NPR Is in Turmoil. But Nothing Will Change If It Keeps Getting Taxpayer Subsidies.

Jarrett Stepman /

It’s been a week since a liberal, 25-year veteran editor for National Public Radio published a damning online essay about the network’s biased, left-wing coverage, and there appears to have been no self-reflection by NPR’s powers that be.

Uri Berliner, who authored the essay, was chastised by NPR employees, suspended, and finally submitted his resignation Wednesday.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

With apologies to Berliner, who said that he’d rather see the taxpayer-subsidized network reform itself and get back to serving the broader public, rather than be defunded, he hasn’t quite come to grips with the depth of the problem.

The West’s compromised and radical institutions won’t reform willingly. They are part of a tightly knit, self-reinforcing system that uniformly rewards left-wing ideology and punishes even mild dissent.

If you want a look at where NPR is headed, just take a look at the social media posts of the network’s new CEO, Katherine Maher, who took over at the helm in January.

Old media posts and media appearances paint an almost ludicrously predictable picture of what NPR has become. The portrait they create is of a woman who seems more like an AI bot crafted by Google employees, rather than a real person.

She has backed every left-wing cause, cheered every Democratic presidential candidate with pom-poms, and riffed on the news with every kind of woke inanity you can think of.

Follow journalist Christopher Rufo on X for the latest: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo.

Here are some of the more noteworthy reveals.

This is what she said about “truth” at a 2022 TED Talk, when she was the CEO of Wikimedia.

“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done,” she said. “That is not to say that the truth doesn’t exist or to say that the truth isn’t important. Clearly, the search for the truth has led us to do great things … [but] one reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience and all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths.”

Maher is all aboard the relativistic “my truth” train. She said she cracked down on the “free and open” ethos at Wikipedia because it was too often based on a “white male, Westernized construct” that led to “exclusion of communities and languages.”

It’s no surprise then that she’s not a huge fan of the problematic First Amendment, which she saw as the “No. 1 challenge” to combating what she called “disinformation and misinformation.”

She said she coordinated with the government to suppress content related to COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

As a quick reminder to our nation’s cultural elites like Maher: The First Amendment was designed to protect free speech, not because all speech is good, but because it was the best way to protect the truth.

Why does the head of a major media organization seem to have a problem with a constitutional amendment protecting the free press?

The problem at NPR isn’t just the woman in charge.

If anything, it seems like the most empowered employees want to do more to smash dissent and control the narrative. Are these employees in the majority? Who knows, but given how quickly Berliner was purged, it doesn’t take a lot to surmise that people like him aren’t going to be listened to behind closed doors.

So, what can be done to fix NPR? I’d suggest that asking for the network to fire Maher might be satisfying, but won’t ultimately solve the underlying problem.

If NPR were to fire her, she would likely just be replaced by another AI chatbot with similar, but perhaps slightly stealthier opinions.

Many on the Left believe—correctly—that their position within America’s most elite institutions is unassailable. Speaking the generic, DEI-laden language of the institutions is how one makes it to the top in the institutional rat race.

This is why the nation’s most elite private high schools are often even more absurdly left-wing than public schools. They know that the path to success doesn’t just come from grades, or accomplishments, or genuine merit. Instead, it comes from a combination of immutable and select mutable personal characteristics and from relentlessly being on the right side of the “narrative” at all times.

That’s how revolutionary regimes often operate, whether it be France in the late 18th century or the Soviet Union in the early 20th century.

Maher played that game flawlessly, which is why today she is NPR’s CEO.

“The new CEO of NPR is part of a rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers who dominate HR and DEI,” Rufo wrote for City Journal. “… They value safety over liberty, censorship over debate, and relativism over truth.”

In some rare cases, somebody different rises to the top and is willing to defy institutional left-wing gatekeepers. That’s the Elon Musk model and why his takeover of Twitter, now X, was such a big deal.

That’s unlikely to happen with NPR, as it’s more directly connected to higher education and the federal government.

The only way forward for positive “change” at NPR is to not only pull the plug on the network’s direct funding, but also to cut off the flow of grant money that has floated many of its most ridiculous programs.

Out of the hundreds of millions of dollars Congress appropriates to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a significant amount is appropriated to local NPR affiliates through grants.

Maybe if NPR is totally defunded and forced to operate on its own, the network will have to finally reckon with its narrow, shrunken audience.

Let’s stop using taxpayers’ money on media organizations with leaders that treat the First Amendment as if it’s problematic. Is that too much to ask?

Trump Juror Dismissed After Prosecutors Question His Honesty on Arrest Record - The Daily Signal

Trump Juror Dismissed After Prosecutors Question His Honesty on Arrest Record

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson /

A juror on former President Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York City was dismissed Thursday after prosecutors raised concerns that he may not have answered truthfully to all questions as part of jury selection, according to multiple reports.

Prosecutors questioned whether the man, an IT consultant who was one of seven jurors sworn in Tuesday, had been honest in answering a question about whether he or a relative had been convicted of a crime, The New York Times reported.

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Prosecutors voiced concerns after discovering an article describing an individual with the same name who was arrested in the 1990s for tearing down right-wing political posters. It is not known whether the juror confirmed it was him because he was questioned out of reporters’ earshot, according to The Associated Press.

Judge Juan Merchan said the juror had “expressed annoyance about how much information was out there about him in the public,” according to NBC News.

The juror’s dismissal initially brought the count back down from seven selected jurors to five.

Another juror was released earlier when she expressed concerns about her ability to be impartial after friends and others asked whether she was a juror, NBC News reported.

The judge directed reporters Thursday not to report physical descriptions of jurors or note their place of employment, according to multiple reports.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

Planned Parenthood Checklist: More Abortions, Less Actual Health Care, More Tax Dollars Than Ever - The Daily Signal

Planned Parenthood Checklist: More Abortions, Less Actual Health Care, More Tax Dollars Than Ever

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel /

Planned Parenthood’s 2022-2023 annual report is out. Unlike last year’s annual report, now we’re finally able to see how the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade is affecting Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers and bottom line.

Spoiler alert: Abortions and government funding are at all-time highs. Actual health care for things such as cancer screening and preventive care continues to decline. More affiliates than ever are providing “transgender services.”

Here are the key takeaways:

In the medical data section, Planned Parenthood reported:

Planned Parenthood performed 228 abortions for every one adoption referral.

In a nod to the reality that women in pro-life states are still traveling out of state to get abortions, Planned Parenthood reports that demand in pro-abortion states rose up to 700%. Some 33,000 people have gotten travel and financial assistance.

In the long term, the trend of more abortions and fewer health services is even more stark. Pro-life scholar Michael New points out that “in the past 10 years, the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood has increased by 20%. Meanwhile, cancer screenings fell by more than 58%, and prenatal services declined by more than 67%.”

After going all-in on “gender-affirming hormone therapy” starting in the 2015-2016 reporting year, Planned Parenthood reports an all-time high of 45 clinics offering such services. Planned Parenthood buries the specific number of services in an “other” category in the medical data tables. We can reasonably infer that gender services drove a noticeable spike in the category. It went from 8,153 in 2015 to 177,237 in this year’s report.

Now take a look at the financial side of things. Planned Parenthood reported:

The sobering reality is that Planned Parenthood is swimming in cash and aborting more unborn children than ever before.

That’s despite more than a dozen states protecting unborn children with beating hearts, despite abortion clinics in pro-life states closing up shop or moving to abortion-friendly states, and despite Planned Parenthood laying off roughly 100 employees in the national office.

The pro-life movement has racked up lifesaving wins since Dobbs. But Planned Parenthood’s cold, hard data shows that the pro-life movement still has a lot of work to do to build a culture of life.

Take Planned Parenthood’s government funding, for example. Why such a dramatic increase? One culprit is the federal Title X family-planning program.

The Trump administration issued a regulation that required, among other things, that participants physically and financially separate any abortion activity from Title X activity. Rather than comply with the rule, Planned Parenthood clinics sided with abortion and pulled out of the program. But the Biden administration changed the regulation, and starting in 2022, Title X funding flowed to abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, once again.

Government funding isn’t the only place executive action is having an impact. Why are Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers continuing to rise despite nearly two dozen states passing robust pro-life laws after the Dobbs decision? Planned Parenthood can thank the Food and Drug Administration.

In the spring of 2021, under the cover of containing COVID-19, the FDA stopped requiring that chemical abortion drugs be dispensed in person in limited health care settings, opening the door to telemedicine abortion and abortion pills being shipped by mail.

Then, in December 2021, the FDA announced it would make that policy permanent and create a process for retail pharmacies to dispense these pills without a doctor’s visit. In January 2023, the FDA officially updated the regulations for the abortion pill.

What does this mean in practice for an organization like Planned Parenthood?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest abortion numbers, abortion pills are now used in at least 56% of all abortions. And thanks to President Joe Biden and the FDA, it’s never been easier for Planned Parenthood to get dangerous do-it-yourself abortion pills into the hands of women and girls across the country.

These executive policy choices should not go unanswered. Congress’ federal role over the power of the purse provides a path forward. Congress can and should defund Planned Parenthood and redirect funding to real women’s health care.

It should restore the Trump-era pro-life Title X rule. It should prohibit the FDA’s reckless disregard for women’s health and safety that opened the door to dangerous DIY abortion pills.

All of this could be accomplished through the appropriations process through policy riders. In fact, each of these solutions was proposed for fiscal 2024 appropriations, but didn’t make it across the finish line. For the sake of women, girls, and unborn children everywhere, let’s hope pro-life policymakers in Congress hold the line as Congress begins considering fiscal 2025 appropriations.

‘The Last Best Hope’ Is a Road Map for Coherent Conservative Foreign Policy - The Daily Signal

‘The Last Best Hope’ Is a Road Map for Coherent Conservative Foreign Policy

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson /

In his latest book, “The Last Best Hope,” political risk analyst John Hulsman offers a succinct, understandable guide to uniting the disparate wings of conservatism behind a realist foreign policy.

While pitched at the interested layman rather than foreign policy nerds, Hulsman’s vignettes might even teach the most savvy readers a new thing or two. Such as, “After the Jay Treaty vote (1794), Washington never spoke to Jefferson or Madison again.” A healthy reminder, lest we think our own times and leaders are the most polarized in American history.

Before I describe the book further, a disclosure: John is one of my oldest friends, as well as a former fellow at The Heritage Foundation, where I work.

Conservatives are unable to unite in the relentless way that the Left doesthese days in Congress, but parsing them into specific tribes is a pointless exercise. Hulsman simplifies this by dividing them into Jeffersonians and Jacksonians. Roughly speaking, the former are the more traditional, corporate, intellectual types, and the latter are lower information, populist, gut-instinct conservatives. As he pithily puts it, “Jeffersonians like Johnny Cash; Jacksonians are Johnny Cash.” What should unite them is patriotism, suspicion of globalism, and, in foreign policy—realism.

From Hulsman’s first book in 2006, “Ethical Realism,” to his biography of Lawrence of Arabia to his amusing short book “The Godfather Doctrine,” realism and “prudence as a policy-making virtue above all others” is a thread running through his work. The nine “precepts of American realism” Hulsman cites in “The Last Best Hope” are each provided with a parable and a great American who embodied it.

For his first precept, that “alliances should be entered into when they advance specific and primary American interests,” Hulsman starts with our first president, George Washington. So popular that he could have been the first king of the United States, Washington left office deliberately after two terms, setting an example that endured until Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.

Washington used his unique national eminence and enormous personal capital to convince Congress—barely—to pass the wildly unpopular Jay Treaty with the British. The treaty certainly favored Britain in the short term, but it also created the scope for the westward expansion of the United States and allowed our commerce to prosper under the British naval umbrella.

Washington saw that the fledgling U.S. must stay out of encumbering foreign alliances and “remain neutral in the face of Europe’s great revolutionary wars” rather than siding with France as Thomas Jefferson and others advocated. Washington’s farewell address warned, in Hulsman’s words, that “America’s national identity must come to supplant sectional attachments, law and order must be strictly maintained, and something must be done about the evils of political parties.” Seeing the state of our union today, this seems very prescient.

To illustrate the maxim “no more stupid wars,” Hulsman looks at how John Quincy Adams kept us out of potentially catastrophic foreign interventions while advancing the national interest. As secretary of state for an emerging United States in the context of a decaying Spanish Empire and rising Britishone, Adams said that “America … goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy”—or as Hulsman sums up his philosophy: “American political beliefs must not be imposed on other countries whose specific history might be very different” from ours.

In the 50 years following the end of World War II, America ignored this wisdom and “frittered away its dominant position in the world, spilling copious amounts of blood and spending trillions of dollars for no real strategic gain,” Hulsman concludes. 

As to Hulsman’s admonition that “to act, or not to act, depends on the national interest,” he illustrates it with the story of how Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, kept us from going to war with Great Britain while we were engaged in the Civil War and possibly losing the Civil War. In a nutshell: “One war at a time.” These are lessons Napoleon and Hitler never learned, and which America needs to remember when staring down China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and others all at once.

For the precept “sovereignty is real—and everything,” Hulsman resurrects Sen. William Borah from relative historical obscurity and describes his successful fight to stop the U.S. from joining Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Not becoming part of the League of Nations is generally described in grade school history books—which is as far as 99% of Americans ever go in this subject—as a tragic failure. Instead, Hulsman argues convincingly that it was a brilliant and perspicacious campaign to prevent the thin end of the globalist wedge from entering our polity.

That wedge, which Hulsman has opposed as “Wilsonian” foreign policy for many years, is now firmly up the national backside and sinking deeper, prodding the foreign policy “blob” to try to do everything, everywhere, all at once. It is this interventionist, utopian progressivism, for example, that will soon have us building—and likely protecting—a pier to bring supplies into Gaza at the same time our ally, Israel, is attempting to wipe out a terrorist group committed to its destruction. Comparisons with Somalia in 1992 and “Blackhawk Down” hang over this latest Wilsonian interventionist enterprise.

Hulsman’s fifth precept is that “America must never shirk using force to fight wars when its primary interests are at stake but … never go abroad looking for a fight over lesser interests.” (One minor quibble I have with the book is that this lesson seems a bit duplicative of others in his canon, but though he could easily have made it seven or even six precepts, that would have left out some crisp historical chapters that make this book entertaining and more popular history than political tract).

Hulsman illustrates this lesson by describing how Franklin Roosevelt slowly brought a reluctant nation around to his view that (in Hulsman’s words) “no scenario for the elimination of Hitler was ever credible without the full involvement of the United States.” Hitler and Imperial Japan were existential threats to the U.S. that required all possible measures to resist, unlike any scenario since—underscoring the historically illiterate comparison President Joe Biden made in his 2024 State of the Union address between Europe in 1941 and today’s situation in Ukraine.

Precept six is that “furthering the specific interests of the American people” must be the touchstone of American foreign policy. Yes, it does sound rather like “America first,” but then what sensible country does not put itself, and its people, ahead of others? Charity begins at home.

For this lesson, Hulsman cites underrated President Dwight Eisenhower, who resisted communism through a “containment” policy while avoiding being sucked into wars in Egypt and Vietnam in support of the fading British and French empires. In his final speech, Ike warned us that a permanent war party and “military-industrial complex” would, if not stopped, trap the United States in a series of perpetual wars while impoverishing the country. Hmm.

Precept seven is that “American national interests … should always drive U.S. foreign policy.” This rather repeats the last one, but it allows Hulsman to tell the tale of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy’s best moment on the presidential stage. Kennedy, despite relative youth and inexperience, played a legendary hand of poker against the Russians, ending the crisis with a secret deal to remove U.S. missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Russians taking theirs from Cuba. All the while, he fended off the Joint Chiefs of Staff who, “to a man, favored a U.S. airstrike to destroy the missiles, followed by a ground invasion of Cuba.”

In criticizing the Wilsonian “endless laundry lists as to what America should do in the world,” Hulsman evokes Frederick the Great, who said, “He who defends everything, defends nothing.”

The eighth precept is the pragmatic lesson of Hulsman’s earlier book, “The Godfather Doctrine.” Sometimes, he argues, “the U.S. must be ruthlessly prepared to cut deals with the devil” when our national interests so require. This used to be obvious, but in today’s social-media-driven, nuance-free age, where there are actually Queers for Palestine, it has to be spelled out. Hulsman does so using President Richard Nixon’s “masterstroke in going to China,” which split the Russian-Chinese communist axis and allowed the U.S. to defeat Russia in the Cold War.

Hulsman admires the partnership of Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, and their “shared realist principles that American foreign policy should be about doing good rather than feeling good.” That boils down, these days, to the principle that the U.S. “must be ruthlessly prepared to cut deals with less than savory leaders and countries if doing so furthers basic U.S. interests … .” Today’s morally Manichaean environment makes it harder for our leaders to do so, but the lessons of thousands of years of history can’t be undone by 20 years of activism on social media.

Hulsman’s ninth and last lesson is that the U.S. should remain an example for the world, “a shining city on a hill,” in the words of Pilgrim father John Winthrop so eloquently adopted by Ronald Reagan. We should never be, as we have been for much of the past 50 years, “in the foolhardy business of trying to impose democracy on the rest of the world at the point of a gun.”

Reagan knew that America, as “a country not founded on race, but on a way and an ideal,” had to cherish the history, laws, and traditions that made us special and such a magnet for freedom-loving people. As he said, “If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

The Gipper would be saddened to see the state of America’s campuses, companies, and government today, where identitarian politics are paramount and history, capitalism, family, and tradition are reviled by a good portion of our self-appointed elites.

How should Hulsman’s nine “lessons and carols” be applied in practice? His recommendation is as simple as “The Last Best Hope” is short. U.S. foreign policy should be realist, that is, “guided by questions of security and survival” with “prudence as a policy-making virtue above all others.”

Hulsman’s record on predicting political events is impressive, from calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the month to his predictions (so far) on the 2024 U.S. election campaign. He warned of the consequences, early and often, as neoconservatives led us into wars we could not win, at prices we could not afford.

The central thesis of Hulsman’s work is that “today’s foreign policy blob has cared more about what is going on in faraway places of limited importance to Americans rather than America itself.” As we survey a divided nation with an essentially open border, zero fiscal responsibility, and disastrous progressive experiments tanking everything from education to public safety, his words could not be more pertinent. 

At home, our house is falling apart, and there’s diminishing (and borrowed) money to fix it, even if we can agree on how. Eisenhower, still faced with the debt load of World War II, balanced three of his eight annual budgets. The last time we had a run that long was Bill Clinton’s final three fiscal years. And today, Biden’s proudest fiscal boast is not that he ever came close to a balanced budget, but that he’s slightly lowered the annual deficit compared to the worst year of the COVID-19 crisis.

Abroad, there are too many dragons to slay for our limited capability. From Ukraine to Taiwan, Haiti to Mali, we will either make tough, responsible choices about national priorities or have them forced on us. If conservatives ever get back in power and want to return U.S. foreign policy to realism and pragmatism, Hulsman’s “The Last Best Hope” provides them with the map to do so.

House Democrats Vow to Codify ‘Rights’ to Trans Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers - The Daily Signal

House Democrats Vow to Codify ‘Rights’ to Trans Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan /

House Democrats released an agenda Thursday that includes a vow to codify a right to so-called gender-affirming care—transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers.

The promise came within the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ agenda, which House Democrats first shared with NBC News. That agenda includes a slew of left-wing interests, including promises of a higher minimum wage and stronger antitrust laws.

“If the progressive base is not excited and enthusiastic—and if they don’t feel like we are trying to earn their votes and that they are important—then I think the horrific idea of a second Donald Trump presidency could become reality,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the progressive caucus, told NBC News in an interview. “We cannot afford to let that happen. And we won’t.”

Although NBC claims that the agenda goes “lighter on cultural issues,” under the category “advancing justice,” it promises to “codify the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, including gender-affirming care and health care.”

Jayapal did not respond to requests for comment for this article explaining what, exactly, codifying a right to “gender-affirming care” would entail.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.—flanked by fellow Democratic Reps. Ann Kuster of New Hampshire and Joe Neguse of Colorado—speaks to reporters on Wednesday. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)

In March 2023, she joined with other Democrats in introducing a “Trans Bill of Rights,” citing the rise in parental rights laws, laws protecting kids from gender transitions, and laws prohibiting boys from participating in girls and women’s sports.

“Day after day, we see a constant onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation coming from elected officials. Today, we say enough is enough,” Jayapal said at the time.  “Our Trans Bill of Rights says clearly to the trans community across the country that we see you, and we will stand with you, to ensure you are protected and given the dignity and respect that every person should have.”

That legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include gender identity as “protected characteristics.” It would also amend federal education laws to say that they protect kids from being discriminated against based on gender identity.

The Trans Bill of Rights also called for ensuring that “every child has the right to grow up in a supportive environment by having their authentic identity respected in the classroom, ensuring they can participate in school sports with their peers, and ensuring access to an inclusive curriculum.”

It further called for “expanding access” to trans surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers and codifying rights to abortion and contraception.

Jayapal told NBC News that progressive Democrats assume “this is an agenda for a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.”

She added: “We have to excite our base. We have to show them what the path forward is—not just say, ‘This is the most important election of your life, and we expect you to vote.’ I don’t think that’s going to turn people out. And so, I think this agenda, really, speaks to the needs of poor people, working people, progressives across the country who want us to make that case to them.”

“We are not seeing the momentum that we would like to see,” she told NBC. We’re going to have a tough election. … We know we’re going to have to put together that progressive coalition. And I think this is the thing that allows us to say, “‘Look, here’s what we’re fighting for.’”

Biden Mustn’t Encourage Illegal Mass Migration From Haiti - The Daily Signal

Biden Mustn’t Encourage Illegal Mass Migration From Haiti

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan / Sen. Marco Rubio /

“It’s better to be the United States’ enemy than its friend.”

Foreign officials tell me this is their perception under the Biden administration, which has a strange habit of appeasing our adversaries while holding our allies to impossible standards. It’s bad foreign policy, plain and simple. Moreover, it’s encouraging chaos in our own region of the world.

Just look at what’s happening in the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean nation is facing extraordinary migratory pressure from neighboring Haiti, which has all but collapsed into anarchy. President Luis Abinader has made it clear he will protect Dominican sovereignty by enforcing deportations.

Yet the Biden administration, influenced by radical left-wing groups like Amnesty International, is pushing Abinader to accept 3 million Haitians at any moment.

This is unfair to the Dominican Republic, a developing nation with limited resources that is already bearing significant burdens on Haiti’s behalf. Anyone who doubts this should consider the fact that more than a third of all births in the Dominican Republic are currently to Haitian citizens.

But encouraging illegal mass migration is also unfair to our country. The Biden administration seems unaware that many Haitians view the Dominican Republic as a stepping stone to Puerto Rico—and that a well-established smuggling ring to facilitate that journey already exists. Because our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico have their own fiscal constraints, illegal migrants who reach the U.S. territory would likely move on to the continental United States.

Like most Americans, I recognize that what is happening in Haiti is horrible and tragic. The breakdown of law and order, the displacement of more than 300,000 people, and the need of roughly 5 million for some form of aid—all of these are matters of grave concern.

This is why I support the international peacekeeping mission that Kenya proposes to lead once Haiti has established a provisional government. In addition, I have reintroduced legislation to preserve U.S. trade benefits for Haitian manufacturers, which could prove a lifeline to legitimate Haitian businesses in this time of crisis.

But, like most Americans, I also recognize that no country should experience illegal mass migration—not the Dominican Republic, and not the United States. Illegal mass migration does no good for the nation people are migrating from.

When all able-bodied, law-abiding citizens leave their homeland, there is no one left to defend it from criminals and tyrants—and no one left to provide for the vulnerable who remain there. On a more fundamental level, though, I cannot support illegal mass migration because the job of elected officials is to protect their citizens first, not anyone else’s.

This is why I have asked the State Department to prioritize U.S. citizens trapped in Haiti, as well as their adopted Haitian children. Moreover, it’s why we cannot allow Haitian citizens to surge across our borders.

As Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and I noted in a recent letter to President Joe Biden, Haiti is rife with gangs, and jailbreaks allegedly have released thousands of dangerous criminals. This means illegal mass migration from Haiti would put Americans at risk.

Since Biden took office as president, more than 8 million people have crossed our insecure southern border, and 90,000 have immigrated from Afghanistan without being vetted. The resulting threats to our national security—from the rise of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua to the infiltration of Islamist terrorists—are severe and out of control.

The tragedy in Haiti is great, but it’s no excuse for letting these threats increase.

Originally published by RealClearWorld and distributed by RealClearWire

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

A Story of the Soil and the Soul - The Daily Signal

A Story of the Soil and the Soul

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan / Sen. Marco Rubio / Armstrong Williams /

Hard work, passion, virtue, and true grit earmark the American heartland. Anecdotes, generation-spanning farm families, and crop innovations speak volumes. They are all children of agriculture.

Farming teaches faith in God, food cultivation, animal husbandry, the value of love, the richness of relationships, and the growth of character. Farming offers time for reflection—an Aristotelian balance between nourishing and strengthening the physical body and deepening and improving our souls.

From my earliest days, the farm was my classroom and nature was my teacher. I learned to treasure my parents, a work ethic, discipline, and sacrifice. A diminishing number of Americans are denied that chance today.

Engaging in routine daily farm tasks and providing care for the animals instilled accountability and highlighted the precariousness of life, illustrating how it can be either abruptly lost or extinguished over time. It further imparted the importance of nurturing your fate and the necessity of diligence and industry to accomplish your goals. I have never forgotten.

The farm also cultivates family togetherness, i.e., if we do not all hang together, we will all hang separately. My family of 10 has no bad blood. We have been intimate our entire lives, and that intimacy grows by the day. Our devotion to God and the lessons we imbibed on the farm unite us. It was under the vast, blue vault of heaven that I felt most connected to nature and in harmony with my family. It was an awesome spiritual experience and celebration of family.

Numerous references in the Bible establish a nexus between farming and God, thereby illustrating the interdependence of the nature of earth and spiritual development. Within the Book of Genesis, God positions man in the Garden of Eden with the instruction to tend to and maintain it (Genesis 2:15).

Since creation, humanity has been saddled with a responsibility to cultivate and maintain the land. 2 Corinthians 9:6 emphasizes the principle that you reap what you sow: “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” This verse speaks to the law of harvest, a concept as true in the spiritual realm as it is in the physical world of farming, where the investment of effort, care, and resources dictates the yield.

Farming imparts ethics and patience. It has been a privilege to have lived with the knowledge and skills I gained on the farm. It has made me a diligent professional and prosperous entrepreneur who knows how to innovate to overcome complex challenges. After learning how to manage a farm, everything else is as easy as pushing water downhill. Daily labor consists of harvesting crops, caring for livestock, and waking up before the break of dawn. It means working in sweltering heat with no shower breaks. Nothing else compares.

Farm work puts life into proper perspective. All troubles are provisionally set aside. You derive solace from the woes of the world and discover tranquility, calm, and the answers that have long been hidden. When you listen to the farm noises—the cows mooing, the dogs barking, the cats meowing—epiphanies come.

The United States is forgetting the value of agriculture in all its moods and tenses. Processed food diminishes health. Farmland is gobbled up by the Chinese government. The number of American farmers is plunging. America is losing its signature identity.

To quote John Donne, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Our deliverance is in unity—E pluribus unum. Agriculture teaches the hard truth of necessary interdependence and collaboration with the elements and with others. But division has become America’s watchword at our peril. Turning back to acclaiming agriculture is a necessary first step to alleviating our alarming divisiveness.

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Biden’s Global Pandemic Agreement Empowers WHO, China, Conservatives Warn - The Daily Signal

Biden’s Global Pandemic Agreement Empowers WHO, China, Conservatives Warn

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan / Sen. Marco Rubio / Armstrong Williams / Fred Lucas /

Congressional Republicans are calling on President Joe Biden to abandon plans for a pandemic treaty that would strengthen the World Health Organization, citing that global body’s numerous failures during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., backed by about half of all Senate Republicans, signed a letter to Biden urging him to withdraw from two agreements with the World Health Organization that would boost its authority to declare public health emergencies and give it new powers over the U.S. and 193 other member states during such emergencies. 

The letter to the president from Senate Republicans also asks that he submit any such pandemic agreement with WHO—criticized for going easy on China during COVID-19—to the Senate for ratification. 

“China has far too much control over the WHO. We certainly don’t want the WHO to control our individual health decisions,” Johnson said at a press conference Thursday outside the Capitol, flanked by several House Republicans and other conservative leaders. 

“I have a bill that would deem any agreement between the Biden administration and the WHO a treaty to come before the Senate for debate and ratification. That is absolutely crucial,” Johnson said. 

The Biden administration looks to commit the United States to the new global pandemic preparedness agreement, as well as to revised rules within the International Health Regulations adopted in 2005. 

The existing rules allow the World Health Organization, with the consent of member nations, to declare a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” The amendment will allow WHO to do so over the objection of member nations. 

Even if the Biden administration tries to commit the United States to the agreement May 27 at the World Health Assembly—absent Senate ratification—at a minimum Congress can ensure that it doesn’t go unnoticed, said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.

“We are going to expose it. They needed four months to get the amendments out there that are going to be considered on May 27,” Norman told The Daily Signal as speakers took questions. “That’s unacceptable. I’ve seen too many documents at the last minute. This is too important to let this go by.”

Norman added that he is calling on Biden to be transparent with Americans about the pandemic agreements.  

“What I will ask him to do, and it will fall on deaf ears, is to show the American people exactly what you are submitting America to,” Norman said. “Show us the fine print. Ladies and gentlemen, the devil is in the details of almost everything that my colleagues and I have to deal with. So exposure is what we can do right now, and he can lead the way as the leader of the free world. Do I think he will do it? No.”

Earlier this month, the White House released a Global Health Security Strategy that says in part: 

The United States is supporting efforts to strengthen global policies and legal preparedness, including negotiating a pandemic agreement and targeted amendments to the IHR [International Health Regulations], as these two instruments have the potential to provide the international community with the opportunity to establish a shared path forward for preventing, preparing for, and responding to international health emergencies.

Nations that belong to the World Health Organization agreed in November 2021 to negotiate and draft an agreement based on WHO’s constitution to strengthen pandemic prevention, according to the White House. 

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on global health, global human rights, and international organizations, also spoke at the press conference. 

“It remains unclear whether the Biden administration intends to submit this treaty agreement to the Senate for its constitutionally required advice and consent as a prerequisite for ratification,” Smith said. “An executive agreement bypassing Senate ratification would be an egregious mistake.”

In January 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations that would enable WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to declare a public health emergency in any member nation—even over the objections of a member nation. 

“Every single day you wake up and say to yourself, ‘Well, what more can it be? I can’t believe what just happened,’” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said at the press conference. 

“They can’t do anything else,” Perry said, referring to the Biden administration. “As bad as it is in dealing with this government taking away our rights every single day, just imagine how difficult it is going to be to drag our rights back away from some international organization of bureaucrats that aren’t even elected, that don’t care about America, that don’t care about our Constitution and don’t care about what we think.”

The change could provide unilateral authority to WHO’s Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States or other countries, without consultation.

The proposed changes to the International Health Regulations would cede control to World Health Organization “regional directors.” The regional directors would have authority to declare these types of emergencies, and WHO’s chief could issue an “intermediate public health alert.” The agreement also includes ways to control information about a pandemic. 

The World Health Organization covered up for the Chinese Communist Party at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and should have less power, said Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots Action. 

“There is not a single one-size-fits-all solution to health care in America. There is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution to health care around the entire world,” Martin said at the press conference. 

“What we saw during COVID, as states were able to compete with one another and show the differences in their policies, we saw which policies work the best,” she said. “If we wind up having a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire world, we may never know the solution that actually is the best.”

WHO came under withering criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for failing to send a team to China during the initial spread of the coronavirus that causes the disease, as required by the existing International Health Regulations.

Under the proposed agreement, the U.S. and other member nations would provide financial assistance to developing countries. Critics note that the United Nations continues to classify China as a developing country despite its large economy. 

Other provisions of the pandemic treaty would promote “sustainable and geographically diversified production” of vaccines and other pandemic-related products and require spending for research in developing countries. 

The agreement would establish a WHO Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network with international requirements for manufacturing and exporting pandemic-related products. It would create a new position called the “secretariat for the WHO pandemic agreement.”

In the past, the World Health Organization and the United Nations have worked against the interests of the United States, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said. 

“This agreement would subject the United States to the powers of the World Health Organization without going through what we need to do in the Senate, without the people’s representatives having a voice and ceding our sovereignty to these enemies who are undermining our national security and the interests of the United States,” Roy said.

The Texas Republican later added: “When are we going to stop funding the organizations that are undermining our freedom?”

The White House didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.

American Voters Voice Disapproval of Speaker Johnson’s Foreign Aid Bills: New Poll - The Daily Signal

American Voters Voice Disapproval of Speaker Johnson’s Foreign Aid Bills: New Poll

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan / Sen. Marco Rubio / Armstrong Williams / Fred Lucas / Rob Bluey /

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—New polling conducted this week sheds light on the contentious foreign aid bills currently under review by the House of Representatives, revealing widespread disapproval among American voters.

With the House gearing up for pivotal votes on the foreign aid bills in the upcoming days, the survey conducted from April 16-18 reveals a growing trend of opposition. The J.L. Partners poll of 897 likely voters was shared exclusively with The Daily Signal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is slated to bring five bills to the floor for votes Saturday. Four of the bills would be combined later into a single package, pending a House rule now under consideration.

Key findings from the J.L. Partners poll of voters include:

The proposed legislative package includes a measure pertaining to TikTok that enjoys 41% support and 36% opposition. This measure would require ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to either disassociate from the Communist Chinese government or cease operations within the United States.

The poll underscores strong opposition from Republican voters toward Ukraine funding, with a mere 17% endorsing a $60 billion loan for the nation while 66% express dissent. The legislation finds favor primarily among two demographics: Americans over 65 and Democrat/Biden supporters.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, the United States has allocated about $113 billion to Ukraine, averaging approximately $900 per American household. Despite this, the Biden administration persistently has sought an additional $60 billion from U.S. taxpayers to bolster efforts in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Republican voters also exhibit skepticism toward allocating $5 billion to Indo-Pacific nations and Taiwan, with 54% opposing and 19% in favor. The Israel aid bill, seeking authorization for $14 billion, receives slightly higher approval from Republicans, though it also encounters 40% opposition compared with 31% support.

These polling results track with another survey conducted earlier this month by Scott Rasmussen at RMG Research Inc. and released by The Heritage Foundation. That survey underscored the overwhelming preference of swing voters for Congress to prioritize addressing the border crisis before allocating more money to Ukraine. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

Johnson intends to put forward a border-related bill for a House vote Saturday, though it won’t be integrated with the other four bills constituting the foreign aid package.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said earlier this week:

Not a single U.S. taxpayer dollar should be going to Ukraine until our own borders are secure, Biden proposes a coherent strategy for ending the conflict, and full accountability for past and future funding [is] secured. The American people know they deserve better and expect policies—and leaders—that put their country first. Congress would be wise to listen to them.

J.L. Partners polled 897 likely voters between April 16-18, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

J.L.-Partners-Foreign-Aid-SurveyDownload
Examining the High Costs and Questionable Gains of ‘Green’ Policies as Earth Day Approaches - The Daily Signal

Examining the High Costs and Questionable Gains of ‘Green’ Policies as Earth Day Approaches

Jarrett Stepman / Katelynn Richardson / Melanie Israel / Simon Hankinson / Mary Margaret Olohan / Sen. Marco Rubio / Armstrong Williams / Fred Lucas / Rob Bluey / Miles Pollard / Hope Canlas /

As we approach Earth Day, it is time to evaluate how green policies have performed. One such policy is the New Jersey bag ban, which was ostensibly designed to tackle plastic pollution, requiring stores over 2,500 square feet in size to replace disposable plastic bags with reusable ones.

The ban bag is an example of “extended producer responsibility,” which is a waste policy that forces companies to use only reusable or recyclable products. Advocates of extended producer responsibility champion measures such as plastic bag bans, but the real-world implementation has only fueled inflation with minimal environmental benefits.  

Despite the ban effectively being a regressive tax on poorer residents, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy praised the state for “addressing the problem of plastic pollution” that will “help mitigate climate change and strengthen our environment.”

Unfortunately for the governor and other advocates of extended producer responsibility policies, a new study by the Freedonia Group has found a threefold increase in plastic consumption since the beginning of the May 2022 ban—from 53 million pounds to 151 million pounds—to create heavier, reusable bags (despite a 60% reduction in disposable plastic bag use). In addition, Freedonia found a $42 million increase in profits from a single 50-store retailer from selling these reusable bags.

Researchers concluded that 90% of these reusable nonwoven polypropylene plastic bags are used only two to three times before being thrown away or lost. To add insult to injury, reusable bags use 15 times more plastic and emit five times the greenhouse gases during production compared to regular plastic bags.

Additionally, reusable bags contain little to no recyclable materials and are often not recyclable themselves. These bags would need to be used 11 to 59 times just to break even on the increased greenhouse gas emissions from production.

The American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, an association of plastic bag manufacturers that commissioned the Freedonia study, argues that the environmental effect of disposable plastic bags is being overstated. The alliance claims that plastic bags account for less than 0.6% of litter cleanups and less than 0.3% of municipal solid waste.

Instead of forcing everyone to use reusable bags that emit more greenhouse gases, the alliance argues that disposable bags should be properly recycled. These disposable plastic bags are then more easily used to create new bags. The alliance has a goal of 20% being made of recyclable material by 2025.

California’s Carpet Stewardship Act provides another example of extended producer responsibility leading to suboptimal outcomes. The law has been imposing an increasing fee schedule on new carpets to support carpet recycling efforts. The enforcement of this extended producer responsibility in California raises input costs for producers, increasing the cost of carpeting, and substantially leading to increased costs of housing, which disproportionately affects poorer residents.

The Carpet America Recovery Effort is the organization in charge of the stewardship program, and its executive director, Bob Peoples, admits that the tax “undoubtedly is a serious burden for the approximately 2,000 California carpet retailers and the 79 carpet mills with operations in the state.” In January 2023, the price of carpet tiles increased by almost half. Naturally, the cost of the tax falls on consumers, who now pay nearly 50% more for their carpets.

Extended producer responsibility policies often result in regressive, inflationary pressures without delivering on their environmental promises. Americans are grappling with soaring costs, from new homeowners needing 80% more income than they did four years ago to credit card debt reaching all-time highs. This is all while the federal deficit and interest rates soar.

Inflationary pressures will continue to increase further if the Environmental Protection Agency’s push for Americans to buy expensive zero-carbon emission vehicles and trucks becomes law. Simultaneously, electricity costs have risen 20% since 2020 and will rise by another 20% in some states to meet renewable energy requirements imposed by state lawmakers. California residents alone have seen an 11% rise in electricity prices just over this past year.  

From Earth Day to every day, it is crucial to recognize that green policies like extended producer responsibility are often touted as beneficial; however, many of these initiatives are simply using green code-phrasing to justify inflating the cost of goods while ignoring their minimal environmental impact.