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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “cut through bureaucratic red tape and speed up reconstruction in the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon areas one year after devastating wildfires destroyed nearly 40,000 acres of homes and businesses.” Daily Signal California contributor Elaine Culotti explains why his plan to fast-track permits and mobilize builders is critical for families displaced for more than a year in today’s special video commentary.  “You have to have a plan. And the plan has to get through the process quickly, because that is called momentum. You have to have mobilization. That’s when you start mobilization. And you have to have a schedule of values. That’s the beginning, the middle and the end. “Donald Trump, thank you so much for doing this. … We need to be able to build. If we want to pay to play, we should be able to do that. If we want to use federal dollars to get it expedited, we should be able to do that. I thank you so much for coming to California. We are

California is notorious for its high cost of living, homelessness epidemic, widespread crime, and failing public schools. These are all “symptoms of a bigger problem,” argues Carl DeMaio, a member of the California State Assembly. “ The fact that we're worse in all those areas is because we are confronting the biggest problem. And that is California's political system is fundamentally corrupt,” DeMaio told Elaine Culotti, The Daily Signal’s California contributor, on her podcast. DeMaio explains that meaningful change requires a grassroots voter revolt, not reliance on party elites or national figures. “If you want true populist grassroots reform, then those of us in the streets, the grassroots, we have to narrow our focus on a couple targets and take out the establishment. Because you know what? When we focus, their money can’t compete with us. We’re an army. It’s a public uprising. It’s a rebellion. A revolt. And they can’t stop that.”

Virginia’s new Governor, Abigail Spanberger, openly admitted it’s good for the state to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, not to protect the climate and environment, but rather because it’s a great “cash grab.”   Bonner Cohen, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, explains how Virginia’s participation in RGGI will raise energy costs, hurt low- and middle-income residents, and drive businesses out of the state, when he joined Joe Thomas, The Daily Signal’s Virginia correspondent, on his podcast today.    “It’s not about saving the planet, and we have to be very careful about what we mean when we say it makes money for Virginia. Actually, it's ultimately going to cost Virginia rate payers who, as a result of RGGI, as well as a result of other energy policies she's imposing as well as taxes she plans to raise, these people are going to see their disposable incomes reduced and you have to ask the question: to what end?” Follow us on Instagram for EXC

California doesn’t “generate revenue”—it drains it. Taxes aren’t income, businesses create income, and Sacramento chased them out, argues Elaine Culotti, Daily Signal California commentator, on her podcast today:  “The state itself does not create any revenue. The state builds nothing. The state earns nothing. The state is money out. It is capital outflow to pay for the state to survive. To pay for the infrastructure that it owes.”

It is starting to look like California may be separating people from their personal property and taxing that property through search and seizure, argues Elaine Culotti, a Daily Signal California contributor, in today’s special video commentary on the Golden State’s impending billionaire tax. “ There are 17.5 million people out of 40 million people that pay taxes in California. The top 2% or 1% or half a percent—200 guys—pay 47% of those taxes.  If you create a wealth tax on those people, they are sure to leave, and it's not because of the 5% you're trying to charge them.  People do not want to disclose their assets. They deem it unsafe, invasive, overreaching government, and unconstitutional. Taxation without representation.”

Adversaries of the U.S. could launch a nuclear weapon at America, or they can achieve the same goal by flooding the nation with fentanyl, says Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., who has introduced a bill cracking down on fentanyl imports.   Over the past decade, roughly 500,000 U.S. lives have been lost to synthetic opioid overdoses, mainly fentanyl, according to the National Institutes of Health.   McDowell on Wednesday introduced a bill aimed at blocking drug traffickers from bringing a tool called a pill press into the U.S.  The process of fentanyl entering the U.S. is “coordinated,” McDowell explains. China, for example, “will ship a pill presser” to a drug dealer in the U.S. to cut “pure fentanyl, ... pressing it down into ... something that looks like a pill,” he said. The Preventing Rogue Equipment for Synthetic Substances, or PRESS, Act, criminalizes the “intentional importation of unlisted precursor chemicals and related equipment, including tableting machines, encapsulating machines, press punches,

Instead flaunting his new red “Trump kneepads” to world leaders and corporate elite in Davos, Switzerland, during the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Gavin Newsom should be more concerned about this state’s abysmal relationship with the federal government argues Elaine Culotti, Daily Signal California correspondent, on today’s special video commentary. “To be clear, our biggest problem in California is the fact that we have no relationship whatsoever with President Trump and the administration. So we can't pick up the phone and call and say, “Hey, we need a lifeline.” It does not exist. It's been destroyed. And with the Pacific Palisades and the fires in California, it has been unveiled how deep that destruction is.”

Virginia is facing a push to hold a special vote, likely in mid-April, to overturn a 65%-approved nonpartisan redistricting commission.  Joe Thomas, The Daily Signal’s Virginia correspondent, breaks down the proposed change that would allow the state to redraw districts reactively if other states change theirs.  “ North Carolina, and even New York state is talking about redistricting their congressional districts ahead of the midterms. Now, unlike all those other states, Virginia had a constitutional amendment that said you can’t do it.” Follow us on Instagram for EXCLUSIVE bonus content and the chance to be featured in our episodes: https://www.instagram.com/problematicwomen/   Connect with our hosts on socials!   Elise McCue X: https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=EliseMcCue Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elisemccueofficial/   Virginia Allen: X: https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=Virginia_Allen5 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virginiaallenofficial/   Check out Top News

With Los Angeles consisting of nearly 4 million people, more than 400 residents are assigned to each LAPD officer, which has an annual budget of about $2 billion. During the fires last year, an estimated more than 25% of emergency response equipment was broken. All this begs the question: What happens to a neighborhood when it has become irrelevant to the city it is in? Answer: They should start exploring de-annexing and fusion safety models for more cost-efficient emergency response services, argues Elaine Culotti in this special video commentary for The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told The Daily Signal a settlement with Harvard University is close, after a protracted battle over the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Trump said Wednesday that he heard the United States had a deal with Harvard. “I hear we have a deal but who the hell knows with them,” Trump told reporters. When asked about the president’s statement by The Daily Signal, McMahon said, “He’s right. It’s ongoing.” Harvard and the Trump administration have engaged in a legal battle for about nine months after President Donald Trump pulled $2 billion in federal funding and removed Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. The president took action over Harvard’s alleged failure to curb antisemitism and its DEI practices.Secretary McMahon talked about this, and more, in a sit down interview with Elizabeth Mitchell, Daily Signal White House correspondent, on Tuesday.

For years, the big spenders in Congress—and the Biden administration—worked together to drive the nation deeper into debt as they wasted taxpayer money on their crazy ESG, DEI far Left agenda. Between the Democrats who just wanna see Trump fail, and the big spender Republicans who want to see any budget cuts fail, Trump has an uphill battle against the “uniparty” when it comes to further progress in the spending fight.  Federal finance is the executive branch’s job, but it really comes down to Congress which “passes spending and tax legislation,” explains Chief Heritage Foundation Economist E.J. Antoni, PhD., on today’s special video commentary.   “It’s high time those legislators actually do something to fix the problem that they themselves helped cause.”

“America’s Job Market Has  Entered the Slow Lane”—that was a recent Wall Street Journal headline. Most of the mainstream media echoes this interpretation, but the reality is much better than the headlines suggest. In fact, it’s as if the reporters who wrote those headlines didn’t read beyond the headline of the jobs report. Here’s what the Dec. 2025 jobs report actually showed:  ✅People working multiple part-time jobs exchanged them for single full-time jobs in December.  ✅During nearly the entire final year of the Biden admin, annual native-born employment was in the red. In 2025, native-born employment beat foreign-born employment by over 1.6 million. ✅The federal workforce is the smallest it’s been since 2014. “So, despite all the naysayers, Trump’s first year back at the helm saw a labor market undergo badly needed structural changes that are making Americans better off… If we keep up with tax reform, regulatory reform, and energy reform, economic growth will turn into a rocket sled on rails.” For

Local officials in California may be co-opting Wolfgang Puck’s and Frank Gehry’s forthcoming upscale retail center along the Pacific Palisades coastline to install unpopular, high-density housing in the coming future using a little-known, Gavin Newsom-backed bill: SB 79.   “About a year ago,” California passed its Senate Bill No. 79 under the premise of encouraging housing near existing transit hubs, which, in principle, sounded like a good idea with best of intentions.   SB-79 can’t be “implemented unless it's at a train station, bus station, [or] airport transit district,” so most people “didn’t say no to it” because transit districts should only have limited, localized impacts, California Correspondent Elaine Culotti explains.   “This happens in California a lot where things are kind of slipped under the radar because they feel like they're not going to affect you. Well, guess what? They figured out a way to put transit districts in areas that don't have transit districts, after the fact.” For more vid

The pro-transgender lawyers arguing for men's ability to compete in women's sports have begun to realize they have a losing hand, and it's making them desperate, according to a lawyer on the other side of the issue. "I think the other side is starting to recognize they're on the losing side of this issue culturally, politically, in every way," Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Food and Drug Administration should “immediately” restore in-person dispensing requirements for the abortion pill, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told The Daily Signal. The senator cited safety concerns in pressing the administration to act. “You don’t have to have a review to know that if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, she’s gonna have a problem,” Cassidy said. “You don’t have to have a review to know that there’s documented cases of people coerced into taking this.” Under President Joe Biden in April 2021, the administration stopped requiring that abortion drugs be dispensed to women in person. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, of which Cassidy is the chair, is holding a hearing Wednesday on protecting women from abortion drugs. Cassidy hopes the hearing will “rehumanize” the issue by demonstrating how the pill harms both women and unborn children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anti-regime protests have continued to gain momentum in the Middle East in recent days and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is predicting a “complete realignment of the Middle East.”   “The potential is here for something of Biblical proportion,” Huckabee told The Daily Signal, adding he has used the very same language when speaking with President Donald Trump.   If the Iranian people succeed in removing the regime from power, “that changes everything across the globe,” Huckabee said, adding it will lead to “one of the most unusual times in human history, because there will be a realignment.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming off the heels of an already highly partisan, controversial ballot initiative season, Golden State voters are again being presented a choice that will have ramifications for generations to come: The Billionaire Tax Act. During the upcoming general election this fall, California voters will choose whether to impose a one-time 5% tax on residents with net worths over $1 billion, with the goal of raising over $100 billion.  California Representative Ro Khanna, a purported 2028 presidential hopeful whose district includes the corporate headquarters of Silicon Valley’s elites, like Apple and Intel, has already endorsed the wealth tax. Makes sense? No, not really. California’s roughly 200 billionaires,  “pay 47% of the taxes that go into the general fund.  And what we're doing here in California is we have decided that we need to make a hundred billion dollars, right? And the way to get to it is to create this tax on things that have not been sold yet. So the way to get to it is to do a one time 5% charge

In war, dependable access to oil is as important as dependable access to kinetic arms. Access to ample reliable flows of oil represents a key strategic interest to the United States.  Western Canada sends over 4 million barrels a day of heavy crude to American refiners.  But now with access to the massive flows of Venezuelan crude following the Trump-led ousting of Nicolas Maduro last week, the U.S. may soon no longer need to rely on Canada for this vital strategic resource.  For months, Canada used its vast reserve of natural resources as leverage in its tariff negotiations with the U.S. Not anymore.  “If the Monroe Doctrine warned Europeans to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and the Roosevelt Corollary established American intervention therein, then the ‘Trump Corollary’ has put a finer, and more economic point on the matter that’s best summed up in two words: America first,” argues Chief Heritage Foundation Economist E.J. Antoni for The Daily Signal on this special video commentary. Keep Up With

**This episode was recorded before Victor Davis Hanson's December 30 medical operation** Whether it’s some within the Minneapolis Somali community racking in millions of dollars from government grants for fraudulent businesses or severely unqualified illegal aliens obtaining commercial truck driving licenses, these groups were “categorized by officials as on the victimized, oppressed side of the lecture. And therefore, they were not completely audited. Because, if they had been audited, the cries of racism, nativism, etc., prejudice, bias would’ve been voiced. And people didn’t want to be exposed to that,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” These non-meritocratic DEI recipients are thrown into a self-perpetuating system that encourages them to continuously engage in illegal activity as they will never face consequences for their actions. When audits stop, deterrence dies—and corruption thrives. (00:00) Introduction to DEI Issues (00:56) Fraud a

Economic booms are usually defined by  “greater productivity,” increased foreign investment, “reasonable” interest rates, “energy production,” and “plentiful deregulation and tax cuts.” But will any of this happen in 2026? Hanson predicts we’ll “see an economic bonanza” in 2026 as “there's going to be more oil,”  “ new technologies,” and “all sorts of tax cuts” and “more deregulation than we've ever seen” in the Big Beautiful Bill on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”  “ Add it all up: We've had an unexpectedly—unexpectedly, unexpectedly—good third quarter. I imagine the fourth quarter might be just as good if it were not for the government shutdown—the longest in history—that occurred in the fourth quarter, but we'll see.  But more importantly: more foreign investment, more tax cuts, more deregulation, more energy development, lower interest, and I think you're gonna see an economic bonanza.” 00:00 Introduction: What Makes an Economy Boom? 00:34 Unexpected Economic Trends 01: