnings over the lack of America’s military readiness have gained additional attention in recent years, given the growing threat from the Chinese Communist Party.   “China has built a capacity to sustain a protracted war of any type. More directly, China is well-postured to sustain a protracted high-intensity war of attrition. The United States is not currently capable of doing so,” the Army War College’s War Room wrote in 2023.   Tensions between the U.S. and China have remained high in recent months amid trade talks and tariffs. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 100% tariffs on China, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent assuaged fears of the threat over the weekend, telling NBC News a trade deal framework is now in place ahead of Trump’s meeting Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.   Trump’s meeting with Xi in South Korea on Thursday is expected to focus on economic issues between the two countries.   The post Weapons Contracting Process Seen as Hurdle to Military Readiness   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s a big controversy that President Donald Trump is not just leaving his mark on the country, but he’s leaving his mark on the White House. For years, decades, maybe over a century, people have complained that the world’s superpower has nowhere at its capital, i.e., its executive branch, at the White House to entertain people. And usually, tents are constructed when there’s diplomatic or state dinners or there’s festivities. Donald Trump, the builder, comes along in his second term and says: You know what? I’m going to solve the problem. I’m going to refashion the East Wing of the White House complex and build a beautiful 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which will allow 650 guests to eat and be entertained and to have official functions. And more importantly, I am going to enlist people from the private sector to pay for it, along with myself. And the price will probably be somewhere between $200 and $300 million. The plans are out there. It’s perfectly transparent. There’s a list of everybody who’s donated. They’re not just right-wing donors. There’s most of the familiar Silicon Valley grandees: Apple, Meta, etc. And it looks pretty much consistent with the style of the White House in general. But people were outraged because to build this huge ballroom—which was sorely needed—you had to demolish the area where it will connect into the east complex. And of course, that’s always messy. So, immediately, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the Left—who have shut down the government—are saying the people don’t have enough food or they’re not getting paid, and Donald Trump is building this luxurious, capitalist, oligarchic, aristocratic hallway. No. It’s for all of America. It’s being privately paid. And if the senators are worried about the people with less means, then just open the government. But more importantly, it wasn’t more than a nanosecond when the media—Left and Right—started to give examples that refurbishing, remodeling, redoing the White House is very common since its or origins. It was burned down—the War of 1812—completely rebuilt. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who suffered from paralysis, wanted to put an indoor swimming pool. He did. And it was torn out by a later administration, made into a press room. President Jerry Ford wanted to swim. So, he has an outdoor swimming pool. He just tore up the garden and made a swimming pool. And people use it to this day. President Barack Obama wanted to refashion a tennis court into a basketball court. He did just that. President Harry Truman came in and said: You know, this White House is creaky. I don’t feel that it’s up to code. I’m gonna move to Blair House for four or five years and gut the entire White House. And they did. So, redoing the White House is nothing new. Having private donors pay for it is advisable and nothing new. But then there was also this argument that it belittles the sanctity of the White House. This ugly scar that we’re watching as the demolition crews break up the existing East Wing to attach this ballroom. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was one of the most severe critics. But if you look at the California historic State Capitol, it’s been demolished, almost. There is an ugly wound where the whole side of it has been gutted and you can look into the ruin. And why? Because it’s necessary, if you want to expand the offices, the parking garage, the facilities, the cafeteria, the gym. Everything for the Democratic supermajorities in California. And remember, in California, we only have nine of 52 Republican congresspeople. Both senators are Democratic. No statewide office holder is Republican. And there’s supermajorities in both legislature. And they voted that they wanted to spend not $200 million, not $300 million, not $400 million, not $800 million, not $1 billion, but $1.6 billion. And not from Meta or Amazon or Elon Musk or any of those people, but from the taxpayers, who are facing a $20 to $30 billion deficit. And that wound makes the White House wound look small in comparison. The job is much more vast. And guess what? It will probably suffer the fate of high-speed rail and be delayed and delayed and delayed, as it already has, at the expense, not of private donors, but of the taxpayer. A final note. Do we really want to know what belittles the White House? I mean, we’re just coming off the Biden administration, where cocaine was found in a carrel in the West Wing. And nobody seemed to want to investigate whether it had anything to do with the former cocaine addict and presidential son, Hunter Biden. But it was found there. Do you remember when Barack Obama was president? He brought in a whole cadre of Muslim Brotherhood people that were tied to Hamas Islamic terrorism. He brought an entourage, in 2012, into the White House. I remember, 2016, he thought it would be neat to have his favorite rappers in the White House. Kendrick Lamar—“Pimp a Butterfly.” Remember those lyrics about killing the police in the White House? That rapper—“kill po-po,” as he said. Then there was the rapper Rick Ross. Remember, everybody was sitting in a solemn occasion in our nation’s executive mansion and his beeper went out because he was a criminal who was under house arrest as part of his sentence for assault and battery, and he had been accused of kidnapping. And all of a sudden, in front of this presidential entourage, Michelle Obama here, Barack Obama here, his beeper goes off on his ankle bracelet. We could go on with the embarrassing incidents. I won’t mention what transpired between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton right off the Oval Office in the presidential laboratory. But nonetheless, the ballroom was needed. It’s paid for by private funds. It will be built efficiently, quickly, quite unlike what we see in California with taxpayers’ money and incompetence and regulations. And the Left, who shut down the government, is angry. But it doesn’t really know what it’s angry about, other than it just wants to be angry. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s Ballroom Broke the Democrats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the final stretch before Election Day, Virginia Democrats called a special session of the Legislature to focus on redistricting—a session that may take the Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, off the campaign trail. If this is a last-minute election strategy, however, it may backfire, a former attorney general noted. “I left the campaign trail because my duty is here, in this building, with the people’s Senate,” Earle-Sears said at the Capitol Monday. She condemned the redistricting effort, saying, “Voters choose their representatives—not the other way around.” Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican who served as the Old Dominion’s attorney general from 2010 to 2014, told The Daily Signal that the special session may draw more attention to Earle-Sears, not less. “She’s going to be the highest-ranking, most involved official, she’s going to get a lot of press,” he explained. The special session may help Earle-Sears “not only from prominence but because the Democrats are seizing on the wrong side of a 2-to-1 issue.” He noted that Virginians voted—66.1% to 33.9%—to pass a constitutional amendment in 2020 creating a bipartisan commission for redistricting. Why Redistricting? Redistricting, the process of redrawing districts for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, gained renewed attention after the Texas Legislature restarted the process earlier this year. President Donald Trump has encouraged Republicans to seek advantages through redistricting, and Democrats responded by demanding redistricting of their own. Virginia Speaker of the House Don Scott, a Democrat, sent a letter to legislators on Oct. 23, calling the session that began Monday. Scott’s letter came one day after the National Democratic Redistricting Committee—an organization founded by Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder to advocate redrawing congressional maps to help Democrats—gave $150,000 each to the Virginia House Democratic Caucus and to Spanberger’s campaign, raising questions about coordination and influence, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The committee also gave more than $17,000 in three in-kind contributions to the Spanberger campaign. Quid Pro Quo? Hans von Spakovsky, manager of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, called foul. “There seems to be almost a direct quid pro quo between this donation and the Democrat call for a special session, a shameful embarrassment for the Democrats in Virginia,” Spakovsky told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “It is almost as if they are saying their legislative duties are for sale.” He mentioned the 2020 constitutional amendment and warned that “Democrats are defying the voters, engaging in electoral corruption of pay-to-play and interfering in the election process currently going on in the state.” “I won’t call it so much a quid pro quo as a fundraising ploy” on behalf of Virginia Democrats, Cuccinelli, the former attorney general, told The Daily Signal. “And it worked.” He warned, however, that the issue will be an albatross around Democrats’ necks. “Every Republican candidate is going to say, ‘I’m not voting for this. The people of Virginia have spoken. I’m not going to spit in their face,'” Cuccinelli explained. Democrats have narrow majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates (51-49) and the Senate (21-19). Why Now? If the redistricting push may cost Democrats voters, why rush to do it before an election? For a constitutional amendment to become law in Virginia, the Legislature must pass it before and after an intervening election, and then the amendment goes to the voters. Virginia Democrats may hope to get this on the 2026 midterm ballot, so they are rushing to pass it before Election Day, Cuccinelli reasoned. Yet the former attorney general pointed to a potential flaw in this reasoning—the 2025 election has already begun. Old Dominion voters cast their first ballots on Sept. 19 through early voting—a process Spanberger herself used. While Election Day doesn’t come until Nov. 4, many Virginians have already voted. “The next intervening election likely can’t happen until 2027, so the earliest this can go to the ballot is 2028,” the former attorney general said. “Do they really want this fought out on a presidential year ballot?” While Cuccinelli admitted the point may be debatable, he suggested the legal argument against presenting the amendment to voters in 2026 will likely prevail. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, condemned the special session as “a desperate grab for power.” “We’re just in shock that they would play this crazy, crazy card and pull everyone back, including Winsome Earle-Sears, who is campaigning—and they’re also doing it to get her off the campaign trail because they understand that this race has tightened so much,” Youngkin told WTOP radio on Friday. As lieutenant governor, Earle-Sears presides over the Virginia Senate and can cast a tie-breaking vote. If she is absent, Democrat L. Louise Lucas, president pro tempore, will preside over the Senate, and Earle-Sears will lose her tie-breaking vote. No More Moderates Cuccinelli said Virginia Democrats called the special session because they represent the more radical wing of the national party. “The Democrats now in the Virginia General Assembly are those foaming-at-the-mouth, rabid, fire-breathing left-wing nutjobs that we say the federal Democrats like [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer are afraid of,” he claimed. “There are no conservative Democrats, there are no ‘blue dogs,’ they’re gone.” Neither the Spanberger campaign, nor the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, nor the office of Speaker Don Scott responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. The post Will the Virginia Democrats’ Special Session on Redistricting Backfire at the Ballot Box? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

'I Was Born the Son of a Poor Black Sharecropper'