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.
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    • News

    California Officials Back Trump on Crackdown on ‘Sanctuary’ Policies

    California law enforcement and local officials gathered at the White House on Wednesday to make it clear that Sacramento doesn’t speak for them on illegal immigration. The Democrat-controlled state Legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a “sanctuary state” law that prohibits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen Shows That She Truly Understands Border Security

    Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen schooled senators with her strong grasp of immigration enforcement and border security issues. Before what would become a heated exchange over her opposition to illegal immigration—because, you know, it’s the law—Nielsen in her opening statement explained what should be obvious to all:…
    David Inserra
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    • News

    6 More Judicial Nominees Advance in Trump Bid to Reshape Judiciary

    President Donald Trump is completing a strong week, and is set to kick off a strong next week, in his push to reshape the federal courts, with Senate Republicans forcing votes on six more of his judicial nominees. Despite the Democrat minority in the Senate using procedures to delay many confirmation votes, Senate Majority Leader…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Right Side of History: Special Counsels Hunting Presidents Nothing New

    “The Right Side of History” is a podcast dedicated to exploring current events through a historical lens and busting left-wing myths about figures and events of America’s past. On this week’s episode, we discuss investigations by special prosecutors, which didn’t start with Robert Mueller’s probe of President Donald Trump. In 1875, President Ulysses Grant named…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Military Families Want Better Schooling, but Special Interests Stand in the Way

    “Dems warn school vouchers for military families could ‘derail’ annual defense bill,” Politico reported last week. At the same time, special-interest groups, such as the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, are holding Capitol Hill briefings suggesting that empowering military families with school choice would “defund Impact Aid.” These objections, however, are without merit, and…
    Lindsey Burke
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    • Opinion

    Democrats’ Universal Job Plan Would Be a Socialist Disaster

    Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to announce a plan that guarantees every American “who wants or needs one” a lifetime government job paying at least $15 an hour, with health insurance and other perks. This new progressive workforce will then, according to The Washington Post, build glorious “projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing…
    David Harsanyi
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    • News

    How Federal Consumer Agency Puts Your Financial Data at Risk

    About 1,000 records of data containing Americans’ financial and personal information may have been hacked after breaches of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, officials say. “I am absolutely concerned about the exposure of our data in this rogue agency that has no responsibility to this Congress,” @SenDavidPerdue says. The CFPB, the government agency created…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Podcast: California Tries to Silence Social Conservatives

    California state lawmakers are considering a bill that would curb speech about LGBT matters. The Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman joins us to discuss. Plus: Dr. Michelle Cretella, who has written for The Daily Signal, gets dozens of protesters when she goes to speak at a church about transgender issues.
    Katrina Trinko
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    • Opinion

    Texas A&M Shuts Down 2 Chinese Learning Institutes Deemed National Security Threats

    Tensions between the U.S. and China just reached two college campuses in Texas. On April 9, the Texas A&M University system announced its intention to close two Confucius Institutes located at its College Station and Prairie View campuses, respectively. The Chinese government-funded institutes offer language and cultural programming for students, but a recent letter from Reps. Henry…
    Helle Dale
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    • Opinion

    No, the Pentagon Shouldn’t Plan for ‘a Lean Future’

    As part of the budget process for the coming fiscal year, the House Armed Services Committee hosted Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. Among the many exchanges between the lawmakers and the Pentagon leaders, the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., warned Mattis: “While 2018…
    Frederico Bartels
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    • Opinion

    Physician-Assisted Suicide in Hawaii Is an Attack on All of Us

    Earlier this month, Hawaii became the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Proponents of the law hail the move as a step toward “death with dignity,” but this could not be further from the truth. Physician-assisted suicide is a direct attack on human dignity. Every human life has value, not because of…
    Monica Burke
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    • News

    Senate Confirms 3 Key Trump Administration Officials, 3 More Judges

    After months of lagging in confirming President Donald Trump’s nominees for top executive branch posts, the Republican-led Senate helped the president staff up with a former Reagan administration appointee at the Labor Department, a top deputy at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a new balance of power on the National Labor Relations Board. The Senate…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Bungling Judicial Precedent, Federal Court Upholds AR-15 Ban

    Last week, a federal judge for the District Court for Massachusetts granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the state’s prohibition of so-called “assault weapons,” such as the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Judge William Young held that the AR-15 and similar weapons aren’t protected by the Second Amendment, because they were originally designed for military…
    Amy Swearer
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    • News

    2,000 Veterans, Relatives Back Education Savings Accounts for Military Families

    More than 2,000 military veterans, spouses, and other family members have signed a letter in support of a bill creating federally funded education savings accounts for military families to provide more choices and flexibility in schooling the children of those in the armed forces. The signers “are writing to express our strong support for the…
    Rachel del Guidice
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    • News

    This California College Welcomes Propagandists for Venezuelan Socialism

    A women-only college in California continues to host Venezuelan propagandists, with two government officials scheduled to speak Tuesday for the failed socialist regime. Scripps College in Claremont, California, invited Venezuelan Consul Generals Jesus Chucho Garcia and Antonio Cordero to address “coups and imperial wars,” “African solidarities,” and Venezuela’s plan to create a “new society rooted in…
    Rob Shimshock
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    • Opinion

    Racial Disparities Don’t Simply Boil Down to Discrimination

    I don’t mind saying that this column represents a grossly understated review of “Discrimination and Disparities,” just published by my longtime friend and colleague Thomas Sowell. In less than 200 pages, Sowell lays waste to myth after myth not only in the United States but around the globe. One of those myths is that but…
    Walter E. Williams
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    • News

    ‘Definition of Tyranny’: Interim Director Asks Congress to Fix Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

    The Trump administration is urging Congress to reshape a consumer agency crafted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., before it is used as a tool for “tyranny.” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "is far too powerful, with precious little oversight of its activities,” the agency's acting director, Mick Mulvaney, said Monday in a public statement. “The power…
    Thomas Phippen
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    • Opinion

    Obama EPA Officials Protest Scott Pruitt’s ‘Secret Science’ Reforms. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.

    Should the public be allowed to know how bureaucrats develop policies that have major impacts on our lives? Or should we simply be left in the dark? That seems like a silly question, right? Hopefully, the answer is obvious. For some though—including Gina McCarthy, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator from the Obama administration—transparency seems…
    Daren Bakst
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    • News

    Trump Fires Shulkin at VA, Taps White House Physician

    President Donald Trump has decided to name his White House physician, Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs as he ousts the scandal-plagued VA secretary, David Shulkin. The president announced the change at 5:31 p.m. Wednesday on Twitter. I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected…
    Fred Lucas
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    • News

    Special Counsel Says Trump Aide Knowingly Communicated With Former Russian Spy

    Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates was in contact just before the 2016 election with a man he knew to be a former Russian spy, according to a document filed Tuesday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office. The revelation comes in a sentencing memorandum filed about Alex van der Zwaan, a London-based lawyer who pleaded guilty in…
    Chuck Ross
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