If President Donald Trump’s long-anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin goes well, the two might extend their trip to Alaska to establish a peace deal with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “I’m more interested in an immediate peace deal — getting peace fast,” Trump told Fox Radio host Brian Kilmeade. “Depending on what happens with my meeting, I’m going to be calling up President Zelensky, and let’s get him over to wherever we’re going to meet.” The summit will take place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage starting at 11:30 a.m. local time. Regardless of how the meeting goes, Trump is expected to hold a press conference. “I’m going to go there, and I’m representing a lot of people, and especially people that are being killed unnecessarily, like 5-7,000 soldiers a week. They’re not Americans, but they’re lives, they’re souls,” Trump said. “And if I can stop something, I’ve stopped six wars this year. This was going to be one of my easy ones, but it never works out that way. This turns out to be probably the most difficult.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the press conference that though the president has many options, he will focus on diplomacy and negotiation. “Certainly, the president has plenty of tools at his disposal that he could use if necessary,” Leavitt said. “But he has always said that diplomacy and negotiation is his primary way of hoping to end this war — so that’s what he’ll be looking to do tomorrow.” Leavitt said Trump “wants to exhaust all options to try to bring this war to a peaceful resolution.” “He wants to sit down and look the Russian president in the eye and see what progress can be made to move the ball forward to end this brutal war,” she said. The options in the president’s arsenal that Leavitt referenced likely refer to economic measures that the Biden administration and the European Union left on the table to pressure Russia, according to Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates. Trump could “include waivers for Russian energy exports, elements in the Russian financial sector that have remained free from sanctions, and importers of Russian energy—including major European allies—who have not been penalized,” said Coates, who now serves as vice president at The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. “If President Trump gets serious about this he will get the attention of everyone—including China, which is the single biggest importer of Russian energy,” Coates added. Trump said if the meeting goes well, he would consider staying longer in Alaska to meet with Zelensky, but if not, he will return to Washington. “I don’t know where we’re going to have the second meeting, but we have an idea of three different locations and we’ll be including the possibility, because it would be by far the easiest, of staying in Alaska,” he said. “If it’s a bad meeting, I’m not calling anybody,” he added. “I’m going home.” Trump has said the deal making will be up to the Ukrainian and Russia leaders, not him. “I’m not going to make a deal. It’s not up to me to make a deal,” he said. “I think a deal should be made for both [Putin and Zelenskyy]. Putin said last week he wasn’t against meeting Zelenskyy, “but certain conditions need to be created” and were “still a long way off.” Prior to the summit in Russia, Zelenskyy went to Berlin for virtual meetings with Trump and European leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump was “very clear” on Wednesday that he wants to obtain a ceasefire. Macron said Trump agreed Ukraine should be involved in any talks on territory. German chancellor Friedrich Merz, at a post-call news conference with Zelensky, called the European meeting “constructive” and said they were all “very much in agreement.” The meeting marks Putin’s first trip to the United States since 2015 for the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The post What to Expect From Trump’s Meeting With Putin appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Conservatives are catching up to the Left when it comes to digital donation prowess. While the Left is known for employing the fundraising behemoth ActBlue, Republicans increasingly have their own formidable fundraising platform called WinRed.  Ryan Lyk, the CEO of WinRed, described the organization’s mission as helping, “Republican candidates raise more money online, grow a strong small-dollar donor network, and, most importantly, to help our candidates win.”  ActBlue has no doubt contributed to keeping Democrat positions and candidates ahead of Republicans in fundraising numbers in the past, but WinRed is working to close that gap. The organization has seen massive state-level growth with an increase in first time donors of 802% from 2020 to 2024 and an increase in unique emails collected of 884% over the same time period.  Additionally, the group has seen a nearly 60% increase in the number of account sign-ups for campaigns from January to June 2025 compared to the same months in 2021. It raised $1.8 billion from 4.5 million donors during the 2024 election season. ActBlue maintains an impressive lead for now, generating a whopping $3.8 billion during the 2024 election cycle.  WinRed has now been rapidly adopted by major players in Republican politics including 81% of GOP primary winners and 97% of GOP general election winners in 2024. The organization’s services are open to any Republican candidate running for office in local, state, or federal elections as well as conservative oriented PACs, C3s, and C4s.  The group has processed $5.6 billion for campaigns and has 8.8 million individual donors. It touts its customer service reporting that it does not send any text messages to donors or make donor data available to be purchased. Instead, only the campaign the donor has given to gets his or her data. WinRed has a 3.2% flat processing fee for donations of $500 or more, and it also has the capacity to set up special accounts for campaigns to track high-dollar fundraising. Its grassroots processing fee rate is 3.94%, which is comparable to ActBlue’s 3.95% processing fee.  ActBlue has come under scrutiny in recent months over its governance and operations. The Republican chairmen of the House committees on the Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, and Administration wrote a letter in April requesting documents from the group and testimony from two of its members. The House Republican leaders said they were investigating, “ActBlue’s fraud-prevention policies and practices, which may allow bad actors to make fraudulent political donations, including from foreign sources.”  Replying to an inquiry by The Daily Signal, an ActBlue spokesperson said, “As we have historically done, ActBlue will continue to respond to requests from the House committees.”  The post Republicans Have an Answer to ActBlue in the Form of WinRed 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. This week there’s a scheduled summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and it’s scheduled to be held in Anchorage, Alaska. Apparently, this was a place that offered a great deal of security. It’s a smaller, controllable city. It’s in the United States, but on the other hand, it’s one of the closest places, major cities, to Russia itself from the United States. We don’t have a very good history of summits. And many summits—as you remember, in March of 2017, Antony Blinken, the Biden secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met with their Chinese communist counterparts. And they were dressed down and humiliated and really didn’t say anything. And what followed then from that was further Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, the Chinese balloon, etc. So these summits are very important. One thing that we’re not hearing from the Left and the Never-Trump Right is that Donald Trump is a “Putin asset,” a “Putin puppet.” I’m quoting pretty loosely, but accurately, what former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan have been saying for 10 years on social media and on cable news. And the reason they’re not saying that Donald Trump is a Putin puppet and going to be had is that he gave Putin an “Art of the Deal” leeway when he first came into office and he doubled down on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He basically was saying, “Putin, see, I’m giving you an opportunity.” Putin did not take it. Donald Trump pivoted and found out that he had to use leverage against Putin. And the leverage he’s going to use, or has threatened to use, is far more deleterious to Russia and far more dangerous and far more ambitious than anything imagined by former President Joe Biden, namely, a secondary boycott. That would be to not trade with countries that trade with Russia. That could include the two largest countries in the world, India and China. India had very close relations with us. We were trying to triangulate India against China. They have their own border disputes and long-standing disagreements. But if we secondary boycott India, that will be a rumination of our relations with India. So, what I’m getting at is Donald Trump’s taking a lot of risk, a lot of risk in using a secondary boycott to pressure Putin. Ninety percent of the issues are already solved. They have been for a year or two. We’re now in a deadlock. Russia claims they’ve only lost 200,000 dead. But they more likely lost a million dead, wounded, missing, taken prisoner. We don’t know the exact ratios of each. And probably Ukraine with their dead, missing, wounded, prisoners around, I don’t know, 400,000 or 500,000. So this is like a Stalingrad or a Somme or a Verdun. We know the general parameters. We’ve discussed them before. Ukraine will not be in NATO. That’s a concession to Putin. But it really isn’t a concession because, privately, a lot of the NATO members did not want Ukraine because they had no intention of going all the way to the Donbas, should Russia invade again, on Article 5 of the NATO doctrine. They were not going to follow that. So they don’t want Ukraine in NATO. Neither do we. I’m not sure Ukraine even does, privately. Secondly, there was no military ability. There’s a moral argument for, but no military ability, to take back Crimea and take back the Donbas. So what we’re discussing now is that the Russian army is about a hundred miles west from the border in Crimea, the Donbas, and then further west. In total, about a hundred miles. That would be the DMZ—in other words, the Demilitarized Zone, where we have a ceasefire, an armistice. And then we would haggle in a peace conference over exchanges of territory on either side. That’s the outline of peace. The problem is that—there’s two problems. One: Ukraine’s Constitution says no land—no land, not Crimea, not Donbas—nothing can be ceded to a foreign country without a plebiscite. And we don’t know what the Ukrainian people will say. They polled they’re tired of the war. They polled they don’t want to give one inch of their sovereign territory. On the other side, Putin himself knows that he has to report to the oligarchic and military hierarchy. And he doesn’t know whether a hundred miles west, in addition to institutionalizing the possession of Crimea and the Donbas for good, whether that extra hundred miles from the border territory will justify the enormous losses, humiliation that the Russian military has suffered. So, we’re gonna have this summit. And Trump is going to say to Putin, “You can have no NATO Ukraine. You can have the Crimea. You can have the Donbas. I think I can get Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to agree. But we’ve gotta fight over how far west you are and whether you have to go back or will stay in place.” And then he’s going to have to tell Zelenskyy, “We’re supplying you. That’s the only leverage we have against Putin, along with a secondary boycott. But you have to decide whether you’re going to cede the Donbas, Crimea, and some of the territory. Because if you don’t, there’s not going to be peace. And if there’s not going to be peace, we can’t assure you a blank check forever.” So, that’s what the parameters are. And one thing that we do know, the Never-Trump Right, as I said, and the Left have ceased the “Donald Trump is a puppet,” “Donald Trump is a sellout,” “Donald Trump is a Russian asset” because nobody in the last four years, in the Biden administration, has met with the Russians and especially the last three years since the war started. Nobody made the attempt. So, at least we have the principles: talking to each other, we know what the outlines of a peace agreement are. And it’s just a matter of what each president has to take back to the powers that be and see if they’ve given too many or not enough concessions. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Could Trump End War in Ukraine During Meeting With Putin? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When 10 juveniles brutally attacked former Department of Government Efficiency whiz kid Edward Coristine—nicknamed “Big Balls” —in an attempted carjacking that left him bloodied, Washington, D.C.’s violent crime rate exploded into a political flashpoint. President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize the Washington police and bring in FBI agents and the National Guard to fight crime has upset liberals who attack it as “unnecessary” and the media who fact check Trump’s statements on crime as false. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” Trump vowed on Truth Social. “The criminals—you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.” On Monday morning, Trump unveiled his plans, announcing a historic escalation of law enforcement in Washington by deploying the National Guard to patrol the streets and placing the city’s police department under federal control. During the first half of 2025, violent crime in Washington fell 25%, with robberies dropping 26% compared to the same period in 2024. If this pace continues through the year, the violent crime rate will land around 632 crimes per 100,000 people—a level significantly lower than in recent years. Carjacking numbers tell a more sobering story. While they have dropped from 959 in 2023 to 496 in 2024, pre-COVID-19 figures were far lower: 95 in 2017, 92 in 2018, and 142 in 2019. Unfortunately, Edward Coristine isn’t the only person in Washington facing the threat of carjackings. “The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled,” Trump announced Monday. But news media fact-checkers quickly countered, citing “figures that the U.S. attorney released earlier this year showing a downward trajectory for these crimes.” The problem is that while carjackings fell dramatically last year, Trump is correct that they are still three times higher than five years ago. Somehow the checkers are ignoring the fact that Trump was referring to the five-year period. Washington’s violent crime rate still exceeds that of every state by at least 54% and rivals or surpasses many major cities. Other cities are also seeing declines. If New York City maintains its current pace, it will end the year with 599.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people, with cities from Boston to Dallas recording similar or lower rates. Washington is still the outlier for murders. In 2023, the last year that final FBI data is available, Washington ranked fifth for murder of the 60 most populous cities. And on Monday Trump discussed how high Washington’s murder rate was compared to other capitals around the world. But these numbers may paint an overly optimistic picture of crime in Washington, as the police union’s July allegations that department supervisors manipulated crime data to make it look as if violent crime fell more than it actually did this year. There is also the problem nationally that over the last few years there has been a large gap between total and reported crime. When crime has gotten out of control and there are few arrests and prosecutions, victims become less likely to report crime to the police. On Friday, Trump dispatched 120 FBI agents from across the country. They have already begun patrolling Washington streets overnight, reinforcing local police at carjacking hot spots. In addition, word came on Monday that the U.S. military is preparing to activate hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington. This isn’t rocket science. The research is clear that if you want to reduce crime, you need to make it risky for criminals to commit crime. Higher arrest and conviction rates as well as longer prison terms matter. Just as making it possible for people to defend themselves also make a difference. Trump’s move for FBI agents and the National Guard will increase arrest rates, and simply the threat of arrest will reduce the crime rate. This represents dramatic increases in the number of law enforcement officers. In Washington, there were 1,340 patrol officers in December 2024 and about 3,400 sworn officers, but obviously not all of these officers can be on duty all the time. Suppose a third are on duty at any point in time: That is about 450 patrol officers and 1,130 officers of any type for a population of about 720,000. “Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits,” Washington police union Chair Gregg Pemberton warned on Monday. The new FBI agents and National Guard soldiers can make a real difference. In 2022, Biden’s U.S. attorney for Washington, Matthew Graves, declined to prosecute 67% of criminal arrests in Washington—up significantly from 31% in 2016. Even in 2023, prosecutors dropped 56% of arrests. Trump’s U.S. attorneys for Washington, Ed Martin and later Jeanine Pirro, vow to crack down on violent crime, with a focus on gun violence. On Monday, Pirro pledged to “change the laws” in Washington so courts treat offenders under 18 more harshly. She criticized the leniency often given to these “young punks” because of their age. In addition, undoubtedly, Trump’s push to deport illegal alien criminals this year has helped reduce violent crime in Washington and across the nation. Republicans are also making moves to let victims defend themselves. The Republican appropriations bill for next year, now before the House, aims to change current law, allowing anyone with a valid concealed handgun permit in their home state to legally carry in Washington. With about 8,000 concealed handgun permits, only about 1.3% of the adult population has such a permit. If sustained, these combined measures—more officers on the streets, higher prosecution rates, and expanded rights for lawful self-defense—could sharply reduce Washington’s violent crime rate in the coming year. While recent declines in overall crime are encouraging, the persistence of high carjacking levels and a violent crime rate exceeding that of every state and many cities show that more can be done to make Washington safer. For Democrats who claim to care about the poor and minorities—the main victims of crime—Trump’s actions will show other cities how to get serious about reducing crime. Originally published by RealClearPolitics. 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 Efforts Could Sharply Reduce DC Crime appeared first on The Daily Signal.

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom fired up a Los Angeles crowd Thursday, promoting a November ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional map in Democrats’ favor in response to Texas’ redistricting. “Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back,” Newsom said at the Japanese American Museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy.  “Here’s the good thing about California, folks,” he continued. “We’re the size of 21 state populations combined… We are not a small, isolated state. I know they say, ‘don’t mess with Texas.’ Well, don’t mess with the great Golden State.” California currently has 43 Democrats and just nine Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a state where Trump received more than 38% of the vote in 2024. Newsom Calls For November Special Election To Further Redistrict CAGov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is pushing for a new provisional congressional map by way of a special election ballot measure on November 4th, citing concerns about Republican redistricting efforts in Texas. pic.twitter.com/qLRfGdLBTs— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) August 14, 2025 Newsom is moving forward with a Nov. 4 special election, in which voters would decide on a constitutional ballot measure to allow the legislature redraw the congressional map. California currently employs a bipartisan redistricting commission to draw its district boundaries.  New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose state relies on a similar commission, has also threatened retaliatory redistricting. “We have got to meet fire with fire, and we’ve got to be held to a higher level of accountability,” Newsom said to the Democrat crowd that included California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff. “We’re doing this in reaction to a President of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, ‘find me five seats.’” A member of the California Independent Redistricting Commission decries @POTUS redistricting plans, saying that the founding fathers would be “rolling in their graves." pic.twitter.com/njfCMntpSM— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) August 14, 2025 Some Texas Republicans have pushed back on Newsom and Democrats’ accusations of unfair gerrymandering, arguing they’re simply following the playbook written in Democrat-governed states. “Nothing we’re considering in Texas is anywhere near as aggressive as what already happened in California and in Illinois,” Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told The Daily Signal Thursday. “Quite frankly, Texas should have done this [redistricting] by now. Texas should have been leading on this. In my opinion, it’s embarrassing it’s taken us so long,” he said. The post Newsom Promotes Pro-Democrat Redistricting in California appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DC Crime Victim: The City's Crime Map Never Listed My Assault

The State Department just made clear that America will no longer aid or ignore foreign censorship, calling out threats to Americans and American companies.  State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce took a subtle jab at the Biden administration when on Aug. 12 she announced that new additions to the 2024 Human Rights Report, are “addressing abuses that had not previously been covered,” including the global free speech crisis developing in places like the United Kingdom (U.K.). Bruce criticized the previous administration’s approach to human rights, saying that this year’s report “Is responsive to the legislative mandates that underpin the report rather than an expansive list of politically biased demands and assertions.”   [Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

The Democratic Party of South Carolina is asking its gubernatorial candidate to reconsider his campaign after the release of video of his embarrassing arrest from May.Mullins McLeod, 53, was recorded yelling and screaming at police while wearing only his shoes and underwear in the video that was released Tuesday through a Freedom of Information Act request.'It is clear that Mr. McLeod is navigating profound challenges and should focus on his mental and emotional well-being.'McLeod was allegedly “yelling at the top of his lungs” when officers from the Charleston Police Department arrested him in downtown Charleston on May 15, according to WCBD-TV.The politician refused to identify himself to police and told them that he was god and Superman several times. He also made references to his gubernatorial campaign.“It doesn’t matter, my friend, trust me. I’m one of the most just humans to ever walk this soil,” said McLeod when asked his name.He also appears to threaten Republicans, including Attorney General Alan Wilson, who has announced a campaign for the governor's office as well.“I’m gonna kick your [expletive] teeth in,” McLeod says.The hour-long video showed his arrest and transportation to Al Cannon Detention Center, where he refuses to leave the police cruiser and tells the officer he'll sleep in the car instead."No, I’m not doing it, no,” McLeod yells to police. “I’m not getting out of this car. It’s time to go to bed.”Police refused his polite request and forced him out of the vehicle. He was booked at about 1 a.m.An officer wrote in the preliminary report of the incident that McLeod's eyes appeared “extremely bloodshot and highly dilated,” which the officer identified as symptoms “typical of an individual under the influence of a stimulant narcotic.”A City of Charleston spokesperson told WCBD that McLeod was facing one charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct as of Monday.RELATED: Female cop may lose job over suggestive TikTok video that went viral McLeod did not return requests for comment from WCBD, but he had told the Post and Courier that the arrest was "unlawful" and vowed that the voters would “know exactly what happened” before the election.A statement from South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain suggested that McLeod should step down from the campaign.“After reviewing the transcript of the dash cam footage from his recent arrest, it is clear that Mr. McLeod is navigating profound challenges and should focus on his mental and emotional well-being instead of a campaign for governor,” Spain said in part. “We offer him compassion and pray he finds the support he needs.”Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Far from being a new debate brought on by current events, the discussion over extending home rule to Washingtonians has been around as long as the District of Columbia itself

YOU VOTED FOR THIS! David French Gets Stark Reminder HE Supports the 'Folks' Attacking Catholic Nuns