War Department Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson says a lot has changed in the United States military over the last year — and that at the end of the day, it all comes down to a shift in the culture. Wilson sat down with The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan to discuss some of the changes made at the Pentagon and within the ranks since President Donald Trump began his second term and put decorated Army veteran Pete Hegseth in charge of his War Department. “The biggest changes have really been the culture,” she said, adding, “We’ve gotten away from the ideology in the military, the politics. No more climate change, no more dudes in dresses, as the Secretary likes to say. We’re getting back to actual war fighting and the Warrior Ethos — standards, fitness, eating right, merit-based programs.” Wilson said that the cultural shift also included a move toward promoting those who earned it through merit rather than those who simply checked the right boxes in pursuit of an ideological agenda. “That has refocused the Department on our core mission,” she said. “And what that’s allowed us to do is be more lethal.” WATCH: Credit: Daily Wire   Wilson touted several major operations, from the surgical strikes on narcoterrorists in the Caribbean to the more recent arrest and extraction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and said that effective leadership and a shift toward lethality were behind those successes and many others. A shift in priorities, Wilson said, was also underway, from “nation-building” and toward “war-fighting.” “We’re making sure that our missions aren’t just drawn out with no clear end state,” she continued. “We’re going in with what success looks like, we’re making sure we attain that, and then we’re getting out and protecting the homeland and always putting America first.” Wilson also addressed the extreme number of attacks directed at War Secretary Pete Hegseth — attacks that began as soon as he was nominated to head the Pentagon. “That’s because, in many ways, he’s over the target,” she explained. “And he’s somebody who’s going to be a true change agent at the Department of War, and he from day one has gotten to work implementing all of those changes. And I think he gets so much hate especially from he mainstream media and from the leftwing politicians in D.C. because he is that change agent. He’s not your typical Secretary of Defense who has maybe contracted for the big defense companies … he’s a true soldier’s soldier.” Wilson rounded out the interview with a few details about the recent mission to capture Maduro and the plan to revamp the long-standing military publication Stars and Stripes, along with a promise that the War Department would always continue to put the warfighters first.

China’s detention of two men for fabricating a viral post about male pandas reveals how governments weaponize misinformation laws to control narratives around sensitive topics. When Viral Posts Become State Crimes Dong, 29, from Huludao in Liaoning Province, and Gao, 33, from Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, crafted a deceptive screenshot claiming “Chengdu: two male Sichuan giant pandas successfully mate in the wild for the first time.” They posted it online seeking attention. The fabrication spread rapidly across social media platforms. On January 18, the Chenghua branch of the Chengdu Public Security Bureau announced their administrative detention, shutting down their accounts and citing disruption to “online order” and “negative social impact.” Two men were detained in China this month for creating and spreading fabricated news claiming that two male giant pandas had successfully mated in the wild. The men used "technical means" to create a fake news screenshot titled "Chengdu: two male Sichuan giant pandas… pic.twitter.com/dbnkFQzafu — Anne (@USA_Anne711) January 21, 2026 The Machinery of Control China’s Cybersecurity Law penalizes content disrupting public order, giving authorities broad discretion to detain individuals for online posts deemed false or harmful. The men’s use of “technical means” to forge an official news screenshot escalated their case beyond casual misinformation sharing. Public reports triggered the investigation, demonstrating how state surveillance systems monitor viral content. The detention serves as a deterrent: fabricate a story online, lose your freedom and digital presence. No appeals or release dates appear in official statements. The Unspoken Subtext Western media outlets framed this story as part of China’s broader crackdown on LGBTQ+ content, noting the government’s history of shutting down gay dating apps and advocacy groups. State media like Global Times emphasized only the misinformation angle, avoiding any discussion of homosexuality entirely. Yet the story’s virality hinged precisely on that absurd premise. Pink News reported that same-sex behavior occurs naturally in 59 primate species, suggesting that it serves evolutionary bonding functions. Chinese officials denied their pandas engaged in such activity, sidestepping the biological reality. Authority Over Truth Giant pandas represent China’s national identity and conservation achievements. The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding stands as a world-leading facility. Protecting this narrative from frivolous or subversive claims becomes a state priority. By detaining the men, authorities signaled that controlling stories about national symbols supersedes tolerating embarrassing falsehoods. In the long term, such enforcement chills speech on viral topics. Online users self-censor rather than risk detention. Social media platforms face pressure to preemptively suppress content. The case aligns with China’s documented pattern of detaining individuals for spreading COVID-19 rumors and other online falsehoods, establishing administrative detention as a routine punishment for digital dissent. Were two men really detained for claiming two male pandas were gay? https://t.co/uqauzYM30z — PinkNews (@PinkNews) January 20, 2026 This incident exposes how governments exploit misinformation frameworks to suppress speech they find inconvenient, whether factually dubious or simply culturally uncomfortable. The men sought viral attention through an absurd claim. Instead, they became cautionary tales in China’s expanding digital enforcement apparatus. Sources: Were two men really detained for claiming two male pandas were gay? Two men detained for fabricating news claiming two male giant pandas successfully mate in the wild for the first time Were two men really detained for claiming two male pandas were gay?

'NO PEACE FOR ICE AGENTS!'

So-called 'toxic ideologies'

'Leave our neighbors alone!'

'Not out of legal jeopardy'

'Protect the homeland from CCP'

On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index crashed 870 points, the biggest drop since October. The mainstream media predictably blamed President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs over Greenland, but they were wrong. Thanks to Bitcoin—which trades 24/7—we can actually go to the tape. It turns out Greenland barely made a dent. What caused the bloodbath was Japan. Specifically, the drop was due to new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Monday press conference. She announced snap elections to bolster a raft of reforms, which would hike government spending and reduce tax revenue. This sent Japanese bonds crashing as bond investors worried Japan can’t handle its massive government debt. The panic then bled into U.S. financial markets via the yen carry trade, where hedge funds and speculators have borrowed hundreds of trillions of yen at near-zero interest rates to park it in U.S. assets. The trade worked fine when rates in Japan were kept artificially lower than in the United States and traders could employ plenty of leverage—like gambling with borrowed money. But now Japanese bond yields are soaring with the 30-year yield setting new records and shorter-term securities like the 10- and two-year at the highest levels since the 1990s. The stratospheric rise in these yields is threatening to strengthen the yen with them—so, that free money spigot is reversing. Unwinding the yen carry trade sent the hedge funds rushing for the exits, crashing stocks and bonds worldwide as they liquidated holdings to get out of their leveraged positions. Put simply, if they bought assets with borrowed money, the assets were sold to repay the loans before the interest on those loans could skyrocket. Japan’s latest bond crisis is a near-repeat of the U.K. Gilt Crisis in 2022, when British Prime Minister Liz Truss introduced a package of tax cuts and spending hikes that sent bond yields soaring a point and a half in a single day—third world territory. And that sent the British pound crashing to a 37-year low against the dollar. The wider issue is what the U.K.—and now Japan—have illustrated: Bond markets cannot digest fiscal deficits that have blown away peacetime records. The fact that this is happening in two of the most advanced—and heretofore drama-free—economies on Earth is ominous. The bond vigilantes are reminding everyone that they have the final veto on all government finance. Even worse, the fiscal deficit in Japan is less than half that of the U.S.—3% of the gross domestic product in Japan versus the 6.4% of GDP that Congress is spending us into the hole every year. While the dollar’s reserve currency status and our lower aggregate national debt buy time, this suggests we’re living on borrowed time. And when the crisis hits here, it could be even harder than Japan. How the Land of the Rising Sun got here is illustrative since Congress is following the same recipe. Japan’s original sin dates to when its easy money bubble burst in 1990, and instead of letting weak companies and banks die off, it put them on permanent life support with stimulus and low interest rates. This created a zombie economy of money-losing companies that hog up one-third of all bank lending and almost 10 million Japanese workers essentially paid to lose money. The result is that while American productivity grew by half since 1990, Japan’s actually dropped. That in turn translated into real wages that are lower in Japan today than 1990, while also driving Japanese government debt to 230% of GDP—an eye-watering $70 trillion in U.S. GDP terms. To finance all that debt, the Bank of Japan pushed interest rates down near zero for 30 years, which was necessary because otherwise the interest on that mountain of debt would eat Japan alive. This created the free money machine of the century for foreigners in the yen carry trade, and it plunged Japan into 30 years of stagnation with no end in sight. Beyond the economic costs, this has driven Japanese suicide rates to one of the highest rates on Earth, while Japanese fertility has plunged to just 1.2 children per couple. Shockingly, that means eight great-grandparents turn into just 1.7 souls. If this keeps up, Japan’s population will fall by half per generation, leaving a shell of a developed nation. Japan is the poster child for a creeping worldwide government takeover that’s transforming vibrant economies into permanent crony bailout apparatuses: Where government handouts and tax-funded nongovernmental organizations feast while the dwindling taxpayers—who pay for it—all check out, figuratively and sometimes literally. The canary in the coal mine is singing. Trump’s doing what he can. Now Congress needs to wake up and turn us back from the fiscal cliff with meaningful spending cuts. The post Japan’s Crash Is Our Canary in the Coal Mine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Conservative members of Congress pushed back on biological male Rep. Tim McBride, D-Del., at a women-only press conference on legislation that would allow victims to sue the creators of nonconsensual sexually explicit artificial intelligence content on Thursday. McBride, who now goes by the name Sarah, began identifying as a woman 10 years before being elected to Congress in 2014. “He didn’t belong, and he will never be one of us,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., wrote on X on Thursday. POV: You attend a press conference for women and biological male Tim McBride shows up.He didn’t belong and he will never be one of us.HOLD THE LINE pic.twitter.com/nDB8e8gyDW— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) January 22, 2026 Other members of Congress, such as Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, also spoke out against McBride for his unwanted appearance at the press conference. “Why did a man show up at a women-only press conference? Biological men can never be women,” Biggs wrote. McBride, Biggs, and Mace did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. McBride’s appearance at the press conference on the DEFIANCE Act, which passed the Senate last week and is now headed to the House of Representatives for a vote, ties into a larger and ongoing national debate on biological males who identify as women. National Debate on Self-identifying Women The comments from the conservative members of Congress come amid a national debate on whether biological men who self-identify as women can be socially and legally classified as one. In Feb. 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports executive order, which banned biological males from competing in federally funded women’s sports. Trump argued that allowing men who identify as women in women’s sports is a direct violation of Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which states that educational institutions receiving federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports. Trump also argued that federal courts in the cases of Tennessee v. Cardona and Kansas v. U.S. Dept. of Education have previously recognized that “ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities.” Trump’s order then called on Congress to protect biological women in education. Weeks before, the House passed Rep. Greg Steube’s, R-Fla., Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which was sent to the Senate for a vote. “Men have no place in women’s sports,” Steube wrote in a statement. “Republicans have promised to protect women’s sports, and under President Trump’s leadership, we will fulfill this promise.” Democrat senators have since blocked the legislation from reaching the president’s desk for a final signature. Democratic opponents of the legislation claim that Republicans are “fearmongering” on the issue of transgenders and have labeled proponents of the legislation as “transphobic.” The post ‘HE DIDN’T BELONG’: ‘Trans’ Rep. Attends Women-Only Press Conference appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Freedom 250 Mobile Museum kickoff event this week launched a nationwide tour of interactive museum trucks designed to bring American history to communities across the country.  This year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the Mobile Museum truck revealed Wednesday is one of six that will tour the United States in celebration of the semiquincentennial.  Dr. Matthew Spalding, vice president for Washington operations at Hillsdale College, delivered remarks on America and its founding at Revolution Academy in Summerfield, North Carolina.  “In 1776, when it announced itself to the world, America was little more than 13 small colonies on a barren continent, thousands of miles from their ancestral homeland, surrounded by hostile powers,” Spalding said at the event. “Ours is the story of a band of patriots who united together to declare independence from—and declare war against—the most powerful nation in the world. At its birth, our Founders justified independence and nationhood by asserting self-evident truths.”  Dr. Matthew Spalding (Courtesy of Hillsdale College) The Mobile Museum truck trailer expands three times its size by extending on both sides. Inside are two rooms—one covering pre-American Revolution history and the other covering post-American Revolution history.   Love of History Hillsdale College helped curate and edit the educational materials featured inside the trucks.  Spalding explained the inspiration for Mobile Museum trucks: “I vividly remember America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. I was in middle school and remember the fireworks and the Tall Ships and the Freedom Train. All that deepened my love of country and sparked my love of history.”  The trucks provide interactive opportunities for young visitors. They include videos of George Washington, interactive screens where visitors can sign the Declaration of Independence themselves, and quizzes that let you see which side of the Revolution you would have been on.  The kickoff event took place at Revolution Academy in Summerfield, North Carolina, and featured speakers and participants such as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Jill Simonian of PragerU Kids, and Richard Childress, CEO of Childress Racing.  Cross-Country Tour After the event, Spalding told The Daily Signal that his “objective is to help people learn—and in some cases relearn—that history, spark their interest in it and help them fall in love with their country again.”  The trucks will tour the country, stopping at schools, NASCAR races, and rodeos, giving communities an opportunity to visit.  Courtesy of Hillsdale College “The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say, ‘Here are our personal opinions,’” Spalding said. “It says, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ and that difference is at the very center of what we wanted to capture.”  He emphasized the strength of America’s founding ideas.  “This is a good country,” Spalding said. “We’re not perfect, but it’s a great country and that has everything to do with those beginnings.”   The Freedom 250 tour ensures that those beginnings are not forgotten.  The post Freedom 250 Mobile Museum Launches National Tour for America’s Semiquincentennial  appeared first on The Daily Signal.