Senator Josh Hawley and his wife, Erin, launched a nonprofit to promote family values and encourage Americans to embrace a culture of life.  The nonprofit, called the Love Life Initiative, will run pro-family national ad campaigns to encourage Americans to raise families and defend life at all stages of development. The group will promote pro-life ballot campaigns and fight against pro-abortion ballot petitions.   “We believe there needs to be a strong voice advocating for life and making it easier to start a family,” Senator Hawley said. “That is fundamental to who we are as Americans and the future of our country. And it is how we will be judged as a society. This is a generational project, not just about the next election cycle.” The nonprofit’s webpage pointed to polling that over 50% of Americans identify as pro-choice and a spate of state ballot petition defeats across the country. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 11 states have passed pro-abortion ballot initiatives, while two states have voted against pro-life petitions.  “The Love Life Initiative will fight to reverse this trend through thoughtful, far-reaching advertising campaigns that promote the sanctity of life, advance referendums that protect life, and identify and defeat harmful proposals in statehouses across the nation,” the nonprofit’s webpage says. “The Love Life Initiative will remind Americans that life is sacred, life is good, and life is worth protecting.” In many of the states, spending in favor of abortion has widely outpaced spending by pro-life advocates. In a 2023 referendum on abortion in Ohio, abortion proponents outspent pro-life advocates $18 million to $7 million in the final months leading up to the vote.  “For years, Democrats have drowned out the pro-life narrative and overwhelmed the pro-life agenda. They’ve raised and spent hundreds of millions on infrastructure, advocacy, and advertising—and it’s taken a toll,” the website says.  Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Erin Hawley, a constitutional lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said that their group wanted to help women choose life instead of ending the life of their unborn children. The Hawleys have three young children.  “Most women have an abortion because of a lack of support. We want to change that. We want to build a culture that is pro-life and pro-family, and we can do that by providing broader support for women in need,” she said.  Some advisors close to President Donald Trump were upset with the launch of the nonprofit, Axios reported. They believe that focusing on the pro-life issue would hurt the GOP at the ballot box. Polling viewed by The Daily Wire shows that many Americans value family formation and would like to see some limits on abortion.  In recent days, pro-life groups and lawmakers have pressured the Food and Drug Administration to roll back Biden-era rules that allowed for the abortion drug to be shipped through the mail.

One of the dumbest things we can do is flatten all ideologies and pretend all human beings think the same way. Every time someone does this, you end up with the worst possible policy. If you say, for example, all human beings have a yearning in their human heart for freedom in the same exact way, that can very easily lead you to the policies pursued by the George W. Bush administration, in which the president declared that the goal of the United States was to end tyranny on planet Earth. Of course, that is not a sustainable goal, because it assumes that everyone has the same priorities that you have. In the same way, when you suggest that all acts of violence are equivalent, when you abstract terrible things happening to the level of the general, when you say, “Okay, there’s a specific terror act directed at whites or Jews or blacks” — instead of looking at the specific cause that is being pursued, instead of looking at the specific ideological matrix used to justify and foment violence, you simply say “Violence is bad, and all human beings should just know that violence is bad,” you are preventing the actual solutions to those problems. That’s because if you refuse to face up to the fact that certain ideas are worse than other ideas, certain cultures are worse than other cultures, certain ideological frameworks are worse than other ideological frameworks, you’re missing the motivating factor in human action. Instead, what you end up with is a blunderbuss foreign policy that differentially strikes groups in an unfair and stupid way.  The other day, Sunny Hostin of The View did a signal version of this. She was commenting on the mass shooting in Bondi Beach in Sydney against Jews by two Islamists. Here is what she had to say: I used to think that gun violence was just an American phenomenon. And now we see this sort of anti-Semitic attack in Australia on the first day of Hanukkah, which is so disgusting and disturbing. And then, you know, kids going to college at Brown in the middle of finals getting murdered. What those families went through? Why all of this sickness and hatred going around the world?  The View is a purveyor of hate. Now, after the tragic weekend, they wonder why there’s so much hate. “Why all of this sickness and hatred going around the world? Not just in this country,” Sunny Hostin, one of the most hate-fueled people on TV. pic.twitter.com/ox73cTuPq6 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) December 15, 2025 “Why all of this sickness and hatred going around the world?” That’s fine on the level of a two-year-old. But let’s be very clear. Different ideological groups commit different types of crimes. Some commit no crimes. Some actually promote peace. Some ideologies promote vast terror attacks, such as radical Islamism. But when you reduce everything to “It’s just an act of violence,” or to the tool, such as a gun; when you look at the Brown University shooting, where we still don’t know the motive, and then you look at what happened in Sydney, Australia, where you absolutely know the motive and you flatten that out and pretend they are both the same, you’re preventing the implementation of policies that would actually prevent shootings. That’s because there actually are ways to target radical Islam in, for example, Sydney, Australia: Don’t import more radical Muslims. Surveil radical mosques. Create a better security apparatus. Have a government that does not grant credibility to radical Islamists and their arguments. There are many ways to fight particular ideologies or particular ideas. But when you flatten that all out to the idea that it’s all just “gun violence,” you are preventing a solution. That is often the core of the debate between the Right and the Left, the traditional Right and Left. I always have to clarify this because there are people who exist on the so-called political Right who are not in any real way conservative; they just don’t like some of the elements of the Left. But traditional conservative thinking suggests that human beings are motivated by the ideas and ideologies they carry, and also that human beings are deeply flawed. They’re not inherently good; human beings have the capacity for greatness and also the capacity for sin. All of this is embedded in Federalist 51, in which James Madison argues that if human beings were angels, you wouldn’t need a government in order to govern them because they would be angels. Once you recognize the reality of human flaws and nature, once you recognize that people change their behavior based on the ideologies that they hold, then it makes it possible to look at the outgrowth of particular ideologies and then fight those ideas. Otherwise, what you end up with is a very bad and stupid public policy.

Nick Reiner, 32, was formally charged with two counts of first degree murder in the brutal slaying of his parents, acclaimed director Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner. Los Angeles officials gave an update Tuesday afternoon on the investigation, announcing as the press conference began, “charges are being filed as we speak.” L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman spoke first, laying out some of the details of the charges filed against the couple’s embattled son Nick Reiner, 32. Reiner was charged with two counts of first degree murder, with special circumstances attached because there were multiple murders and because he allegedly attacked with a deadly weapon — a knife. The maximum sentence, should Reiner be convicted on those charges, is life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty — but Hochman said that no decision had yet been made with regard to whether or not his office would pursue the death penalty. For the time being, he said that his office had requested that Nick Reiner be held without bail. “Charges are not evidence,” Hochman cautioned then, reminding the public that Reiner had to be allowed his day in court and that prosecutors would be held to the long-enduring “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard when they presented their case to 12 jurors. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Reiner, he said, was still going through the standard medical clearances necessary to be brought to court, where he would be arraigned and enter a plea. Hochman also reminded the public that “cases involving family members are some of the most heart-wrenching cases” because of how brutal they can be. Noting that the Reiners were “icons” — both locally and nationally — he added, “Their loss is beyond tragic. We will commit ourselves to bringing their murderer to justice.” “Please do not rely on rank speculation, rumor, or hearsay to believe that you know anything about this case,” Hochman said, reminding the public to make sure that they get their information from “trusted sources” and wait for the evidence to be presented in court. “This case is heartbreaking and deeply personal, not only for the Reiner family and their loved ones, but to our entire city,” Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said. An autopsy of the Reiners is still pending, and McDonnell noted that as far as an official time of death was concerned, “We don’t have specificity yet, we’re waiting on the coroner to determine as best they can.” Several reporters were given the opportunity to ask questions as the briefing wrapped up, but most of them could not yet be answered because officials were not willing to undercut an ongoing investigation.

President Donald Trump expanded his travel ban to include five additional countries following a wave of terror attacks across the globe. Trump applied travel restrictions to Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, and heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela in June. He expanded the ban Tuesday to include Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria, according to the White House. Travelers with documents from the Palestinian authority will also be banned from entry. “The United States must exercise extreme vigilance during the visa-issuance and immigration processes to identify, prior to their admission or entry into the United States, foreign nationals who intend to harm Americans or our national interests,” the president’s proclamation states. “The United States Government must ensure that admitted aliens do not intend to threaten its citizens; undermine or destabilize its culture, government, institutions, or founding principles; or advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security,” it adds. It comes just days after a series of devastating terror attacks. The most recent of the attacks occurred in Sydney, Australia, where a father and son inspired by ISIS opened fire on Jewish community members celebrating Hanukkah on the beach, killing 15 individuals. On Saturday, it emerged that two U.S. Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter — also American — had been killed in Syria by ISIS. Last month, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who entered the U.S. in 2021 as part of President Joe Biden’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” allegedly shot two National Guardsmen who were deployed to Washington, D.C., as part of the Trump administration’s crime crackdown. One of the soldiers, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of the West Virginia National Guard, tragically succumbed to her injuries a day after the attack. Her colleague, West Virginia National Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, is still recovering from his injuries.

Imagine coming across a live WWII bomb in 2025

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America failed to establish a democracy in Afghanistan and then failed to properly vet many of the 200,000 Afghans taken into the U.S. after the fall of Kabul in 2021, according to Simon Hankinson.   After Afghanistan fell to the Taliban under President Joe Biden, the U.S. scrambled to evacuate nationals who had served the U.S. government and military. What ensued was an “Afghan vetting fiasco,” says Hankinson, who served as a Foreign Service Officer for over 20 years.   “I don’t know who made the decision and how, but when we were flying people out of Afghanistan, we were not flying people who … had [Special Immigrant Visas] only,” Hankinson, currently a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.   “We were not flying people who were confirmed Afghan allies,” he continued. “We were flying everybody who showed up to the airport, and could somehow, you know, bluff their way onto a plane. So, the default seemed to be, well, bring them and we’ll figure it out later.”   Hankinson was scheduled to testify before members of Congress on Tuesday on the issue of Afghans nationals being paroled into the U.S., but the hearing was postponed until 2026.  Before 2021, Special Immigrant Visas were reserved for people who had served the U.S. government in a foreign country in an outstanding way for 20 years, and in some rare cases for just 15 years. There is usually a long progress of vetting and levels of recommendation for a foreigner to receive a Special Immigrant Visa, but in the case of Afghanistan, visas were fast-tracked initially to Afghans who had only served the U.S. government for a year, and then later for two years, Hankinson explained.   But there was not time to give every Afghan who had helped the U.S. a Special Immigrant Visa, so many were simply paroled into the U.S. and given all the benefits of a refugee, such as a driver’s license and work permit.   Missing Data  While the U.S. did conduct vetting of the Afghans paroled into the U.S., “vetting is only as good as the data that you have,” Hankinson said.   Because some Afghans are illiterate and don’t know the date of birth, it is impossible to find their records without actuate biographical information.   For example, he explained, among the 200,000 Afghans who have come to the U.S. since the fall of Kabul, 10,000 list their birthday as Jan. 1.   “Whoever is doing the typing is in a hurry and puts in ‘Jan. 1,’ [and] some may only have one name,” Hankinson said. Furthermore, some crimes, such as certain sex crimes, are not considered crimes at all in Afghanistan, and the Taliban, of course, is not a government the U.S. can work with to confirm an individual’s criminal record or lack thereof.   Afghans who had worked for the U.S. military or CIA in Afghanistan were vetted more thoroughly, and a background check with the Afghan authority would have likely been completed, which is “about as good as you can get,” he said. Yet even this higher level of vetting is not perfect.   While most of the 200,000 Afghans who come to the U.S. under the Biden administration “are probably not criminals,” Hankinson said, “among those, I absolutely guarantee you that there are child molesters, there are rapists, there are thieves, there are people who work for the Taliban, and there are terrorists.”   Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Afghan man and suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. in November, worked under CIA direction in Afghanistan and would have undergone thorough vetting.   Lakanwal, like thousands of other Afghans, entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome.  What Now?   Since the tragic shooting that left National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom dead and National Guard member Andrew Wolfe seriously injured, President Donald Trump has paused the issuance of visas for Afghan nationals.   Moving ahead, Hankinson says there needs to be more information sharing within the U.S. government since it was found that the Department of War had information on Aghan nationals that it had not turned over the Department of Homeland Security.   Among the 200,000 Afghans, those “who were not allies, who just got out by accident, and, of course, the terrorists and the criminals,” need to be deported, he said.    Hankinson argues the U.S. government should have paid another country, such as Tajikistan, to receive Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban since there were likely only about 10,000 Afghans who served the U.S. government in such a way that put their lives at risk with the Taliban, he estimates. But since that was not done initially, Hankinson says “solutions closer to Afghanistan” should be found for additional Afghans currently living in refugee camps and who are in fear of returning to Afghanistan.    The post How Fall of Kabul Led to ‘Afghan Vetting Fiasco’   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced Vanity Fair’s profile on chief of staff Susie Wiles as “fake news.” “This was, unfortunately, another attempt at fake news by a reporter who was acting disingenuously and really did take the chief’s words out of context,” Leavitt told Fox News Channel’s “America Reports.” “But I think, most importantly, the bias of omission was ever-present throughout this story. The reporter omitted all of the positive things that Susie and our team said about the president and the inner workings of the White House.” Wiles sat for 11 interviews with Vanity Fair to discuss her role as White House chief of staff and reflect on President Donald Trump’s eventual first year. Wiles called the finished product a “disingenuously framed hit piece.” Wiles reportedly said Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality;” called Elon Musk an “avowed ketamine [user];” said Vice President JD Vance was a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and referred to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought as “a right-wing absolute zealot.”  “Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” Wiles wrote in a rare post on X. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.” “The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in 11 months than any other president has accomplished in eight years, and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!” she continued. Leavitt said the story won’t distract the White House from the work at hand. “And President Trump has been such a productive president and has accomplished more in 11 months than most presidents do in eight years because of his vision and his tenacity, which is executed on and facilitated by our great White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, whom I’m very proud of to call a boss and a mentor and a friend,” she said. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump said he was not offended by being compared to an alcoholic. “I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that — what’s the word? Not possessive — possessive and addictive-type personality,” he said. “Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before.” Trump said he didn’t read the story because he doesn’t read Vanity Fair, a magazine which he believes has “lost its way.” “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided,” he said. “Yeah, deceived — and he didn’t have great access, a couple of very short interviews. And Susie generally doesn’t do interviews,” he continued. Vance agreed with Wiles assertion that he is sometimes a conspiracy theorist. “Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,” he said. “By the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time. For example, I believe in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three year olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills. I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.” “And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponent, at least on some of these conspiracy theories,” he said. “It turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it, and that’s my understanding.” According to Vance, Wiles understands that understands she is in the role to effectuate the will of the American people. “I really love Susie Wiles, because Susie is who she is in the president’s presence. I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes, and that’s what you wanted a staffer. “We have our disagreements. We agree on much more than we disagree,” he said, “but I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the President of the United States, and that makes her the best White House chief of staff that I think the president could ask.” The post ‘FAKE NEWS’: Trump, Leavitt React to Susie Wiles Profile 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. I’ve talked about affordability, this new meme, this new theme that the Democrats are using against the Trump administration. They have belatedly responded to it, as I pointed out earlier. Perhaps because they thought it was sort of absurd when the 21.5% aggregate inflation came under President Joe Biden. And their inflation rate that they inherited in the month of January was 3%—it’s already gone down. It’s 3%-2.7%. Gas is cheaper, etc. So, I don’t think they took it seriously that anybody would believe that the people who caused the problem would blame the people who are trying to clean it up. And four years the problem, 10 months the cleanup? And then I think they thought their foreign policy successes would mitigate any criticism. In fact, they amplified it because the Democrats said: You’re all involved with these ceasefires or Ukraine, you don’t care about us. And so, then they had all these initiatives, which will boom, I think, the economy in 2026. But they didn’t emphasize them, exactly how increased oil and gas will help us very quickly. How all this foreign investment, how all this new deregulation, how these new tax cuts, how the new trade policies, how artificial intelligence and the jobs they will create are going to boom the economy in ’26. Could I go back in history just a minute to offer a warning? In 1992, George Bush was up for reelection—George H.W. Bush, the elder Bush. He was riding high because the 1991 Gulf War had finished, I think, a little problematically, with the survival of Saddam Hussein. But he had ended that threat, expelled him from Kuwait with a four-day ground war, following a brilliant air campaign. Very few American casualties. He was at the top of his game as an international diplomat, former war veteran. George H.W. Bush came into campaign cycle 1992 as high as 90% approval rating. There had been a recession in ’90-’91, but by ’92, when the year started, that year would show 3% inflation. That’s not too bad. It would show 3.5% gross domestic product growth. The unemployment rate had gone down. It was still over 7% too high, but it was going down. And he was at 90%. What happened? He had a lackluster campaign. I would not wanna speak ill of Fred Malek or Robert Teeter, who has passed away, or Robert Mosbacher. But that campaign team really lacked a Lee Atwater. He was the “No Prisoners” campaign director of 1988 that got George H.W. Bush elected. I know a lot of you say, “Well, he did the Willie Horton ad. He did the Boston Harbor ad. He did the tank ad.” He did. And he was relentless. And he destroyed the Dukakis candidacy, maybe cruelly, but he destroyed it. And he got George H.W. Bush elected. He didn’t play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. And he was gone. He had passed away. He had a new Wall Street-type of team, and they played by the rules, and they didn’t take the Clinton-Gore campaign seriously, and they did not take the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot seriously. Why didn’t they do it? Because—I hope this doesn’t sound eerily similar to the problem today—but they said: We had such foreign policy successes. We were polling 90%. They said: The recession is almost over. Look at all the GDP, the inflation. They’re all going in the right direction, and they’re not at recessionary levels. Meanwhile, the Clinton-Gore-George Stephanopoulos team was saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And they took that meme and said: This is the worst economy since the Great Depression. We have no jobs. Inflation is affordable. And then they got an amplification from Ross Perot. He was kind of like the never Trumpers of that age, although he was an independent third party. And the result of it? Bush’s popularity went from 90% to 40% that election year. And he would lose that election, partly because of Ross Perot, partly because of a lackluster, complacent campaign, and partly because they created this meme, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and turned a recovering economy that they had, in a sense, inherited a recovering economy into the Great Depression. I hope that doesn’t sound too familiar, but that’s exactly what is happening now. The economy is on the uptake. President Donald Trump is overseas with a lot of successes. And the same Democrats are saying: It’s affordability, stupid. And they need to get out in front of that issue and not discount it in the way that Republicans did in 1992. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’: How a Political Meme Toppled a President and Could Do It Again appeared first on The Daily Signal.