'I’m the head of this household'

Oklahoma consistently ranks among the worst states in the country for public school outcomes. In an effort to improve educational options, the state’s official charter school board and an online Catholic charter school are fighting what they say is religious discrimination all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.   Charter schools in Oklahoma are run by private entities that receive public funding through a contract with the state. These schools are open to all students, tuition-free. Attorneys from the Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom are appealing an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling from June 2024 that said the state’s charter school board could not authorize a contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School because the school is religious. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, on April 30.   Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a lawsuit against the board in the state Supreme Court for failing to adhere to state law when it granted a charter authorization to St. Isidore. Article 2 Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution prevents public money from supporting any religious institution. The attorney general also cited the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution and a nonsectarian provision in the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act, which classifies charter schools as public schools.   Though not technically a Blaine amendment, the provision in the state constitution follows from the same history as the proposed but failed 19th century U.S. constitutional amendment that would have forbidden the states to grant public money or lands to schools with religious affiliations. Thirty-seven states passed their own so-called “mini” Blaine amendments around the turn of the last century. Oklahoma followed suit when it achieved statehood in 1907.   Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, an attorney and the director of The Conscience Project, said the mini Blaine amendments originate from anti-Catholic and anti-minority discrimination.  “You can’t shake the discriminatory foundation and history even if, in Oklahoma’s [case], it may not have had its genesis at the time of [Blaine], it still reflects this anti-religion animus and bigotry,” Picciotti-Bayer said.   Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, said the Supreme Court has been chipping away at the teeth of the states’ Blaine amendments in recent years. In Ezpinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2022, the court held Montana violated the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment by preventing families from using state-funded tuition assistance at private Catholic schools.  In a brief filed March 31, Drummond said a taxpayer-funded public Catholic charter school would violate the U.S. Constitution.   “Oklahoma readily agrees that there is no categorical bar against public monies reaching (and funding) private religious schools, including for devotional instruction and ministry, through such parental choice programs,” the filing said. “No one doubts that such an education can be profoundly valuable. But it is not one that states must provide in public schools.”   Oklahoma’s school choice laws offer tax credits and tuition assistance for religious private schools, he said, thus eliminating the need for religious public schools.   The case is not about the exclusion of a religious entity from government aid, according to Drummond’s press secretary Leslie Berger. It is about the state’s creation of a religious school, which is the establishment of religion, she said. “St. Isidore’s proponents have said the public charter school will be ‘Catholic in every way,’ from employment regulations to Catholic instruction,” Berger said. “As the attorney general has argued, that simply cannot be squared with the Oklahoma Constitution or the U.S. Constitution. The framers of the U.S. Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution wisely understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the state from sponsoring any religion at all. If St. Isidore Catholic public charter school is allowed to proceed, the inevitable result will be taxpayer-funded public schools teaching Sharia law, Wicca—even the Church of Satan.” The head of the state’s charter school board said he is more concerned with improving test scores than proselytizing the youth. Oklahoma ranks 48th out of 51 (including Washington, D.C.) in one World Population Review ranking state public school systems based on K-12 performance, school funding and resources, higher education quality, and safety.   “We want to make sure we have great options for families to choose and expand their choices so that we can improve educational outcomes for the state of Oklahoma and the children and the families,” chairman of Oklahoma’s Statewide Charter School Board, Brian Shellem, told The Daily Signal.   The charter school initiative gives parents the option to pull their children out of low-performing public schools and give them better educational opportunities at no cost, Shellem said. The charter contract prevents Isidore from excluding children based on religion.  The U.S. Constitution trumps state constitutions on First Amendment violations, according to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Phil Sechler.   “That Constitution makes clear that you’re entitled to the free exercise of religion, which the Supreme Court has made clear, means that state programs, government programs that are open to private groups are open to religious groups, too,” Sechler said. “They have to be.”  Shellem said the online school would provide an option for low-income or rural families who may not otherwise have access to a charter or private school. The state’s charter school board approved St. Isidore on its merit as an educational program, he said.  “We want the best results,” Shellem said. “We want the people who can get the job done the best. And we shouldn’t be excluding those who can get it done just because they have a religious affiliation.”  The post Supreme Court to Decide if Catholic Charter Schools Can Receive Public Funding appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump is using tariffs to apply heavy pressure on China on trade, but he remains open to negotiations with Beijing, Tucker Carlson says.   “Well, of course, he is,” Carlson said when asked whether he thought Trump is willing to negotiate with China. “I mean, the question is: Who needs the other more? Does the U.S. need China more or China need the U.S.? I can’t answer that,” Carlson told The Daily Signal.   Only hours after new tariffs went into effect on about 90 countries around the world, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs, but he increased tariffs on goods from China.   “Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world’s markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.   China and the U.S. “need each other,” Carlson said. “The deal has been for the past 30 years: We’ll buy your underpriced consumer goods; you buy our overpriced debt. And you know, in some ways that’s worked great. In other ways, it hasn’t worked at all.”  Carlson was at the White House last week when Trump stood in the Rose Garden and announced his plan to increase tariffs to a minimum of 10% on nations around the world. Despite knowing Trump for years and the president’s interest in tariffs as a negotiation tool, the conservative news commentator and former Fox News host said he was “shocked” by Trump’s tariff plan.   “I wasn’t against what Trump was saying, but I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s shocking that he said that. You can’t erect trade barriers.’ … It’s like all the childhood orthodoxies were still rattling around in my head.”   Free market conservatives have traditionally opposed most tariffs.   While there is a lot Carlson said he cannot assess regarding Trump’s use of tariffs due to not being an economist, he was confident in saying, “There’s going to be a disengagement from China.”   “I hope it doesn’t become a … total disengagement,” Carlson said, “and I certainly hope there’s not a military conflict. I don’t think we’d win. Well, we wouldn’t win at this point. But there needs to be some kind of disengagement on trade.”   America cannot be reliant on China and other nations for critical products such as pharmaceuticals and critical military components, he said.   “You have to be able to build a jet engine exclusively in the United States and not rely on supply chains 10,000 miles long or on countries that are hostile to you. I mean, that’s crazy. It’s just basic stuff. And we have the resources to do that,” he said.   On Friday, China raised tariffs on U.S. imports to a matching 125%.   Trump says he is using tariffs to bring American manufacturing back to the U.S., an action some on Capitol Hill say is long overdue.   “Missouri alone has lost 50,000 jobs to China,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote on X on Thursday. “Trump is right to go after China.”   The post Tucker Carlson: ‘Of Course’ Trump Is Willing to Negotiate With China on Tariffs 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. With two large theater wars raging, one in Ukraine and one in the Middle East, maybe it’s time just to pause for a few minutes and reflect on the historic nature of war. Traditionally, the way that political differences were settled—the aggressor versus the invaded—was by defeating the enemy through superior force. Not proportional force, not symmetrical, but asymmetrical and disproportionate force. Forcing them to either surrender or to forcibly destroy their means of opposition. And then humiliating them and subjecting them to political reform. That’s how the Civil War ended. Unconditional surrender. Ulysses Grant gave terms to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. The South accepted it. They were defeated. The issue that had separated the two sides—slavery, states’ rights—was solved. Same thing with World War II. We did not have a Versailles Treaty. We did not have an armistice like World War I. We subjected the Italians, the Japanese, and the Germans to overwhelming force. They accepted that, surrendered. And we forced political changes. And today, they’re all our friends and allies. That is very rare, though, in history. It happens and it’s the preferable way of solving a political existential difference. But it doesn’t happen and it’s almost nonexistent since World War II. If you look at Korea, if you look at Vietnam, if you look at the Gulf War I, if you look at Gulf War II, etc., etc., if you look at, what, seven or eight wars in the Middle East that Israel has fought—so why is that happening? One, people think there’s nine nuclear powers in the world today and they have several proxies. So, when an inevitable conflict arises in the Middle East, we’re worried that Russia might intervene or China might intervene. Or along the Ukrainian border, we think strategies dictate that Ukraine should hit strategic targets in Russia. But if we did that—they did that, Europe did that, we supplied it—Russia might, as they threaten, reply with a tactical nuclear weapon that would escalate into DEFCON 1. Cuban Missile Crisis. Is that the answer? Or is it we’re a therapeutic world now? We’re globalized. You can see a death in action by drone in the Middle East on your television set. So, we’re all engaged and we see war in its raw manifestation. This is not like the Civil War where people had no idea what the body count was at Gettysburg for weeks. So, maybe we are repulsed by it. And we say, “No, no, don’t do that. War is an obsolete idea.” I could go on but there are a lot of restraints on classical warfare formula. Defeat, humiliate the enemy, subject them to political terms, change or alter their politics, and there is no longer an existing difference and war then has some utility. What do we see in the Middle East? Israel has decided, since Oct. 7, 2023, that it must take a different course. So, as I’m speaking, they are in Gaza and they have adopted a new strategy. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but it basically defies the modern restraints on ultimate, unconditional surrender by the enemy. What do I mean? They’re saying, “I don’t really care if Iran says they have a nuclear weapon or not. We’ll deal with that. But we are going to defeat Hamas, humiliate it, and force them either out of Gaza or to disband. And we’re gonna do that by superior force. And we do not really care what CNN shows you on your television screen.” We’ll see if it works. It’s an ossified idea in our culture. But it is a solution that 2,500 years of Western civilization have said works. Maybe in Ukraine. Ukraine said, “Maybe we can push Russia back.” That was impossible. That spring offensive, as much as we all wanted it to succeed, they were attacking a country four times the population, 10 times the gross domestic product, 30 times the wealth. Maybe Russia thought, “The only way to solve our Ukrainian problem is to take Kyiv, dismantle the government.” That was their strategy. It was classically Roman, but it didn’t work because they didn’t have the military wherewithal to defeat Ukraine. So, generally, in the world today, these conflicts are what we call a “bellum interruptum,” they just keep going on. They simmer down, they flare up like a forest fire. But the old classical idea that you defeat the enemy, you solve the political problem may not be as ossified as we think. Maybe the self-restraints are up here rather than in the real world. And we’re gonna see very quickly, perhaps, in the Middle East. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post How Will the Wars in Ukraine, Middle East End? The Answer Lies in History appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Universities face a reckoning. President Donald Trump canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University for failing to protect Jewish students. Columbia caved to the administration’s demands to get that funding back. Now, Harvard is in Trump’s crosshairs, with $9 billion at risk. Trump’s Department of Education is investigating at least 60 universities for creating a hostile environment. Something is terribly wrong. The solution isn’t partisan posturing or federal overreach—it’s institutional courage. And it starts with replacing outdated neutrality doctrines—policies that prohibit universities from making statements about “controversial” issues—with values-driven principles. University administrators make opaque decisions about what’s controversial—in their minds, defunding the police after George Floyd’s death in 2020 was not controversial, but condemning Hamas after the terrorist organization murdered 1,200 civilians was—so “neutrality” becomes just a cover story for administrators’ selective silence. Critics argue that Trump’s concerns about campus antisemitism is mere political theater. The New York Times reported that “Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million,” referring to Columbia’s September 2000 decision not to buy a 75-acre lot from Trump located near the Lincoln Center in Manhattan’s West End, implying that the parallel dollar amount shows this federal action is personal payback time. And over 3,000 people signed the “Not in Our Name” statement, claiming Trump’s funding cuts and student deportations have nothing to do with antisemitism; rather, they’re claiming that Trump’s goal is supporting Christian Nationalism while silencing the “anti-colonialist resistance” movement. But these critics ignore reality. Campuses really did become hostile environments for Jews—and if we’re honest, they’ve been intellectually hostile to heterodox and conservative views for years. The difference now is that the hostility has turned physical. At UCLA, campus protesters chanted “Itbah al-yahud” (“Slaughter the Jews”) before waves of violence broke out. At Stanford University, pro-Palestinian protesters drew Nazi swastikas in a Jewish student’s dorm room. At Harvard, protesters put antisemitic stickers of an Israel flag with a swastika where the Jewish star would go near the Hillel Center for Jewish Life. Only the deeply disengaged could have missed the surge in antisemitism and violence on campus since Oct. 7, 2023, and Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel. And only the deliberately ironic could pretend that requiring universities to take down swastikas is somehow platforming neo-Nazis. What these universities share isn’t just elite status. They believe silence can stand in for moral leadership. Each adopted some form of “institutional neutrality” based on the 1967 “Kalven Report,” which argues that universities should not take official positions on contested issues. The theory is that institutional neutrality promotes students’ civil discourse. But neutrality only works—in theory—when an institution is healthy, with established values, shared norms, and fairly enforced rules. The reality is that neutrality has collapsed into paralysis. Campuses retreated from moral clarity, failed to distinguish protest from intimidation, and left students—especially Jewish students—to fend for themselves. Silence didn’t protect discourse. It protected disorder. The consequences of that moral vacuum are now coming into focus. An ongoing lawsuit alleges that Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and several campus groups—including Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest—acted as a “propaganda arm” for Hamas. According to the complaint, these groups circulated material bearing the Hamas Media Office logo and followed messaging directives coordinated through Hamas-affiliated networks. Even more disturbing, the suit claims that Students for Justice in Palestine used materials created before the Oct. 7 massacre—implying foreknowledge of the attack. If true, these allegations suggest that under the banner of neutrality, a U.S. campus became a staging ground for a terror-aligned propaganda campaign. When “neutral” universities fail to act with moderation and clarity, they invite the strong hand of the state to intervene. That’s what happened when federal agents arrested the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine ringleader, who now faces deportation under a Cold War-era law that allows removal if someone is deemed to threaten U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked at least 300 student visas to date. Whether or not these deportation proceedings survive due process, the message is clear: If universities won’t keep their own houses in order, the federal government apparently will. And when that happens, everyone loses—students, faculty, and the very idea of the university as a space for principled debate. If universities want to reclaim their integrity—and preserve their independence—they must move beyond outdated doctrines and govern with moral clarity. That means reaffirming their values: free inquiry; community safety; and fair, consistent enforcement. What universities need is a reinvigorated community process: a genuine reckoning with their own identity, purpose, and values. The goal isn’t to take sides amid a reasonable debate. It’s to take responsibility when hate speech kills conversations. The danger isn’t just what’s happening on our campuses—it’s what’s not happening. When universities say nothing, do nothing, and enforce nothing, they don’t protect speech. They erode trust. They invite extremism. They surrender control to outside forces—whether radical activists or federal agents. If higher education wants to preserve its independence, it has to earn it. Not by staying neutral, but by standing for something. Expressing shared moral values isn’t politics. It’s leadership. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Universities Flunk the Neutrality Test When It Comes to Student Protests appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Texas is Trying to Do Something About Squatters

BREAKING: Wave G'Bye, Khalil - Immigration Judge Declares Hamas Sympathizer 'Removable'

It seems impossible for former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to stay out of the limelight and make himself look even more ridiculous. The insufferable economic dunce-in-chief joined the show Here & Now on National Public Radio to go on a predictable tirade against President Donald Trump’s tariff battle with trading partners, and completely downplaying the significance of trade deficits. NPR asked Krugman during an April 8 segment, “Trump has long criticized U.S. trade deficits with countries including Japan and China. Do trade deficits with individual countries matter?” Then Krugman had the temerity to accuse Trump of using dumb economics, as if he really has any leg to stand on  following the extent to which he simped for the disaster of Bidenomics. “No, just as simple as that. This is all junk economics. I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. I have a trade surplus with my employer. Bilateral trade deficits are all around us. It's how we live.” Yes, the same person who spent months trying to convince the country that the inflation crisis under Biden was “transitory,” that America would witness a Biden boom, and who told Biden before his inauguration “ Don’t Worry About Inflation” is complaining about so-called “junk economics.” He also even had the audacity to bleat that Biden “created the best job market in a generation.” The level of projection here is just unreal. Fox Business reported in February that  the“U.S. goods deficit soared 14% to $1.2 trillion in 2024, with imports reaching an all-time high of $364.9 billion in December ahead of Trump's return to office,” with significant deficits tied to China, Mexico and Canada.  Krugman further stoked alarmism when asked about the effects of a persistent trade war, ““In the longer run, meaning a year or two from now, it just means increases in prices that will run well ahead of increases in wages. So, we'll be talking about people having less purchasing power. It's a pretty serious cost.” Oh, so now all of a sudden Krugman is concerned about increased prices running ahead of wages after he effectively treated Americans as being dumb for panning Bidenomics? Research released by Statista in February 2025, found that “[d]espite the level of wage growth reaching 6.7 percent in the summer of 2022, it has not been enough to curb the impact of even higher inflation rates. The federally mandated minimum wage in the United States has not increased since 2009, meaning that individuals working minimum wage jobs have taken a real terms pay cut for the last twelve years.”  In January 2025, Statista released another analysis headlined, “Biden's Blemish: Wages Haven't Kept Up With Inflation.” Was Krugman making a fuss then? Nah. In fact, in 2024, Krugman was too busy telling readers in 2024 that their economic struggles were practically made-up: “A lot of it is simply — a lot of people who say the economy is lousy —what they’re really saying is, ‘I hate the idea that a Democrat is president.’” Krugman’s comments, of course, were blurted out right before the latest inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was released, showing that prices slowed down in March more than expected to 2.4 percent against the projected 2.6 percent increase. Krugman’s comments were also prior to Trump announcing a 90-day tariff pause on 75 countries who did not execute retaliatory actions against his trade policies, while slapping a 125 percent tariff on China to boot, ironically leading to stock markets skyrocketing. As columnist David Marcus analyzed April 10, “Democrats, and a fair number of free-marketeer conservatives to boot, celebrated Trump ‘caving’ to the pressure of the financial markets. But when the smoke settled, it was clear that, far from folding, Trump had instituted a historic tariff regime, and somehow got a stock market rally out of it.”  Everyone’s freaking out about the tariffs and the stock market dropping, but here’s the deal: This isn’t the end of the economy. If you're a real investor, you don’t make decisions based on headlines. You think long term. The market is still up over time. Wealth is built by… pic.twitter.com/vlhQ5WRUgI — Dave Ramsey (@DaveRamsey) April 8, 2025 What the end result of Trump’s trade war is, nobody knows. But there is enough evidence to show that the last person anybody in the media — including NPR — should be looking to for a serious take on the economy’s future is an unhinged ideologue like Krugman who acts like Bidenomics was the best thing since chocolate ice cream. Good grief. 

This is not criticism – this is subversion. The VP was reflecting the President’s policy position – he is her Commander-in-Chief & her job is to carry out his policies – not her own. She was not elected. https://t.co/MzG2ysyET4 — Lara Logan (@laralogan) April 11, 2025

from, Sprott Money: In this episode, Andrew Sleigh from Sprott Money unpacks the deeper implications of Canadian tariffs on China, the accelerating gold and silver markets, and what a weakening USD means for everyday Canadians. He explains how the rising gold price reflects a global loss of confidence in fiat currencies, and how the silver price […]