Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has a clear path to the GOP nomination for Ohio governor after the state’s attorney general, Dave Yost, announced on Friday that he is suspending his short-lived campaign. Yost said his chances went from a “steep climb” to “a vertical cliff” after the Ohio GOP through its support behind Ramaswamy last week for the 2026 race, The Columbus Dispatch reported. “I do not wish to divide my political party or my state with a quixotic battle over the small differences between my vision and that of my opponent. I am simply not that important,” Yost added. President Donald Trump backed Ramaswamy’s bid immediately after the tech entrepreneur launched his campaign in February. Ramaswamy was initially set to work in the Trump administration alongside Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, but it was revealed on Inauguration Day that he would not serve in that role. Yost said he wants Republicans to focus on defeating Democrats instead of a “family squabble.” “Columbus needs re-engineering, not demolition,” Yost wrote in a letter to his supporters. “Sherrod Brown and the risky progressive ideas of his party will unwind all of the good that the last 15 years of Republican leadership has brought. This is a time to protect Ohio, not a time for a family squabble.” Ramaswamy praised Yost in a statement and said that the attorney general will continue to play a role in the state’s political future. “Congratulations to Dave on running a thoughtful campaign,” Ramaswamy said. “He has served Ohio with great dedication, and I am confident he will continue to play an important role in shaping the future of our state and our nation.” While the Ohio GOP rallies behind Ramaswamy, Lt. Governor Jim Tressel — the former Ohio State football coach — said last week that he is considering jumping into the race, NBC News reported. Tressel was tapped by current Republcian Gov. Mike DeWine to become lieutenant governor after Jim Husted was appointed to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Vice President JD Vance. “What has been a surprise, and it has been humbling, is how many people are encouraging me to run for Governor,” Tressel said. “I have not decided yet, but when I became Lieutenant Governor in February, Ellen told me that it seemed like God had more work for me to do, and she was right,” he added, referring to his wife. “While I have not ruled out a run for Governor — and there will be a time in the future for those conversations — for now, I will remain focused on helping Ohioans get off the sidelines and into our workforce so they can reach their full potential.” In the GOP primary, Ramaswamy’s only declared opponent is Heather Hill, the former president of the Morgan County, Ohio, School Board, who is running a longshot bid. On the Democratic side, the former director of the Ohio Department of Health, Amy Acton, is the only candidate who has jumped into the race. Along with former Sen. Brown, former U.S. Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan has expressed interest in running for Ohio governor.

'The freebies for free-loading fat cats are over'

'I hope you know who my husband is'

'Active cover-up'

'Balance our budget'

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. I’d like to do something a little different in this video, and that is to ask an existential question: Why? Let’s look at the border. President Joe Biden over four years destroyed it. He defanged Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He stopped the congressionally approved wall. The result was 12 million people came in. They entered illegally. They resided illegally. And we have 500,000 of them suspected of criminal backgrounds. And almost every day there is a murder/rape. But here’s the question. Everybody knows he did it but nobody asked why did he do it? Why did you do the most nihilistic thing in the history of the modern presidency? I think we’re gonna live with this problem for 50 years. But why did he do it? Why did he say, “You can come in without a COVID-19 vaccination but we are gonna get rid of 8,500 of our U.S. citizens in the military who don’t want to be vaccinated”? Why did he say that you need a Real ID but you don’t if you’re in illegally? Why? Was it that he wanted new constituents because the agenda didn’t appeal to 51% of the population? Did he think that under early and mail-in voting protocols inaugurated in 2020 that he was gonna be able to have these people vote very quickly? Did he want to grow government and then have a bigger entitlement? Higher taxes? Did he not believe in borders? Was he a globalist? It was so nihilistic. It was so destructive that we need to know why. Just tell us why you did it. Was it just because you hated half the country and you wanted to destroy it? You hated MAGA? The garbage, semi-fascists? Is that it? The same existential is why do all these reporters say now, “We were in on the deal, we covered up for Biden”? “The Biden staff did it.” “No, the media did it.” But they all agreed that he was non compos mentis. He was cognitively challenged when he was nominated, when they cleared the nomination field out. They got rid of Pete Buttigeig. They got rid of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. They got rid of Sen. Bernie Sanders. They all disappeared quickly. And then they used this waxen effigy as a veneer. But why? That was very risky to do that. They all tell us they did it, but they don’t tell us why. Was the idea that good old Joe Biden from Scranton had some conservative remnant vestigial aura about him? And then they could use him and they could tell Jill, Joe, “You get to be president but we’re gonna run it.” Or was it even worse than that? They thought, “This is what we’ve always been waiting for. This is what Barack Obama said when he wanted a third term and he could phone in a left-wing agenda from his basement without appearing in public.” In other words, it wasn’t that they were stuck. They saw this as a wonderful opportunity. Use Joe Biden and just have him come in three days a week, stumble through stuff, and then push through the most left-wing, nihilistic, destructive, socialist agenda in history. It really was, if you look at the border and crime and Afghanistan and two theater wars and the hyperinflation and the $7 trillion that he borrowed. Was that the reason why? Or were they just incompetent, they just didn’t know? They were just, “I don’t know. Who are we gonna nominate? Oh, Joe.” They didn’t think he was that bad. But please, don’t tell us that you covered it up and think that’s a confession sufficient for the American people. Tell us why you did it. They never tell us why. So, we had all these polls. They were wrong in 2016. They were wrong in 2020. They lost credibility. And then in 2024, they did it again. As I said earlier, the NPR/PBS poll of then-Vice President Kamala Harris had her winning four points on the night of the election. She lost by a point and a half. They were five and a half points off. David Plouffe, one of the insiders of the Harris campaign, said he was kind of amazed that all the polls had her ahead when their internal polls—that have to be accurate because you work from them in your campaign strategy and you pay for—not one had her ahead. So, why would they risk their reputation and lie again in 2024 and be discredited again and give Rasmussen, Insider Advantage, and Trafalgar more and more credibility as the accurate poll? I don’t have that answer. Was it because they wanted to gin up momentum? They knew she was gonna lose. They thought if they lied, if the Des Moines Register said she was really winning when she lost by 12 points, they’d get more funding. People would say, “Gee-whiz, Trump’s gonna lose. I don’t wanna vote.” Is that the idea? What was it? Why do they continue to lie? They have to tell us why. It’s not enough just to say, “Politics. We want power.” What was the strategy to make you do something so egregious? So egregious to destroy the border and cause so much misery. So egregious to foist somebody who was not in control of his own cognitive powers as president with nuclear codes. So destructive to try to influence a campaign by repeatedly lying that the losing candidate—who was losing the whole time—was going to win. We just want to know why. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Biden’s Enablers Never Told Us Why They Did It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the wake of U.S. Supreme Court victories in favor of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop who had been targeted because he refused to bake a custom cake for a gay wedding, and high school football coach Joe Kennedy, who was fired for going against a school order not to kneel in prayer on the field after a game, you would figure (incorrectly) that the culture warriors might be rethinking their far-left positions on social issues. No, instead, they are turning it up “to 11.” In this case, a Virginia real estate broker is potentially facing the end of his career, and, like Phillips and Kennedy, he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. And, as you will see, he wasn’t. It’s the case of Wilson Fauber, the next victim of the “Culture War.” As a Realtor, he is a career-long member of the National Association of Realtors, and that organization proprietarily controls access to the Multiple Listing Service that a member like Wilson uses to show his clients all the available listings of properties for sale and where he lists their properties. Just in the past month, he has lost his membership, and the association has labeled him a “discriminator” until he undergoes “sensitivity training” administered by the Virginia Association of Realtors. One wonders how this all came about. Was it like Masterpiece Cakeshop, where he declined to serve a gay couple? No. Was it like Coach Kennedy, where he had been warned by his bosses that his public display of religion could result in his dismissal? No. So, what did Fauber do to bring this on? Nothing. That’s not a typo. He did nothing. There is not one allegation that he discriminated against a buyer or seller regarding property, that he denied anyone his services, or that he even said anything discriminatory. What he did was post a quote from the Bible to his personal social media account … eight years before allegations were made against him. To be fair, the Bible passage he posted (reposted, technically speaking, as it was first posted by the Rev. Franklin Graham) was Leviticus 20:13, which does take a harsh view of “men laying with other men as with a woman” (which was apparently happening back then, too). But the post was only seen by his friends, and that was back in 2015. When Fauber ran for Staunton City Council in 2022, his opponents found this post and made it central into their campaign against him. He lost. So, case closed? Not at all. The post was eventually brought to the attention of—anonymously, of course—the National Association of Realtors as a violation of the organization’s “hate speech” prohibitions. Under “Standards and Practices,” the organization prohibits Realtors (a trademarked word only applicable to members) from “using harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on protected classes.” The prohibition was updated in 2021 to “apply to all activities, including personal, off-the-clock time.” You read that correctly. The infraction occurred six years before the policy was ever put into place. So, Fauber “violated” a policy that didn’t exist at the time. To be called a Realtor, you have to be a member of the National Association of Realtors. And in order to stay in that exclusive club (which you pay to be a member of), you subject yourself to the scrutiny of its ethics board. While Fauber’s attorneys from the Founding Freedoms Law Center are preparing for the next step in his legal battle against the Virginia Association of Realtors (which administered the sanction based on the national association’s guidelines), we are left to consider the “suppression” ripples that each instance like this causes. Despite the eventual victories in court of people like Phillips and Kennedy, how many businesses compromised their beliefs rather than get targeted like Masterpiece Cakeshop? How many coaches or teachers decided not to try to be an example of humility to the young people that were in their charge, lest they get fired like the coach? How many parents decided not to speak out at their school board meetings because the former attorney general of the United States might have started a dossier on them and the FBI might have investigated them as domestic terrorists? You don’t even need to have done anything illegal or immoral to face firing or cancellation. In fact, you may have even done something entirely moral and stood up for your principles. But for the Left, it’s no longer a Culture War. It’s become a Culture Jihad. The post When the Culture War Becomes the Culture Jihad appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Top congressional Republicans are picking up the pieces in the wake of the House Budget Committee’s rejection Friday of leadership’s budget proposals. If one thing’s clear, it’s that leadership will have to seek a compromise with fiscal hard-liners. On Friday, the House Budget Committee voted against advancing the budget package with Republican fiscal hawks—specifically, Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma—joining all committee Democrats in voting it down. The vote was 21 against advancing the budget and 16 in favor. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., switched his vote from yes to no at the last moment. The Lancaster, Pa.-based news site LancasterOnline.com reported that “Smucker said he flipped his vote for procedural reasons. Doing so ensures he can call for another vote on the more than 1,100-page legislation at a later date. House rules require that a motion to reconsider must be introduced by a member from the prevailing side of the vote—in this case, someone who voted against the bill.” In response to the failure to pass the budget through the committee, the panel’s leadership stated that they would move to reconvene on Sunday.  “I am confident we will get to a good place this weekend and have the votes to pass it out of committee Sunday evening,” budget chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said in a statement. A statement from Budget Committee Chairman @RepArrington: pic.twitter.com/FUzTaOiPxq— House Budget GOP (@HouseBudgetGOP) May 16, 2025 Satisfying holdouts will take some concessions—namely, more aggressive reforms to benefits programs such as Medicaid. On Thursday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Daily Signal that “everything is on the table” when asked if he would consider implementing Medicaid work requirements sooner than the bill currently calls for in order to satisfy holdouts. Norman said in a statement after the vote, “My biggest priority in Congress is to STOP the bloated bureaucracy’s spending. Today, the budget committee marked up the One Big Beautiful bill that includes making President [Donald] Trump’s tax cuts permanent. That is INCREDIBLE!!” Read my official statement on today's @HouseBudgetGOP markup ?? pic.twitter.com/bcfKoBP9WY— Rep. Ralph Norman (@RepRalphNorman) May 16, 2025 He continued, “However, this bill is not serious about necessary reforms. It delays work requirements for able-bodied adults until 2029. It does nothing to combat Obamacare’s unfair Medicaid expansion that provides more federal funding for able-bodied adults than the truly disabled, pregnant mothers, and children the program was originally intended for.” Norman and other fiscal hawks are seeking to implement proposed Medicaid “engagement requirements” immediately and limit the federal government’s matching of federal payments to Medicaid expansion enrollees. “In addition to Medicaid reform, Biden’s ‘Green New Scam’ tax credits MUST be repealed. We’ll be working through the weekend to keep pushing for stronger reforms. No more SMOKE & MIRRORS.” Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan., told reporters, “I expect the next step is to work on addressing some of the concerns raised by the Republicans who voted no. These particularly include that the deficit reduction is not enough and that what deficit reduction there is included is so heavily weighted to the end of the 10-year window.” Friday’s vote against the budget package was a reminder of disagreements within the GOP that House leadership will have to contend with in order to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Johnson has repeatedly said that Memorial Day, May 26, would make for a good deadline for passage, while major stakeholders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have suggested Independence Day, July 4. Two natural incentives for accelerating the budgetary process are the expiration of Trump’s first-term 2017 tax cuts and the eventual running up against the federal government’s current debt limit. Jacob Adams contributed to this report. The post Republicans Scramble to Regroup After Budget Bill Setback appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Well THAT Escalated Quickly

Boston Cream Puffs: Who on Wu's Staff Bit Who?