'I find it pretty offensive'

Grip on Havana's Energy Lifeline

For top Democrats, it’s not enough that Kristi Noem is out as homeland security secretary; they want the Trump Justice Department to prosecute her.  Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his House counterpart, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, made a criminal referral alleging that Noem lied under oath to Congress.  “We write to refer evidence showing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem repeatedly misled the Senate Committee on the Judiciary during her testimony on March 3, 2026, and the House Committee on the Judiciary during her testimony on March 4, 2026,” Durbin and Raskin said in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi Monday.  “A number of her statements appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress,” the letter continues.  The two Democrat lawmakers have consistently opposed the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement carried out by the Department of Homeland Security.  In the letter to Bondi, Durbin and Raskin said the Justice Department should investigate whether Noem made false statements to Congress regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s compliance with court orders, contracting, detaining U.S. citizens, and detention conditions. “Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes,” they wrote.  Noem testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3 and to the House Judiciary Committee on March 4. President Donald Trump announced on March 5 that he was removing Noem and would nominate Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., for the Cabinet post.  Still, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson asserted in an email to The Daily Signal Monday, “Any claim that Secretary Noem committed perjury is categorically false.” Even the two Democrats suggested the referral was symbolic, given that they didn’t expect Bondi to act. However, they implied a possible future Democrat administration could target Noem. “While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years,” the two Democrats said.  The post Democrats Push DOJ to Prosecute Kristi Noem After Trump Ousts Her From DHS appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Brian Christine urged medical students to “refuse” to perform procedures that violate their consciences. “If your deeply held religious convictions say that you can’t engage in some activity, for instance, abortion, or a sex-rejecting procedure, stand strong in that,” he told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. “Refuse to do that, and again, reach out to the proper authorities and individuals at their institutions,” he added. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education currently requires that medical residents with moral or religious objections be allowed to opt out of abortion training. But pro-life doctors say the opt-out system puts pressure on residents and places them at risk of being targeted for their beliefs if they refuse the training. Christine spoke to The Daily Signal after addressing the sixth hearing of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission on Monday. “I am old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan, and this administration is the most pro-religion and pro-religious administration that I think I’ve seen in my lifetime and at the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said. Christine said HHS is “working hard to make sure that conscience protections for physicians, nurses, healthcare professionals, and health care institutions are protected.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Christine, a urologist, said religious physicians like himself were threatened with loss of licensure if they didn’t comply with certain requirements. “We believe that protecting a person’s deeply held religious convictions and conscience is important,” Christine said. “We’re gonna make sure that these individuals don’t have to bend the knee to some harsh and ambiguous government.” Christine said he revoked several Biden-era policies to protect freedom of conscience, so that doctors and nurses can’t be coerced into performing abortions. In June, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era mandate that attempted to force emergency room doctors to perform abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.  Christine says his Catholic faith is his “compass” in his role at HHS. “I take the role to serve the republic and serve President [Donald] Trump seriously,” he said. “And my Catholic faith is a compass that guides me into doing what’s right for our republic and serving the president that way.” Religion is at the core of the American founding, Christine said. “Religious liberty is incredibly important, and again, at the Department of Health and Human Services, we stand firm in our support for religious liberty,” he said. “We’re not just simply saying that we believe in religious liberty,” Christine added. “We’re not simply just saying that we’re gonna protect conscience, we’re actually doing things. We are keeping promises that the president and Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy have made.” The post ‘REFUSE’: Top HHS Official Gives Message to Medical Students Pressured to Perform Abortions 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. We’re in the second week, just completing it, of the so-called Iran war. This effort of the United States to bomb the theocracy into submission, so they will cancel their missile and nuclear programs and to champion the popular protest on the streets that have some potential to get rid of the regime itself. But it’s a very surreal war. I haven’t seen—I don’t think any of us have seen—anything like it. It’s only been two weeks, and we’re told that it’s dragging on, that it’s a forever war, that we’re losing, that the Pentagon and the Trump administration had no plans. And yet, when you look at Iran, this huge country, much, much bigger, much, much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan, and it has no military left. The navy is dismantled. The air force is dismantled. The Revolutionary Guard. All of these special contingents are under enormous assault. The command and control is destroyed. The missile defense is destroyed. And yet people say that it’s unconquerable. It doesn’t make any sense. Its output of missiles and drones at the Gulf petrol states and Israel has dropped by 90%. So what’s going on? And I think part of the problem is that there’s no media coverage. There are no embedded reporters there because we are not on the ground. When you don’t have a ground fight in enemy territory, you don’t have American embedded journalists traveling with the troops that can give diverse opinions, accurate accounts. All we have are the journalists who are allowed into Iran, and that happens to be—guess who—CNN, and they report the party line that comes out of the Iranian theocracy. Again, an air war is very hard to cover because pilots can’t talk to anybody. They’re at bases that are secluded and secure. They get in the planes, they fly their mission, and they go home, and there’s no way a journalist can really get to them or talk to them. So all of our information comes from three sources: the Iranian propaganda machine, which is completely not credible. It’s about as credible as the Hamas body count that we saw two years ago. Or CNN and a few other Western—but very biased—news outlets that only Iran will let in based on the conditions which they impose on them. And the only thing you can find out about this war that’s official comes from the Israeli government and some Israeli newspapers—the Times of Israel or The Jerusalem Post. So there’s a lot of misinformation about the actual damage that we’re inflicting. And then there’s the attitude toward the war. The attitude in World War II—everybody was behind the United States. We did a lot of things that we regretted—the Japanese internment. We made a lot of mistakes, strategically, Okinawa, Tarawa, were disasters. The B-17 bombing program cost 40,000 [lives], but everybody basically said we don’t have to be perfect to be good. We’re going win our war because our cause is better than the alternative. That’s gone now. It is gone. Even in the first Gulf War of 1990-91, people were united, but the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton. It’s a socialist party. That’s a euphemism. It really does not believe in traditional America, and it believes that if it can convey a sense that America is losing, then two things follow it. For some, it means that the November midterms might give power back to the Democrats, and therefore it’s in their self-interest to magnify the debacle, so to speak, or the tragedy, or that we’re losing. And then there’s others that actually, in the Democratic Party—and I’m talking about the Squad or Ilhan Omar—they actually are sympathizing with the enemy. If you think I’m crazy, there was a protest out in New York where we had resident aliens, students here on student visas, naturalized citizens, and what were they screaming? Shame on the United States. Why we’re at war. And who were they protesting on behalf of Iran, the Hezbollah terrorists, and the Hamas terrorists. And so, this is a very bizarre thing. And in addition to that, we’ve got the element of antisemitism where we have the Democratic Party now. Its base is just avowedly antisemitic. And I’ll just make a casual observation. I will predict that you will not have a Jewish American presidential candidate or vice presidential candidate for the foreseeable future. It is impossible to nominate anybody with a Jewish background on a national ticket in the Democratic Party. And you can see that as the Democrats look at this war, they have bought hook, line and sinker the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is pulling the strings of the Donald Trump puppet and tiny Israel is getting us into this war. Despite the fact that all seven prior presidents, and Trump himself, said on the record that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon on its watch, and that they would take measures to ensure that it didn’t in the future. And none of them did that. None of them did that. And so when you look at the first Gulf War, it was 42 days, but only four days were on the ground. It was a magnificent victory, but 300 people were killed. We’ve lost about, what, 14, 13 fatalities. Three hundred—that was considered amazing at the time. And they overran the country, but it took 42 days to disable it, and they left Saddam Hussein in power, and they had to go back. And so that was considered a stellar success. But this is a much more dramatic victory. We’ve only been here two weeks and a much more formidable enemy is in shambles. And we’re left with just three alternatives. Either the regime is going be replaced now or in the next few weeks as the people come out of their homes and see what their country is like, and what the theocracy caused, and what it did to them. Or there’s going be some Venezuelan solution where a strongman will come forward. Or maybe that won’t happen at all, and the United States, under political pressure, will stop. But if it stops, they have destroyed the Iranian military and its nuclear and missile program for years. So this was all preferable to the situation prewar, in which Iran still was working on the bomb, still had 3,000 missiles and more drones, and was boasting that it was going to anytime it wanted close the Strait of Hormuz. And they’ve tried it, and they will not be successful. Put it all together, this is a surreal war. What is actually happening is not being reported. And there’s an alternate reality that’s been constructed by the Left that sees this war as politically advantageous to its agenda to recapture power in the United States if it can convince us, the American people, that A, we’re losing, B, we may deserve to lose, C, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault, and this war will be beneficial in denying him the Republican majorities in Congress in about eight months. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post ‘It’s a Very Surreal War’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A shooting on Old Dominion University’s campus has left Americans asking how someone who pled guilty to helping ISIS was able to enroll at an American university. The unsettling answer is that Virginia Democrats passed a law forbidding public colleges for asking applicants about their criminal history. Republicans in Washington are now looking to take federal action to prevent future tragedies like the one that unfolded on Old Dominion’s campus last Thursday. A Terrorist on Campus The shooter, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen from West Africa who became an ISIS terrorist while serving in the U.S. Army National Guard, shot and killed ROTC professor Lt. Col. Brandon Shah and wounded two others. In 2016, Jalloh pled guilty for attempting to aid the terror group and was sentenced to 11 years in prison but was released early in 2024. Despite Jalloh’s terrorist past, he was able to re-enroll at ODU as a student in 2025 thanks to a bill signed by former Democrat Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. In 2019, Northam signed into law a bill which bars public colleges from questioning applicants on their criminal history and cannot deny them acceptance because of it—even if the applicant is a terrorist.   “It’s just heartbreaking,” Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., told the Daily Signal of the shooting. And with Northam’s law on the books, “it all just seems preventable,” the former Navy SEAL added. “I was in the House of Delegates, and I voted no on that bill. It’s called Ban the Box law,” McGuire said, adding that he believes the tragedy at Old Dominion could have been prevented if Democrats hadn’t passed the legislation. “The fact that we have a person that has terrorist ties and is just allowed to walk the streets, I mean, that makes me furious,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, told The Daily Signal.  Republicans Eye Bill That Would Have Denaturalized and Deported the Shooter On Monday afternoon, Kiggans co-sponsored a bill brought forth by Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., that could have prevented the shooting. Kiggans signed on to Emmer’s SCAM Act, which seeks to “denaturalize and deport individuals within 10 years of naturalization who join terrorist organizations or commit serious crimes against our country.”  “This monster should’ve been stripped of his citizenship and shipped back to Sierra Leone. Instead, he was let back onto our streets only to commit more terror. We can’t go on like this,” Emmer wrote on X.   Under current law, it’s nearly impossible to denaturalize and deport naturalized citizens turned terrorists.That’s why @SenEricSchmitt and I introduced the SCAM Act.Denaturalizing America-hating terrorists is COMMON SENSE and necessary for the security of our nation. pic.twitter.com/kN8MkOA0Hp— Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip) March 16, 2026 The SCAM Act is a critical part of Republicans’ ongoing efforts to support law and order, Kiggans suggested. “We need to put legislation in place that keeps our streets safer,” Kiggans said. “It’s been a goal of this administration and a goal of mine and Congress to do whatever we can, not just to support law enforcement, but be supportive of border patrol.” The Shooting Shakes Virginia While Republicans on Capitol Hill consider a federal solution, Virginia Republicans are demanding answers. Virginia Senator Glen Sturtevant told the Daily Signal that “if that law prevented ODU from knowing about this individual’s terrorism conviction, then Virginians deserve a full explanation and accounting from those responsible for its passage.” Gov Ralph Northam’s legacy. Jalloh was convicted of a terrorism felony, sentenced to 11 yrs in prison. Despite this felony, he applied & enrolled at ODU with the school having no idea his criminal history because of the 2019 “social justice” law signed by Northam. pic.twitter.com/igdZqG45KO— Jason Miyares (@JasonMiyaresVA) March 15, 2026 “This is exactly the kind of consequence many of us warned about when these so-called ‘restorative justice’ policies were passed,” Sturtevant continued. “Instead of making public safety a priority, Richmond Democrats chose to tilt the system toward criminals and away from the safety of our communities.” Virginia Democrats, however, say that guns are to blame.   Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who represents Old Dominion University’s district in Congress, wrote on X, “We must do everything we can to prevent these all-too-common tragedies of gun violence.”   Kiggans said this wasn’t an accurate description of the situation. “This person who committed to shooting the shooter and had no regard for laws,” she said.   Lt. Col. Brandon Shah was an inspiring leader and a source of encouragement for students at my Service Academy Night last year. His passion for the ODU Army ROTC program and his commitment to mentoring the next generation of Army leaders were truly unmatched. A decorated Army… pic.twitter.com/KR3WOUWazg— Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (@RepJenKiggans) March 15, 2026 McGuire called it “ludicrous” to describe this situation as gun violence. “Criminals don’t care about any law you pass,” he continued. “The best way to stop guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  “The [Democrats] are championing soft-on-crime policies that protect perpetrators while simultaneously passing an unprecedented number of bills to disarm law-abiding Virginians,” Anne Ferrell Tata, a Republican representing Virginia Beach in the Virginia House of Delegates, told The Daily Signal.   “You do not make Virginia safer by stripping away the Second Amendment rights of our citizens while granting sanctuary to violent criminals,” Tata added. “Virginians deserve better.”    The post Democrat-Passed Law May Have Allowed Shooter to Enter Old Dominion Undetected appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Are Iranian Security Forces Turning on Each Other?

It's hard to miss how elitist media like the Associated Press thrive on the notion that the Iran war is already a fiasco.   On Sunday, the AP author was Will Weissert (best remembered for scribbling a loving paean for Fidel Castro), but it could have been written by any of a number of flacks at the DNC gloating over what they think will help the Democrats in the midterm elections. The result was an opinion piece very poorly disguised as a legitimate story -- "Two weeks into war with Iran, Trump has been knocked back on his political heels." It was therefore no big surprise that the very first source cited in the story was a DNC hack: “I think Democrats are well-positioned for this November and the midterms,” said Kelly Dietrich, CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, which trains party backers to run for office and staff campaigns. Dietrich said the past two weeks show the Trump administration has failed at long-term planning. “They’re flying by the seat of their pants, and the rest of us are paying the price,” he said. Weissert himself immediately proceeds right after that with smear-mongering by strongly suggesting that Trump is so callous that he prefers golfing over caring about the well-being of our troops in the Gulf region: On Saturday, Trump spent hours at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, before attending a closed-door fundraiser for his MAGA Inc. super PAC at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Last weekend, he also golfed at another of his South Florida properties a day after witnessing the dignified transfer for six U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war. That death toll rose this past week. Let's guess this wasn't AP's game when Obama went golfing after journalist James Foley was executed, or how Obama flew to California for a fundraiser right after addressing four Americans killed at the Benghazi consulate in Libya. Next came Weissert's charge that Trump's plans aren't going well in the Strait of Hormuz: The president — who kept allies other than Israel in the dark about his war plans for Iran — this weekend began suggesting the U.S. would need to lean on the international community to help oil tankers move through the Strait of Hormuz, where transportation has been severely disrupted, throwing global energy markets into a tailspin.... Trump had pledged at the beginning of the war that U.S. naval ships would escort tankers through the waterway. But that hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, questions about the strait continue to undermine Trump’s recent pronouncement during a Kentucky rally that, “We’ve won.” Weissert concludes his highly opinionated piece on a note of Democrat Hopium including a quote, appropriate to the DNC flavored hype, from a Democrat strategist gloating over what he hopes the Iran issue will mean for his party in the midterm elections: Iran also has even divided Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base, between those who support the action and others who say that Trump expressly campaigned on ending wars. The political turbulence has some Democrats predicting their party could see midterm gains rivaling 2018’s “blue wave” election during Trump’s first term. “Democrats just have to keep reminding people that he made a promise to bring prices down, and they’re still going up,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said of Trump. “And now they’re going to go up even more because prices in gasoline can increase prices of everything else, including at the grocery store.” Exit question: Will Will Weissert need to take trauma leave if the midterm elections do not turn out as he so obviously hopes they will?

On Saturday’s The Weekend: Primetime, MS NOW aired an interview host Ayman Mohyeldin had scored with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Mohyeldin asked about the condition of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said the new leader is “wounded and likely disfigured.” But when Araghchi — chuckling [see screencap] — refused to give a straight answer, Mohyeldin failed to press him — despite the foreign minister having recently made a demonstrably false claim about the previous supreme leader. In the immediate aftermath of the strike that killed the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a death Iran itself later acknowledged — Araghchi publicly insisted that Khamenei was alive, adding the hedge “as far as I know.” Technically, the caveat gave the foreign minister a sliver of deniability. But the notion that Iran’s foreign minister might not know whether the most powerful figure in the regime was alive strains credulity. Asked If Iran’s New Supreme Leader Is Injured, FM Can’t Give Straight Answer pic.twitter.com/2NmJeuvkxt — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) March 15, 2026 Mohyeldin began by adopting the regime’s preferred terminology, saying Mojtaba Khamenei had been “elected” supreme leader. In reality, the Iranian people do not vote for the position; the choice is made by regime insiders in the Assembly of Experts. Mohyeldin also claimed that Mojtaba had “issued a statement yesterday.” In reality, the statement was issued in his name, which is not the same thing. The host then asked Araghchi about Hegseth’s statement regarding the new leader’s condition. Instead of directly addressing the question, Araghchi launched into a series of evasions. At one point he said the new leader “will perform his duties,” before quickly correcting himself to say he is performing his duties. Araghchi also offered this revealing formulation: ABBAS ARAGHCHI: I think by now it should have been clear and it should have been known for everybody that our system is very well rooted in the society. The Islamic Republic is a system which is not dependent on any individual or any group of people. Rather than clearly stating that the new supreme leader is healthy and unharmed, Araghchi pivoted to the durability of the regime itself — effectively suggesting that the system would continue regardless of any individual leader’s condition. He later added another curious hedge: ARAGHCHI: They will see soon, I guess, that there is no problem with the new Supreme Leader. For a foreign minister supposedly aware of the leader’s status, I guess is strikingly shaky language. Mohyeldin nevertheless allowed Araghchi’s evasions to stand without challenge. Despite Araghchi’s recent false claim about the previous supreme leader, Mohyeldin never pressed him to give a direct answer about the condition of Iran’s new one. Here's the transcript. MS NOW The Weekend: Primetime 3/14/26 7:19 am EDT MOHYELDIN: We know that Iran has elected a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. He has not been seen yet in public, though he did issue a statement yesterday.  I'm sure you have heard the comments from the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has said that, he claimed, the supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured.  What is the status of the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei?  ABBAS ARAGHCHI: Well [chuckles], they have made so many claims like this. Yesterday, they said that all Iranian authorities are in the bunkers, but at the same time, the whole world saw our president, speaker of parliament, everybody, the secretary our National Security Council, everybody was in the street among the people who demonstrated.  So there are lots of accusations like that. They will see soon, I guess, that there is no problem with the new Supreme Leader.  He sent his message yesterday and he will perform his duties. He is performing his duties according to the Constitution, and he will continue to do that.  I think by now it should have been clear and it should have been known for everybody that our system is very well rooted in the society.  The Islamic Republic is a system which is not dependent on any individual or any group of people. It is well established. It's a very well established political structure.  And the deepest state is doing its functions, it's functioning. And everything is in place. So they shouldn't have any hope for anything to happen to the individuals.  The system is working. It worked properly after the assassination and martyrdom of our supreme leader. You saw that nothing happened, and everything remained in order, and still everything is under control. 

A lesbian illegal alien in North Carolina subject to an ICE detainer request has been charged with murdering her partner after police found the victim’s body decomposing in the suspect’s closet. On Tuesday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police went to the suspect’s apartment to perform a wellness check after a DoorDash driver reported being told there was a dead person inside the dwelling, as WCNC reports: “When officers entered the apartment, investigators say they discovered a woman’s body hidden inside a closet, behind a door and covered with several towels. The victim was identified as 26-year-old Evelin Carolina Enamorado-Cisnado. Detectives say her body had already begun decomposing.” The next day, officers located and arrested Lhis Birito Costa, 23, charging her with first-degree murder. Jealously and infidelity appear to have been a factor. According to court records, Brito-Costa, told investigators she had been in a relationship with Enamorado-Cisnado and shot her after learning that Enamorado-Cisnado was involved with someone else. At her hearing at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse on March 12, Costa was denied bail when a judge ruled that she should remain in custody without bond. Her next court date is scheduled for April 2. Costa is currently being held at a Charlottee-Mecklenburg detention facility. But, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officers have issued an ICE detainer request for Costa, an illegal alien, reportedly from Brazil. ICE, a federal agency, is seeking to take custody of Costa in order to deport her. However, getting the local police to accommodate the ICE request appears problematic, given Mecklenburg Sheriff Gary McFadden’s legacy of refusing to cooperate with federal officials trying to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Despite state laws requiring sheriffs to honor ICE detainers by holding illegal alien inmates for up to 48 hours to allow ICE agents to come get them, data presented at a North Carolina House hearing last month reveals that McFadden’s office pales when compared to the cooperation with ICE of local police of a similar county, as The Charlotte Observer reports: “The Wake County Sheriff’s Office received 441 detainer requests and 288 pickups last year, a 65% pickup rate, according to data presented. In Mecklenburg County, though, the sheriff’s office received 445 detainer requests, but only 72 of the offenders were actually picked up by ICE. That is about 16%. “That’s quite a disparity, and McFadden had no real answer for it at the hearing when pressed.” In fact, ICE didn’t pick up anyone at the Mecklenburg jail before House Bill 318 took effect in October, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Sarah Mastouri told The Raleigh News & Observer. In 2026, however, Sheriff Mecklenburg has been more willing to cooperate with ICE. Of the 111 detainers so far in 2026, ICE has taken custody of 56 illegal aliens, a rate of 50.5%.