Political Commentary & Opinion
Analysis, commentary, and opinion essays on politics and policy from The Daily Signal’s contributors and experts.
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- News
‘Kids Are Off-Limits’: DeSantis Sues Bar That Let Children Attend Drag Shows
Florida is suing a bar that hosted drag shows with children present after investigators found that the establishment was exposing minors to sexually explicit content, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, discussed the complaint and spoke out against sexualized content targeting children during a Wednesday speech in…Laurel Duggan -
- Opinion
Why Speaker Pelosi Must Go to Taiwan
Beijing is warning of “serious consequences” and “firm and resolute measures” should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through with her plans to visit Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party can’t help itself. Like so much of what China has done in the past 10 years or so, these pronouncements only help to bring about the thing…Walter Lohman -
- Opinion
Tunisia Backslides From Arab Spring to Autocracy
Tunisia, the birthplace of the 2011 Arab Spring mass protests that swept North Africa and the Middle East, has entered an uncharted chapter in the country’s already turbulent transition toward democracy. Unfortunately, in moving away from the status of the sole evolving democracy to have emerged from the mass uprisings in the region, Tunisia’s democratic…Anthony B. Kim -
- Opinion
Failure to Prioritize Arctic Has Left America Vulnerable to Adversaries
The Arctic is a critically important region to the U.S. because of its trade routes and natural resources, yet America is unable to protect its interests there against increasingly aggressive and better equipped adversaries. If left unopposed, countries such as Russia and China will continue to exert their influence in the region and could wrest…Jackson Clark -
- Opinion
Why My Friends and I Had More Wisdom When We Were 12 Than College Students and Faculty Have Today
The average 12-year-old student at a yeshiva has more wisdom than almost any student at Harvard or most other universities. (A yeshiva is an Orthodox Jewish school with an emphasis on religious studies. About half the school day is devoted to religious studies—taught from the original Hebrew sources. This is probably true for many 12-year-olds…Dennis Prager -
- News
7 Takeaways From Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy Speech
Former President Donald Trump focused mostly on fighting a surge in crime and keeping Americans safe but veered into other topics Tuesday in remarks packed with policy proposals that topped 90 minutes. “We need an all-out effort to defeat violent crime in America and strongly defeat it, and be tough and be nasty and be…Fred Lucas -
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How Gender Ideology Cost a Chicago Mother Custody of Her Child
Jeannette Cooper never imagined she’d lose custody of her only child. A Chicago resident and lifelong educator who spent her entire adult life surrounded by children, Cooper considered herself a loving and responsible mother. After she and her husband divorced in 2015, she won custody of their daughter six days and seven nights a week. …Kelsey Bolar -
- Opinion
OK, Groomer: Phrase Calling Out Predators Banned on Twitter
Editor’s note: This commentary, originally published March 23, has been updated to reflect Twitter’s suspensions of James Lindsay and the parents’ rights organization Moms for Liberty, as well as Twitter’s new policy surrounding the word “groomer.” Of the many topics the radical left has sought to render verboten, there is none more contentious than gender ideology. At…Douglas Blair -
- News
Monkeypox’s Inconvenient Truth
As the Biden administration considers declaring monkeypox a public health emergency, an epidemiologist says the easiest way to combat its spread is to discourage the practices of “aggressively hypersexualized gay men.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the U.S. has 2,890 diagnosed cases of the virus, which causes sores and open lesions on the…Ben Johnson -
- Opinion
Sex and Gender Matter. Writer-Academic Abigail Favale Explains Why.
When political leaders can’t define what a woman is, society has a problem. The radical left has detached sex and gender from “material reality,” says Abigail Favale, author of the book “The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.” Removing fact and biological reality from sex has led to a “subtle denigration of … the female…Virginia Allen -
- Opinion
Polygamy Seen as Possibility Under House-Passed Marriage Bill
House Democrats, with the assistance of 47 Republicans, last week passed legislation under which the federal government would recognize any marriage if it is legally performed in any of the 50 states. The bill also would allow the nation’s attorney general to file civil action lawsuits against states that refuse to recognize marriages in other…Douglas Blair -
- Opinion
How Did Democrats Become So Out of Touch With the American People?
The president of the United States, equal parts senescent and feckless, garners record-shattering low approval ratings seemingly each week. This week, a new Quinnipiac University survey found that a paltry 31% of Americans approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job. Among political independents, that number is, somehow, considerably lower: 23% approval, compared…Josh Hammer -
- News
Criticism Dogs Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Redefinition of ‘Female,’ ‘Male’ to Include Gender Identity
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary is facing renewed criticism for slipping woke gender ideology into its definitions of “male” and “female.” “Female,” primarily defined in the online dictionary as “of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs,” now includes the secondary definition of “having a gender identity that is…Evalyn Homoelle -
- Opinion
Republicans Used to Defend Traditional Marriage. What’s Changed?
When the Supreme Court delivered its blow to marriage in 2015, burning down three dozen state laws and tearing up 50 million ballots, the GOP’s reaction was straightforward. Outrage. With a handful of exceptions, the response that echoed across the two coasts was a collective “How dare they?” As far as Republicans were concerned, what the five…Tony Perkins -
- Opinion
The Media Has Tried and Failed to Sell the Left’s Crazy Agenda
Every reasonably honest observer knows the corporate media has a liberal bias. That bias is displayed more often in the topics they choose to emphasize than in outright misinformation. We all know the major narratives that the media is trying to drive home. There is none bigger than the idea that Republicans have become extreme,…Neil Patel -
- Opinion
Army Is Falling Dangerously Short on Recruitment. Here’s What We Can Do About It.
The Army is falling far short of its 2022 target end strength, the maximum number of personnel permitted by Congress in each military service. A recent news report noted the Army will “fall about 10,000 soldiers short of its planned end strength for this fiscal year,” and has only achieved 50% of its recruiting goal…Thomas Spoehr -
- Opinion
Bidenvilles: America’s New Emblem of Decay
In French, a “bidonville” is a shantytown. A “bidon” is a large container, like the giant yellow vegetable oil bottles used to carry drinking water in developing countries. I’ve seen plenty of shantytowns in cities from India to Togo; they are an unfortunate consequence of rapid urbanization. What surprised me when I came home to…Simon Hankinson -
- Opinion
Where’s the Beef?
How can it be that with so much cattle in America, we sometimes can’t buy meat? At the beginning of the pandemic, Costco, Wegmans, and Kroger limited purchases of beef. Hundreds of Wendy’s outlets ran out of hamburgers. “How the hell can this be?” says Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., in my new video. “They [Wendy’s]…John Stossel -
- News
6 Big Takeaways as House Panel Retraces Trump’s Steps During Capitol Riot
“The dam has begun to break,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., asserted early in the eighth hearing held by the House panel investigating the Capitol riot 18 months ago. The hearing’s focus Thursday night was on what Donald Trump did and didn’t do at the White House for about three hours as rioters breached the Capitol…Fred Lucas -
- Opinion
Medicare Savings Should Be Used for Improving Medicare, Not Funding Obamacare
Attention, seniors! Here is a simple proposal: Every dime of potential budgetary savings in the Medicare program should first be plowed back into the Medicare program to help ensure its solvency or secondarily be earmarked for debt reduction. Under no circumstances should Medicare be milked as a cash cow for other government programs, whether…Robert Moffit