Trump to Pull Stefanik UN Ambassador Nomination to Protect Republican House Majority

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / March 27, 2025

President Donald Trump is pulling the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., to be United Nations ambassador.

The move is designed to protect House Republicans’ slim majority, the president said.

“With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” the president said on Truth Social. “The people love Elise and, with her, we have nothing to worry about come Election Day.”

Others can do a good job in the position, so Stefanik “will stay in Congress, rejoin the House Leadership Team, and continue to fight for our amazing American People,” according to Trump.

“Speaker [Mike] Johnson is thrilled! I look forward to the day when Elise is able to join my Administration in the future,” he said. “She is absolutely FANTASTIC. Thank you Elise!”

While Stefanik would likely have had no trouble getting the necessary votes for confirmation, Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House with 218 seats while Democrats hold 213 seats. There are currently four vacant seats.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, was expected to slow-walk the special election to replace Stefanik.

Stefanik’s nomination was expected to move forward on April 2, the day after the Florida special elections, Axios reported last week. She would have been the last of Trump’s Cabinet to get confirmed.

Stefanik is the second of Trump’s Cabinet picks to have their nominations withdrawn, following Rep. Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal in November after it became clear he did not have the votes to be confirmed.

This is a breaking news story and it may be updated.

Watch Our Live Inauguration Day Coverage

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / January 20, 2025

The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett will be doing live coverage today from Washington, D.C. Catch his show, which you can watch right here, starting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern and concluding half an hour after the inauguration. Stay tuned to get smart commentary from guests, including Scott Rasmussen and Kurt Schlichter, and watch the inauguration itself.

American Tea Parties, Greek Yogurt Parties

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / June 21, 2011

When it comes to crushing debts, unsustainable entitlements and ballooning deficits, Americans and Europeans are all in the same sinking boat. Where they part ways is in their response to the looming crisis.

Faced with out-of-control government spending and the prospect of a bleak economic future, Americans from across the country have rallied under the banner of the Tea Party and sent a clear message to Washington: Enough! In a vigorous manifestation of that greatest of all checks on government—the “vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America”—citizens began a grassroots wave of orderly protests that have since only grown in number and promise to keep the pressure on Washington to pull its financial act together.

Meanwhile in Greece, proposed austerity measures to avert bankruptcy have left the country paralyzed by strikes and riots. Last week in Athens, Greek police fired teargas at protesters who responded by throwing stones and yogurt. This week, the country is being hit with blackouts as the main power company goes on strike. Violent protests have sadly become the norm whenever European governments attempt to tackle their financial woes. Their citizens, coddled by the nanny-state and its promises of cradle-to-grave no-hassle living, do not take well to being told it’s time to face the music.

Cynics will say that Americans aren’t hurling stones and yogurt because the government has yet to touch their benefits, and that when it does, things will get ugly here too. Perhaps. But there are reasons to believe that Americans, who by and large still view themselves as free citizens of a republic rather than dependent wards of the welfare state, will have the fortitude to accept whatever painful cuts are necessary. And thanks to the efforts of the Tea Party, these cuts, when they do occur, will not be as drastic as they would have been had the people sat by in torpor until the crisis hit.

Cuba Says It Killed 4, Wounded 6 Others Aboard Speedboat, Including Wanted Cubans Who Came From US

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / February 25, 2026

REUTERS–Cuban forces killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida-registered speedboat that entered Cuban waters on Wednesday and opened fire on a Cuban patrol, the Cuban government said at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.

Cuba’s Interior Ministry said the group was comprised of anti-government Cubans, some of whom were previously wanted in Cuba. It said the group came from the U.S. armed with assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, ballistic vests and telescopic sights.

An additional Cuban suspect was detained inside Cuban territory in connection with the plot, the statement said.

“According to preliminary statements from the detainees, they intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes,” the Interior Ministry said in an official statement.

The wounded were evacuated and receiving medical attention, while the Cuban patrol commander was also wounded, the ministry said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters it was not a U.S. operation and that no U.S. government personnel were involved. Cuban authorities made the U.S. aware of the incident, but the U.S. embassy in Havana would attempt to independently verify what happened, Rubio said.

“We are going to have our own information on this, we are going to figure out exactly what happened, and there are a number of things that could have happened here,” Rubio said.

“Suffice to say it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that,” he said.

The incident took place as the U.S. has blocked virtually all oil shipments to the island, increasing pressure on the Communist-run government.

American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 3, removing a key Cuban ally from power, and Rubio reiterated his rhetoric against the Cuban government on Wednesday, calling the status quo unsustainable and saying Cuba needed to change “dramatically.”

Cuba said it identified the six detainees from the boat, two of whom were previously wanted in Cuba on suspicion of planning terrorist acts against Cuba: Amijail Sanchez Gonzalez and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gomez.

In addition, Cuba said it detained another Cuban man in Cuban territory who had come from the U.S. to the island in order to receive the infiltrators.

One of the dead was identified as Michel Ortega Casanova, while the other three dead had yet to be identified, Cuba said.

The speedboat came within one nautical mile of a channel on Falcones Cay, on the north coast of Cuba about 120 miles east of Havana, when it was approached by five members of a Cuban border patrol unit, Cuba said.

The speedboat then opened fire, wounding the commander of the Cuban vessel, the statement said.

Cuba said the speedboat was registered in Florida with the number FL7726SH.

“Faced with the current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its commitment to protecting its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar for the Cuban state in safeguarding its sovereignty and stability in the region,” the Cuban statement said.

Florida politicians called for separate investigations, saying they did not trust the Cuban account.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said he was ordering prosecutors to open an investigation in conjunction with other state and federal law enforcement partners.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican whose district includes the southern tip of Florida, called for a federal investigation, saying he had asked the State Department and military to look into the matter.

“United States authorities must determine whether any of the victims were U.S. citizens or legal residents and establish exactly what occurred,” Gimenez said.

Originally published by Reuters

‘It’s a Disgrace’: Vance Reveals Playbook for Combating Fraud in United States

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / February 25, 2026

Vice President JD Vance announced he is withholding Medicaid reimbursements from Minnesota while the administration investigates fraud in the state.

When asked by The Daily Signal if this plan should be viewed as a playbook for fighting fraud in the rest of the country, Vance said, “I think you can, certainly.”

“There are certain things that we’re doing in Minneapolis and Minnesota that I’m not gonna be able to do in other parts of the country, because the fraud is gonna be different in each place,” he said. “But yeah, I get this basic model of saying to people, ‘Hey, you get a massive amount of money to provide a service to people.’ Did you actually provide that service?”

NEW?: @VP just announced he is withholding Medicaid reimbursement from MN during the fraud investigation.

I asked him if this should be viewed as a playbook for fighting fraud in other states.

"I think you can, certainly. There are certain things that we're doing in… pic.twitter.com/4ehGLCbl2O
— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) February 25, 2026

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump tapped Vance to lead the “war on fraud” throughout the country.

Vance announced the first move in this war on Wednesday—withholding reimbursements for $259.5 million in Medicaid funds for Minnesota pending investigation.

“The providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid. The state has paid those providers the money,” Vance said. “What we’re doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.”

Curbing fraud shouldn’t be controversial, Vance told The Daily Signal.

“The fact that it’s even controversial, that we’re asking these questions as a government goes to show how much the culture of fraud has permeated Washington, D.C.,” Vance said.

“Think about this once you heard about people who take money from autistic children. They pretend their children, or some other person’s kid is autistic, they collect a fake check, they don’t provide an ounce of services, and then the very money that’s supposed to go to needy kids isn’t there anymore to help those needy children.”

Vance shared a story about fraudsters exploiting funding meant to provide after school programs to autistic children.

“The fact that we have so normalized this, and the fact that I guarantee there will be voices in the media, there’ll be voices in the state of Minnesota who say this is hurting children,” Vance said. “No, it’s hurting fraudsters.”

“The way to protect kids is to go after those fraudsters,” Vance added, “which is what we’re doing.”

Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has 60 days to respond to Vance about the matter.

“All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,” Vance said.

“And the fact that there are so many people handing out millions and billions of dollars of federal Medicaid money without even confirming that they’re doing the thing that they say that they’re doing, it’s a disgrace,” Vance said. “It’s defrauding the American taxpayer, and we’re stopping it.”

Soros-Backed Prosecutor Allows Murder Suspects to Avoid Prison Time

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Tyler O'Neil / February 25, 2026

Last week, a man who allegedly shot the founder of a charity 10 times while he lay in bed with his wife got off without a prison sentence—because the prosecutor, backed by groups funded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, agreed to let him plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

Gret Glyer had founded DonorSee, a charity platform that allowed donors to support specific people while giving video updates to show the donor’s concrete impact. Joshua Danehower, 37, who had gone on one date with Glyer’s wife Heather about 10 years previously, allegedly broke into the family’s house, snuck into the bedroom, and fired 10 shots into Gret Glyer, leaving his wife a widow and his two young children fatherless.

Due to the plea agreement, however, Danehower will move from a jail cell to a mental health facility. After a year, he will receive a psychological evaluation and may then gain his freedom.

Danehower is far from alone, however. Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County, Virginia, has overseen at least 10 murder pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. Mental Health America notes that defendants charged with a felony use the insanity plea in less than 1% of cases, and it only succeeds 25% of the time.

Yet, according to the victims’ rights group Virginians for Safe Communities, fewer than 50 murder cases have been disposed in the last three years, while Descano’s office has begun the insanity plea process for at least 10 murder defendants—around a 1-in-5 ratio.

Descano’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Are murder suspects in Fairfax County really over 20 times more insane than felony defendants across the country?

Critics presented an alternative explanation: the bias of Steve Descano.

A Strong Murder Case

“Steve Descano’s office allows 1-in-5 murderers to get an insanity plea,” Gizan Glyer, the victim’s sister, told The Daily Signal Tuesday.

“Gret Glyer’s admitted murderer avoiding prison is not an anomaly,” she argued. “It is part of a pattern of corruption and incompetence displayed by the Fairfax Commonwealth Attorney’s office. My family not only fears for our lives, but the lives of our community members.”

“Everyone should know what Descano is getting away with,” she added.

The bereaved sister noted that detectives found a trove of evidence, including “a manifesto, a map of my brother’s whereabouts, and bullet casings at the crime scene that matched bullet casings left at the gun range he visited 3 days after the murder.”

“This all points to a premeditated, targeted murder of Gret,” Gizan Glyer added. Yet, due to the insanity plea, Danehower “can now be released from the mental health facility as early as next year, and every year after that will continue to appeal his release.”

According to NBC4, the psychologist’s report says Danehower came to believe Grett Gyler was part of the “illuminati” and had forced Heather into marrying him, and thought that he had to kill him.

‘The Rogue Prosecutor’ Movement

One expert told The Daily Signal that this trend of increased insanity pleas is “very much par for the course, where essentially you have the prosecutor functioning as another defense attorney, for the defendant, instead of seeking justice for the victims.”

Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of the book “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,” also noted that Descano represents part of a larger movement, funded by Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire.

During his 2019 election, Descano received $659,054 from two PACs funded substantially by Soros—Justice and Public Safety PAC and New Virginia Majority. This sum accounted for more than two-thirds of his approximately $950,000 in overall donations. He received $82,793 from these PACs during his 2023 reelection campaign.

Neither the Justice and Public Safety PAC nor New Virginia Majority responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment. The Daily Signal reached out to the Open Society Foundations to see if Soros would comment, but did not receive a response.

While the Justice and Public Safety PAC says it aims to “elect better prosecutors,” Smith wrote that it forms part of “a devious scheme to replace law and order prosecutors with zealots opposed to the death penalty.” In the 30 U.S. cities with the highest murder rates, Smith noted, at least 14 had prosecutors backed or inspired by Soros in 2022.

“Descano has certainly been very aggressive about not prosecuting certain offenders,” Smith told The Daily Signal. Descano has refused to seek the death penalty, even when family members of victims urge him to do so.

Former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares released an investigative report into Descano’s office last October. Among other things, Miyares faulted the attorney for “improper plea agreements,” including falsely stating that victims had agreed to lenient plea agreements.

Miyares Descano Report Download

Descano dismissed the report as “a sad, last-ditch political stunt by a man who’s about to lose an election.” Miyares did lose his reelection campaign in November.

Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities, attributed Descano’s “inordinately high rate of granting insanity pleas to murderers” to “incompetence at the law and indifference toward victims and justice.”

“Under Virginia law, simply having a mental illness does not mean you are not criminally responsible,” Kennedy told The Daily Signal. “Signs of premeditation, cover-up, and clear motive all but negate the insanity defense. Virginia jurors should have been allowed to decide the fate of these killers, not Steve Descano and his handpicked shrinks.”

5-Year-Old’s Near-Death Experience Moves Congress to Stop Illegal Aliens From Truck Driving

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Tyler O'Neil / Pedro Rodriguez / February 25, 2026

Congressional Republicans are pushing to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses in the wake of President Donald Trump acknowledging 5-year-old Dalilah Coleman during his State of the Union address.

Dalilah was nearly killed in 2022 by Partap Singh, an illegal immigrant truck driver in California, after he did not stop his 18-wheeler at a stop sign.

“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump said.

“President Trump is spot on: Left-wing lunatics like [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom are getting Americans killed by giving out driver’s licenses to illegals,” Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told The Daily Signal.

Barr and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced the Secure Commercial Driver Licensing Act in October to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, or CDLs for short.

The Secure Commercial Driver Licensing Act aims to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining CDLs through a more rigorous permitting process and adding accountability measures.

The bill requires all testing related to the issuance or renewal of CDLs and non-domiciled CDLs to be conducted only in English.

The bill also directs the secretary of transportation the authority to revoke a state’s authority to issue non-domiciled CDLs if found non-compliant with federal standards and to require individuals to hold a standard driver’s license for one year before obtaining a CDL.

The president endorsing the idea of preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining CDLs at the State of the Union could serve as a boon to the Republicans’ efforts.

Barr’s office confirmed with The Daily Signal that the legislation will augment efforts to achieve justice for Dalilah.

“That’s why Senator Cotton and I are leading the charge to put an end to this by punishing states that do this and requiring all testing for CDLs to be in English,” Barr added.

As recently reported by The Daily Signal, states like California outsource the vetting and training process for drivers to third-party driving schools, which often go with little verification from government authorities.

“States issue CDLs based on the say-so of driving schools. Many drivers have never had a representative from Department of Motor Vehicles with them in the vehicle during a driving test,” Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian told The Daily Signal.

Cotton echoed Barr’s remarks and told The Daily Signal that by administering CDLs to illegal migrants “who can’t read English road signs,” Democrats continue to endanger Americans.

Barr described the bill as “commonsense legislation to end this dangerous practice and require commercial drivers to pass an English-only test.”

Other Republican legislators, such as Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; and Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., backed conservative efforts to crack down on illegal immigrant truck drivers.

“When it comes to preventing illegal aliens from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, anyone who is against this policy has lost all semblance of common sense,” Fitzpatrick told The Daily Signal.

In a statement shared with The Daily Signal, Tuberville added that in order to drive a truck, “you should be able to speak English fluently.”

Today, I had the honor of meeting with the Coleman family, whose 5-year-old daughter, Dalilah Coleman, was nearly killed by an illegal trucker.

We’re so grateful that Dalilah is still with us today – but this horrible accident NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

We must ensure that… pic.twitter.com/qSJqibeImv
— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) February 4, 2026

“This protects our law enforcement officers and the public. This is not only about safety and efficiency—it’s just common sense,” Tuberville added.

Earlier this month, Tuberville hosted the Coleman family in his congressional office.

‘Complex’: Senators Say Passing SAVE America Act Will Be a Challenge

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Tyler O'Neil / Pedro Rodriguez / George Caldwell / February 25, 2026

After President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, congressional Republicans have a clear homework assignment from the White House—to pass the SAVE America Act, requiring photo identification and proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections.

Now, Republicans are trying to figure out whether this legislative push will be an exercise in lawmaking or just messaging.

“I’m asking you to approve the SAVE America Act to stop illegal immigrants and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections,” Trump told Congress Tuesday in an attempt to create momentum for the act’s passage through the Senate, where it has not yet received a vote.

“Congress should unite and enact this commonsense, country-saving legislation right now and it should be before anything else happens.”

President Trump is 100% right: all voters must show proof of citizenship and valid ID to vote.

Rep. Roy’s SAVE America Act gets the job done. pic.twitter.com/cU9HSrCIrF
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) February 25, 2026

The House recently passed the bill. Democrats in the House and Senate have generally opposed the bill, arguing that citizenship and photo identification requirements suppress the vote and disadvantage minorities.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday on Fox News that he would bring the bill to a vote, but that his current priority was ending the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

“We’ll put the Democrats on the record,” Thune said. “We will get a vote on it. And we are right now in the middle of a government shutdown so we’ve got to try and get the government opened up first, but in due time we will … have a vote on it.”

? BREAKING: Senate Leader John Thune confirms HE'S FORCING A VOTE on the SAVE America Act, he will put Democrats ON THE RECORD opposing the 85-15 issue

This MUST pass! Voter ID, citizenship — common sense ??

"We will put the Democrats on the record! […] We'll get it on the… pic.twitter.com/bvtULHAV45
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 25, 2026

On Wednesday morning, Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., identified Trump’s advocacy of the bill as a main takeaway from the State of the Union address.

“He said, first and foremost, the SAVE Act’s got to get passed and he’s 100% right,” Moore told The Daily Signal.

But many House Republicans are calling on their Senate Republican counterparts to not just vainly seek the 60 Democrat votes typically required to end debate on legislation, but to force a “talking filibuster.”

The theory, expounded by figures such as Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is that Republicans could enforce Rule 19 of the standing rules of the Senate, under which senators are given a limit of two speeches on each “question” in a legislative day.

Proponents say Republicans could refuse to adjourn, thereby forcing Democrats to exhaust all of their allotted speeches to delay the bill, eventually bringing the SAVE America Act to a pass-fail, simple majority vote.

But there is no Republican consensus about the approach yet.

Thune told Politico after the address, “Our conference is definitely not united on the talking filibuster, and it will take 50 [Republicans] because you’ve got to defeat all the Dem amendments.”

? BREAKING: Senate Leader John Thune says there are ACTIVE discussions to bring the SAVE America Act to a talking filibuster and floor vote

If successful, it can PASS with 50 votes + JD Vance

"We're having conversations about it, but it's not a unified position among… pic.twitter.com/CdPAh8wA3j
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 25, 2026

At a Wednesday press conference, Thune again did not commit to the talking filibuster approach. He argued it would take much floor time and would require party unity among Republicans, since Democrats could try to drag out the process by proposing numerous amendments.

“We’ll see what the Senate does,” Moore told The Daily Signal, “if they actually exercise procedures which are within their own rules for a talking filibuster, or if it’s just a throwaway where … they hold some cloture vote without actually going through with the talking filibuster.”

Shortly before Trump’s address, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Daily Signal he supports using the maneuver to force a vote on the bill, but is not sure it will work.

“I was with [Sens.] Mike Lee [of Utah] and Rick Scott [of Florida] at the Oval Office when we were discussing with the president. I’m supportive of it. I’m not going to overpromise what we may not be able to deliver.”

Great meeting today with @realDonaldTrump, @SenRonJohnson, and @SenRickScott

We all agree: it’s time to turn to the SAVE America Act, and do whatever it takes to pass it in the Senate

Big plans unfolding soon! https://t.co/J40xFd9DO0 pic.twitter.com/sYDNriUpjq
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) February 6, 2026

Johnson said he believed passing the SAVE America Act after a talking filibuster might require changes to precedent in order to prevent Democrats from dragging out floor time by bringing forward “an infinite number of amendments.”

“It’s far more complex, far more uncertain than some people may be leading the public to believe,” Johnson told The Daily Signal.

“If senators can go down there and offer an amendment and that’s not counted as a speech, now all of a sudden you have an infinite number of amendments that can be offered, and you’ll never bring debate to a close,” Johnson told The Daily Signal.

Johnson nevertheless called for putting Democrats on the spot on whether or not they support the bill.

“Nobody knows the outcome of this thing, but I think, at a minimum, Republicans ought to make Democrats defend why they are opposed to what approximately 80% of Americans support … some basic controls in terms of ID, citizenship, so that their legitimate vote isn’t canceled out by a fraudulent one,” he said.

9-0 SCOTUS Ruling Could Trigger Wave of ICE Detention Lawsuits

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Tyler O'Neil / Pedro Rodriguez / George Caldwell / Fred Lucas / February 25, 2026

The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling, sided against a private prison firm that contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal aliens.

The outcome could subject privately-owned prisons currently contracting with ICE or other government agencies to more litigation. The ruling stems from a lawsuit that has languished in court for more than a decade.

With Wednesday’s ruling, illegal immigrant detainees can continue to sue The GEO Group, the defendant in the case, for requiring them to work for $1 per day. The company sought to toss the lawsuit, claiming sovereign immunity as a government contractor with ICE.

The litigation dates to 2014 when detainees—held in Aurora, Colorado—alleged they were forced to do janitorial and other work virtually without pay.

“Nothing in its [the ICE contract’s] terms, the court found, instructed GEO to adopt the work rules at issue,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the unanimous majority.

The GEO Group has 98 facilities, including one in Newark, New Jersey, where last year Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for protesting.

Alejandro Menocal, a detainee, initiated the class action lawsuit on behalf of the Aurora facility’s detainees.

The suit challenges two policies that GEO used to reduce labor costs. The plaintiffs alleged the company violated both a federal law against forced labor and a Colorado law prohibiting unjustified enrichment.

GEO defended the practice and initially argued for the case to be dismissed because it was an ICE contractor, but a district judge sided with the plaintiffs.

Menocal did not win the case, only the right to continue the litigation.

“If eventually found liable, GEO may of course appeal … But GEO must wait until then,” Kagan wrote.

SupremeCourt-Private Prisons Download

The State of the Union: Trump Comeback Is Bigger Than the Biden Setback

The American story is one of resilient comebacks. And as we celebrate our 250th year as a nation under the leadership of President Donald Trump, we’re witnessing perhaps the greatest comeback of them all—especially for Main Street USA.

As the president illustrated last night at his State of the Union address, America is awakening from a yearslong winter of managed decline under the heavy hand of big government. Today, we’re glimpsing the rekindled lights of our nation’s greatness on the horizon by putting America First—and reigniting the free enterprise system that powers opportunity.

During the Biden administration, the flame of our nation’s towering economic strength, rooted in capitalism and exceptionalism, was nearly extinguished. Under the crushing weight of Bidenomics and socialist welfare policies, massive inflation, red tape, bad trade deals, and a growing bureaucracy, families and small businesses faced devastating setbacks in earnings, savings, and homeownership.

Wasteful government spending drove consumer prices to 40-year highs. Green New Deal regulations added $6 trillion in new costs for households and business owners. Unfair trade deals shuttered thousands of factories and made us dependent on adversaries. Stark images of fraudsters receiving billions in taxpayer benefits only added insult to injury for every American job creator, worker, and family who was left behind.

In just over 12 months, Trump has restored confidence and opportunity to Main Street with a commonsense economic agenda designed to put hardworking families and small businesses—not Washington bureaucrats, illegal aliens, or coastal elites—in the driver’s seat.

Four years of broken policies won’t dissipate overnight. But with pro-worker, pro-growth incentives like tax cuts, deregulation, and fair trade, Main Street business owners are beginning to hire, expand, and invest again. These are the early rays of light dawning for workers and communities across America.

The data speaks for itself. Despite the continuous mainstream media doomcasting, core inflation has reached its lowest level in nearly five years. In the last three months of 2025, the average rate was just 1.7%—compared to the average 5% during the last administration.

As importantly, wages are finally rising faster than inflation, and interest rates have come down. In Trump’s first year, real earnings outpaced inflation by nearly $1,400.

American families and workers have more money in their pockets with higher hourly earnings and lower prices.

Job growth is accelerating where it matters most—in the private sector. The economy added 172,000 new private-sector jobs in January, particularly in construction and specialty trade jobs. Growth is coming from the builders, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and innovators—not bureaucratic expansion.

The America First agenda is also restoring industrial strength. With $18 trillion in outside investment commitments secured by Trump thanks to fair trade and tax incentives, manufacturing activity expanded at its fastest pace since 2022. More businesses are building and producing domestically—lowering prices, securing our supply chains, and restoring Made in America.

Growth is driving the comeback on Main Street. Small business sales recently hit a six-month high and small business optimism remains above the 52-year average. Over 70% of small business owners expect higher revenues this year, 55% plan to create new jobs, and over half say that Working Family Tax Cuts will materially boost their business and growth projections.

These historic tax cuts represent the next chapter of our nation’s economic turnaround, with long-term incentives designed to break job creators free from the clutches of socialist government and empower the private sector—kickstarting the engine of free enterprise that creates jobs, drives expansion, and promises generational wealth.

The Working Family Tax Cuts make the 20% small business pass-through deduction permanent, generating an estimated $750 billion in economic activity and supporting over one million new jobs.

It allows full expensing for factories, equipment, and research and development—accelerating domestic production. It substantially eliminates taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits, boosting take-home pay by thousands of dollars per year for millions of Americans. It strengthens health savings accounts, expands child care access, and creates new Trump Accounts, Workforce Pell Grants, and 529 plans.

Families and workers are just beginning to see their largest tax refunds in history. Small businesses are hiring, expanding, and investing again when just a couple of years ago they were cutting shifts and closing shop.

Last week at an event with Trump in Georgia, Coosa Steel owner Andrew Saville thanked him for the tariffs and tax cuts that saved his business: “Your first term, we saw some things come back just a little bit here and there. The second term, about July, the quotes, the orders … I couldn’t keep up. They were coming nonstop.”

There is more work to do to right the world’s largest economy, but the facts are undeniable: the America First economic agenda is working for U.S. workers and job creators. The ship is no longer foundering under the weight of Democrat socialist policies; under Trump, the forecast for Main Streets across America is a new Golden Age, and it is just beginning to dawn.

As Trump highlighted last night, the state of our union is finally strong again, and the best is yet to come.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Are Negotiations Destined to Fail After Iran Accuses US of ‘Big Lies’?

The Trump administration is employing “Nazi” propaganda tactics to spread “big lies” about the Iranian regime, a senior Iranian official claimed one day before scheduled nuclear negotiations between the two governments.

“Professional liars are good at creating the ‘illusion of truth,’” Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Iran, wrote on X Wednesday morning just hours after President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address, where he made a case for action against Iran. Baqaei accused Israel of joining the United States in using “Nazi” propaganda tactics.

“‘Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,’ is a law of propaganda coined by Nazi Joseph Goebbels,” Baqaei wrote on X. “This is now systematically used by the U.S. administration and the war profiteers encircling it, particularly the genocidal Israeli regime, to serve their sinister disinformation [and] misinformation campaign against the Nation of Iran.”

United States and Iranian officials are scheduled to hold talks in Geneva on Thursday over Iran’s nuclear program, and Trump says he prefers to solve the controversy through “diplomacy.” However, he pledged Tuesday night he “will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror … to have a nuclear weapon.”

“Since they seized control of that proud nation 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” Trump said of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.S. has moved a significant number of military resources into the Middle East since the start of the year, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, is working its way toward the region and is currently docked at the Mediterranean island of Crete.

The buildup of U.S. military resources in the Middle East comes about eight months after the U.S. struck Iran’s three key nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer, which “obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” according to the president. But now, Trump says Iran is working to rebuild its nuclear program.

“After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over,” Trump said during Tuesday’s address.

Satellite images over Iran show new activity at key Iranian military sites, and images show Iran has buried the tunnel entrances at one of the nuclear sites the U.S. bombed last year, Reuters reports.

Trump claims Iran has “sinister ambitions” to restart its nuclear program and has developed weapons that could reach U.S. military bases in Europe. The president also accused the Iranian regime of killing “32,000 protesters in their own country” during anti-regime protests that began at the end of December.

“We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said.

Iran’s response to Trump’s remarks casts doubt on the ability of the two nations to reach a diplomatic solution during negotiations Thursday.

“Whatever they’re alleging in regard to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s ballistic missiles, and the number of casualties during January’s unrest is simply the repetition of ‘big lies,’” Baqaei said. “No one should be fooled by these prominent untruths.”

Professional liars are good at creating the 'illusion of truth.'

"Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda coined by Nazi Joseph Goebbels. This is now systematically used by the U.S. administration and the war profiteers encircling it,…
— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) February 25, 2026

Trump has a “number of tools” at his disposal to ensure Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News channel’s “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday morning, adding that he hopes Iran takes this into consideration during negotiations on Thursday.

The U.S. has leveled a number of sanctions on Iran and Iranian officials in recent weeks. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced new sanctions on “over 30 individuals, entities, and vessels enabling illicit Iranian petroleum sales and Iran’s ballistic missile and advanced conventional weapons production.”

“Iran exploits financial systems to sell illicit oil, launder the proceeds, procure components for its nuclear and conventional weapons programs, and support its terrorist proxies,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“Under President Trump’s strong leadership, Treasury will continue to put maximum pressure on Iran to target the regime’s weapons capabilities and support for terrorism, which it has prioritized over the lives of the Iranian people,” Bessent said ahead of Thursday’s negotiations.

State AGs Hold AMA’s Feet to the Fire on Gender Transitions for Children

The once-ironclad defenses of institutions captured by the transgender agenda appear to be crumbling before our eyes. After a recent statement by the American Medical Association suggested its defense of gender-transition surgeries for minors was shaky, a coalition of state attorneys general committed to defending children has decided to press the point.

On Monday, 20 state AGs wrote a letter to AMA CEO and Executive Vice President Dr. John J. Whyte seeking clarification on the organization’s position with regard to gender transition hormones for minors.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, led the letter, in which he was joined by his Republican counterparts from Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.

The AGs’ letter responded to a media statement released by the AMA earlier this month. When pressed for a reaction to news that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a position statement against gender transition surgeries for minors, the AMA gave media outlets a statement, admitting, “In the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”

“The American Medical Association has finally admitted what many have warned for years: its recommendations for surgeries on children were not grounded in solid evidence, despite telling doctors and families otherwise,” said Marshall. “Yet the same weak science underpins puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. You cannot dismiss one intervention as unsupported while continuing to push the rest. When children’s lives and futures are at stake, anything less than full scientific honesty is reckless. The AMA must follow the science completely, not selectively.”

This line of inquiry was the purpose of Monday’s letter. The attorneys general “read with appreciation” the AMA’s admission about transgender surgeries on children. However, they added, “We thus find it concerning that the AMA continues to support the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors. The quality of evidence is the same as it is for surgeries: low and very-low quality.”

“So if you agree that there is insufficient evidence to support using surgical interventions to treat gender dysphoria in minors—as your recent statement indicates—we do not understand how you can find that there is sufficient evidence to support using hormonal interventions to treat gender dysphoria in minors,” the letter reasoned. “These interventions have not been shown to be any safer for children than surgeries are, and in fact may be all the more dangerous precisely because they are viewed as not as serious. But hormones can leave a child sterilized just as surely as surgery can.”

The letter cited recent systematic evidence reviews conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as by the National Health Service in England. It cited from the HHS review that “the certainty of evidence is very low regarding the effect of surgery on [gender dysphoria] or incongruence, improvement in mental health including suicidality and depression, and long-term outcomes such as sexual function, quality of life, and regret.”

Likewise, “the evidence base is similarly lacking when it comes to the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors,” they wrote. Again, citing the HHS review, “[t]he certainty of evidence is very low regarding the effect on [gender dysphoria] or incongruence, improvement in mental health, and safety metrics including fertility and bone health” of cross-sex hormones.

In fact, “the rationale for providing the treatments” that Annelou de Vries, a pioneer of the infamous “Dutch studies” that pioneered gender transition procedures for minors, has shifted from arguing for the effectiveness of outcomes to claiming that “effective” outcomes were not necessary.

The attorneys general wanted to know whether the AMA still defends gender-transition procedures for minors as its evidentiary basis erodes. In particular, the attorneys general wanted to know where exactly the AMA stood with regard to the “Standards of Care” produced by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an activist organization whose guidelines were improperly influenced by political considerations brought by the Biden administration.

Marshall, who joined Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch,” insisted:

[T]he AMA ultimately needs to be a medical organization that’s not in political advocacy, but defining what’s best medical practice for doctors across our country. … Absent a political agenda on the Left, now they need to be able to step up and recognize [that] what the science also tells us is that there’s no basis for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones being used to deal with gender affirming care,” the AG argued. “And we’re now giving them the opportunity by this letter to be able to say very clearly what their positions are. Do they stand with science? Do they stand with what we’ve seen [in] the overwhelming trend coming from Europe to identify this as experimental treatment of kids?

The AMA recently claimed that “medical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria and gender incongruence … are medically necessary as outlined by generally-accepted standards of medical and surgical practice,” the letter noted, although they decline to officially endorse WPATH’s standards.

The letter asked 14 questions of the AMA, including, “Does the AMA endorse or otherwise recommend the provision of puberty blockers to minors to treat gender dysphoria? If so, what is the basis of that recommendation, and how do you distinguish the evidence base for the provision of surgeries versus the provision of puberty blockers?”

Likewise, “Does the AMA endorse or otherwise recommend the provision of cross-sex hormones to minors to treat gender dysphoria? If so, what is the basis of that recommendation, and how do you distinguish the evidence base for the provision of surgeries versus the provision of cross-sex hormones?”

And, for good measure, “How did the AMA decide to join the amicus briefs in United States v. Skrmetti and other cases in which the AMA told courts that the WPATH and Endocrine Society guidelines were evidence-based and well-accepted and that the provision of transitioning procedures to minors was safe and effective at treating gender dysphoria and improving well-being?”

These are good questions. The letter gives the AMA 30 days (until March 25) to respond. The attorneys general likely suspect they know what the answer is. But politely requesting an explanation is a first step of due process before any potential prosecution — a prospect the letter does raise.

“While we hope to avoid a formal investigation under our consumer protection laws, we do have concerns that the AMA may be violating those laws,” the letter warned. “Under Alabama law, for instance, it is unlawful for an organization to cause ‘confusion or misunderstanding as to the … sponsorship, approval, or certification of goods of services,’” to “represent ‘that goods or services have sponsorship, approval, … uses, benefits, or qualities that they do not have,’” to “represent ‘that goods or services are of a particular standard, quality, or grade … if they are of another,’” or to “engage ‘in any other unconscionable, false, misleading, or deceptive act or practice in the conduct of trade or commerce.’”

To avoid violating these provisions, the AMA would have to both clarify what gender transition procedures it does or does not support and renounce support for gender transition procedures not supported by the evidence.

In fact, no gender-transition procedures are well-supported by the evidence. When the ASPS issued its recommendation against gender-transition surgeries on Feb. 3, it cited low-quality evidence and a high risk of harm as major reasons not to carry out the procedures on minors.

The state attorneys general aim to induce the AMA to make a similar concession. The ASPS statement against gender-transition surgeries for minors came as the result of government scrutiny, as the organization “was participating in an urgent, time-limited process initiated by a federal agency seeking clarification of medical society positions on this topic,” wrote ASPS Executive Vice President Michael Costelloe.

This demonstrated the result that government scrutiny can achieve in keeping medical associations accountable to the truth. Following suit, the coalition of state attorneys general has applied a bit more scrutiny, in hopes of calling the AMA to account.

As Marshall put it, “The AMA has the opportunity to make sure to send a message to physicians that if, in fact, you’re in one of those states that continues to allow this experimentation on children to take place, that they are at great risk … not only financially for themselves — we’ve already seen a verdict come from a detransition — but they’re also clearly harming kids in ways that aren’t validated by science.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand

Biden-Appointed Judge’s Blistering Rebuke Could Change Trump’s Deportation Strategy

A Biden-appointed federal judge on Wednesday revoked the Trump administration’s policy of deporting illegal immigrants to places other than their country of origin.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued a scathing opinion in DVD v. Department of Homeland Security. He called the administration’s deportation policy “unlawful” and accused the government of providing “false” information in the case.

The judge, of the Massachusetts district, led his opinion with a strong characterization of the question before the court.

“This case is about whether the government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured, thereby depriving that person of the opportunity to seek protections to which he would be undisputedly entitled,” Murphy’s decision says.

If the administration appeals the ruling, it will go to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. The 1st Circuit has five Democrat appointees and one Republican appointee.

“The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown—in so-called ‘third countries,’” Murphy wrote.

He wrote the government’s position is, “that’s fine.” Then he added, “It is not fine, nor is it legal.”

“Congress made it ‘the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country’ where that ‘person would be in danger of being subjected to torture,’” Murphy wrote.

Murphy wrote that there is little verification of the administration’s assurances that the deported individuals won’t be tortured.

“Why has the government deemed them [the assurances] credible? How can anyone even know for certain that they exist? These are basic questions that the Constitution permits a person to ask before the Government takes away their last and only lifeline,” his ruling says.

Deportation-JudgeMurphy Download

Roy Pushes Terrorist Designation for Mexican Drug Cartels

In the wake of Mexico’s recent explosion of gang violence, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is pushing his Republican colleagues in the House to codify an executive order declaring some drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations.

Roy’s renewed efforts come after a U.S.-led military operation resulted in the death of the cartel’s leader, “El Mencho,” which resulted in violent unrest in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, over the weekend.

“The elimination of El Mencho makes clear why Congress must codify President [Donald] Trump’s strong border policies into law,” Roy told The Daily Signal.

Roy told The Daily Signal on Tuesday that Congress must pass the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act.

“Congress must pass this legislation to ensure that, regardless of who occupies the White House, the United States has the full authority to relentlessly pursue and destroy the cartels,” he claimed.

The bill looks to codify a Day-One executive order from Trump, titled “Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

“The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States,” Executive Order 14157 reads in part. “In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, controlling nearly all aspects of society.”

“The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere,” the order continues. “Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.”

PUT ON THE SPOT: Trump asks Congress members to stand if they believe “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” pic.twitter.com/CXIw2ALffN
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) February 25, 2026

Following the executive order, on Jan. 31, 2025, Roy reintroduced the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act to direct the secretary of state to designate the Mexican Gulf Cartel, Northeast Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as foreign terrorist organizations.

“I first introduced HR 885, the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act, in 2019 to permanently enshrine that designation in U.S. law, and I have reintroduced it in every Congress since,” Roy said about his legislation.

Over 70 people have been killed in Puerto Vallarta after El Mencho’s death, Time noted. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has issued a shelter-in-place for Americans in parts of Mexico.

The cartel, Roy stated, is also “responsible for flooding our communities with dangerous drugs and violence.”

Some of Roy’s conservative colleagues in the House are also pushing for the bill.

“Cartels have slaughtered Americans and poisoned our families with fentanyl,” Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal. “Congress must codify President Trump’s executive order designating cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations now—so no future administration can look the other way.”

“Yet Democrats continue to ignore this deadly chaos,” Harris added.

Harris is now considering joining 31 of his Republican colleagues in co-sponsoring Roy’s bill; his office told The Daily Signal.

Trump’s SOTU: The Golden Age as Its Own Evidence

On Sept. 26, 1960, something strange and irreversible happened to American politics: Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy faced each other in the first televised presidential debate, and two entirely different realities emerged from the same event.

Those who listened to the debate on the radio believed Nixon won: his arguments were sharper, his command of policy superior.

Those who watched on television saw something else: a pale, sweating man effortlessly outshone by a bronzed, perfectly tailored vision of American vitality.

Same event. Two media. Two completely different truths.

That night, the country discovered something it has never been able to unlearn: The image does not illustrate the argument; the image is the argument.

Substance does not precede its representation; the representation is the substance. Once you understand this, you cannot unknow it, and those who fail to understand it tend to lose.

No event in American civic life makes this clearer than the State of the Union. Before a single word is spoken, the meaning is already fully present. The Cabinet processes in first—in this case, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, then War Secretary Pete Hegseth—a grammar of power made flesh, the executive branch literally assembling itself into legibility before the nation’s eyes.

Then the president appears framed between the vice president and the speaker on the elevated dais, a visual trinity.

And then the clapping—rhythmic, metronomic, tribal—the percussion of a nation manufacturing its own consensus in real time.

The State of the Union does not report on America. It performs America into being, briefly, in that room, and the performance is the reality.

This is precisely why then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union, widely celebrated as a success, was actually the opening act of his destruction. He exceeded expectations. He projected energy. Democrats exhaled. A special counsel had recently described him as an “elderly man” with a “poor memory,” and the speech seemed to refute that verdict.

The Democratic Party convinced itself that the image had been corrected. But this is the trap the image always sets for those who think they control it: You can curate the sign, but you cannot own what it means to the people who receive it.

The State of the Union chamber is a terrarium: a sealed, perfected environment where teleprompters, lighting, and exhaustive rehearsal produce a controlled simulacrum of presidential vitality. Democrats saw the simulation and mistook it for the real. They forgot the Nixon lesson entirely.

When Biden met President Donald Trump on the debate stage—uncontrolled, unscripted, the terrarium gone—the real reasserted its authority: The frozen pauses; the sentence that dissolved into silence; the vacant eyes. No policy position survives that image.

Trump entered the chamber last night in a dark suit, American flag pin anchored to the lapel, the flag wall behind him a studied field of red, white, and blue—repeating, stacking, layering until the eye receives it as the texture of the room itself, nationalism become wallpaper, the nation made into its own backdrop.

And the tie: that specific arterial red, blazing against the darkness of the suit.

This is not fashion only: Red is blood still moving, fire still burning, vitality made visible and worn at the throat.

When Trump declared that America was “the hottest country in the world,” the room had already made that argument in color before his words arrived. The sign preceded the statement; the statement confirmed the sign. This is the complete circuit.

The camera, on Fox News at least, cut to Hegseth the moment Trump said, “The state of our union is strong.”

Hegseth: The most bitterly contested Cabinet member, the man whose confirmation had been the loudest battle, a video having recently circulated of his bench-pressing.

The word and the image thus arrived simultaneously, each completing the other, collapsing the distance between the claim and its evidence until they occupied the same second of television.

The State of the Union, at its most potent, does not argue. It demonstrates; it arranges the room so that what’s said and what’s seen become a single, indivisible event.

The Olympic hockey team entered the gallery directly above the president—khaki pants, blue sweaters with white USA font, gold medals catching the light—and the chamber roared: USA. USA. USA.

That chant is not a political argument. It’s the nation saying its own name out loud and recognizing, in the act of saying it, that it exists, that it is one thing, that it is here. The gold medalists stood above the president like knights in a medieval gallery, their medals gleaming, their presence a physical ratification of everything being claimed below.

When Trump announced that the goalie—the last line of defense, the man whose singular function is to hold the line—would receive the nation’s highest civilian honor, the room did not need to decode the symbolism. The symbolism decoded itself.

The awards that followed were the speech’s most honest text. Capt. Royce Williams, the Medal of Honor. Petty Officer Scott Ruskan, who pulled 165 people from Texas floodwaters on the Fourth of July—the nation’s own birthday, 165 strangers saved because help was possible and so help was given.

These men are not ornaments to the speech. They are the speech. They are the answer to the question the whole ritual asks: What is the state of our union? The state of our union is a rescue swimmer who jumped into the flood repeatedly. Everything else—the tariff debates, the budget lines, the executive orders—is preface to this.

Alas, what refused to rise? Not a single Democrat stood when Trump affirmed that the government’s first obligation is to protect its citizens. Not a single Democrat stood for the mother of a murdered daughter sitting in the gallery above them. No framing, no surrogate, no press release issued the following morning can rehabilitate the image of a chamber full of seated people in the presence of a grieving mother.

The body’s refusal to rise is its own sign system, and it communicates with a clarity that language cannot match and cannot undo. Every American watching read it—not as political analysis, but viscerally, the way the senses read threats or coldness or contempt, through channels older than rhetoric.

The Democratic Party had calculated that standing would hand Trump an image he didn’t deserve. What they failed to calculate was that not standing would hand him a far more powerful one. They thought they were withholding a sign. They were, in fact, producing one.

A nation’s story does not require unanimous participation to become real. Every Golden Age in history was contested while it was happening. The chant doesn’t need every voice. The image doesn’t need every body. It needs only to be sufficient—enough people standing, enough medals gleaming, enough red blazing against the flag wall—for the representation to harden into reality, to become the ground on which everyone must subsequently stand, whether they helped lay it or not.

Trump said, “Golden Age,” and the crowd roared, and the hockey players stood gleaming above him, and a rescue swimmer rose to his feet for 165 lives. In that convergence, something was produced that is more durable than any policy or news cycle: an image of America that America recognized as itself. Not as it is in every particular, but as it insists on being, as it reaches toward, as it knows itself when it says its own name out loud in a crowded room.

The Golden Age is not a promise about the future. It’s a claim about the present, staked entirely in the image. And the image, as Nixon learned too late and Biden’s party forgot too soon, does not wait for the facts to catch up. It arrives first. It arrives as reality.

And then everything else arranges itself around it.

Learning Economic Literacy Through Another Government Shutdown

Despite last-minute negotiations, federal leaders have once again entered another federal government shutdown, as funding has lapsed for the Department of Homeland Security.

To eventually re-open DHS, Congress will have to resort to an increasingly common financial legerdemain: funding the federal government through a last-minute “continuing resolution” rather than an on-time vote before the start of the fiscal year, which began in October.

Rather than make the hard financial choices to fund the budget on time, which could involve cutting spending on popular programs or increasing revenue through taxes, Congress is fond of punting the decision another year. In doing so, Congress often raises the federal debt ceiling in tandem with passing a continuing resolution (which it did again last July), relying on increased government borrowing to make up the difference.

This concerning phenomenon isn’t new.

If Congress doesn’t get its act together, 2026 will mark 30 straight years since it last passed a fully funded budget on time. It took former President Bill Clinton declaring “the era of big government is over” after a painful midterm election for his party to deliver a full federal budget in September 1996.

Unfortunately, Clinton was wildly wrong on that score. Since his pronouncement three decades ago, the federal debt has skyrocketed from approximately $10.7 trillion in 1996 to more than $37 trillion today, alongside a similar increase in the size and scope of the federal government. In 1996, debt accounted for 66% of U.S. gross domestic product; today, it is 124% of GDP.

In light of these concerning statistics, perhaps our trend of recent federal government shutdowns could be seen as a positive—a way to highlight the increasingly unsustainable nature of federal spending, and an opportunity to cut wasteful spending and balance the budget?

Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way.

The current shutdown centers on the politics of increased funding for DHS and its subagency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a funding bill totaling nearly $1.2 trillion, Congress shut down the government over approximately $10 billion for ICE funding—less than 1% of the total bill amount. At our government’s current rate of overspending, the federal debt increases by roughly $10 billion every 36 hours.

The October 2025 federal government shutdown was similar. Congressional negotiators debated the potential extension of premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, leading to a 43-day shutdown, the longest ever. Eventually, the government was funded—but not before the federal debt would have grown by about $266 billion.

There’s no free lunch carrying this debt.

It costs $355 billion annually just to maintain interest payments—19% of total federal spending in fiscal year 2026.

Instead of playing politics over trivial amounts of federal spending, our leaders should tackle the debt’s real causes, including ballooning interest payments, growing entitlement programs, and other mandatory spending. The fact that they don’t reflects on our nation’s concerning lack of economic literacy.

Economic literacy is the understanding of the core economic principles that govern our lives, and how to apply them to everyday economic decision-making.

Every American, whether a busy parent or a member of Congress, should possess basic economic literacy.

Unfortunately, our political debates often reflect a lack of understanding of opportunity costs, tradeoffs, incentives, and other key economic concepts relevant to the federal budget.

My organization, the Foundation for Teaching Economics, works year-round to address gaps in our nation’s economic literacy.

FTE hosts in-person and online programs for high school and middle school teachers, equipping them with the tools to teach economics to their students.

Each year, more than 1,500 high school teachers participate in these programs, educating an estimated 175,000 students annually.

By fortuitous timing, FTE just kicked off our winter schedule with a relevant program—Making Sense of the Federal Budget, Debt & Deficit.

The seminar helps educators teach the economic way of thinking to help students understand the spending choices facing American policymakers. To get a handle on the ever-growing federal debt and stop the current shutdown/overspending cycle, we must continue to support programs that increase economic understanding across society and promote the economic way of thinking among America’s next generation of leaders.

Only by understanding these critical concepts can we maintain sound government policies that enable economic growth—a must-have if we’re ever to meet our growing obligations on the deficit and debt.

Though FTE’s programs typically serve high school teachers and students, we’re happy to make an exception for any member of Congress eager to attend and learn how to avoid the next budget crisis.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Trump’s SOTU Was a Defiant Commitment to American Self-Rule Over Ideology

What is the state of the union in the 250th year of America’s independence?

Seeing the country’s strength and prosperity today, the signers of the Declaration of Independence would probably agree with President Donald Trump that this is “the golden age of America.” Their last-ditch effort to save their way of life by breaking away from the most powerful empire on earth not only succeeded, it led to the creation of a republic that would more than once save European civilization itself.

“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” the president said in his peroration last night, and his entire address served as an urgent reminder of what the revolution’s political significance really is.

For decades, Americans have been taught to understand their revolution in essentially left-wing terms, as a rejection of traditional government—i.e., monarchy—and the beginning of a new, radically egalitarian morality.

Thomas Jefferson may not have known it when he wrote “all men are created equal,” but the implication of his language was that all people are so equal we can’t tell who’s a man or who’s a woman.

It’s taken us 250 years to understand that, but all American history has been the story of progressive liberalism’s germination.

Trump, in this view, is an almost unaccountable aberration. Perhaps he is an importation of “European conservatism” or fascism—he is of German immigrant roots, after all. Liberals are certain they know how history will judge Trump because history came to an end with themselves.

The future is only the enfolding of their ideas: Time’s catching up to forward-thinking.

Yet when Trump spoke last night of a revolution that hasn’t ended in 250 years, he was not attempting to curry favor with his opponents. The revolution he invoked is not akin to the French Revolution nor the Bolshevik Revolution nor the many left-wing revolutions of the past two centuries and more.

On the contrary, the nation born of the American Revolution has long frustrated the ambitions of leftist revolutionary powers like 1790s France and the Soviet Union.

The American Revolution was undertaken in the defense of self-government by British subjects who had lived for generations under largely self-chosen local authorities.

If the revolution involved the rejection of the British tradition in some respects, the Americans also had a certain conservatism of their own, and their reluctance to sever their relationship with the king was one expression of it. The Declaration of Independence was a long time coming, and when it did come, it was framed not in terms of aspiring to progress but rather as an acceptance of “the necessity which constrains [the colonists] to alter their former Systems of Government.”

A staunch Tory like Samuel Johnson might accuse the colonists of Whiggish radicalism, but the Americans themselves largely rejected the radicalism of the French republic of letters. Although the French Revolution broke out a decade after our own, the battle lines of that conflagration had already been drawn by the philosophes.

And while the philosophes had their sympathizers in America, as in Britain, the American Revolution was more in keeping with the traditional spirit of British politics than it was with the spirit of French philosophy. The fact that the Americans habitually drew upon the language of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and British opposition writers from the following generation demonstrates how grounded in the past their politics could be.

The American revolutionary commitment to self-government is antithetical to radical philosophy for the simple reason that however sinful or flawed ordinary voters might be, they are not as perverse as a society’s “advanced” thinkers tend to be.

Self-government empowers a modicum of common sense, patriotism, and religious belief against the rigorously wrong moral and intellectual systems dreamt up by progressives. The practical result is the election of figures like Trump in defiance of liberal opinion.

The president enumerated a great many accomplishments and new initiatives in his remarks last night, the longest State of the Union address yet delivered.

This was more than just an update on his activities in office, however, or even on the state of the country here and now. It was also a report on the ongoing battle between rival interpretations of America.

Though it may have sounded like a line that could have been included in almost any State of the Union address, when Trump said, “Together, we’re building a nation … where government answers to the people, not the powerful, and where the interests of hard-working American citizens are always our first and ultimate concern,” the meaning in the context of the president’s politics was clearly quite specific: “The powerful” are those responsible for the high-crime, high-inflation, high-immigration, and otherwise disastrous policies condemned in the rest of the president’s remarks.

The powerful are those who want to substitute their own ideology for the interests of “hard-working American citizens.”

America marks 250 years of citizen self-rule this year, but those who would like to abolish the distinctions between citizen and foreigner—or male and female, criminal and innocent—are as persistent as ever. This president, as his remarks last night attest, isn’t looking for a compromise between the spirit of ’76 and the spirit of “progress.” He’s on the side of a revolution that does not serve a radical philosophy.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Promises Made, Promises Kept: The Return of an ‘America First’ Future

When presidents stand before a joint session of Congress, they like to declare that “the state of our union is strong.”

President Donald Trump can say those words and mean them. Millions of Americans agree.

Thirteen months ago, the border was open to anyone willing to cross it, including criminals, cartel operatives, and nearly 300,000 unaccompanied children, thousands who are now considered unaccounted for.

Three years of inflation had wiped out wage gains, pushed up rents, and made the grocery store an anxious territory for families watching every dollar.

Illogical gender identity and DEI policies in schools and sports were threatening fairness and the safety of women and girls. The Biden administration’s policies made things worse at every turn—opening the border, killing American energy, rejecting biological reality, and handing our economic future to our rivals.

That was a little more than a year ago. The progress since then has been nothing short of staggering.

Inflation, which hit 9.1% under the previous administration, plummeted to 1.7% in the last three months of 2025.

Energy production is at record levels—real money back in the pockets of families who had grown accustomed to watching their purchasing power shrink.

At the southern border, illegal crossings dropped 87% in 2025, to their lowest level since 1970. We are once more sovereign over our frontiers. Communities that bore the costs of those lawless years—the ones that saw their schools overwhelmed, their hospitals strained, their streets where parents stopped letting children play outside—feel the difference now.

None of this happened by accident, and none of it was unopposed. It happened because the Trump administration chose to act where others had only talked: producing American energy, securing the border, and putting American workers and families first. And it held the line against an implacable establishment that fought against “America First” policies every step of the way.

The men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are doing some of the hardest law enforcement work in America—removing violent criminals, dismantling trafficking networks, and upholding immigration laws written to protect American families.

They are doing it in courts that have tried to stop them, in cities whose officials have defied them, and on streets where they have been shot at, doxed, and assaulted. They deserve an administration that stands behind them without reservation. Today, they have one.

Securing the border and securing prosperity for American families are the same fight.

This administration is writing new trade rules—framework agreements with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and partners across the Western Hemisphere—that put American workers first.

In the past, American trade policy served Beijing and Brussels. Not anymore. The January numbers alone told a story of prosperity: 130,000 new private sector jobs, unemployment at 4.3%, wages up 3.7%.

The American people didn’t give this administration a narrow mandate. Seventy-seven million Americans didn’t vote for a down payment. They voted for the American dream—restored, permanent, and passed on.

The work ahead is vital: executive actions codified into law, energy dominance made permanent, federal DEI mandates permanently rolled back, and trade relationships and policy wins built to outlast any single administration.

The president also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, “commonsense, country-saving” legislation that requires a photo identification when voting in federal elections, because a secure border means nothing if the ballot box isn’t.

Finishing these tasks honors and protects the American people and safeguards an America First future for generations to come.

Respecting the American people also means respecting their hard-earned money.

No person’s monthly electrical bill should increase because of artificial intelligence data centers. This administration has advanced a new ratepayer protection pledge requiring technology companies to build and operate their own plants rather than shift the costs onto taxpayers. In many cases, this strategic move will decrease electricity costs for taxpayers.

The next chapter gets written in state capitals as much as in Washington.

Governors and legislators are taking up the America First agenda on energy, parental rights, law enforcement, and more. Families who have seen what these policies deliver are eager for more.

Four in 10 young Americans say they are barely getting by.

That number is the mission, and it is the barometer of success. The young couple who can afford to get married and start a family. The dad whose overtime check goes somewhere other than the utility bill. The mom who finally feels safe letting her kids walk to school again—because ICE showed up when her city wouldn’t.

Over 90% of the America First agenda has been enacted or advanced in a single year. And we know how to finish what we began.

The American dream was always real. Americans never stopped believing in it—even when everything around them argued otherwise. Today, this administration is doing exactly what America First was called to do: defend the interests of the American people without trying to run their lives. The past year made the case. This administration will see the promise through. As Trump said in his address to Congress, the state of the union is strong, and the best is yet to come.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Trump’s SOTU: Celebrating America and Its Heroes

America has much to be proud of and many heroes to be thankful for. President Donald Trump took the opportunity during his State of the Union address Tuesday night to make that point. While his words and honors given channeled a surging popular patriotism, much hard work remains to deliver peace through strength.

In the short span of a year, this new administration has made historic achievements and started the long process of reversing decades of defense industrial decay.

But people respond quickly to positive leadership. A military recruitment crisis during the last administration appeared on an irreversible path to collapse, but a renewed focus on competency and lethality has seen all military branches meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals.

In perhaps the most important statement of American resolve, the president unequivocally made clear that he will never hesitate to confront threats.

In a dangerous world, this is vital—narco-cartels are engaged in open violence in Mexico targeting Americans, Iran is headed toward conflict over its illicit nuclear weapons program and mass killings of 32,000 protesters, and the unmentioned looming threat of China’s rapidly growing arsenal appears aimed at our homeland.

Echoing the recently released National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, the president repeated what his strategy is in simple terms—Peace Though Strength. This is urgently needed given the explosion of wars under the previous administration from Ukraine, Gaza, the Red Sea, and Afghanistan.

But the military strength required will not come cheaply nor quickly.

That said, American resolve demonstrated around the world in the last 12 months has galvanized our allies to action.

Like the seizing of dark fleet oil tankers, with the U.S. successful interdiction of these ships beginning in December, France, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and others have joined in acting against this illicit trade.

In time, the success of targeting narco-cartel smuggling boats, which has effectively cut the at-sea illicit drug trade to America, may likewise see more partners acting to cut narcotics smuggling across the Pacific and Atlantic.

With over 25,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killing each other every month in combat, the reality of war has shaken many out of their post-Cold War stupor. But only the forceful and straight-talking diplomacy from this administration has galvanized our friends and allies in Europe to begin the process of regaining their strength as well. This is needed and overdue, and by meeting their obligations for 5% of gross domestic product on defense spending, Moscow will see the futility of its war and attempts to divide our NATO alliance.

And, a ninth conflict hopefully can be ended in this still new administration’s tenure.

Executing missions like the spectacularly successful Operation Midnight Hammer that massively degraded Iran’s nuclear weapons enterprise, or operation Absolute Resolve to bring Venezuela’s narco-dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice, require significant investment to achieve.

It demands intensive training, weapons that our enemies cannot evade, aircraft and warships armed at numbers to deter our biggest threats—like China.

During his speech the president honored our nation’s heroes, on whose shoulders peace through strength is carried, thereby elevating the value of service and patriotism.

He awarded a legion of merit to Coast Guard rescue swimmer Scott Ruskin, who saved 165 lives (many of them young school children) from Texas flash floods. And Trump connected past acts of valor with today’s by awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Korean War Navy pilot Royce William and Army Warrant Officer Eric Slover for his selfless actions in the raid to capture Maduro.

When it comes to paying the bills for the defense the nation needs, the administration is delivering—$1 trillion in the current budget and $1.5 trillion anticipated in the next defense budget. On this there has been bipartisan support, let’s hope this spirit of common cause in our national defense endures—it is needed to keep Americans safe.

The legacy of American heroism and patriotism lives on, thanks to Trump. The nation was reminded of this fact as he honored those on whose shoulders we rely for our security.

MoveOn’s Anti-SOTU Event Draws Crowd—of Hecklers

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Hecklers appeared to make more noise than attendees at an anti-Trump rally sponsored by left-wing group MoveOn and featuring former MSNBC hosts Joy Reid and Katie Phang.

President Donald Trump gave his State of the Union address Tuesday, with over 70 congressional Democrats electing to boycott the speech. During the MoveOn event, one heckler jumped onto the stage while Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy was decrying Trump’s immigration policy.

“Go Trump! Go Trump!” the man, who was wearing a “Trump 2024” hat, shouted, adding, “Hey, Murphy, you’re a scumbag.”

Security hustled the man off stage, as Murphy continued to rant against Trump’s policies on immigration.

The rally appeared to be sparsely attended with a crowd that did not appear energetic with coughing seeming to be louder than cheers or boos, according to video posted on X by Daily Caller News Foundation Associate Editor Caleb Howe.

“You can’t HANDLE this level of enthusiasm from the yuge crowd at MoveOn ‘People’s State Of The Union’ featuring Joy Reid and Katie Phang,” Howe said.

Reid and Phang were also heckled during the event, with Reid attempting to claim that one heckler was actually a “fan.”

“Reid, you suck, you loser!” the heckler shouted, only for Reid to claim, “My fans are back. What I always say is, you know who I am and I don’t know who you are, that means you’re a fan. You’re a fan.”

MoveOn, as well as many of the Democrat lawmakers who attended the counter-rally, has received donations from groups connected to left-wing billionaire George Soros and his family, according to public records.

Democrats are demanding new restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal immigration officers were involved in the fatal January shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good during Operation Metro Surge—a deployment of hundreds of federal agents to Minnesota in response to reports of a massive welfare fraud mostly involving Somali migrants.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

SOTU: The Economy Is Improving for Americans

The American economy is strong. That sounds simple, but in the current political climate, simple truths have a way of getting buried under argument and qualification.

So, it’s worth saying plainly: By most meaningful measures, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has been good for the economy. The numbers say so. The markets say so. And for millions of ordinary Americans checking their retirement accounts, grocery bills, and paychecks, the feeling is sinking in.

Start with the markets. Since the inauguration, the S&P 500 has climbed between 13% and 16%, touching an all-time high of over 7,000 earlier this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 50,000 this month for the first time.

Capital markets are not moral arbiters, but they are relentless aggregators of information, and what they have been pricing in is confidence: in earnings, in policy stability, in the durable capacity of American enterprise to grow.

Inflation, meanwhile, has cooled. Annual inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, for the 12 months ending in January came in at 2.4%, down from 2.7% and far removed from the Biden 9.1% peak of June 2022 (the highest reading in more than four decades).

Because inflation outpaced wage growth under President Joe Biden, the average weekly paycheck bought 4% less when he left office, despite the paycheck being 17% larger. For the millions of households whose purchasing power was quietly eroded by Bidenflation, the recent drop in inflation is much-needed relief. The average weekly paycheck now buys 2% more than when Trump took office.

Retirement savers have felt it, too. Average 401(k) balances have reached record levels, rising about 17% since the first quarter of 2025. One analysis found aggregate averages across multiple accounts are around $340,000. This is what compounded confidence looks like in practice.

The legislative cornerstone of this economic moment is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump on July 4, 2025. Without it, Americans were facing what would have been the largest tax hike in history: more than $4 trillion hitting in 2026 when the 2017 Trump tax cuts expired. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act prevented that, making those rates permanent and expanding on them.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act leaves the average family about $1,700 better off each year, while a median-income household with two children can expect an increase in take-home pay of roughly $4,000 to $5,000.

Taken together, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is less a collection of line items than a statement of priorities: that tax policy should reward work, support families, and create the conditions for broadly shared growth, not fund an ever-expanding federal bureaucracy.

One of the less-discussed drivers of this moment is a quieter shift in regulatory philosophy—specifically, the restoration of a simple principle: that financial regulation should concern itself with financial materiality.

The Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission finalized sweeping climate-disclosure rules in March 2024, formally titled “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” Public companies would have been required to report material climate-related risks, greenhouse gas emissions, and elaborate governance strategies tied to environmental metrics.

The rules were challenged in court immediately and stayed. In March 2025, the commission voted to withdraw its defense of the rules entirely, and without agency support, the regime has effectively collapsed. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals suspended proceedings. What remained was a signal: Disclosures should be rooted in what is financially material, not in what is ideologically fashionable.

Trump reinforced that signal on his first day back in office, revoking Executive Order 14030, the 2021 Biden directive that had commanded federal agencies to integrate climate-risk assessments and net-zero ambitions into financial oversight.

In the retirement space, the Department of Labor has been unwinding the Biden-era rule known as “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” which permitted ERISA fiduciaries to weigh ESG factors when selecting investments.

In May 2025, the department abandoned its defense of the rule in litigation and announced plans to replace it with guidance centered on financial considerations. The savings of teachers, machinists, and nurses, the argument goes, should be managed for return, not for left-wing signaling. Securities regulators exist to ensure transparency and market integrity, not to conscript balance sheets into ideological projects.

None of this means deregulation alone explains what is happening. The American economy is vast and resilient and does not require a single cause. But incentives matter, and so does clarity. When disclosure mandates are untethered from financial reality, capital flows less efficiently. When retirement managers are tasked with pursuing returns rather than righteousness, savers benefit. When inflation recedes, long-term planning becomes possible again.

At the end of the day, economies run on confidence. Not on speeches or executive orders or regulatory rollbacks alone, but on the quiet, cumulative belief that the environment is stable enough to take a risk, hire someone, save for the future. That belief has been returning. You can see it in the data, like with investment rising 3.8%, and increasingly, people can feel it in their lives.

That’s not a political talking point. It’s just what a good economy looks like.

Trump Briefly Lays Out Case for Possible Attack on Iran in State of the Union

WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters)—U.S. President Donald Trump briefly laid out his case for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.

In his speech, Trump pointed to Tehran’s support for militant groups, its killing of protesters, and the country’s missile and nuclear programs as threats to the region and the United States.

“The [Iranian] regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” the Republican president said about 90 minutes into his annual address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives.

He accused Iran of restarting its nuclear program, working to build missiles that “soon” would be capable of reaching the United States and of being responsible for roadside bombings that have killed U.S. service members and civilians.

Iranian state media have claimed that Tehran is developing a missile capable of reaching North America.

The run-up to Trump’s address was overshadowed by the buildup of U.S. military forces in the Middle East and preparations for a possible conflict with Iran that could last for weeks if Tehran does not reach a deal to solve a longstanding dispute over its nuclear program.

Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with negotiators’ failure to reach an agreement. “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,'” Trump said in his speech.

Iran says its nuclear research is for civilian energy production.

Trump also faulted the government in Tehran for the deaths of thousands of protesters during recent anti-government demonstrations, although the specific figure he cited—that 32,000 people had been killed—is much higher than most public estimates.

“What is claimed about Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile, and the number of people killed in the January unrest is nothing but the repetition of a series of big lies,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in a post on X on Wednesday.

‘Forever Wars’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a briefing on Iran hours before the speech for Congress’ “Gang of Eight”—composed of the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives and the two chambers’ intelligence committees.

“First and foremost, if they want to do something in Iran—and who the h— knows what it is—they should make it public and discuss it with the public and not keep it in secret. When you do these military operations in secret, it always causes longer wars, tragedy, more expenses and mistake[s],” Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer told a press conference shortly before the classified session.

Advisers had urged Trump to focus on the economy, immigration, and other domestic policy issues, and he devoted the lion’s share of his nearly two-hourslong speech to such topics.

Trump and his fellow Republicans rose to the top of U.S. politics with the passionate support of a political base that embraces his “America First” policies and vow to end an era of “forever wars” like the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Polls also show Americans wary of foreign conflicts. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from January showed 69% of Americans agreed with a statement the U.S. should only use its military when facing a direct and imminent threat, while 18% disagreed and the rest weren’t sure or didn’t answer the question.

Trump ordered strikes on Iran last year, claiming in July that they had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities. His aides have claimed more recently that Iran is very close to having the ability to make nuclear bombs.

Trump addressed the issue in Tuesday’s speech, saying, “They [Iran’s leaders] want to start all over again, and are, at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions.”

Trump said he preferred to make peace, listing a range of worldwide conflicts he takes credit for ending, or easing.

“As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” Trump said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom, additional reporting by Nolan McCaskill; Editing by Don Durfee, Howard Goller, Alistair Bell and Dubai Newsroom)

Trump Stem-Winder Sends Shockwaves Across Capitol Hill

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Katrina Trinko / David Azerrad / Daniel Trotta / Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell / Tyler O'Neil / Pedro Rodriguez / George Caldwell / Fred Lucas / Kelly Loeffler / Virginia Allen / Joshua Arnold / Fred Lucas / Pedro Rodriguez / Allen Mendenhall / Ted Tucker / Daniel McCarthy / Greg Sindelar / Brent Sadler / Harold Hutchison / EJ Antoni / Allen Mendenhall / Patricia Zengerle / David Brunnstrom / Pedro Rodriguez / Virginia Grace McKinnon / George Caldwell / February 25, 2026

In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s nearly two-hour State of the Union address, Republican and Democrat members of Congress went running to the media to start the messaging war.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Trump’s speech Tuesday was “one of the best State of the Union speeches ever.”

“It was really well done,” Johnson added. “Great content, great delivery.”

Speaker Johnson talks to press leaving the State of the Union tonight in Statuary Hall:

“It’s shameful what the Democrats did tonight, the display, it should be beneath any member of Congress. I think it’s something they’ll regret.” @DailySignal @SpeakerJohnson pic.twitter.com/fwECEisKUD
— Virginia Grace McKinnon (@virginiagmck) February 25, 2026

Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal that the speech was “powerful” and “professional.”

“It was powerful, professional, and touched on all the points that I think I was looking to hear,” Harris stated. “He described the situation that he inherited, all the way to all of the things he has done in his first year.”

The president’s nearly two-hour address covered his administration’s successes on immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. But the president also called on Congress to act on several key issues, such as health care, tech policy, and election integrity.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told The Daily Signal that “we need lower health care costs. The fact that the president is focused on it gives it hope we can accomplish it.”

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told The Daily Signal that the president “was absolutely right” in mentioning his plans for things like artificial intelligence and data centers.

“If we can’t figure out how to build data centers and not increase electricity costs, then all the other problems we got are going to be much harder, so I think the president was absolutely right,” Donalds stated.

Democrats, on the other hand, claimed Trump’s speech was performative and sought to divide the country.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said the speech was “typical, terrible, horrible, divisive, racist,” and “immigrant vilifying.”

During the speech, Democrats defied Trump’s address by shouting at the president, sitting down during standing ovations, and refusing to commemorate American athletes, victims of violent crime, and war heroes.

At one point, Democrats refused to stand in agreement with the president on the American government being for the benefit of American citizens, rather than illegal aliens.

“We are in pretty tough shape,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told The Daily Signal. “I was hoping for a unifying speech. The recognition of the Olympic gold medal team was positive, the recognition of our decorated veterans was positive. Other than that, there was a lot of disagreement.”

Johnson and Donalds condemned the Democrat disruptors and did not rule out administering consequences to them.

“It’s shameful what the Democrats did tonight, that should be beneath, under any member of Congress,” Johnson stated.

In response to whether they will be punished for their defiance, Johnson said, “We’ll find out.”

HOW DO YOU NOT STAND??

President Trump shamed Democrats for refusing to stand for Anna Zarutska, the mother of the poor Ukrainian refugee who was killed by an illegal alien.

"How do you not stand? How do you not stand?" pic.twitter.com/gGaVT4Fo7s
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

“Democrats crazily have decided to take the 20% side of 80-20 issues,” Donalds said on the SAVE America Act and Republicans’ election integrity push.

“The SAVE America Act, actually requiring voter ID so you prove you are who you say you are before you cast your ballot, everyone supports it except Democrats on Capitol Hill,” Donalds said. “Insanity.”

“The Democrats have decided they want to be on the wrong side of history,” Donalds concluded.

Winners and Losers of the State of the Union

President Donald Trump repeatedly confronted Democrats for refusing to stand and applaud on multiple occasions in the first official State of the Union address of his second term Tuesday night.

This strategy highlighted the extremism of Democrat policies while championing the people victimized by them.

Trump drew attention to issues with broad public appeal, such as secure elections, public safety, energy production, and stories of American heroism, while daring Democrats to oppose his actions on these issues.

Here are the winners and losers of the speech.

Winner: Border Security

Trump celebrated that “in the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States.”

The Department of Homeland Security has indeed claimed that not one illegal alien has been admitted during that time.

Former President Joe Biden said that he needed legislation from Congress to close the border, but Trump effectively closed the border on his first day in office.

?ZERO ILLEGALS ADMITTED

President Trump took a well-deserved victory lap on the border and crime pic.twitter.com/osUk5Y1QKK
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Winner: Energy

Trump noted that “American oil production is up more than 600,000 barrels per day” and that the United States received from Venezuela—which he called “our new friend and partner”—more than 80 million barrels of oil.

Trump also touted cutting “a record number of job-killing regulations.”

Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded the Endangerment Finding, the centerpiece of federal regulation on oil and gas.

??ENERGY UNLEASHED

President Trump noted that "American oil production is up more than 600,000 barrels per day" and that the U.S. received from Venezuela—which he called "our new friend and partner"—more than 80 million barrels of oil.

Trump also touted cutting "a record number… pic.twitter.com/w221X1MhF8
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Winner: Erika Kirk

Trump commemorated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and honored his widow, Erika Kirk.

“Charlie was violently murdered by an assassin, and martyred—really martyred for his beliefs,” he said. “His wonderful wife, Erika, is with us tonight.”

“In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation under God, and we must totally reject political violence of any kind,” the president added.

Candace Owens is slandering @MrsErikaKirk, but President Trump rightly honors the bereaved widow at the State of the Union.

"Thank you Erika. … In Charlie’s memory we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation under God, and we must totally reject political… pic.twitter.com/9bClCKRMZo
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Winner: Team USA

Trump celebrated the victories of Team USA men’s and women’s hockey teams over the Canadian teams in the Olympics. He also presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to men’s goaltender Connor Hellebuyck for his “amazing saves” that “helped beat Canada in overtime.”

The men’s team attended the State of the Union address, while Trump announced that the women’s team would visit the White House.

?PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM

Trump awards Team USA?? goalie Connor Hellebuyck the highest civilian honor for his victory over Canada?? in the Olympics pic.twitter.com/M3CkhLubT2
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Loser: Affordability Messaging

Trump flipped the script on the Democrats’ “affordability” messaging.

He mentioned the “record-setting inflation” of the Biden years. “Now, the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word ‘affordability.’”

“Somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure,” Trump said. Looking at the Democrats, he said, “You caused that problem.”

“They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie,” Trump said. “Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them.”

Prices continue to increase, but the rate of inflation has slowed considerably, and real wages are outpacing inflation.

?FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON AFFORDABILITY

President Trump flips the script on affordability—blaming Democrats for inflation? and noting that the increase in prices has cooled.

Then he slams the "Unaffordable Care Act." pic.twitter.com/rXgFV7Fj7V
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Loser: Mamdani

When calling for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act to require ID to vote, Trump mentioned New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling him “a nice guy” but attacking him for hypocrisy.

He noted that Mamdani is requiring emergency snow shovel workers in New York City to present ID, but Democrats “don’t want identification for the greatest privilege of all, voting in America.”

TRUMP SLAMS MAMDANI

The president notes that the NYC mayor requires ID for people who will shovel snow, but "they don't want identification for the greatest privilege of all, voting in America."

"NO GOOD." pic.twitter.com/mYs92vUuqK
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Loser: Democrats Refusing to Stand

Trump repeatedly chided Democrats in the chamber for refusing to stand and applaud for good policies or for the people he was honoring.

Trump urged Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security, stating, “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

After Republicans cheered and applauded, Trump chided Democrats for not joining.

“Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up,” he said.

?YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF

President Trump slams Democrats for refusing to stand for the Department of Homeland Security, which the Dems are refusing to fund.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up." pic.twitter.com/wmWlHzRBOL
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

When honoring Sage Blair, who was separated from her parents after her school hid her transgender identity, Trump faulted Democrats who refused to stand. Blair’s family claimed she became a victim of sex trafficking after she was separated from her family.

“Look, nobody stands up,” he noted. “These people are crazy. I’m telling you. They’re crazy.”

?'PEDOPHILE!'

A Democrat responds to President Trump's important retelling of Sage Blair's story—getting victimized by the transgender cult—by shouting "Pedophile!"

Trump doesn't even dignify it with a response. pic.twitter.com/UbS44A1vSc
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Trump urged Americans to “ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider trading” on the stock market. When some Democrats stood up to applaud, the president responded with shock.

“They stood up for that. I can’t believe it,” he said. He asked whether former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has invited scrutiny for reaping large profits in the stock market, also applauded.

“Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she’s here? I doubt it,” Trump said. “Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay.”

“I wasn’t sure if anybody even on this side was going to applaud for that,” the president noted. “I’m very impressed. Thank you.”

?BURN

President Trump expressed surprise that Democrats stood to applaud a ban on insider trading. He thanked them for standing, but he also got in a dig.

"Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she's here? I doubt it," he quipped. pic.twitter.com/1Ap16ByCx2
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Trump also shamed Democrats for refusing to stand for Anna Zarutska, the mother of the Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was murdered on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, last year by a homeless man with a criminal record.

“How do you not stand? How do you not stand?” he asked.

HOW DO YOU NOT STAND??

President Trump shamed Democrats for refusing to stand for Anna Zarutska, the mother of the poor cook who was killed by an illegal alien.

"How do you not stand? How do you not stand?" pic.twitter.com/xXtZywGFG1
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

Padilla Calls SAVE America Act An ‘Intimidation’ Tactic During All-Spanish SOTU Reaction Speech

Sen. Alex Padilla, during his all-Spanish response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union, accused Republicans of wanting to “manipulate the elections” and mobilize Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “terrorize” Hispanic communities.

“Despite Trump’s lies, we know what we see with our own eyes,” the California Democrat said, before accusing “masked and armed agents” of “terrorizing our communities” and targeting people on the “color of their skin.”

People are also targeted by ICE for “speaking Spanish,” Padilla added.

Padilla accused federal immigration agents of “shooting cars with families inside,” and “placing people in detention centers without access to doctors, food, and drinking water.”

The “terrorizing” ICE operations Padilla described began last year in Los Angeles and have “since extended to corners across the country,” according to the senator.

Acabamos de escuchar a Donald Trump hacer lo que mejor sabe hacer: Mentir.

Miente sobre la economía, miente sobre su aplicación de las leyes de imigracion de manera violenta y fuera de control y pretenden engañarnos sobre sus planes para manipular las elecciones este noviembre. pic.twitter.com/5kyFzPnkXS
— Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) February 25, 2026

The senator claimed election integrity is a Republican attempt to “manipulate” elections.

House Republicans passed the SAVE America Act this February, which would require voters to demonstrate voter ID before casting a ballot if passed by the Senate.

He added that Trump is pushing voter identification to “intimidate” Hispanic voters, describing him as a “dictator.”

“These are tactics we have seen in countries governed by corrupt dictators,” Padilla said. “And just like them, Trump doesn’t want to lose power.”

“Remember this, Donald Trump will not be president forever,” Padilla continued, switching to English.

Trump’s SOTU Message Was Common Sense vs. ‘Crazy’ Democrats

“These people are crazy. I’m telling you, they’re crazy.”

That was one of President Donald Trump’s signature lines of Tuesday night’s State of the Union address as he blasted his Democrat opponents for sitting silently (and in a few cases jeering) while he spoke about protecting children from being “transitioned” with drugs and surgical procedures.

This really was the central theme of the speech: common sense versus crazy.

Despite the decade-long attempt to portray him as a deranged and illegitimate shock to the system, it’s Trump who is bringing back normalcy as Democrats descend into madness.

On point after point, Trump delivered factual assessments about where the country is compared to a few years ago. He noted that crime and inflation are down, American savings accounts are up, and our enemies are on their back heels as opposed to being on the march.

At every turn, as Trump pointed out, Democrats have punted in their responsibilities to protect and represent the American people.

On no set of issues was that clearer than his record on immigration and border enforcement. And that’s where Trump landed his biggest blow.

Trump rightly pointed out that since returning to office the border crisis has all but dissolved.

“In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States,” Trump said. “The flow of deadly fentanyl across our border is down by a record 56% … And last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history … the lowest number in over 125 years.”

By the reaction of Democrats in attendance, you would have guessed this is all terrible news.

And maybe from their perspective, it is. They appear to have been counting on former President Joe Biden’s border crisis to go on indefinitely, for their constellation of NGOs to continue getting government support to fan its flames, and for taxpayer dollars to keep flowing to their new, imported voters.

Democrats clearly no longer care if immigration happens legally or not, so why should they care if taxpayer dollars are going to legitimate sources as long as their supporters get paid, right?

One of the great lines of the night was when Trump blasted the massive and shameful fraud that occurred under the averted eye of Gov. Tim Walz and the entire Minnesota Democrat political establishment.

“The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” Trump said. “Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here, to the USA—and it is the American people who pay the price, in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime.”

That’s absolutely correct. Prudence would have dictated that American leaders should have been wary before importing countless people from one of the most corrupt parts of the world and giving them essentially a blank check to the treasury once they arrived.

But none of that prudence existed under Biden and his fellow Democrats. And folly has slipped into madness as under Democrats who, once they lost national power, decided to go back to their roots as the party of rebellion and sedition.

To what end? All to apparently protect noncitizens, criminals, drug traffickers, and rapists.

As if on cue, the alternate performance put on by Democrats—and it really was a performance—was featuring, I kid you not, a man in a giraffe suit blowing on a harmonica and gloating about how he was fresh off coming out of an “ICE prison” in Minneapolis.

This is what Democrats are doing instead of attending President Trump's State of the Union speech.

Democrats are literally hanging out with deranged Leftists dressed in giraffe costumes bragging about getting arrested by ICE. pic.twitter.com/hMIUHrmrHy
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2026

This reinforces the point that the Democrat Party isn’t led by sober-minded statesmen, wise defenders of the liberal order. Instead, it’s being pulled this way and that by a deranged activist class that has little connection to this country or even reality.

These were the people who were supposedly protecting our “norms” against the populist Trump. But it turns out they weren’t protecting anything at all besides their insane ideological agenda, which was imposed ruthlessly.

Trump effectively laid out that he was, unlike his opposition, going to prioritize American citizens. He was going to take commonsense, level-headed positions that most Americans still believe in.

Trump also made it clear that if his opponents on the left retake federal power, they will immediately return to the ruinous open borders and many other terrible policies that Americans voted against in 2024.

.@POTUS: "We can never forget that many in this room not only allowed the border invasion to happen before I got involved—but indeed, they would do it all over again if ever given the chance." pic.twitter.com/YU3lwuH3sZ
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 25, 2026

In a sense, it was the way Democrats acted Tuesday night that said nearly as much as Trump’s speech. House Speaker Mike Johnson said it well when he noted that it was “good” for the American people to see just how “shameful” and out of touch the opposition had really become.

'IT WAS SHAMEFUL'

House Speaker @SpeakerJohnson condemns Democrats for applauding themselves while Republicans stood and cheered for "all these great Americans who deserved all this attention" and received honors from Trump. pic.twitter.com/PaPoWL2oeH
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

He’s right.

Whatever one can say about the state of the union, Trump’s leadership, America’s place in the world, it’s hard to imagine how much worse things would be under the renewed tyranny of Democrat theater kids.

That will undoubtedly be the GOP’s message after Tuesday night and heading into the midterms.

Abigail Spanberger Poses 3 Questions in Democrat Rebuttal to Trump

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democrat response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, posing three questions focused on affordability, security, and leadership to challenge the president’s record.

She bluntly responded to Trump’s speech, “We did not hear the truth from our president.”

At the start of her remarks, Spanberger asked, “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?”

Spanberger criticized immigration enforcement that she said harmed families, claiming federal agents “ripped nursing mothers away from their babies” and “have killed American citizens in our streets. And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.”

Earlier this month, Spanberger announced she was terminating 287(g) agreements with the federal government. Those partnerships allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to coordinate with state and local law enforcement agencies.

Beyond immigration, Spanberger mentioned affordability for families and government accountability. She noted high costs for housing, health care, and tariffs, while emphasizing that Democrats across the country are focused on lowering costs and protecting families.

She accused Republicans of putting an economic burden on American citizens.

“They are making your life harder, they are making your life more expensive, they are even making it more difficult to see a doctor,” Spanberger said.

At the end of her remarks, she called on the power of ordinary Americans to demand better. “It is deeply American and patriotic,” she said, “to stand up for what is right” and ensure the state of our union remains strong for the next 250 years.

The response marked Spanberger’s highest-profile national appearance since taking office as governor last month.

‘Did Nancy Pelosi Stand Up?’: Trump Calls Out Pelosi as He Calls for Congressional Insider Trading Ban

President Donald Trump took a jab at Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during his State of the Union address on Tuesday as he pushed Congress to pass a ban on stock trading for members of Congress.

“Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she’s here? Doubt it,” Trump joked after many Democrats remained seated while he called on Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act.

“Let’s also ensure members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information,” Trump told Congress on Tuesday night.

Trump called on Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act, introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., “without delay.” The bill would crack down on stock trading among members of Congress.

Pelosi’s investment portfolio has long been scrutinized for it performing better than some of the nation’s leading hedge funds.

Democrats originally stood and applauded Trump’s call to ban congressional insider trading, but they quickly sat down after Nancy Pelosi was specifically singled out pic.twitter.com/shKNtuK4ym
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) February 25, 2026

Some Democrats, including Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Andy Kim of New Jersey, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, stood and clapped.

“I wasn’t sure if anybody on this side was going to applaud for that. I’m very impressed,” Trump added. “Thank you. I’m very impressed.”

5 Highlights From Trump’s 2026 State of the Union

President Donald Trump highlighted the successful raid in Venezuela, the U.S. triumph at the Olympics, and new plans for tariffs and affordability in his first official State of the Union address of his second term.

Here are five highlights from his speech on Tuesday night.

1. Honoring a Hero of Raid to Capture Maduro

Trump put a spotlight on Chinook helicopter pilot Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, who was injured in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.

Slover was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the operation.

While piloting the helicopter, Slover was hit in the leg and hip by enemy machine gun fire but continued to carry out the mission.

“He absorbed four agonizing shots, shredding his leg into numerous pieces,” Trump said. “And yet, despite the fact that the use of his legs was vital to a successful helicopter flight, flying a helicopter to deliver the many commandos who would capture and detain Maduro was the only thing Eric was thinking about.”

“Even as he was gushing blood which was flowing down the aisle, the helicopter landed at a steep angle,” Trump said.

Trump also reunited a former Venezuelan prisoner of war with his niece for the first time.

“I’m pleased to inform you that not only has your uncle been released, but he is here tonight,” Trump said. “We brought him over to celebrate his freedom with you in person.”

2. Calling for the SAVE America Act

“We have to stop it, John,” Trump said to Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune about illegal immigrants voting in America.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to vote in federal elections.

“Why would anybody not want a voter ID?” Trump asked. “One reason is because they want to cheat.”

“They want to cheat,” he said. “They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat, and we’re going to stop it.”

Trump called out Democrats for refusing to put American citizens ahead of illegal aliens.

“If you agree with this statement, please stand up,” Trump said. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens.”

Many Democrats did not stand.

3. Hockey Player Gets Medal of Freedom

Trump announced that Connor Hellebuyck, the U.S. men’s hockey team’s goaltender, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After the U.S. beat Canada in the 2026 Winter Olympics finals on Sunday, Trump welcomed the team to his first State of the Union address.

Trump described the medal as “the highest civilian honor.”

President Trump announces he will be awarding Connor Hellebuyck, the U.S. Men's Hockey Team goalkeeper, the Presidential Medal of Freedom pic.twitter.com/PXzfXMFE2o
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) February 25, 2026

The hockey team received a standing ovation from the crowd as they entered the chamber, with the exception of some Democrats who refused to stand.

4. New Retirement Plans

Trump announced a new initiative to create retirement savings plans for workers who don’t have one provided by their employer.

“Since I took office, the typical 401(k) balance is up by at least $30,000 because the stock market has done so well, setting all those records, your 401(k)s are way up, yet half of all working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer,” Trump said.

“To remedy this gross disparity, I’m announcing that next year, my administration will give these often forgotten American workers, great people, people that built our country,” Trump said, “access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker. We will match your contribution with up to $1,000.”

Trump also highlighted his executive order to stop large institutional investment firms from buying single-family homes.

Trump promised to always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

He renewed his call for Congress to pass his “Great Health Care Plan” to lower health care prices for Americans.

?FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON AFFORDABILITY

President Trump flips the script on affordability—blaming Democrats for inflation? and noting that the increase in prices has cooled.

Then he slams the "Unaffordable Care Act." pic.twitter.com/rXgFV7Fj7V
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) February 25, 2026

“I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower price,” Trump said.

“My plan requires maximum price transparency,” Trump added. “That’s a big deal.”

5. The Future of Tariffs

Trump addressed the Supreme Court’s “unfortunate ruling” against his tariffs last week, pivoting to his next plan.

Trump said the Supreme Court on Friday “got it really wrong.”

“But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made,” Trump said, “knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate ruling.”

Trump attributed the wars he helped end partially to the tariffs.

“I used these tariffs, hundreds of billions of dollars, to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis, everything was working well, countries,” Trump said, “they were ripping us off for decades and now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars they were ripping us so badly all know that everybody knows it, even the Democrats.”

Dems Sit in Protest After Trump Demands Americans Be Placed Over Illegal Aliens

The House chamber broke out in U.S.A. chants after President Donald Trump called on all elected officials to place American citizens over illegal immigrants during his State of the Union address, but the cheers were from only one side of the aisle: that of the Republicans.

“One of the great things about the SOTU is how it gives a chance to see what their representatives want them to believe,” Trump said. “So tonight, I’m inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle.

“If you agree with this statement, please stand up,” Trump added. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens.”

Despite the chants and cheers from Republicans, Democrats did not stand.

PUT ON THE SPOT: Trump asks Congress members to stand if they believe “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” pic.twitter.com/CXIw2ALffN
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) February 25, 2026

Trump told Democrats they “should be ashamed” of themselves. “These people are crazy,” the president later observed.

Earlier in his remarks, the president touched on the ongoing partial government shutdown, which was caused by Democrats’ refusal to extend Department of Homeland Security funding.

“Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” Trump said. “It’s all cut off; it’s all cut off.

“Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers,” Trump added. “Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security and Homeland Security of the United States, and for helping people clean up their snow. We have no money because of the Democrats.”

Democrats demanded that the department adopt new guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to have its funding reinstated. The new guidelines include demands to halt immigration enforcement operations near polling places and to allow states to sue the department.

Trump called it “another Democrat shutdown.”

The government had shut down for 43 days in November after Democrats blocked funding for the federal government. Republicans at that time accused Democrats of wanting to extend health care subsidies for illegal immigrants.

Trump Calls on Senate to Pass SAVE America Act

President Donald Trump called on lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act during his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

“I’m asking you to approve the SAVE America Act,” Trump said, adding, “cheating is rampant in our elections.”

If passed and signed into law, the SAVE America Act, which stands for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require proof of United States citizenship to register to vote and a valid photo ID to vote. The legislation has passed the House but faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Democrats are expected to use the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome, to block the passage of the bill in the Senate.

Some House Republicans are pressuring Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to employ a procedural maneuver known as a “talking filibuster” that would ultimately require only 50 votes to pass the bill.

“They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat,” Trump claimed of Democrats.

“We have to stop it, John,” Trump said to Thune. “It’s very simple: All voters must show voter ID.”

President Trump is 100% right: all voters must show proof of citizenship and valid ID to vote.

Rep. Roy’s SAVE America Act gets the job done. pic.twitter.com/cU9HSrCIrF
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) February 25, 2026

Trump called the bill “common sense” before accusing Democrats of using “race” as an excuse to not back voter ID and wanting to “cheat” to win elections.

Voter ID requirements continue to poll well among voters, according to a 2025 Pew Research survey, which found 83% of voters support Americans being required to show a government-issued ID to vote.

The Pew Research poll also found that 80% of U.S. voters support early in-person voting being made available to voters at least two weeks before an election.

A Heritage Action poll of likely voters in five Senate battleground states showed more than two-thirds of likely voters supporting proof of citizenship to register to vote.

More than 70% of likely voters across Alaska, Georgia, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio oppose noncitizens voting. Almost 80% support applying the same voter eligibility standard in every state for federal elections.

Why Trump Chose Olympic Goalie for America’s Highest Civilian Honor

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he would award Connor Hellebuyck, goalie for the U.S. men’s hockey team, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hellebuyck is the 50th athlete to receive the prestigious award.

Hellebuyck played a crucial role for the U.S. hockey team in the 2026 Winter Olympics, the Americans’ first gold medal since the 1980 Winter Olympics. In the gold medal game against Canada, Hellebuyck blocked a total of 41 shots, which led to a 2-1 victory.

“The members of this great hockey squad will be very happy to hear based on their vote and my vote, and in this case, my vote was more important that I will soon be presenting Connor with our highest civilian honor,” Trump said during the State of the Union address. “Great athletes have gotten that very great, the best. And I thought he deserved it. And I did take a vote.”

CONNOR HELLEBUYCK COMES UP HUGE TO DENY MCDAVID. ? pic.twitter.com/bV0sxh8GiG
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 22, 2026

Hellebuyck is one of NHL’s top goaltenders with the Winnipeg Jets, a three-time Vezina Trophy winner, and the 2024-25 Hart Trophy winner.

He’ll soon join a distinguished list of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

In 2016, President Barack Obama gave NBA superstar Michael Jordan the award to recognize his accomplishments. Over the course of playing 15 seasons, Jordan is known as the greatest basketball player of all time. He played for the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards, won six NBA championships, and won two Olympic gold medals for Team USA in 1984 and 1992.

Baseball titan Babe Ruth joined the list of athletes after Trump posthumously bestowed the award in 2018. During his playing career, Ruth won a total of seven World Series titles and set the MLB home run record. He played for the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves.

During his first term, Trump recognized Tiger Woods with the honor in 2019 at a White House ceremony. Woods has won 82 PGA Tour events and 15 major championships. The term “Tiger Slam” was coined when Woods won all four major golf championships consecutively.

A list of all athletes who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom is below.

Recipient	Year	Sport	President
Robert J.H. Kiphuth	1963	Swimming Coach	John F. Kennedy
Jesse Owens	1976	Track & Field	Gerald Ford
Joe DiMaggio	1977	Baseball	Gerald Ford
Paul “Bear” Bryant*	1983	Football Coach	Ronald Reagan
Jackie Robinson*	1984	Baseball	Ronald Reagan
Earl Blaik	1986	Football	Ronald Reagan
Ted Williams	1991	Baseball	George H.W. Bush
Richard Petty	1992	Auto Racing	George H.W. Bush
Arthur Ashe*	1993	Tennis	Bill Clinton
Hank Aaron	2002	Baseball	George W. Bush
Roberto Clemente*	2003	Baseball	George W. Bush
John Wooden	2003	Basketball Coach	George W. Bush
Arnold Palmer	2004	Golf	George W. Bush
Frank Robinson	2005	Baseball	George W. Bush
Muhammad Ali	2005	Boxing	George W. Bush
Jack Nicklaus	2005	Golf	George W. Bush
Buck O’Neil*	2006	Baseball	George W. Bush
Billie Jean King	2009	Tennis	Barack Obama
Stan Musial	2011	Baseball	Barack Obama
Bill Russell	2011	Basketball	Barack Obama
Pat Summitt	2012	Basketball Coach	Barack Obama
Ernie Banks	2013	Baseball	Barack Obama
Dean Smith	2013	Basketball Coach	Barack Obama
Charlie Sifford	2014	Golf	Barack Obama
Willie Mays	2015	Baseball	Barack Obama
Yogi Berra*	2015	Baseball	Barack Obama
Michael Jordan	2016	Basketball	Barack Obama
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	2016	Basketball	Barack Obama
Vin Scully	2016	Announcer	Barack Obama
Alan Page	2018	Football	Donald Trump
Roger Staubach	2018	Football	Donald Trump
Babe Ruth*	2018	Baseball	Donald Trump
Tiger Woods	2019	Golf	Donald Trump
Bob Cousy	2019	Basketball	Donald Trump
Roger Penske	2019	Auto Racing	Donald Trump
Mariano Rivera	2019	Baseball	Donald Trump
Jerry West	2019	Basketball	Donald Trump
Dan Gable	2020	Wrestling	Donald Trump
Lou Holtz	2020	Football Coach	Donald Trump
Jim Ryun	2020	Track & Field	Donald Trump
Babe Didrikson Zaharias*	2021	Golf, Track & Field	Donald Trump
Gary Player	2021	Golf	Donald Trump
Annika Sorenstam	2021	Golf	Donald Trump
Simone Biles	2022	Gymnastics	Joe Biden
Megan Rapinoe	2022	Soccer	Joe Biden
Jim Thorpe*	2024	Football	Joe Biden
Katie Ledecky	2024	Swimming	Joe Biden
Magic Johnson	2025	Basketball	Joe Biden
Lionel Messi	2025	Soccer	Joe Biden
Connor Hellebuyck	2026	Hockey	Donald Trump

* Awarded posthumously

LIVE STATE OF THE UNION COVERAGE by Daily Signal, Featuring Tony Kinnett

The Daily Signal is LIVE right now with extraordinary coverage of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett stages a special edition of his show, “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” featuring pre-speech commentary and expert analysis by Daily Signal reporters and editors. Then, it’s uninterrupted coverage of the president’s remarks at 9 p.m. and post-speech analysis by Kinnett and a variety of guests.

You don’t want to miss it. It’s not the same lame coverage you’ve seen time and time again. Join us right now!

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