Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
To expand Medicaid or to not expand Medicaid? That’s still the question facing lawmakers in Kansas and 18 other states. Though the Kansas Legislature voted for expansion last week, Gov. Sam Brownback promptly vetoed the measure. Legislators then tried to override the veto early this week, but fell three votes short of the two-thirds threshold…
Wherever one sits on the ideological spectrum, we all agree that our children deserve access to a high-quality education. The American economy will not grow without qualified workers and our democracy will not thrive without an informed citizenry. This is critical to the very idea of America—everyone should be free to reach as high as…
Profiling is needlessly a misunderstood concept. What’s called “profiling” is part of the optimal stock of human behavior and something we all do. Let’s begin by describing behavior that might come under the heading of profiling. Prior to making decisions, people seek to gain information. To obtain information is costly, requiring the expenditure of time…
Few things make Americans more upset than a threat to the Social Security program that they have spent years paying into. That is why a Facebook video of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., raising a point of order against the 2015 budget deal has been viewed more than 76 million times. That vote, taken in the…
As modern Supreme Court nomination hearings go, Judge Neil Gorsuch’s were surprisingly uneventful. One of his judicial decisions that drew fire is Hobby Lobby v. Burwell. That case determined whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should prevent the federal government from imposing the Affordable Care Act’s regulatory contraceptives mandate on a particular family-owned business contrary…
When I was first elected to the Senate in 2010, I ran on a promise to repeal Obamacare. When I ran for re-election last year, I again ran on a promise to repeal Obamacare. For more than six years, I’ve made finding a way to make health care more affordable for Utahns my top priority…
In the age of Trump, the so-called “mainstream media” has once again been possessed of its manic Republican administration energy levels, determined to shine the light on government corruption and malfeasance stemming from the administration. The Washington Post even adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to show the world its rediscovered commitment to keeping…
Just a few short months after President Donald Trump was elected, the American people have come face to face with a reality known for years to defense leaders and military service members—the armed forces are facing a distinct crisis. Budget cuts, sequestration, and operational overuse have resulted in a force that is undermanned, underequipped, and…
Editor's note: One reader who we heard from awhile back marked March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility. So this weekend seemed like a fitting opportunity to publish the letter as the lead item in our mailbag.—Ken McIntyre Dear Daily Signal: At first I was going to ignore Kelsey Harkness' video report and the comments, but there comes a…
The United Nations approved a resolution on March 24 authorizing a fact-finding mission into human rights violations in Burma. The resolution is the most serious intervention thus far in Rakhine State, where the majority of the 1.2 million Rohingya Muslim population resides. The resolution, adopted by consensus, addresses a wide range of human rights concerns….
It isn’t often that Congress moves a heavy burden off the backs of the states and allows them the freedom to be actual “laboratories of democracy.” Yet the Senate did just that Thursday in voting 51-50 (with Vice President Mike Pence breaking the tie) to invoke the Congressional Review Act to rescind an Obama administration…
The federal government has been too involved in regulating America’s health care system for years. Yes, long before the unaffordable “Affordable Care Act,” aka Obamacare, came along, Washington was picking winners and losers in health care. The unfair tax treatment of health care started post-World War II when we began giving tax breaks to those…
After a week of fallout from the failure to pass the GOP health care bill, disgruntled Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois took to the pages of the New York Times Friday to vent his frustrations. His target? The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative members that has borne the brunt of media shaming and ire…
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Sometimes, members of Congress have the memories of goldfish. One such example is a taxpayer-backed subsidy program for water infrastructure projects. The Bureau of Reclamation within the Department of Interior oversees water resource management in Western states for activities like water supply, storage,…
America must kick its addiction to spending before it becomes an insurmountable crisis. On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its “2017 Long-Term Budget Outlook,” which lays out budget and economic projections for the next 30 years. The report shows that time to fix the nation’s skyrocketing debt levels is running out and Congress must…
The undercover Planned Parenthood videos published in 2015 made one thing abundantly clear: Big Abortion skirts the law for its own gain, going to great lengths to hide its illicit activities not only from the public, but even from its own employees. After such revelations, it seems like common sense that the government would defund…
If the goal of compromise is to ensure that nobody’s happy, then North Carolina is succeeding. With the NCAA’s ultimatum to repeal H.B. 2 just hours away, the state flew into action Thursday to try to appease the NCAA, which has become a puppet of the radical left. Turns out, the compromise only made liberals…
President Donald Trump's tweet that it’s the House Freedom Caucus that “we must fight” shows there may be a little confusion about what "draining the swamp" means or, at the very least, what it looks like. The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We…
As Democrats prepare to attempt a historically unprecedented filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, it’s important to be able to separate fact from fiction as debunked talking points are repeated by those who oppose the nominee. Here are seven key facts to remember: There has never been a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme…