Posts on Saturday, April 18, 2026

Democrats and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have their sights set on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, with the press desperate to discredit him as unfit for office, and Democrats happy for their journo allies to lay the groundwork for an impeachment effort. As further evidence, we can look to the freakout they had and the juvenile gotcha games that were played after he went off on the media during a Pentagon briefing on Operation Epic Fury on Thursday. "I sat there in church, and I thought: Our press are just like these Pharisees. Not all of you. Not all of you. But the legacy, Trump-hating press," Hegseth stated.

Donald Trump has a growing Thom Tillis problem. The administration’s actions this week are doing nothing to solve it. As the president flirts with trying to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and dismisses Tillis as “no longer a senator,” the retiring North Carolina Republican shot back with his own message to the administration Wednesday: “I’m not dead yet.”(snipTillis is blocking Trump’s Fed chair nominee, Kevin Warsh, until the Justice Department drops an investigation into Powell. And the stalemate is leaving him in limbo with no clear off-ramp in sight.

Democrats Abdul El-Sayed and Mallory McMorrow are neck and neck in new polling on the competitive primary for Senate in Michigan, besting Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the race for a rare open seat. A new Emerson College Polling/WOOD-TV survey found 24 percent of likely primary voters in Michigan each support El-Sayed, the former Wayne County health director backed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and McMorrow, a state senator backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The tied scores represent an 8-point increase in support for El-Sayed since January and a 2-point bump for McMorrow. The poll’s credibility interval for

Construction of a ballroom and presidential bunker at the White House will continue for now, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted an administrative stay of an order earlier this week that blocked most above-ground construction. The next hearing in the case is set for June 5, according to the court's briefing schedule, so construction will likely continue through at least then.

President Trump has signed an executive order to ease research restrictions on psychedelics, including the drug ibogaine, which is used in some countries to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Health officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and podcaster Joe Rogan joined Mr. Trump in the Oval Office for the signing Saturday. Mr. Trump said the order will "dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs," which he said have shown "life-changing potential." He said the federal government was also opening a pathway for ibogaine to be administered to "desperately ill patients" under the Food and Drug Administration's Right To Try rule.

The U.S. government has been losing up to half a trillion taxpayer dollars just to fraud for the past five years, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. America’s national debt as of Saturday morning is $39.13 trillion and climbing every second. Democrats have spent decades deliberately encouraging as much reckless spending and fraud as possible, but even most Republicans are content to overlook a vast amount of fraud and overspending if they secure the pet projects they want. Robert Westbrooks, former federal inspector general, gave April 15 testimony to the House Oversight Committee, exposing the gargantuan financial crisis.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is not expected to step down this term and has already hired all four law clerks for the upcoming annual term despite speculation the high court justice was weighing retirement, multiple sources said. Alito "is not stepping down this term and is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term," a source told Fox News Digital. Two other sources told Fox News that Alito is not retiring this term, which lasts until the Supreme Court's new year kicks off in October. Justices tend to hire their clerks two to three years in advance, although

The Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi agreed on Friday that the Strait would be open, albeit using the Iranian-approved route. But he immediately got in trouble for what he said, because he didn't address the U.S. blockade in his tweet. As President Donald Trump said, the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships continued. The attacks showed the chaos their leadership is in. The other main negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, after likely seeing what happened with Araghchi, reneged on the deal and said it would remain closed until the blockade stopped. So then they decided to punctuate their tirade by firing on ships on Saturday.

The video about the two gay dads and their baby, who keeps saying “maa-maa-maa,” isn’t bad for the reason people say it is—namely, that the baby desperately wants mommy, not daddy—although it’s still bad. However, when it comes to all the moral wrongs of surrogate parenting, there’s actually an even more disturbing video out there. Two points, before getting to the gay dads and their “maa-maa-maa” baby, one factual and one anecdotal. The factual point is that “maa-maa-maa” is the first sound almost all babies make. That’s why so many cultures have that sound in their preferred word for what a child calls its mother. Whether spoken with an American, English, Spanish, Italian,

I don’t suppose you missed the delicious humiliation of Obama, Clinton, the Blob, when they ululated over the defeat of Victor Orban only to find out that the new guy - Péter Magyar - young, with actual muscle tone - was even more committed to the anti-immigration/conservative agenda than Orban himself.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar blamed an accounting “discrepancy” for errors in a financial disclosure that listed her net worth at up to $30 million – while doubling down that she is not a millionaire, a report said. The lefty “Squad” lawmaker – facing fraud probe calls from President Trump – insisted the initial figures in a disclosure filed last May were completely off-base, as an amended filing now shows shared assets with her husband of up to just $95,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The amended disclosure confirms what we’ve said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire,” her spokesperson, Jacklyn Rogers, told the outlet.

The Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, during the height of the Progressive Era. Reformers argued that state legislatures had become hopelessly deadlocked and corrupt. Between 1885 and 1912, legislatures deadlocked seventy-one times over Senate selections, leaving at least seventeen seats vacant for entire sessions or longer. States went unrepresented in Washington, while lawmakers wasted months on partisan warfare. Scandals amplified the outrage. In Montana, copper baron William A. Clark admitted to spending the equivalent of millions in today’s dollars to buy his seat; the Senate refused to seat him. In Illinois, Senator William Lorimer was expelled in 1912 after evidence showed that four state legislators

The Supreme Court handed environmental plaintiffs a unanimous defeat on Friday, ruling that Chevron USA can fight its Louisiana coastal damage lawsuit in federal court rather than the sympathetic state-court venue that produced a nearly three-quarter-billion-dollar verdict against the company. The 8-0 decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish vacated a Fifth Circuit ruling and remanded the case back to the lower courts. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion, joined by six colleagues; Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the judgment separately. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the case, having recused himself due to his financial interest in ConocoPhillips, the parent of Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Co.,

Rep. Ilhan Omar has dramatically revised financial disclosures that previously showed multimillion-dollar assets, now claiming the figures were the result of an “accounting error.” The far-left Somali Democrat, who regularly demands that lawmakers raise taxes on the super-rich, had reported assets between $6 million and $30 million in a prior filing. Yet according to The Wall Street Journal, an amended disclosure now places total assets at just $18,004 to $95,000.

Amidst the ongoing conflict in Iran, a major political event took place in the United States on April 16, 2026, that deserves more attention and scrutiny than the mainstream media will likely devote to it. The event to which I refer to is the victory of Analilia Mejia in the New Jersey special election for congressional district 11. Mejia’s decisive win in the seat formerly held by New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill should send political shockwaves because I think it is more than fair to say that she will likely be perhaps the most socialistic member of Congress. When asked if she would join “The Squad” shortly before the election,

CAIRO — The standoff over the Strait of Hormuz quickly escalated again Saturday as Iran reversed its reopening of the crucial waterway and fired on ships attempting to pass, in retaliation after the United States pressed ahead with its blockade choking off Iranian ports. Confusion over the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, threatened to deepen the energy crisis roiling the global economy and push the two countries toward renewed conflict. The ceasefire between them is due to run out by mid-next week, and Pakistani mediators were working to put together a new round of direct negotiations to keep the truce going.

Embattled New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday repeatedly refused to tell The Post why she won’t release her tax returns like other top Democrats in the state did earlier in the week. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul have made income tax returns available for review by reporters, but James is refusing to do so — even as she fights back allegations she falsified information on mortgage applications. The Empire State’s AG bizarrely claimed that the decision to release her own tax return was up to her staff. “They will make that determination,” a perturbed James repeatedly told The Post

I do like to follow up and keep you all on top of where things stand with some of the previous stories I've covered. Sometimes, it's true, there's not much to write about because whatever happened happened and then they lie there like a dead bug until they shrivel and go away of their own accord. In other cases, there can be happier resolutions, which is always cheerful news, but those are admittedly rare. Most wind up in the slow-rolling disaster column, and man - that does seem to be the case with the Biden administration's $1.6B push to electrify city transit fleets. ...E-buses have been purchased by transit agencies

It was quite a week. The Democrats decided they needed to get rid of a candidate in the crowded field for Governor of California, and the fall guy was Eric Swalwell. It turned out that the Democrats and their reporters had known all along that Swalwell was a sexual predator, but until now it wasn’t opportune to mention it. President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, or maybe just as a doctor, healing someone. That prompted howls of outrage from the people who are always howling in outrage, and an extraordinary outpouring of memes showing Trump and others as Jesus, or just as healers. Speaking of Jesus,

Financial markets are reacting positively Friday to news that Iran will temporarily open the Strait of Hormuz for commercial traffic during its ceasefire with the United States. The major U.S. stock indexes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ, surged. The S&P500 also crossed 7,100 for the first time ever. At the same time, oil prices quickly dropped about 10% after the Iranian announcement. Market conditions had already begun to improve on Thursday as President Donald Trump expressed optimism that the war in Iran was nearing its end. Trump said the war “should be ending pretty soon.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) extensive record voting to confirm liberal judicial and executive nominees revered by the Left are weighing on his efforts to win a fifth six-year term in the Senate. The South Carolina Senator is a mainstay on Fox News, where he alternates between cheerleading for President Donald Trump’s agenda while encouraging the President to veer towards neoconservative priorities. But his record confirming nominees who later haunt Trump tells a different story. Graham voted to confirm President Joe Biden nominees Merrick Garland for Attorney General and Lisa Monaco for Deputy Attorney General. Both were key architects of the lawfare against Trump and his family and allies.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department asked two Senate committees to provide transcripts and records of contacts with former CIA Director John Brennan regarding the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations, signaling there was an active investigation into whether the former spy boss had misled or obstructed Congress. The letters gave a hard deadline of Feb. 23 for compliance. Two months later, the body run by Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has not complied, slowing a key angle of a grand jury investigation based in Fort Pierce, Fla., into whether Obama and Biden-era government officials engaged in a conspiracy —

Although the US.–Iran ceasefire is in effect for the moment (depending on who you ask), President Donald Trump signaled that things could change very quickly if the Islamic Republic doesn’t agree to terms — by Wednesday. Speaking on Air Force One, the president said the clock is ticking. In the meantime, the blockade will stay in force: President Donald Trump said late Friday he may end the ceasefire with Iran unless a long-term agreement is reached by Wednesday. "Maybe I won't extend it, but the blockade is going to remain," Trump told reporters on Air Force One. "So you have a blockade, and unfortunately we have to start dropping bombs again."

For decades now, the left in this country has preached that we should feel guilty about America’s success, we should obsess over its flaws, we should downplay our positive contributions to the world, and we should talk softly and carry no stick. Be ashamed, their message has been. And all too many Americans and virtually everyone in academia and the mainstream media bought it hook, line, and sinker, and have been selling it as hard as their little hearts can manage. And then along came Donald Trump and blew that garbage narrative to smithereens.

Victor Davis Hanson: Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I know a lot of you have been exasperated by the reaction to the Iran war, from the Democratic grandees in the House and Senate, the liberal media, The New York Times, particularly The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, and network—even The Wall Street Journal’s news section. And then we have some people on the right who have also looked at the war and said it was lost, it went south, it was gonna—World War III, blah, blah, blah.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before Congress this week defending his department’s policy agenda. The secretary, who has been under sustained scrutiny from skeptics of his Make America Healthy Again mission, vowed to work with members on specific health legislation to secure wins promised by the administration. Kennedy spent almost 10 hours on Capitol Hill this week and is set to appear for four more hearings next week. The secretary is looking forward to showing Congress how we are working to reduce prescription drug prices, make health care costs clearer for patients, and streamline processes like prior authorization,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told The Daily Signal.

This week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas celebrated America’s 250th anniversary by exposing the greatest threat to the Declaration of Independence today—the ideology of Progressivism. “Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement—with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War—to openly oppose the principles of the declaration,” the justice said in a speech at the University of Texas at Austin Wednesday. “Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident.”

Ten House Republicans joined Democrats on Thursday evening to keep roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals in the United States on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) despite the Trump administration seeking to end the quasi-amnesty. The House passed the measure, led by Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Laura Gillen (D-NY), after advancing the bill through a discharge petition maneuver, with help from half a dozen Republicans. Essentially, the bill would keep about 350,000 Haitians in the U.S. via TPS just as President Donald Trump fights in the Supreme Court to end the quasi-amnesty. The 10 House Republicans who joined Democrats to defy the Trump administration and move the bill to the Senate are:

Everything about California Governor Gavin Newsom is fake. Even the numbers on his book sales. His new book is being touted by his allies as a best seller, but the main reason it’s selling so well is because his own political action committee has spent upwards of $1.5 million buying thousands of copies of it. That’s one way to get on the New York Times best seller list. It’s not honest, but it’ll probably work. Not a single thing about this man is genuine. Newsom PAC bought thousands of memoir copies about his hardships, juicing sales

There are numerous headlines like the one above out there Friday, so I won’t pick on one particular outlet. There are longer ones like “European Leaders Welcome Hormuz Reopening and Push for Permanent Navigation Security.” Why did this make me chuckle? Because of course they’re pleased — and they had nothing to do with it. But don’t worry, they’re going to have meetings about the situation very soon: I can barely contain my excitement. And Macron has “demands”: