FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., has introduced a bill to ensure homeschoolers aren’t discriminated against in college admissions. “No student should ever face discrimination or disadvantage during the college admissions process simply because they were homeschooled,” Harris said. “Yet, many universities still treat homeschoolers as second-class applicants by requiring excessive documentation and additional testing.” The Higher Education Act currently defines an “institution of higher education” as one that admits students with a high school diploma or its recognized equivalent. However, the law refers to homeschoolers as “Students Who Are Not High School Graduates.” This has caused some colleges and universities to require homeschoolers to take the GED despite having legally graduated. Harris’ bill, called The Home School Graduation Recognition Act, replaces the heading “Students Who Are Not High School Graduates” with the title “Students From Non-Traditional Settings.” Harris says this creates a clear, uniform federal definition affirming homeschool graduates as high school graduates. “With nearly three million homeschooled students across America, it’s long past time to end this discrimination and guarantee every student a fair shot at higher education,” Harris said. The House Education and Workforce Committee, of which Harris is a member, supports the bill. The Home School Legal Defense Association also endorses Harris’ effort. “The Home School Graduation Recognition Act will eliminate ambiguity, prevent ongoing misinterpretation, and ensure equal treatment for homeschool graduates by clarifying that homeschool graduates meet the definition of high school graduates for federal student aid purposes,” HSLDA president James R. Mason said. The post EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Harris Introduces Bill to Stop Discrimination Against Homeschoolers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrats have spent the better part of two decades branding themselves as protectors of working Americans. But when you examine their actual policy choices rather than their press releases, a consistent pattern emerges: Their interventions routinely raise costs, distort markets, and ultimately hurt the very people they claim to champion. Their latest foray into student lending and consumer credit is a case study in that contradiction.A chorus of congressional progressives—led, predictably, by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—is now demanding that President Donald Trump halt his administration’s effort to sell off portions of the federal student loan portfolio. Their reasoning is as political as it is transparent: They want to keep these loans on the government’s books so they can one day engineer a mass “forgiveness” program. Lost in this rhetoric is the structural reality that Washington’s heavy-handed role in student lending is one of the primary drivers of soaring tuition. When the federal government guarantees easy credit, institutions raise prices accordingly. The Warren-Sanders model—limitless federal lending paired with periodic political promises of forgiveness—gives colleges every incentive to hike tuition further, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers will absorb the fallout.Trump’s policy moves in the opposite direction. Transferring significant portions of the loan portfolio to private entities reduces federal exposure, reins in a program plagued by delinquency, and returns loan management to organizations equipped to handle it. For decades, Democrats warned about runaway deficits; yet when confronted with an opportunity to reduce a structurally unsound federal liability, these same voices insist taxpayers should shoulder even more risk. The inconsistency is striking—but it’s also revealing.Because even as they fight to prevent a modest correction in the Student Loan Program, Democrats are simultaneously pushing for a national 10% cap on credit card interest rates. As economist Stephen Moore has shown in his analysis of credit markets, such a cap would instantly make millions of at-risk borrowers unprofitable to serve, drying up access to mainstream credit almost overnight. The data is clear: Unsecured lending only functions when lenders can price for risk. Eliminate that price signal and lenders retreat.That retreat hits hardest among the populations Democrats claim to champion. Higher-risk borrowers—young adults, gig workers, families with limited savings, individuals recovering from financial setbacks—rely on access to revolving credit to manage unexpected expenses, smooth income volatility, or simply build a credit history. If Washington dictates that lenders may not charge more than 10% interest on unsecured credit, banks will respond exactly as any rational actor would: They will stop offering credit to borrowers whose risk profile exceeds the artificial ceiling.And here is the deeper irony. In higher education policy, Warren and Sanders insist on maintaining federally subsidized lending structures that inflate tuition and embed perverse incentives throughout the system. Colleges raise prices because Washington promises unlimited credit and then flirts with broad forgiveness. In consumer credit policy, those same lawmakers champion restrictions that will make legal credit scarce precisely when vulnerable households most need it. The result is a double blow: escalating education costs on the front end and shrinking credit availability on the back end.This creates a perverse policy loop. Federal interventions make college more expensive. Families borrow more to keep up. Tuition continues to rise. Then, when those same families need access to credit to manage expenses, progressive policymakers seek to cap rates at levels that make offering that credit impossible. What starts as misguided paternalism ends as a direct assault on household financial stability.A responsible government would reverse both trends. It would acknowledge that federal overreach in student lending has driven tuition inflation for years and welcome efforts to reduce taxpayer risk. And it would recognize that capping interest rates on unsecured credit below market-clearing levels doesn’t protect consumers—it excludes them.Yet Democrats want it both ways: unlimited government risk when it fuels their preferred political narratives, and heavy-handed restrictions on private credit markets when it yields a populist talking point. Trump’s approach—restoring fiscal discipline in student lending while letting market forces allocate credit—is the only one grounded in economic reality. More importantly, it is the only approach that actually protects working Americans from the long-term consequences of distorted credit markets and runaway tuition. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats Want It Both Ways on Debt—and Working Americans Will Pay the Price appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Public Polls Are for Entertainment Purposes Only

Playing Smashmouth: AgSec Rollins Taking the Blue States' SNAP

Also known as "blue field entoptic phenomenon" and "blue sky sprites", the little dots move in time with your heartbeat.

ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t suspended for very long for preposterously claiming that Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer, Tyler Robinson, was a right-wing MAGA type. In the wake of Kirk’s killing, the media aggressively played dumb, claiming the motive was “elusive” and “complicated.” Now we’re seeing the effects of the misleading coverage. According to a November 25 McLaughlin & Associates national poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted for the Media Research Center, less than a quarter of respondents correctly described Tyler Robinson, the man accused of murdering TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, as left-wing.  The poll asked participants the following question: On September 10, 2025, Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking on a college campus. What was the political ideology of his killer? Options for answers included: “left-wing,” “moderate,” “right-wing,” “no ideology,” “other,” and “don’t know.”  The plurality of respondents (27.5%) professed no knowledge of Robinson’s political ideology. Less than a quarter – 24.1 percent –  identified him as left-wing, while 22.3 percent incorrectly asserted that he was right-wing. Another 13.2 percent claimed he was either moderate or a centrist. The evidence that Robinson was a left-wing radical is voluminous.  In a text conversation obtained by investigators, he plainly stated his motive: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”  Multiple family members publicly confirmed his left-wing tendencies. Robinson’s mother remarked that over the past year, her son had started to “lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans rights-oriented.” Another family member recalled him expressing outright hatred of conservatives. Robinson inscribed his bullet casings with unambiguously far-left messages, despite the bad-faith insistence by corporate journalists that they were somehow inscrutable. The slogans included, “Hey, fascist, catch,” and “Bella Ciao” (the name of a left-wing song popular among antifa radicals). With nearly a quarter of respondents convinced that Kirk was killed by a right winger, it is inarguable that the corporate media have mangled the facts of the case. But the fact that the most common response was professed ignorance about Robinson’s motive highlights another pernicious aspect of the press’s approach to this story: their lack of interest. To left-wing journalists, Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension for lying about Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer was orders of magnitude more deserving of coverage than the shooting itself. As soon as ABC yanked the show, the corporate media pivoted to focus on what they deemed a case of government censorship. CNN host Jake Tapper called the four-day hiatus “pretty much the most direct infringement by the government on free speech that I’ve seen in my lifetime.” Americans had just days to catch any of the press’s few quiet admissions that Robinson was a left-wing radical. After that, Charlie Kirk was relegated to the role of background character in articles and news reports resulting from his own murder. Given the media’s disastrous mishandling of this story, it should come as no surprise that respondents’ news consumption habits proved a significant determining factor in how they understood Robinson’s politics. Only 18.8 percent of those who primarily watched left-of-center cable news outlets were able to correctly describe his ideology, as compared to 27.7 percent who asserted that he was right-wing. Surprisingly, even among right-of-center cable news viewers, barely over a third of participants (33.5%) answered that Robinson was left-wing, and a still-considerable 18.0 percent believed him to be right-wing. The professed political ideology of respondents also heavily affected their perception of Robinson’s own political proclivities. A whopping 35.4 percent of liberals believed he was right-wing, while just 12.7 percent identified him as left-wing. For conservatives, 17.0 percent answered that he was right-wing, whereas over 41.9 percent described him as left-wing. Students were the single least likely cohort to correctly identify Robinson’s political bent; 33.2 percent of students believed Charlie Kirk’s accused murderer was right-wing, while a paltry 4.0 percent accurately labeled him left-wing. The American left appears to have a political violence problem. According to a September survey by YouGov, nearly one-fifth (18%) of liberals believed politically-motivated violence was at least “sometimes justified.” But despite leftists’ burgeoning fondness for political terrorism, the McLaughlin poll demonstrates that the left-wing media remain unwilling even to acknowledge when their own side has engaged in it.

The woke pastor of the North Chili United Methodist Church in Upstate New York recently surprised his congregation with the news that he plans to masquerade as a woman full-time and take cross-sex drugs.No longer sporting the beard he wore in his headshot photo on the United Methodist of Upper New York website, Rev. Phillip Phaneuf, 51, donned rainbow stoles and told his congregation on Nov. 23, "I am inviting you to join me in a season of creative transformation for myself and, I think, for all of us."'They do not support me.'"I'm transitioning. I'm affirming and saying to all of you that I am transgender," continued Phaneuf. "The best way to put this is that I'm not becoming a woman; I'm giving up pretending to be a man."The Methodist pastor, who is hardly the UMC's first transvestite pastor, called for the Holy Spirit's involvement in the process and cautioned his parishioners about the "fear of the unknown" in such circumstances.In an apparent attempt to assuage such fear, Phaneuf told churchgoers that while he's changing his name to "Phillippa," they could still call him "Phil"; that his personality wouldn't change; and that he would continue to prioritize "belonging." He noted, however, that he was now identifying as an "asexual" and that his face, name, body hair, voice, and clothes would change — adding that there is no such thing as "girls' clothes or boys' clothes."Phaneuf — who claims his pronouns are now "she, her" — said that he wouldn't become the "pronoun police," as he expects that no one will "misgender or mispronoun out of malice."The legacy media appears keen to respect Phaneuf's wishes, with even the New York Post playing along and Fox News Digital refraining from using his correct pronouns.RELATED: 'Not medicine — it's malpractice': Trump HHS buries child sex-change regime with damning report Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe Methodist pastor claimed during his sermon that the scriptures, Methodist theology, his district superintendent, his bishop, and the UMC are "okay" with his transition.At the expense of alienating thousands of congregations, the United Methodist Church has accommodated LGBT activists' demands in recent years. For instance, the 2024 General Conference removed the church's 40-year ban on non-straight clergy last year and dropped the prohibition against performing same-sex weddings.While the pastor claimed that his superiors were receptive to his transvestism, he told his congregation that his parents were "absolutely not.""They texted me this morning and asked for me to tell you all that they do not support me and that they have chosen their convictions and their beliefs over supporting their child," said Phaneuf.Despite his parents' alleged rejection of his lifestyle choice, the pastor was quick to lean into his superficial female role-play, getting his ears pierced, wearing makeup, and throwing on a wig.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Could hormonal birth control be turning women into NPCs?That’s “non-player characters,” by the way. You may remember the meme, which reached the height of its popularity a few years ago and has largely disappeared now.Only now, many decades after it was unleashed on the world, are we starting to understand hormonal contraception’s effects more fully.The NPC is a person who lacks any kind of unique identity. Who they are is completely determined by their social circumstances and by the values and information fed to them by a narrow range of approved sources: the government, scientists and “experts,” the mainstream media, Hollywood and Netflix, handpicked celebrities and influencers.The NPC exercises no independent judgment, no free-thinking of their own. They simply do as they’re told, and they get very angry if you don’t do the same.The NPC is represented by a special Wojak — a cartoon person — with grey skin and generic facial features: pindot eyes, a semi-triangle nose, and a horizontal line for a mouth.During the pandemic, for example, the NPC meme was used to mock everyone who chose to “trust the science” unquestioningly. It was also widely used in Donald Trump’s first presidency to describe devotees of the mainstream media who repeated its various platitudes and mantras ad infinitum — “orange man bad,” “diversity is our strength,” and so on.That sync-ing feelingA new study suggests that hormonal birth control reduces the “functional individuality” of women’s brains, making them more alike with one another. Making women NPCs, in other words.Researchers analyzed the brain activity of 26 users by means of MRI scans. They looked in particular at something called “functional connectome fingerprinting,” a method of identifying patterns of brain connectivity that are distinct to each person.They found that while each woman’s brain patterns remained identifiable, the overall distinctiveness of those patterns was reduced by hormonal birth control.In basic terms, there was a general “dampening” or “normalizing” effect on the brain as a whole.The changes affected certain networks more than others, though: networks involved in executive function, muscle control, perception and attention, and the so-called “default mode network,” which is active during various kinds of introspection, including daydreaming, thinking about oneself and others, remembering the past, and planning for the future. The default-mode network is central to the creation of an “inner self” and a coherent “internal narrative.” In other words, a distinct identity.RELATED: Time for RFK Jr. to expose the dark truth about the pill Rattankun Thongbun via iStock/Getty ImagesMood for thoughtIn truth, I might have been exaggerating just a little bit when I said birth control could be turning women into NPCs. Yes, we’ve seen changes in particular regions of the brain that are associated with particular functions, but the researchers didn’t investigate the actual effects of these changes — I’ve simply inferred what they might be. The researchers did note evidence that the changes were associated with increases in negative moods, which many of the participants recorded, but we can’t say much more than that, at least not yet.What we need is more research. This might look at direct evidence of the effects of hormonal birth control on female behavior, preferences, and character: things like individual decision-making processes and personality traits like conformity.BrainsplainingThere are plenty of studies that already do that kind of thing with hormones, especially testosterone. Some have shown that a dose of testosterone will make a man more likely to stand up for himself and defend a minority opinion, even in the face of disapproval from the majority. Studies have also shown that testosterone makes men more comfortable with inequality and hierarchy, which is usually couched as an “antisocial effect,” but when you remember that virtually every society in history has been hierarchical, except our own — at least in principle — that doesn’t really make much sense.Still, we have every reason to be concerned about the effects of hormonal birth control on women’s brains and their behavior. As the study notes, more than 150 million women worldwide use hormonal birth control, and if it is changing the way their brains work, that obviously could mean significant effects in the aggregate, with the potential to touch more or less every aspect of life, from personal relationships to politics.Retrograde researchOf course, this is a controversial stance to take, even as evidence mounts. The drug makers don’t want to lose money if women stop taking hormonal birth control, and the champions of “liberation” don’t want women to stop either. The entire sexual revolution was kickstarted by the pill, and “equality” as we understand it is predicated on women having total conscious control over their bodies. Anybody who says women shouldn’t take hormonal birth control, or just that they should think carefully before they do, is immediately denounced as retrograde, sexist, or, as we’ve seen with recent viral social-media trends, a purveyor of dangerous “medical misinformation.” And that includes women who’ve been on hormonal birth control themselves and quit, and female medical professionals like Dr. Sarah Hill, the author of the very well-reasoned and evidenced book, “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control.”My new book, “The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity,” is a call to get serious about the effects of hormones on politics. Deadly serious. Testosterone, in particular, is rapidly disappearing, in large part because we’ve created a world that’s reliant on thousands of chemicals and substances that mimic the “female” hormone estrogen. We had created that world long before we even knew what many of those chemicals are, let alone what they do to us.The same is true of hormonal contraception. Only now, many decades after it was unleashed on the world, are we starting to understand its effects more fully, having built a world that is reliant upon it to function.Our hormonal interventions remain clumsy and short-sighted. In truth, we’ve not come all that far from the first bright spark who decided to lop off a bull’s testicles to bring it under control. In that first brutal act, endocrinology — the science of hormones — was born, a science still very much in its infancy.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is launching his latest endeavor to uproot woke culture in the federal government by bringing Christmas to the Department of War, and Blaze News has exclusively learned about some recent changes at the Pentagon that are sure to bring everyone into the holiday spirit. For instance, Hegseth will be holding the first ever Pentagon Tree Lighting Ceremony on Wednesday afternoon as well as revamping the old Christmas tree on the grounds. Bald eagles were seen flying overhead.This ceremony serves as a major course-correction from previous Pentagon leadership, contrasting starkly with President Joe Biden's Department of Defense. Under Hegseth's leadership, this is the first time the Pentagon has decorated for Christmas at this scale, according to a DOW official. RELATED: Exclusive: Moses Ezekiel’s historic sculpture finally set for installation in Arlington Cemetery, by the Southern graves it once marked Photo by STAFF/AFP via Getty ImagesTo commemorate this new era at the Pentagon, Hegseth also signed off on removing the old Amelanchier tree that was planted on the grounds around 2008. The old tree had been declining for some time and was slated to be removed within the next year.The tree was replaced by a 14-foot Nellie Stevens Holly from the Green Works Nursery in Chantilly, Virginia. Bald eagles were seen flying overhead while the new tree was being planted, one DOW official told Blaze News. RELATED: Exclusive: Sen. Blackburn introduces bill that would bar military 'leftists' from disrespecting Trump in key way Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesAll Pentagon staff and their families were extended an invitation to the lighting ceremony, according to a DOW official. "We are pro-family and pro-Christmas at the department," the official told Blaze News. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Rachel Maddow Has a Theory for Why Trump's Targeting Totally Innocent Fisherman in Rowboats