'I think we're all struggling to understand'

Russia’s former Minister of Transportation Roman Starovoit has shot himself dead, Russian media reported Monday.  The Kremlin fired Starovoit from his role as Minister of Transportation early Monday. Investigators found his body in a car outside of his home hours later with what Russian authorities preliminarily described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reported Russian state outlet […]

'They’ve done a very foolish thing'

'Gentrification is just one more step towards colonization'

Wimbledon has been conquered by America

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. Elon Musk, as we all know now, has had a rupture. The friendship between himself and President Donald Trump has been ruptured. Now, they’re not just frenemies, but they’re kind of hostiles. And they’re going back and forth against each other. This is a tragedy because we have the world’s richest and probably most creative man versus one of the most successful politicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, Donald Trump, and wonderful president so far. And they should be working together. But now Elon Musk, in his anger, has decided to create a new party called the “[America] Party.” And he outlined the platform. And whether it’s on regulation, taxes, tariffs, free speech, it’s very Republican. It’s not close at all to the Democratic platform. But it’s really—it’s almost identical to the Libertarian Party. And it’s designed, I’m afraid, to lose seats for the Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections and maybe even, if he were to be successful, in the 2028 presidential election. A word of caution: All of us know the history of third-party movements, and it’s not very good. And I’ll get to that in a second. So it would be logical and probably wise to say that, well, this is crazy. Elon Musk is just nursing a grudge. He’s going to spend a lot of money. And the American party is going to go nowhere. Remember the name “American party,” it’s kind of reminiscent—I don’t know if that was intended, of course, it wasn’t. But in 1968, George Wallace and Curtis LeMay—one of my heroes—the head of the B-29 program in World War II, ran as a third party on the American Independent Party. They added ”Independent,” but that was an American party, third party—they got about 8% of the vote. A lot of people think that ’68 vote, because he was a Democrat, hurt Hubert Humphrey more than it did Richard Nixon. It might have swung the election. So it’s kind of an effort to hurt Donald Trump, both in the Congress and his successor in four years. But here’s the question that I have for Elon Musk, and that is, does he really believe that he can pull this off? Apparently, he does. I would like to say, as I said, that it’s impossible that he can do it. But I would also have said 10 years ago it’s impossible that anybody can break into the big three auto companies. We had American Motors dropped out. Remember the DeLorean automobile, and I think that was the ’70s. That didn’t make it. He did. Tesla still has the highest stock value of the big three. I would’ve thought no one could ever challenge NASA—that government monopoly. He did. I thought, wow, he paid so much for Twitter. How could he—you can’t just rebrand it ”X” and after paying three times its market value, be a force. Would it work? He did it. I don’t need to get into Starlink. So everything he’s done is successful. So people should be very careful about writing a third-party movement off. But that being said, let’s just look at similar cases in history. In 1980, John Anderson, a moderate Republican, didn’t get along with Ronald Reagan. He said he was going to run as a third party. Remember that Reagan, until about the last three weeks of the campaign, was running behind Jimmy Carter. And everybody said John Anderson, if he takes 6% or 7%—which he did—of the vote, Reagan will lose. Reagan won. And remember, “There you go again, Jimmy Carter,” in that one very dramatic debate. I mentioned the 1968 George Wallace campaign. I think that may have hurt Humphrey. And then, some of you were going to say, “Well, wait a minute, Victor. George Wallace, politically, was closer to Richard Nixon than he was Hubert Humphrey. So that’s a wash.” If you look at the two third-party runs by Ross Perot—remember 1992? He really had a grudge against the Bushes. He ran and he got almost 19% of the vote. And if you look at the margin that Bill Clinton won by, about eight or nine points, that did hurt George H.W. Bush. I do think that most people felt that Ross Perot was more conservative than liberal and closer to the Bush position than he was the Clinton. And that third-party effort in ’92 spoiled the reelection bit of George H.W. Bush in large part. He did it again in 1996. Everybody writes that second attempt off. He pulled out. He was all over the map. He still won almost 9% of the vote. And if you add up all of Bob Dole’s votes, popular votes, and Ross Perot’s—and I think he was much closer to Bob Dole than he was to Bill Clinton, who was running for reelection—it’s almost equal to the Clinton vote, may or may not had a role. Strom Thurmond, he won four states as a Dixiecrat in the 1948 election. And boy, everybody said that Harry Truman was running behind, well behind Thomas Dewey, and if Strom Thurmond bolted the party, they were done for. He took four states, won those electoral votes. Harry Truman still, in a comeback surprise, won by over four points. It had no effect. There’s two times I think we could finish by saying third parties did really matter. And one was in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt, he had taken over after the assassination of William McKinley. He’d finished out a first full term. It was his second term. He wanted to run again. And his appointed successor—I mean, the person that he endorsed—William Howard Taft, he felt was not progressive enough. So he ran against him. And he had a third party—not the American party, but the Bull Moose Party. And what happened? He won 27% of the vote. William Howard Taft only, I think he got six electoral—he only won six states. And he only won 23%. But here’s the kicker. If you had put Teddy Roosevelt’s votes with William Howard Taft, they would’ve creamed Woodrow Wilson, who was a hard-left progressive. So that was a spoiler election. The other one was a famous one in 1860, when Stephen Douglas, who had those famous debates in the senatorial race in Illinois against Abraham Lincoln, was the Democratic nominee against Abraham Lincoln. John Breckinridge broke off from the Democratic Party and had a Southern Democratic Party. And he took enough votes away from Stephen Douglas that got Abraham Lincoln elected president with—thank God—only 40% of the vote. What I am getting at is there is no record ever that a third-party candidate can win the presidency or will make a fundamental change in the makeup of the Senate or the House. I don’t think in the next midterm election there’s going to be [America] Party senators or representatives. However, they do, in some cases, affect elections. And for the most part, it’s unpredictable. Nobody knows what the situation will be in 2028. But Elon Musk must know that it won’t be a constructive role, that he is more akin to Donald Trump and the conservative movement than he is the people who have persecuted him and tried to put him out of business. So let’s hope that he looks at history, comes to his senses, and says, “For all my disagreements with Donald Trump, they pale in comparison to what has become of the Democratic Party.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Beware, Elon Musk’s ‘America Party’ Could Be Democrats’ Path Back to Power appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—As some Democrats seek to blame the Trump administration for at least 95 flash-flood deaths in Texas, a senior official with the National Weather Service assures Americans that the service features one of the most dedicated groups of employees in the federal government. Critics of the Trump administration have claimed that funding “cuts” at the National Weather Service caused it to fail to do its job in Texas. “You’d never find a more dedicated group of employees, as you do with the National Weather Service,” Erica Grow-Cei, communications director at the agency, told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. However, Grow-Cei said local forecast offices in the Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo areas, where the floods hit, had extra personnel on duty during the freak rainfall weather event, in which the river reportedly surged by more than 20 feet within 90 minutes on Friday.  Additional staff members from both offices were called in or were asked to stay later, so extra personnel were working on the night of Thursday into Friday. The River Forecast Center made the decision to go into 24-hour operations on Thursday afternoon, before the flash flooding started. “There’s a difference between having an opening and having the staff that you need to get the job done,” Grow-Cei said in response to reports of understaffing. “We have the staff you need to get the job done.” The National Weather Service’s next step is to conduct a storm survey next week, if and when conditions allow, Grow-Cei said. President Donald Trump has said he plans to visit the area on Friday. If the White House asks, the National Weather Service will provide decision support for the trip, Grow-Cei said. When asked what she would say to Americans doubting the ability of the National Weather Service in the wake of the flood deaths, which included 27 young female campers and counselors, she said the mission of the NWS remains firm, regardless of who is president. “Many of us—I’m one of them—dreamed of becoming a meteorologist since we were little kids, and so our passion for the mission and the service to our community is second to none,” Grow-Cei said. “Every American should feel confident that they are being served by a community that wants to get it right and wants to make sure that they stay safe.” She said thousands of weather forecast office employees hundreds or even thousands of miles away from Washington, D.C., pour their hearts into their jobs every day. “The mission doesn’t change, no matter what year it is, who’s in charge, anything like that,” she continued. “The dedication to the mission remains paramount.” On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said those Democrats who are seeking to politicizing the Texas floods are “depraved and despicable.” “Those comments are depraved and despicable, especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children,” Leavitt said. “The National Weather Service, as I said, did its job. Many experts, many meteorologists, have said that.” “Unfortunately, not all, but many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game, and it is not,” she added. “This is a national tragedy, and the administration is treating it as such.” The post Weather Service Official Defends Staff’s Dedication Against Political Smears in Texas Flood Disaster appeared first on The Daily Signal.

LA Mayor Busy Jumping in the Middle of Active Immigration Enforcement

For every silver lining, we must find a cloud! That is, if you're the liberal media, and the Trump administration and Israel have pulled off audacious strikes on Iran, severely damaging its nuclear facilities and eliminating many of its top military leaders and nuclear scientists.   Thus it was that on Monday's Morning Joe, Katty Kay introduced a segment on the results of the strikes by proclaiming her intent was "not to throw cold water on any potential optimism" as to how there could be a moment for Israel to find peace with Saudi Arabia and in Gaza. In a discussion with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Kay then proceeded to cite a conversation with Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. According to Kay, Sadjadpour described several possible scenarios that: "Could see Iran rushing for a nuclear weapon now, not doing what the Americans are asking and completely disbanding their nuclear program, but actually doing the opposite. And there is a potential that the strikes actually could precipitate a situation in which we're less safe, not more safe, with Iran." Ignatius said his sense was "pretty similar to our friend Karim's." Ignatius told Kay, "You're right to be cautionary. There's no sign of a breakthrough with Iran." And to the contrary, Ignatius said that whereas there was "extensive dialogue" with Iran prior to the B-2 bunker buster strikes, now, we're "not getting any budge at all from Iran."  Nice try, Morning Joe! If not quite a bunker buster, you attempted to drop a big bucket of cold water on Israeli and US accomplishments regarding Iran!  Note: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where the Iran analyst Kay relied on and whom Ignatius described as "our friend" works, describes itself as "nonpartisan."  Let's have a look at its officers, past and present. Current president: Mariano-Florentino "Tino" Cuéllar. Appointed by Gov. Jerry 'Moonbeam' Brown as a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, and a former official in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Cuellar was the successor to William Burns, Biden's CIA director. Burns was preceded as president by Jessica Tuchman, a former official in the Carter and Clinton administrations. The current chairperson of the Endowment's Board of Trustees is Jane Hartley, a former ambassador appointed by Obama and Biden. Yup, sure sounds "nonpartisan!" Here's the transcript. MSNBC Morning Joe 7/7/25 6:36 am EDT KATTY KAY: Not to kind of throw cold water on any potential optimism that there might be that you're expressing there, I had a long conversation with Karim Sadjadpour who we had on the program a lot. It's hard to believe that it's only two weeks in this kind of frenetic news world. We tend to forget news very quickly but it's only two weeks until those strikes.  Karim was laying out a kind of scenario in which there are multiple ways that the strikes could lead to some sort of different type of government or some sort of successor to the Ayatollah in Iran. But that amongst those different scenarios, several of them could see Iran rushing for a nuclear weapon now, not doing what the Americans are asking and completely disbanding their nuclear program, but actually doing the opposite. And there is a potential that the strikes actually could precipitate a situation in which we're less safe, not more safe, with Iran.  What's your take on where we are with the Iranian nuclear program at the moment and this idea that there could be a rush in Iran for a nuclear weapon? DAVID IGNATIUS: So, Katty, my sense is probably pretty similar to our friend Karim's. It's clear that the intensity of Israeli and then American bombing has delayed the Iranian nuclear program. It will take months, maybe years, we just don't know, to put it back together.  There is still this question of where the highly enriched uranium that Iran had already accumulated is, that could quickly be moved to bomb grade in a, as what you describe a dash by Iran towards having a nuclear weapon.  I think the most pessimistic factor that I see is that when I talk to the people involved in the negotiations, they say they're not getting any budge at all from from Iran. Before the U.S. sent the B-2s up with the bunker busting bombs, there was an extensive dialogue between Witkoff, the special envoy, and the Iranian foreign minister. That seems to have ended.  And so we're just in a situation where the only recourse in the future, if Iran does move toward a bomb, is for U.S. and Israeli intelligence to detect it, and then somebody to go in and bomb it again.  So in that sense, I think you're right to be cautionary. There's no sign of a breakthrough with Iran. 

On Monday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe invited New York Times opinion writer, Mara Gay, who did not hold back her left-wing bias regarding the continuous arrests and deportations made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gay went as far as to claim that the policy in the White House implemented was about “othering people who are not seen as American enough.”   On Friday, President Trump signed the Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the liberal media had some hot takes about the money that was going towards aiding ICE. Gay stated:   I remember being told there’s no money in America for healthcare, for public education, for new parks, all kinds of initiatives that we were told there’s no money for this. But then suddenly there’s money to deport farm workers. There’s money to sweep up, you know, people who worked with our troops in Afghanistan. There’s funding to separate families, people who have really not committed crimes, but have come here to work to be a part of this country.       This was where the media fell short, they didn’t want to admit the truth that the people who were being arrested and deported by ICE were illegal immigrants and are criminals for crossing the border illegally. Of course, no one wants to see families separated, but that was not the reason why ICE was sent aid. ICE was established to uphold the order and law of the land by removing people who were here illegally.    If the liberal media wanted to talk about “no money” then they should have turned their heads to the previous administration that gave billions of dollars to Ukraine, but left barely anything for the disaster floods that hit the mountainous areas of North Carolina and Tennessee last fall.    Along with aiding ICE, putting Americans first also included strong borders and security, which was what ICE was enforcing. Yet, Gay went on a tangent criticizing the Trump administration:   And I just think that the cruelty underlying this really shows that this isn’t about immigration policy for this White House. This is about a policy of othering people who are not seen as American enough. And I think that is chilling. And you see that throughline with this Alcatraz. You know, I don’t, I mean, it’s so disturbing.   No, Mara, the Trump administration was not arresting people who were not “American enough.” They were arresting people who weren’t following our laws and skipped the line to get in.   Gay lamented that the ICE raids were “going to just be turbocharged and without any kind of accountability.”   The Trump administration had made it clear that upholding law and order to protect the country was a top priority. It would seem like increasing funding was just action to support the command, but the left-wing media detested the thought of having strong borders and security in this country.  Click here for the transcript. MSNBC’s Morning Joe 7/7/25 9:25 a.m. Eastern (...) MIKA BRZEZINSKI: The co-host of MSNBC’s the weekend prime time, Elise Jordan, is back with us. Also joining us, opinion writer at The New York Times, Mara Gay. And, Mara, I’m first of all wondering – I’m trying to think of the limits that might be pushed with this new funding coming in from the bill. MARA GAY: Ha, limits? I think unfortunately, what we’re seeing is that these ICE raids have now, it’s going to just be turbocharged and without any kind of accountability. Congress has not shown an appetite, under Republican control, for any kind of oversight. And we’re talking about spending dollars for ICE and ICE raids and DHS that rival some countries, the entire budget of other countries. So, there’s a lot of concerns about just wantonness, I would say. We already don’t actually have much insight at all into what’s happening on America’s streets. Where these raids are happening, the way they’re being conducted. And I just – I think that Americans should be asking their congress people to take a far more active role in oversight. And you know, I think there’s an underlying tragedy here. We were told for years, you know, I’m not even 40 years old, I remember being told there’s no money in America for healthcare, for public education, for new parks, all kinds of initiatives that we were told there’s no money for this. But then suddenly there’s money to deport farm workers. There’s money to sweep up, you know, people who worked with our troops in Afghanistan. There’s funding to separate families, people who have really not committed crimes, but have come here to work to be a part of this country. And I just think that the cruelty underlying this really shows that this isn’t about immigration policy for this White House. This is about a policy of othering people who are not seen as American enough. And I think that is chilling. And you see that thoughline with this Alcatraz. You know, I don’t, I mean, it’s so disturbing. It’s honestly hard to get my- [Crosstalk] ELISE JORDAN: Mara, I do you think you- GAY: words around it.  JORDAN: - hit the nail on the head though, talking about the cruelty. GAY: Yeah. JORDAN: I, you know, It sounds like the migrants who are being deported to South Sudan have committed some pretty unsavory crimes. That said, how is it within humanitarian law to send people to a war zone, to an active war zone? Okay, Mika, I just think it sounds insane, and I just can’t believe we’re doing this as a country. BRZEZINSKI: It's hard to get your mind around for sure.