Political Commentary & Opinion

Analysis, commentary, and opinion essays on politics and policy from The Daily Signal’s contributors and experts.
Filter articles by
    • Opinion

    Why Pete Hegseth Is Right About Women in Combat

    It’s amazing how controversial common sense is these days. Look at the reaction to Pete Hegseth’s comments about women in combat roles. President-elect Donald Trump wants Hegseth to be his secretary of defense. He served in the Army National Guard, deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s talked repeatedly about the problems he sees in today’s…
    Victor Joecks
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Let Them Eat Cake

    DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—It is “lessons learned” season for the political class, but recent anecdotes reflect the Left’s selective takeaways from the campaign and election of 2024. — Former President Bill Clinton bemoans the advent of “zillions” of right-wing websites as a reason why the Harris-Walz ticket had such difficulties in reaching out to rural America. —…
    Bob Ehrlich
    Read More
    • Opinion

    The Left Knows It’s Losing the Online Culture War

    After Kamala Harris’ thorough defeat at the hands of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats claim to be engaged in all kinds of soul-searching that’s starting to look an awful lot like navel-gazing. Some Democrats’ latest theory on why they lost the 2024 election has nothing to do with inflation, rising crime, foreign…
    Bradley Devlin
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Disrupting the Health Agencies Will Save American Lives

    The public health establishment and left-wing media are rushing to discredit President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead health agencies. The New York Times smears them as “outside the medical mainstream.” Circling the wagons, Dr. Paul Offit, a current adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, lamely observes, “What they’re saying when they make these appointments…
    Betsy McCaughey
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Journalists Mourn That Jack Smith’s Probes Are Dead

    Democratic attorneys waged legal war on former President Donald Trump on every level of government: federal, state, county and city. Now that he’s been reelected, all that legal wrangling is going to be curtailed. Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith had to fold his tent, and on Nov. 25, the networks offered live “breaking news” that…
    Tim Graham
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Woke Isn’t Dead. The Battle to Root It Out Is Only Just Beginning.

    Donald Trump, the once and future president, won not just the Electoral College but likely the popular vote. In doing so, he defeated the Democrats’ DEI hire candidate, the great intersectional hope Kamala Harris, in part by running on a platform of rooting woke ideology out of the federal government. Trump’s triumph comes after a…
    Tyler O’Neil
    Read More
    • Opinion

    The Groups and Barista Proletariat of the Democratic Party

    Postmortems of the Democratic Party’s loss, running well beyond the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., are starting to come in from some of the party’s most perceptive thinkers. And it was a loss across the board, not just this year. As RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende has argued, 2024’s voting patterns…
    Michael Barone
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Universities Have a 2025 Rendezvous With Reality

    Universities have suffered a cataclysmic decline in public approval and support. A Gallup poll taken this year found that only 36% of Americans polled either expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education—once the agreed-on touchstone to upward mobility. Gifting to most universities has been down for two consecutive years….
    Victor Davis Hanson
    Read More
    • Opinion

    A World of Leverage

    President-elect Donald Trump understands, better than any recent American president, one simple rule when it comes to dealing with the world: Leverage matters and ought to be applied to those who oppose American interests. Trump believes, for example, that tariffs ought to be used to threaten those who would close their markets to American products…
    Ben Shapiro
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Journalists Should Spend Less Time Railing on Elon Musk, More Time Rebuilding Public Trust

    There’s something about Donald Trump winning an election that drives journalists crazy. The National Press Club in the nation’s capital is an epicenter of media arrogance, as anyone could see from its Nov. 21 “Fourth Estate Award Gala,” in which they proclaimed they were honoring the “fearless pursuit of truth.” But as always, the “truth”…
    Tim Graham
    Read More
    • Opinion

    To Get Rid of Woke, Understand How It Got Started

    Coincident with Donald Trump’s electoral victory, increasing numbers of America’s corporations are backing off their DEI—diversity, equity, inclusion—programs. Trump’s opposition to DEI is clear, and JD Vance’s bold opposition to this agenda was one of the reasons for his selection as Trump’s running mate. As the Trump transition team completes its work bringing in the…
    Star Parker
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Here’s How a Small Band of Pediatricians Pushed for Ending Age Minimums for Child ‘Sex Changes’

    DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A handful of pediatricians who perform “sex-change” procedures on children led a successful pressure campaign to push a major transgender medical organization to remove age minimums for life-altering sex-change surgeries from its clinical guidance, according to emails exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Emails reveal the American Academy of Pediatrics…
    Megan Brock
    Read More
    • Opinion

    America’s ‘Chicken Little’ Elites Don’t Like Trump’s Personnel Picks

    The people who drove America’s institutions into the ground are upset that Donald Trump isn’t leaving the “experts” in charge. Following his convincing victory, Trump has swiftly announced his nominees for cabinet secretaries and other key roles. His selections include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary, Pete Hegseth for secretary of…
    Victor Joecks
    Read More
    • News

    DEA to Consider Loosening Federal Marijuana Restrictions

    THE CENTER SQUARE—The Drug Enforcement Administration plans to hold a formal hearing next week on its plan to reschedule marijuana at the federal level. The proposal is to move marijuana from a Schedule I drug, along with heroin and LSD, to Schedule III, where it would join ketamine and anabolic steroids. In May, the Department…
    Brett Rowland
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Here’s How to Deport More Than 10 Million People

    Under President Joe Biden’s failed leadership, the United States has been in the throes of a four-year-long illegal immigrant crisis, during which an estimated more than 10 million people have entered the country. With immigration among the top issues in the 2024 campaign cycle, the American people are sending President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on…
    Bradley Devlin
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Jaguar’s Wrong Turn

    When I was a teenager, the sleek, uber-cool Jaguars featured in movies like “The Italian Job” and “Die Another Day” were the epitome of dream cars. Today, when I can finally afford such a vehicle (and happen to be in the market for a new car) Jaguar just removed itself from my consideration list. True,…
    Steve McKee
    Read More
    • News

    EXCLUSIVE: Oversight Committee Hearing Will Review Census Miscounts That Benefited Democrats

    FIRST ON DAILY SIGNAL—The head of the U.S. Census Bureau is set to face questions from Congress on Dec. 5 regarding its overcounting of residents of blue states and undercounting of those in red states. Such errors could aid Democrats politically by giving blue states a larger share of Electoral College votes as well as…
    Fred Lucas
    Read More
    • Opinion

    ‘Problematic Women’ Cook Thanksgiving Dinner

    This Thanksgiving, “Problematic Women” is stepping out of the studio and celebrating the rich history and traditions of the holiday with a homemade meal. Join hosts Virginia Allen, Kristen Eichamer, Lauren Evans, and friends as they make Thanksgiving dinner together in this special cooking edition.   Since its inception almost a decade ago, The Daily…
    Virginia Allen
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Don’t Be a Turkey on Thanksgiving

    “My Mom Voted for Trump. Can We Let It Go?” Read the headline for The New York Times’ “The Ethicist” piece Friday. The family dynamic no doubt is familiar to New York Times’ readers—the writer’s wife’s family members are committed Donald Trump haters, except his mother voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. The writer…
    Debra Saunders
    Read More
    • Opinion

    Why Medical Establishment Deserves Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    I don’t always agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, but I can’t help but feel a bit of healthy schadenfreude at the prospect of America’s corrupt health care establishment getting the bitter taste of well-deserved disruptive medicine. Kennedy isn’t exactly a conservative….
    Tyler O’Neil
    Read More