National Security News

The Daily Signal provides reports on national and homeland security issues, including military readiness, intelligence operations, border protection, and global conflicts. Featuring news, analysis, and commentary, this section explores how security policy decisions affect America’s national defense and freedom.
Filter articles by
  • opinion

    Socialism Is a Rigid Ideology That Always Ends in Tyranny
    Q: What did socialists use before candles? A: Electricity. It’s an old joke, sure. But it’s no laughing matter. Just ask the people of Venezuela. The socialist regime there nationalized the electricity sector a dozen years ago. Today, blackouts in the once-prosperous Latin American nation have become routine. Electricity isn’t all that’s in short supply. Gasoline is scarce in the…
    Lee Edwards
    Read More
  • news

    Illegal Border Crossings Hit 10-Year High as Officials Warn of ‘Breaking Point’
    The U.S. border with Mexico is at a “breaking point,” Trump administration officials say, with arrests of illegal immigrants surging to record levels. In February, border agents arrested more than 66,400 people for entering the country illegally, the highest number recorded since 2008. “This situation is not sustainable,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan…
    Kelsey Bolar
    Read More
  • news

    ‘People Are Starting to Realize Just How Dangerous the Socialist Agenda Really Is,’ Says Former NY Lawmaker
    Former Rep. Claudia Tenney, who represented New York’s 22nd Congressional District in the 115th Congress, spoke to The Daily Signal at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. Tenney narrowly lost re-election to Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y., last November. An edited transcript of the interview is below. Rob Bluey: Looking back on your time in…
    Robert B. Bluey
    Read More
  • opinion

    China Is Poisoning America With Fentanyl
    Fentanyl is now the leading cause of fatal drug overdoses. In 2017 alone, 49,000 Americans lost their lives to fentanyl.  What is the source of the synthetic opioid, abuse of which leads to this senseless loss of life? China is the principal culprit. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has identified China as the primary source…
    Peyton Smith | Hans von Spakovsky
    Read More
  • news

    ‘Put Socialism on Trial,’ Larry Kudlow Urges
    Larry Kudlow, director of the president’s National Economic Council, called Thursday for putting socialism “on trial”—and convicting it. “I want you, and everybody in this room and your friends and your neighbors, I want you to put socialism on trial, that’s what I’m asking,” Kudlow said, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside…
    Fred Lucas
    Read More
  • news

    Mark Meadows Hails American Dream Over Socialism of Green New Deal
    Americans have to look no further than Venezuela to see the harms of socialism, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus told conservative activists gathered Thursday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I think it was a young Bernie Sanders who was talking about it’s good to be in line to wait for…
    Rachel del Guidice
    Read More
  • opinion

    Venezuela and the Myth of Kinder, Gentler Socialism
    Venezuela is a socialist country. Venezuela is also a dictatorship. Currently, Venezuela has fallen into open violence and complete chaos, with the strongman Nicolas Maduro ordering troops to open fire on those attempting to bring humanitarian aid into the country. Yet, strangely, Maduro still has his defenders. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the leading declared Democratic…
    Ben Shapiro
    Read More
  • opinion

    Why the Military Is Losing the Battle for the Best, Brightest Cybersecurity Talent
    What do GPS satellites, F-35s, and the new Department of Veterans Affairs health care records management system have in common? The latest Defense Department annual assessment of cyberthreats has found disturbing weaknesses in each of these systems. Furthermore, Robert Behler, director of the Defense Department’s Operational Test and Evaluation, claimed that the Pentagon’s cybertesting was…
    Elias Gavilan | James Di Pane
    Read More
  • opinion

    How the 2020 Defense Authorization Act Will Determine the Fate of Defense Strategy
    Will the Trump administration be able to continue rebuilding our military? That depends in large measure on whether Congress passes the National Defense Authorization Act for the upcoming fiscal year. In his inaugural hearing as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., delivered a message of committee unity and commitment…
    Frederico Bartels
    Read More
  • news

    What a Judge’s Ruling on Drafting Women Means for Military
    A federal judge’s ruling that women must be included in a potential military draft is based on incomplete information, an advocate for military readiness says. The Obama administration rejected a field test by the U.S. Marine Corps that found all-male units performing simulated ground combat tasks outperformed gender-mixed units 69 percent of the time, said…
    Fred Lucas
    Read More
  • opinion

    Why Gender Dysphoria Must Remain a Bar to Military Service
    In normal usage, “discrimination” is an ugly word. But discrimination has two meanings. The first and more familiar definition is “the treatment of a person or particular group of people differently, in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated.” Discrimination of that sort is clearly unacceptable. The second, less common…
    Thomas Spoehr
    Read More
  • opinion

    Military Members Should Fight Dangers Abroad, Not in Their Own Homes
    Despair filled the eyes of the mother next to me in the Senate committee hearing room as she showed me a picture of her son. She explained he will need lifelong medical care because she was unknowingly exposed to lead paint and mold in her home during her pregnancy. To my surprise, she wasn’t living…
    Megan Rohn | Thomas Spoehr
    Read More
  • opinion

    Medicare’s Financial Condition Is Getting Worse. Here’s What Trump and Congress Can Do.
    The financial condition of Medicare—the huge program that covers over 58 million beneficiaries—is deteriorating. The president and Congress are legally required to address the problem this year. For the taxpayers, it’s essential that they slow the growth in Medicare spending. For the beneficiaries, they can improve the program’s overall performance, benefit structure, and financial condition…
    Robert Moffit
    Read More
  • news

    Trump Says Venezuela Crisis Marks ‘Twilight Hour of Socialism’
    The movement for freedom in Venezuela reveals that the “twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere,” President Donald Trump said Monday night in a speech in Miami. “The Venezuelan people have spoken, and the world has heard their beautiful voice,” Trump said in his remarks at Florida International University to an audience that…
    Fred Lucas
    Read More
  • opinion

    Frank Talk at the Munich Security Conference
    MUNICH—The annual Munich Security Conference opened Friday with the largest U.S. delegation in the five decades of its history. The conference has grown into one of the leading forums for discussion of international issues.  Included in the list of participants for the 2019 conference are numerous heads of state, among them German Chancellor Angela Merkel,…
    Thomas Spoehr
    Read More
  • opinion

    Socialism Has Already Hurt America
    President Donald Trump was principled and politically astute to address, in his State of the Union, the horrors taking place now in Venezuela, and then to declare: “Tonight we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” Venezuela is indeed a poster child for what happens when a nation’s economic machinery falls…
    Star Parker
    Read More
  • opinion

    California’s High-Speed Rail Failure Shows the Insanity of Green New Deal
    Even California can’t apparently support high-speed rail. Just a few hundred miles of high-speed rail in California was well on its way to exceeding $100 billion in costs by the time of completion. As a result, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that the state will be massively shrinking the project. “Let’s be real,” Newsom, a…
    David Ditch
    Read More
  • opinion

    The Constitution Rejects the Premise of Judicial Supremacy. So Should All Americans.
    Americans today are inclined to accept, without thinking much about it, the idea of judicial supremacy.  We think that the federal courts—and especially the Supreme Court—have an extensive discretion to decide for us the big questions of public policy that come before the nation.  After all, the Supreme Court has taken upon itself the authority…
    Carson Holloway
    Read More
  • opinion

    Podcast: Social Justice Challenges America’s Founding Ideals
    Social justice—you’ve probably heard the term. It’s a buzzword, but it’s also an ideology. When you peel back the layers, it becomes quite clear that this new social justice ideology stands directly against America’s founding principles—things like blind justice and equality before the law. Noah Rothman writes about all this in his new book “Unjust:…
    Katrina Trinko | Daniel Davis
    Read More
  • news

    8 Takeaways From Acting AG Whitaker’s House Judiciary Committee Hearing
    Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker doesn’t expect to remain in the job for more than another week, as the Senate is expected to confirm nominee William Barr for the position. Whitaker has been in the office long enough, however, to be sharply grilled by Democrats—and a pair of Republicans—at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Friday….
    Fred Lucas
    Read More