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<p>Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.</p><p>Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House, congresswoman from the Bay Area in California, just said that she was going to warn federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that if, in the opinion of state authorities, they acted in the way the state felt was improper, then she would order their arrest.</p>

When Republicans first began using trans people as a political tool around 5 years ago, many Democrats were quick to oppose Republicans’ efforts to demonise the trans community. Accordingly, the federal government under Biden and Democratic-controlled states all passed laws to make their states more trans-friendly, providing valuable refuge against Republican policies. But upon Trump’s election last year, amid a firestorm of $200+ million worth of anti-trans attack ads, a handful of voices within the Democratic Party felt that this crucial support had been a mistake. In the next few months, Democrats like New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, Massachusetts Rep....

Until the time that Barack Obama took office, I had a reasonable amount of faith in the U.S. federal government. I knew that those on the Left in positions of leadership, as well as some on the Right, often concocted narratives for their own ends. The mainstream media decidedly leaned Left, and shaded every story, feature, event, and happening in the U.S. and around the world to their own point of view. Still, it was easy enough to get past what they were claiming. Maybe Some Good Could Result With the ascension of Barack Obama and his subsequent election as...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday that Democrats would vote to end the government shutdown in exchange for a one-year extension of expiring ACA tax credits, multiple sources told Axios.

We can draw a few conclusions from an off-year election, when iconic races in blue states went, as expected, overwhelmingly Democratic. Nevertheless, there is only a year left before the midterms. So Republicans must react to even these paltry results. 1) Democrats' chaotic nihilism still works. The chaos strategy causes so much turmoil, noise, and negative media coverage that the confused voting public simply cannot sort it all out. The public wishes the upheaval would just go away and often blames those with the most current authority -- logically, the incumbent Trump and his administration. 2) Every day of Trump's...

It depends on who’s running the tent.Democrats are famously in very poor shape these days. Despite the unpopularity of many of Donald Trump’s specific moves, Democrats’ popularity has not been rising. Indeed, in many polls it is mired at historic lows. Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot for 2026 is alarmingly modest and the situation in the Senate is dire. And no, the Democrats’ strong showing in the idiosyncratic 2025 elections, boosted by favorable terrain, disapproval of the incumbent Trump administration, and their now-traditional advantage in lower turnout elections where their educated, engaged supporters flock to the polls, does...

Pressure for a deal has intensified as the impact on Americans grows Senate leaders plan to take up a stopgap funding measure in a rare Friday session to test whether a Democratic logjam could finally break to end the longest partial government shutdown in history. But after a long day of closed-door talks, Democrats remained mostly tight-lipped about their intentions, with some suggesting they were prepared to continue the standoff until they secure an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. Republicans leaders have insisted they would not negotiate on health subsidies until the government is reopened. “The plan is...

Democrats still don’t have a leader to guide them out of the wilderness. Seismic victories in a series of off-cycle elections on Tuesday showed the power of an energized liberal base all across the country — and teased at the potential for the Democratic Party to storm back to power. But those wins did not immediately crown a singular leader who can harness that energy. There are still dozens of competitors for the throne. The POLITICO Poll, conducted by Public First in the closing weeks of the election, found a complete lack of consensus among 2024 Kamala Harris voters on...

Trump Is Not To Blame For Democrats Electing Violent ExtremistsDemocrats have a long history of defending and electing party leaders engaged in the worst behavior imaginable, while Republican voters are still rejecting extremists.While liberal America is justifiably triumphant about Tuesday night’s election results, a lot of professionals are quietly worried about extremism infecting the party. Certainly, electing a mayor of New York who’s an unfortunate hellbroth of communism, Islamism, and “defund the police,” is not someone you want defining your party nationally.And then there’s the problem of Jay Jones, the Attorney General-elect of Virginia, who won handily despite being caught...

Emboldened by Tuesday’s encouraging election results, veteran political strategist James Carville said he would “bet money” that Democrats will not only win the presidency in 2028, but then proceed to pack the Supreme Court to ensure permanent one party rule. While taking questions during Thursday’s installment of he and co-host Al Hunt’s “Politics War Room,” one listener asked how the Biden Administration could have prepared for “the possibility of Trump winning a second term.” While Hunt argued in favor of new legislation and guardrails, Carville gleefully predicted that the next Democrat president will fundamentally redefine American government. “I’m going to...

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., avoided answering whether he would support eliminating the filibuster, as he did under President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Raskin was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about President Donald Trump’s recent comments regarding several Republican losses nationwide Tuesday night and the ongoing government shutdown. “One of the things that he has been talking about for the last couple of days more intensely is getting rid of the filibuster. That’s actually something that you wanted to do when Joe Biden was president. Things weren’t getting through the Senate. So is that an area where you agree with him?”...

An Illinois state senator is fuming following the death of two constituents allegedly caused by an illegal immigrant driving his car under the influence, asking what more it will take for Democrats to take action. Edwin Pacheco-Meza, 34, was allegedly driving his car under the influence when he caused a crash on Oct. 24 that killed Coles County Board member Michael Clayton and his wife, Gail Clayton, in Westfield, Illinois, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Juan Morales-Martinez, an 18-year-old passenger inside the car Pacheco-Meza was driving, was also arrested. Ammunition, an extended magazine, drugs and an open...

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said Thursday his party’s “brand” could undergo “substantial damage” if Democrats were to cave and reopen the federal government following their overwhelming election victories Tuesday night. “There will be some pretty substantial damage done to a Democratic brand that has been rehabilitated, if on the heels of an election in which the people told us to keep fighting, we immediately stop fighting,” Murphy told Punchbowl News on Thursday morning. “We’re going to start operating on an increasingly short calendar. The 2026 election is just 12 months away. And if we surrender without having gotten anything,...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is dangling another carrot for Democrats. They still aren’t ready to bite. In his latest pressure tactic, the South Dakota Republican is teeing up yet another vote to reopen the government Friday, the 38th day of the record-setting shutdown. But this time, he is pledging to swap out the House-passed stopgap bill for a new funding patch, likely into January, along with full-year funding for veterans programs, food aid and more. “It’s what they asked for,” Thune said Thursday night. But Democrats, stiffened by their party’s big election wins Tuesday that have papered over rising...

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is fast-tracking approvals for a massive AI datacenter in Saline Township. Locals oppose the project, but few are more excited about it than Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s husband, Ryan Friedrichs. Friedrichs, vice president for billionaire Stephen Ross’ Related Companies, celebrated the project on LinkedIn. “Thank you again to all our community, state, regional, and national partners who worked tirelessly with us this year, and will into the future,” Friedrichs wrote in the post, which linked to another from Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau.

FIRST ON FOX: An Empire State Republican is criticizing New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for his attendance at a conference in Puerto Rico, days after winning his race and during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. "If Zohran Mamdani is truly serious about helping working families, he wouldn’t be jetting off to a luxury resort the moment he wins an election," Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., first told Fox News Digital. Fox News Digital confirmed that Mamdani is expected to travel to the 2025 SOMOS Conference in Puerto Rico on Thursday. Mamdani is attending a cocktail reception on Thursday...

And deserves to get it good and hard.Last night was the (well, not mid-term elections — those are next year — “quarter-term” elections?) and the areas that thought that Kamala Harris was a damned fine pick for POTUS last cycle stayed Blue. That should not have been a big surprise to anyone with a licence to adult..In Newt Yack City, a CAIR1-funded communist Democratic Socialist is now mayor.Whee. As long-time readers of my little scribblings have probably already figured out, I doubt that Mamdani will be as bad as his detractors say; but I damned sure don’t think he’s going...

How should we respond to the unpleasant but expected Blue Wave that washed over the country on Election Day, 2025? The first issue is clearly that the Republican Party has a turnout problem in off-year elections. A lot of the new MAGA Trump voters are centrist or liberal-leaning independents who have joined the GOP. These voters don’t get engaged beyond the presidential elections. Republican activists must concentrate their efforts on getting them to vote more. Better campaign strategies have to invest in more than liking President Trump and wanting to reverse the damage done by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris....

Congressional Republicans need to do something worthy of voter support, and the party has to sharpen its early-voting ground game. The third time wasn’t the charm for Republican businessman and former New Jersey lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli in Tuesday’s race for the Garden State’s next governor. And Virginia didn’t elect its first black female governor. New Jersey and Virginia remain squarely in the blue state column.But Tuesday’s election, contrary to the left and their corporate media partners, wasn’t an early verdict on Republican President Donald Trump or a bellwether of next year’s midterms. The Democratic National Committee proclaimed far-left Abigail Spanberger’s...

One Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to discuss caucus deliberations said there is “enormous” pressure on the group to hold the line after Tuesday: “It’s hard for anyone to argue the message from voters is ‘Please cave ASAP to Trump.’” The Democrats involved in the talks received no cover from senior leaders of their party Wednesday. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demanded a new meeting Wednesday with Trump to discuss ending the shutdown and addressing health care, which has emerged as the centerpiece of the weeks-long spending brawl. Schumer made no secret Wednesday that he believes his party...