Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced six interagency agreements (IAAs) with four federal agencies to take another major step forward toward fulfilling the promise of dismantling the 45-year failure of the astronomically expensive and ineffective department.
The agreements are with the Department of Labor, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of State. According to a <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-six-new-agency-partnerships-break-federal-bureaucracy">press release</a> from the Department of Education, “by partnering with agencies that are best positioned to deliver results for students and taxpayers, these IAAs will streamline federal education activities on legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees.”
The six agreements are as follows. First is the Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. Going forward, the Department of Labor will begin playing a larger role in the administration of federal K-12 education programs to enhance <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-labor-dol-elementary-and-secondary-education-partnership-112465.pdf">alignment</a> with workforce and postsecondary programs, resulting in “a cohesive, unified strategy for talent development.”
Second is the Postsecondary Education Partnership, which is also between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. It will streamline the administration of postsecondary education programs and <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-labor-dol-postsecondary-education-partnership-112464.pdf">will</a> “create a better coordinated Federal approach to postsecondary education and workforce development to help more Americans achieve career success.”
Third is the Indian Education Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of the Interior. This includes the Department of the Interior administering Indian education spanning from elementary, secondary, and higher education, as well as career and technical education and vocational rehabilitation. This will ensure Native American students are better served with education, training, and workforce programs.
Fourth is the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. It leverages the expertise of the Department of Health and Human Services to evaluate whether the accreditation standards for foreign medical schools are comparable to those of U.S. medical schools. According to a <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-foreign-medical-accreditation-partnership-112462.pdf">fact sheet</a> in conjunction with the press release, the “accreditation standards must be comparable between U.S. and foreign medical schools in order for American students enrolled in medical schools outside of the U.S. to be eligible for federal student loans.”
Fifth is a second agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, termed the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Partnership. The partnership <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-child-care-access-means-parents-school-partnership-112460.pdf">will</a> “promote innovation and process improvements in pursuit of better outcomes for parents and children” by streamlining policies and program requirements, and also <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-department-of-education-ed-and-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs-child-care-access-means-parents-school-partnership-112460.pdf">providing</a> “campus-based child care services to low-income students.”
Sixth is the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership between the Department of Education and the Department of State. It enhances the efficiency of the Fulbright-Hays grant programs, which equip Americans with skills critical to our national security and interests.
Speaking of these partnerships, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said, “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.” The mission is nothing other than — with the votes necessary from Congress — to eliminate the ineffective U.S. Department of Education, which has wasted trillions of dollars without improving student learning.
Continuing, Secretary McMahon explained what lies ahead: “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”
Since January, the Trump Administration has been focused on cutting wasteful spending within the U.S. Department of Education and removing harmful ideologies. For example, just three days after taking office, under the President’s direction, the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-takes-action-eliminate-dei">U.S. Department of Education</a> took action to “eliminate harmful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” This <a href="https://www.chalkboardnews.com/issues/cultural-issues/article_89d2f95a-da74-11ef-881f-c31173f69a5c.html?seyid=48320">included</a> placing U.S. Department of Education staff leading DEI initiatives on administrative leave, removing more than 200 web pages containing DEI resources that promote or endorse harmful ideological programs, and cutting over $2.5 million of DEI contracts.
<div id="attachment_1002607" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1002607" class="size-large wp-image-1002607" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-864x576.jpg" alt="US President Donald Trump holds an executive order after signing it alongside US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon (R) in the East Room of the White house in Washington, DC, March 20, 2025. US President Donald Trump will sign an order March 20, 2025 to start dismantling the Department of Education, fulfilling an election campaign pledge and a long-held dream of American conservatives. By law, the Education Department -- created in 1979 -- cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress, and Republicans do not have the votes to push that through. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2205418285.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Credit: Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images.</div>
In March, President Trump signed the “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/improving-education-outcomes-by-empowering-parents-states-and-communities/">Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities</a>” executive order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-empowers-parents-states-and-communities-to-improve-education-outcomes/">directing</a> Secretary McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
President Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjnoGgEJvLs">explained</a> and communicated confidence, stating, “We are going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs. And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it is a common-sense thing to do, and it is going to work. Absolutely, it is going to work.” Signing the executive order was a foundational first step toward eliminating the department.
Despite the opposition&#8217;s rhetoric, dismantling the Department of Education is about partnering with other federal agencies to improve efficiency, break down bureaucracy, and return education to the states where it rightfully belongs. This will give moms and dads a bigger voice while providing for greater accountability for academic results.
The recent 43-day government shutdown highlighted the lack of need for the federal education department. Just two days before the major IAAs partnership announcement, Secretary McMahon <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/11/16/school-funding-trump-dismantle-education-department/87251723007/">wrote</a> in USA Today on November 16, “The Schumer shutdown underlined just how little the Department of Education will be missed. As such, the Trump administration will work to end federal micromanagement of our schools and empower state and local leaders to create high-quality education programs that lead to a rewarding career. We know that the stakes could not be higher.”
These strategic actions under Secretary McMahon’s leadership mark a decisive departure from decades of federal bureaucratic bloat and chart the much-needed path forward toward making good on President Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-empowers-parents-states-and-communities-to-improve-education-outcomes/">executive order</a> commitment to return “power over education to families instead of bureaucracies.”
* * *
Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Senior Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: The title of this article has been updated.
* * *
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Trump Takes Steps Toward Dismantling Education Department

Trump Admin Delivers On Promise To Dismantle U.S. Department Of Education

Department of Interior

Department of Labor

Donald Trump

Education

Federal Government

Linda McMahon

Parental Rights in Education

State Department

Students

Teachers

Trump Administration

Well, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is finally over, and many of you are asking questions like, “Why would Sydney Sweeney make a movie where she plays a fat boxer? What was she thinking?” Also, “Why do women play with their hair when they like a guy?” And here’s another one: “You know how the screen just went dark in the last episode of &#8216;The Sopranos&#8217;? What the hell was that about? I mean, they’re paying the screenwriter good money. Shouldn’t he be able to come up with some kind of ending? And don’t even get me started on &#8216;How I Met Your Mother.'&#8221;
And okay, some of you may have questions about the government shutdown and, holy moly, I can’t even imagine what your lives must be like. But hey, here at the Daily Wire, it’s not our place to mock you for being pathetic, so as part of our mission to give you an in-depth understanding of the news, we’re pleased to provide you with this handy Q&amp;A about the government shutdown.
Q: Why did the government shut down in the first place?
A: The government shut down because Chuck Schumer is the Senate leader of the Democrats, and he&#8217;s a demon.
Q: Wait, really?
A: Yeah! Look at him. With those dead eyes, and the widow’s peak you could cut your wrists with. The guy’s a hell dweller. Probably crawled out of a crevice in the earth somewhere.
Q: But weren’t there, like, political considerations?
A: I dunno. I’m still trying to figure out how Sydney Sweeney looked in the mirror and thought: “Oh good, I’m a super-hot white girl! For the next ten years, I can literally have anything I want. I know! I’ll make a movie where I’m a fat palooka. People will flock to the theaters to see that!” I mean, who knows why people do things?
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974735 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Klavan-watch-now.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Q: Could we get back to the shutdown? 
A: Sure, you obviously have nothing better to do.
Q: What were the results of the shutdown?
A: During the shutdown, the government couldn’t perform its very important functions like — I don’t know — making speeches and putting up signs and whatnot.
Q: That’s it? They couldn’t make speeches and signs?
A: Signs are actually very important. Otherwise, they tow your car and you’re like, “What did I even do?”
Q: Well, what about healthcare?
A: Right. Democrats want to gradually lure the United States into a government healthcare system like they have in England and Canada, where more and more of your money goes into increasingly outdated medical treatments until finally they have to legalize medically assisted suicide so they can kill patients off in order to keep treatment expenses down. So then, you’re, like, twelve years old and you go to the doctor with a splinter, and he’s like, “Wouldn’t you rather just kill yourself?” The Republicans didn’t want to fund that, so Chuck Schumer closed the government.
Q: Wait, Chuck Schumer wants to suicide 12-year-olds, but that’s demonic… O-o-o-oh, I get what you’re saying.
A: This is why we provide these helpful Q and A’s.
Q: Well, what happens to stuff like taxes during a shutdown?
A: You still have to pay taxes during a shutdown so Congress can get paid.
Q: Get paid for doing what?
A: Well, the government’s shut down, so they’re not doing anything.
Q: So Congress doesn’t do anything, and we still have to give them our money?
A: Correct, and that continues even during the shutdown.
Q: So why exactly did the shutdown end?
A: The shutdown ended because the money for welfare payments ran out, so pretty soon, welfare recipients would’ve had to find jobs. Then to keep their jobs, they’d’ve had to improve their behavior, which would’ve helped them find spouses and start families and increase their sense of self-worth, until they wouldn’t even need Democrats. So basically, the Democrats needed to reopen or they’d become irrelevant.
Q: Well, frankly, I’m glad. I need to get home for Thanksgiving, and when I saw all the delays piling up at airports, I wanted to kill myself.
A: Unfortunately, if you want to kill yourself legally, you’ll just have to wait till the Democrats are back in power.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this satirical piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Longest Shutdown Tests Air Travel, Federal Workers And Patience

Here’s A Handy Q&A To Explain The Shutdown — Spoiler: It’s As Dumb As You Think

Andrew Klavan

Canada

Chuck Schumer

Congress

Government Shutdown

Humor

Satire

In the end, it was air travel, of all things, that ended the longest government shutdown in United States history. That was the point of failure. We just shut down the federal government for 43 days, which runs a budget of around $6 trillion a year, and nothing of value broke during that period — nothing at all — until the flight cancellations and delays started ramping up within the last few days. It wasn&#8217;t until the air traffic controllers walked off the job that a single American had any good reason to complain about the shutdown.
As much as I&#8217;m loath to talk about federal government shutdowns — they are, in every case, a waste of time that benefits no one — this one actually turned out to be a pretty interesting experiment. It was a stress test that exposed some key weaknesses in the conservative movement, as well as the way the federal government works. And before the next funding bill is voted on — which will take place at the end of January, apparently — it&#8217;s worth shoring up some of these weaknesses as quickly as we possibly can.
At a minimum, we need to answer some pretty basic questions that no one ever seems to talk about. Starting with: Why exactly is air travel a core function of the federal government? Why does air travel shut down when the government does? More specifically, why are air traffic controllers paid by the federal government at all?
Since the 1940s or so, the federal government has employed air traffic controllers in this country. Taxpayers have been responsible for their salaries and benefits, and everyone&#8217;s been okay with that arrangement. But there&#8217;s no clear reason we&#8217;re doing it this way. And indeed, several countries have a very different system. For example, Canada has a nonprofit called &#8220;Nav Canada&#8221; in charge of their air traffic control system. They generate their own revenue. They&#8217;re self-sufficient. Did you realize that? Did you know that, when it comes to aviation, we actually have more government bloat than Canada? In terms of efficiency, we&#8217;re being shown up by a country that&#8217;s put the government in charge of everything — from healthcare to Facebook to euthanizing people who miss rent payments. It&#8217;s embarrassing.
One of the many benefits of a private system, when it comes to air traffic control, is that government dysfunction doesn&#8217;t strand tens of thousands of travelers and shut down the entire aviation industry. The ability of the country to travel using airplanes isn&#8217;t contingent on appropriations bills in Congress. Additionally, in a private system, government bureaucracy (in our case, the FAA) isn&#8217;t in charge of operating the same system that it&#8217;s supposed to regulate. If a private entity is in charge of air traffic control, then the private entity can focus on directing traffic and upgrading its systems, and the federal government can focus on checking its work. They can supervise. That&#8217;s the ideal arrangement.
But we don&#8217;t have a privatized system for air traffic control — even though most major airlines in the United States want one — for a very simple reason: Air traffic control, like many other government-run industries, is designed to be as inefficient as possible. It&#8217;s essentially a jobs program that saps taxpayer money while sabotaging any potential for innovation. And indeed, there hasn&#8217;t been innovation in the industry for many years.
Air traffic controllers are still using paper strips, which they shuffle around by hand, to track flights in many control towers — even though it&#8217;s obviously a less efficient and more dangerous system. And this system has persisted despite the fact that the FAA has been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/faa-nextgen-us-air-traffic-reform-effort-faces-lengthy-delays-over-budget-2025-10-01/">working</a> on a program called &#8220;NextGen&#8221; to update air traffic control systems (including the paper strips) for more than 20 years.
Yes, over more than two decades, the FAA has supposedly been working on a $15 billion project to modernize air traffic control. And they&#8217;re currently behind schedule and over-budget. Their plan to get rid of the paper flight strips has been delayed until 2030. They&#8217;re going to scale back the number of airports they update by 45%, and costs are over-budget by 20%.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1691-the-matt-walsh-show?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
A private, self-funded corporation could fix all of these problems virtually overnight. And they could probably do it with fewer employees, too. They could update the software in the control towers, take some of the workload off the controllers, and make everyone safer. But the unions wouldn&#8217;t like that change, for obvious reasons. And apparently, no one in Washington wants to privatize air traffic control either, because as far as I can tell, no politician is even broaching the subject at the moment. Even though the government shutdown just exposed a gigantic vulnerability in the aviation industry, the possibility of reforming the air traffic control system is going totally unmentioned.
Instead, one after another, Republican politicians have been posting videos celebrating the end of the government shutdown because SNAP benefits are being restored. That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re focusing on. They&#8217;re not talking about the fact that, other than air traffic control, we don&#8217;t appear to need the federal government at all.
Instead, they&#8217;re thrilled that billions of dollars will continue to flow to the 40 million Americans on food stamps, even though 40 million Americans clearly don&#8217;t need handouts to afford food. It&#8217;s an absurdly, comically fraudulent program, and yet, to Republicans in Congress, SNAP recipients are worth mentioning in the same breath as military servicemembers and federal law enforcement officers. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Tonight, we ended the Democrat shutdown so that we can fund programs like SNAP and WIC and pay our troops, federal workers, and air traffic controllers. <a href="https://t.co/RdjMihaKeF">pic.twitter.com/RdjMihaKeF</a>
— Congressman Rudy Yakym (@RepRudyYakym) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepRudyYakym/status/1988792508374216936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @RepRudyYakym/X.com
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Just finished voting to end the 43-day Democratic-led shutdown. Tonight’s vote gets our troops and federal workers paid, restores SNAP, and lets us get back to legislating. And even while Washington was stuck, I kept working for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CO03?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CO03</a>, securing $450,000 for new,… <a href="https://t.co/ztHJRjkVwu">pic.twitter.com/ztHJRjkVwu</a>
— Rep. Jeff Hurd (@RepJeffHurd) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepJeffHurd/status/1988793628576133397?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @RepJeffHurd/X.com
One of those things is not like the others. We can all agree that law enforcement officers and military servicemembers, and air traffic controllers should be paid. That&#8217;s because they&#8217;re actually doing something. But SNAP recipients aren&#8217;t doing anything. They&#8217;re just taking handouts they don&#8217;t need. Seventy-five <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/do-food-stamps-make-people-fat-why-does-washington-subsidize-soda-and-candy-4d29659f?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqf9M-dHq1KxNxYg2R3rBtTfRzhDXrxuROSMQy3inDPuj_R5GWLSCZxazNO0wfA%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69016d5f&amp;gaa_sig=3m34s8qxfaT1rrz3S9qsK1YT5Q7s9NSWqVFlMhWSRcBIx5iqK27Kj4Grph_Nord1e6MdtldEOcVw7Sx3QmyCcg%3D%3D">percent</a> of SNAP recipients are overweight or obese. If you break it down, according to USDA data, 44% of SNAP recipients are obese, 28% are overweight, and only 2.5% are underweight. So at a minimum, we can cut this program by 75%, and no one would be affected. We&#8217;d be eliminating a massive amount of fraud, right off the bat, if we required SNAP recipients to step on a scale before we gave them their EBT card.
But really, the scale of the fraud is much greater than that, because pretty much every SNAP recipient is taking advantage of many other welfare programs too, including WIC, which, for many Americans, duplicates what the SNAP program does. (Actually, there&#8217;s one important difference. WIC only offers a list of pre-approved items like milk and bread. SNAP, on the other hand, will happily pay for your Oreo cookies and your two liters of Coke.)
And on top of that, grocery stores and so-called &#8220;bodegas&#8221; often defraud the SNAP program in plain sight. A few years ago, The Daily Wire&#8217;s Luke Rosiak spent a week standing around in various stores, writing down what people bought with food stamps. It turns out that the &#8220;bodegas&#8221; — whose trustworthiness the SNAP program is 100% reliant on — were openly selling ski masks in August, pipes for smoking crack, and cigarettes. They&#8217;re just criminal one-stop shops. In some cases, as Fox&#8217;s Will Cain reported, cashiers will run EBT cards for $100 in food, but return $50 cash to the customer instead of groceries. And then the SNAP recipient will sell the EBT card balance to someone else. Additionally, of course, many SNAP applications are simply fraudulent and include incorrect information about income, household members, and so on.
For her part, the Agriculture Secretary just disclosed that 5,000 dead people are getting SNAP, and half a million people are getting SNAP benefits twice under the same name. And that&#8217;s just the data they&#8217;ve been able to gather from conservative states. Left-wing states aren&#8217;t turning over the data at all, because obviously, the fraud is even worse there. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 BREAKING: In a jaw-dropping revelation, Sec. Brooke Rollins found 5,000 DEAD PEOPLE getting SNAP, and 500,000 PEOPLE getting SNAP &#8220;2 times under the same name.&#8221;
And that&#8217;s just what they&#8217;ve confirmed&#8230;
&#8220;This light has now been shined one of the most CORRUPT, DISFUNCTIONAL… <a href="https://t.co/GfCN49yAwN">pic.twitter.com/GfCN49yAwN</a>
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1988766862994289135?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @EricLDaugh/FoxNews/X.com
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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins: “We found one guy [collecting SNAP benefits] in 6 states… under the same number… These are the red states that turned their data over. It’s the blue states that we’re trying to get data on.”
“Can you imagine if this fraud is happening in… <a href="https://t.co/iFbKI8zHO2">pic.twitter.com/iFbKI8zHO2</a>
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) <a href="https://twitter.com/RedWave_Press/status/1988775229225628098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @RedWave_Press/FoxNews/X.com
The Agriculture Secretary is promising some future action, which is all she can really do in her position. But that&#8217;s simply not good enough. The action that should&#8217;ve been taken, by every single Republican in Congress, was to abolish the SNAP program entirely. Don&#8217;t throw billions more dollars into the fire. Get rid of it. Keep the government shut down if you have to.
The fact that Republicans caved on this issue, by itself, makes this shutdown an abject failure for the party. Yes, Democrats didn&#8217;t get the Obamacare subsidies they wanted — at least not yet. And yes, if that holds, it&#8217;s going to save taxpayers money that would&#8217;ve gone to healthcare for illegal aliens and other loyal Democrat voters.
But there&#8217;s really no reason to think that this stopgap is going to hold. After all, Republican lawmakers have just demonstrated that they&#8217;re willing to tolerate billions of dollars in fraudulent handouts every year. Roughly 60% of these fraudulent SNAP handouts go to illegal alien households. And yet, Republicans won&#8217;t even condemn that fraud or mention it. Instead, they&#8217;ll celebrate the payment of SNAP benefits as if it&#8217;s some great win for the country because, at long last, the flight delays will end. We&#8217;re supposed to accept the proposition that your ability to fly on an airplane in this country — the world&#8217;s greatest superpower — is contingent on the ability of tens of millions of people to receive fraudulent benefits. That&#8217;s the position of the Republican Party. Give them about three months, and they&#8217;ll be rolling out healthcare subsidies for illegal aliens as well. Everyone knows it.
At this point, it&#8217;d be shocking if you could find anyone in this country who&#8217;s excited to vote for any of these Republican lawmakers in the midterms a year from now. They have refused again and again to take a principled stand on anything — from codifying the DOGE cuts in the federal government, to restricting H1-B visas, to impeaching federal judges who are flagrantly violating their oaths of office. And now, predictably, these same Republicans have decided to waste yet another opportunity with this government shutdown. Once again, nothing will change. Air travel will continue to be dependent on the federal government. Illegal aliens will get more of your tax money. And in January, when the next funding showdown is supposed to take place, we&#8217;ll probably get rolled all over again. That&#8217;s what millions of Republican voters have to look forward to. They can look forward to being taken advantage of, time and time again. The GOP majority can either address these voters directly and give them what they voted for, or they won&#8217;t be the majority for much longer.

US Capitol building at sunset

As The Longest Government Shutdown Ends, The SNAP Scam Returns

air traffic controllers

Air Travel

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Welfare

At long last, well over a month after it started, it appears that we are now nearing the end of the government shutdown, because last night, Democrats in the Senate caved.
Eight of them approved moving forward with the procedural vote, which would move the process toward the end of the government shutdown.
Make no mistake: Democrats lost. President Trump won. The Republicans won.
Democrats themselves know they lost. The win they did get was by showing that they were resistant to President Trump&#8217;s agenda. They did better than they might have otherwise in places like Virginia or Georgia or Mississippi or New Jersey, or even in New York.
In other words, there is a very rabid base of Democrats who are very interested in resisting President Trump. But the reason that the Democratic dam is breaking regarding the government shutdown is because Democrats who are in purple states recognize that if they continue to aimlessly pound their heads against the Trumpian wall, they are going to lose their Senate seats.
That&#8217;s what happened last night.
According to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/11/10/government-shutdown-aca-tax-credits-vote">Axios</a>, which first reported what was going on, “Eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to advance a deal that reverses shutdown RIFs, funds the government until late January, promises a vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits, and funds several agencies. Democratic negotiators acknowledged that negotiations were going nowhere. In the end, fatigue and frustration triumphed over anger and anxiety at President Trump.”
Democrats were attempting to use the fiscal cliff here. They were attempting to use the non-funding of the government as a way to pry open the coffers again to continue the Obamacare subsidies.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2314-will-the-shutdown-finally-end?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
So what, exactly, did Democrats get out of this? A kind of guarantee that people who were fired during the government shutdown would come back to work. The government will remain funded until late January, and it promises a future vote, but not a guarantee on extending that Obamacare subsidy.
That&#8217;s something Senate Majority Leader John Thune had promised weeks ago. That was one of his early offers: Here&#8217;s the deal. You extend the CR, and then we will, in three weeks, have an open vote on whether to extend the Obamacare subsidies. You guys will probably lose because you don&#8217;t have a majority, and then we&#8217;ll move on with our lives.
Democrats rejected that because they were using the shutdown as leverage to get Republicans to restore funding for these Obamacare supplemental subsidies. 
Four former governors, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, which is a very, very purplish state; Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, again in purplish state, and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia — which has a bunch of civilian federal workers — broke the six-week stalemate, joining people like Senator John Fetterman, as well as Nevada Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen.
You’ll notice that all of these people are from purple states. So it&#8217;s very easy for Senator Chuck Schumer from New York — not a purple state — to vote “no” on opening the government. Very, very easy for Senator Alex Padilla from California to vote “no” on opening the government, or for Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts to do so. She&#8217;s not going to lose her seat.
But if you are a Democrat and you are looking at the possibility of losing your seat because you&#8217;re in a purple state, then it was not in your interest for this government shutdown to continue.
The GOP leadership in the House is saying that Congresspeople should be on notice within 48 hours, 36 hours perhaps. Then they need to be back at the Capitol in order to vote.
Democrats are very, very angry at this because they had staked their political stance on the idea that under no circumstances would they reopen the government unless they got what they wanted.
Just before the shutdown, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said, “We&#8217;re going to keep it going.” This is literally right before the Senate voted in order to end the shutdown. He stated, “America under Donald Trump and Republican policies has become far too expensive, while at the same time dealing with the Republican health care crisis that threatens to drive up premiums, co-pays and deductibles to levels that will be unaffordable for working class Americans because of the Republicans’ refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act.”
I love that this is somehow a Republican health care crisis. When Obamacare was created purely by Democrats, it was increasingly subsidized by Democrats. So it&#8217;s a Republican crisis?
If Democrats can&#8217;t get the cost curve down, it&#8217;s a Democratic crisis because Obamacare is a gigantic failure. It has not made Americans healthier in any measurable way, and has not bent the cost curve in any serious way.
The American people are getting very, very tired of this. Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, said that even if the shutdown ends, it&#8217;s going to take a while for these kinks to work themselves through the system.
We have been highlighting the split in the Democratic Party between people who actually want to get things done and people who do not want to get things done, between these so-called moderate Democrats — people like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or John Fetterman in Pennsylvania — and the increasingly progressive, wild-eyed Democrats.
Thus, many Democrats who broke ranks are coming under significant fire.
This was a misbegotten strategy from the very beginning. The only thing it got Democrats was a political win because it got Democrats out to the ballot box.
But — they&#8217;re willing to take the American people hostage, politically speaking, in order to get what they want here.
This is the first government shutdown that I can remember in which the government was shut down — not in order to extract concessions to lower spending — but in order to exact concessions to increase spending.
That&#8217;s an amazing thing to say, “I&#8217;m not going to fund the government so I can get more funding for the government.”
That’s an insane proposition.
And that&#8217;s what Democrats were doing here.

Shutdown Nears End As Democrats Agree To Funding Deal

The Shutdown Looks Done. Trump Won, Democrats Lost.

Ben Shapiro

Democrats

U.S. Senate

News on the economy is all over the place, but a solid thread runs through it: many recent American college graduates can’t find jobs. Not only are employers not hiring, they’re laying off left and right. Amazon and United Parcel Service are each cutting more than 14,000 jobs, and the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/white-collar-jobs-ai-324b749c?st=BLfhsb&amp;reflink=article_email_share">says</a> tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are being cut at other companies.
Yet at the same time, the U.S. immigration system permits thousands of foreign college graduates to enter the job market in direct competition with Americans. Companies employing them don’t have to pay the same payroll taxes as they do when hiring American citizens and permanent residents. This gives foreign students an unfair advantage over American graduates.
The program allowing foreign graduates to work is called Optional Practical Training (OPT). It was <a href="https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/miano-OPT.pdf">started</a> decades ago by the administrative state through regulation, without any express congressional authorization. Over time, and through collusion between Washington and large employers, OPT was expanded into a pathway for foreign students who completed their studies to remain working for years, or indefinitely, in the U.S. while seeking permanent residence.
Given the brutal job market, the underlying premise for OPT no longer applies. Why allow masses of temporary foreign students to remain in the U.S. and enter the work force right out of college when your own graduates can’t get jobs? The argument for eliminating this program has never been stronger. As Lora Ries <a href="https://wng.org/roundups/weighing-the-price-of-100-000-worker-visas-1759852411#:~:text=Ries%20from%20the%20Heritage%20Foundation,preferred%20hiring%20for%20American%20workers.">argues</a>, we need to “allow American students and American workers a fair shake at applying for jobs, being interviewed for jobs, being hired for jobs, and being retained at their jobs.”
<a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/aug/recent-college-grads-bear-brunt-labor-market-shifts">Unemployment</a> of college graduates aged 23-27 is a few percentage points higher than the national average of 4%. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/business/long-term-unemployment-college-grads.html">long-term unemployment</a> rate (more than 6 months out of work) in the country for that age group is 26%, the highest in three years. And of those college graduates who are employed, over half are working in jobs that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-unused-440b2abd">don’t require a degree</a>.
It’s fair to argue that many recent graduates got degrees that are patently useless in a tight market. Anything ending in “studies” comes to mind, or mass-produced degrees from diploma mills whose quality is not respected by employers. But graduates with the vaunted Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math degrees are faring badly, too. Graduate <a href="https://money.com/college-grads-stem-degrees-unemployed/">unemployment</a> for computer engineering graduates was 7.5%, and for physics it was 7.8%.
The reasons for the sudden drop in demand for educated workers are unclear. One cause is that companies are searching for efficiencies and cutting costs in a competitive market. Another major factor is the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies are using AI to streamline their business models from top to bottom, which means they are replacing humans with bots.
Labor-saving robots, now supercharged with AI, are a threat to traditional pathways into the labor market for people. <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-robotics-robots-fulfillment-center">Amazon</a> has over a million of them doing warehouse and shipping work formerly done by people.
We don’t know how the deployment of AI is going to play out. Maybe it will exponentially increase productivity, and we’ll end up in a cashless, Star Trek world where no one works unless they want to. Maybe the machines will take over and wipe us out, as in the Terminator movies. Or maybe AI will be just one more leap forward, like the printing press, electricity, or the internet, that requires a massive adjustment of our labor force and economy.
Whatever the future holds, it is the primary responsibility of the generations who hold the money and power – that’s mostly Baby Boomers and Generation X – to take care that a pathway still exists for coming generations to get jobs and houses, start families, and have a chance to prosper. Student visas for foreign nationals, the OPT program, and work visas are not set in stone. They can be adjusted or even eliminated when the domestic conditions make them unjustifiable.
Congress should end the OPT program while we figure out how to employ, or retrain, the rising graduate workforce of American citizens. Joseph Edlow, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/05/22/snubbing-trump-immigration-nominee-will-end-student-practical-training/">said</a> he wants to “remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school.” That’s a good start.
* * *
Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Woke-Commandments-Must-Obey/dp/1680533614">&#8220;The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)&#8221;</a> from Academica Books.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Trump Says Harvard Should Cap Foreign Students At 15%

The College Lie: How Washington’s Visa Loopholes Hand Good Jobs To Foreign Workers

American Universities

Artificial Intelligence

Big Tech

Corporations

foreign students

Technology

Visas

Firestorm Over Food Stamps Erupts With Funds Set to Expire

The EBT Scam Just Went From Bad To Worse

Amazon

Food Stamps

Walmart

The EBT Program Is A Massive Scam, And The Government Shutdown Just Proved It

Amy Klobuchar

Food

Schumer Shutdown

Taxes

WASHINGTON—The largest union of federal employees is pushing for an end to the government shutdown, dealing a major blow to Democrats as the funding fight drags on.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, on Monday <a href="https://www.afge.org/article/its-past-time-to-end-this-shutdown/">urged</a> the Senate to approve a “clean” continuing resolution to end the stalemate. The union, usually a dependable Democratic <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-aligned-union-breaks-ranks-demands-end-to-govt-shutdown?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Dem-Aligned+Union+Breaks+Ranks%2C+Demands+End+To+Govt+Shutdown">stalwart,</a> all but endorsed Republicans&#8217; plans to end the shutdown in a statement.
“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said, calling the shutdown “an avoidable crisis that is harming families, communities, and the very institutions that hold our country together.”
Kelley did not lay blame with either party, but did call for the Senate to pass a &#8220;clean&#8221; continuing resolution — which Republicans have called for from the beginning of the shutdown fight.
About 1.4 million federal workers missed a paycheck last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a press conference Monday morning, urging Senate Democrats to approve the House-passed continuing resolution.
Johnson added that the House had “done its work” by passing the measure a month ago.
“The Army nurse in San Antonio, the TSA officer in Atlanta, the USDA food safety inspector in Iowa, and hundreds of thousands more like them are being asked to keep our country running without the paychecks that keep their own households afloat,&#8221; Kelley said.
Kelley said the workers are &#8220;patriotic Americans – parents, caregivers, and veterans – forced to work without pay while struggling to cover rent, groceries, gas and medicine because of political disagreements in Washington. That is unacceptable.&#8221;
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said AFGE calling for an end to the shutdown “has a lot of impact,&#8221; Semafor&#8217;s Burgess Everett <a href="https://x.com/burgessev/status/1982902515013186033">reported</a> on X.
“It’s something we will be discussing this week,&#8221; Durbin told the outlet. &#8220;I’m not announcing any change in my position at this time. They&#8217;re our friends. We take them seriously.”
Bloomberg News reporter Erik Wasson <a href="https://x.com/elwasson/status/1982857696937496756">reportedly</a> asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about the union’s statement, but Schumer declined to comment.
The House Freedom Caucus weighed in Monday on X, responding to an NBC report on the union’s stance.
“It’s a bad day for Chuck Schumer when even the AFGE…a union that routinely endorses and supports Democrats…sees how bizarre the Democrats’ position is,” the caucus <a href="https://x.com/freedomcaucus/status/1982858175117484057">wrote on X.</a>
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) told The Daily Wire that AFGE is “rightly calling Democrats out on their political games, and hopefully Senate Democrats will listen.”
“Lawmakers are sent to Washington to govern, but Democrats seem to think their job is to obstruct the agenda of the President of the United States and to jeopardize the livelihoods of the American people,” Emmer said.
Emmer said Americans on “both sides of the aisle are seeing right through the Democrats’ lies and they will be held accountable for their hostage tactics.”
Democrat Sen. John Fetterman (PA) said <a href="https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1982809715831628084">on X</a> that AFGE is “firmly on the right side of this and we should absolutely listen.”
“Our servicemembers, federal workers, and Capitol Police are hurting. It’s one of many reasons why I’ve continuously voted to open our government. We need to end this chaos,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman sided with Republicans on the House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the government, as did Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Angus King (I-ME).
This week, many politicians have highlighted the looming November 1 expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which will affect more than 42 million people.
The SNAP <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program">website</a> currently cites Democrats for failing to reopen the government, stating, “Bottom line, the well has run dry.”
There are currently discussions of a potential bill to pay “certain” federal workers between Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), as reported by <a href="https://x.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1982861472968376606">Punchbowl News</a>.
As of Monday evening, a spokesman for Johnson’s office confirmed talks are “ongoing.”
On the Senate floor Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer <a href="https://x.com/AmberJoCooper/status/1982908995909382282">claimed</a> the Trump administration is “making an intentional choice not to fund SNAP this weekend.”
“The emergency funding is there — the administration is just choosing not to use it. And for those who say the money can’t be moved around so easily, that’s a load of bunk. If the administration can cough up $40 billion for Argentina, they can find money for SNAP by this Saturday,” Schumer said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) <a href="https://x.com/LeaderJohnThune/status/1982893996847555019">maintained</a> that the Senate can reopen the government this week if five “courageous” Democrats vote with them, adding there will be another opportunity to vote to reopen in the coming days.

Federal Employees Hold Rally Calling For End Of Government Shutdown

‘It’s A Bad Day For Chuck Schumer’: Dems Waver As Fed Union Calls For End To Shutdown

John Thune

Labor Unions

Ever since Donald Trump took office, federal judges have undertaken a concerted effort to suspend the power of the Executive Branch, unlike anything else that&#8217;s ever happened in this country. The words &#8220;judicial coup&#8221; do not begin to describe what&#8217;s been going on. In every case — whether they&#8217;re blocking the Trump administration from deleting trans propaganda on federal websites, or from terminating federal employees, or from deploying the National Guard — these individual, unelected federal judges have determined that the president of the United States had somehow overstepped his authority under the Constitution. 
This is obviously an unsustainable situation. If judges are going to overturn every single significant decision the president makes, then the judges have effectively become president. Eventually, something has to give. That&#8217;s why a lot of commentators, myself included, have called on the White House to simply ignore these rulings. Other than impeaching and removing judges — which is impossible, given that Democrats have too many votes in the Senate — ignoring courts that go rogue seems like the only real option. Andrew Jackson did it before, and Donald Trump (who happens to be a big fan of Andrew Jackson) can do it again.
But there is actually one additional approach that the Trump administration could take, before we decide to simply do away with the court system altogether. And based on recent reports, it looks like the White House is seriously considering this particular route. I&#8217;m talking about invoking the Insurrection Act, the federal law that permits the president to federalize the National Guard and deploy U.S. troops for law enforcement purposes in U.S. cities.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1671-it-s-time-to-crush-the-leftist-insurrection-once-and-for-all?elementPosition=1&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
When the Insurrection Act is discussed in the press, of course, it&#8217;s described as the mother of all power grabs. Democrats pretend it hasn&#8217;t been invoked more than two dozen times in this country&#8217;s history, most recently to suppress the L.A. riots. They don&#8217;t want to talk about the fact that several presidents — including some of their heroes, like JFK and FDR — all invoked the law, mainly to enforce racial integration.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Republicans point out, correctly, that the Insurrection Act is necessary to put down lawlessness in cities like Portland and Chicago — lawlessness that&#8217;s reached almost comical levels of absurdity, as police supervisors have made it clear that their officers should not assist federal agents who are being actively attacked. 
Here&#8217;s audio from the Chicago police scanner, to give just one example. 
Dispatchers told officers not to assist federal agents who were being surrounded by a mob. Listen:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
PLAY THE TAPE.
STOP protecting criminals:
“They were requesting the police—we’re not sending.”
Not only did Chicago’s leaders refuse to send support to federal law enforcement officers in danger, now they’re lying about it.
Disgusting. <a href="https://t.co/7hz1dZOv1B">pic.twitter.com/7hz1dZOv1B</a>
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/1975623141725474964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @DHSgov/X.com
“They were requesting the police—we’re not sending.” That&#8217;s the decision that&#8217;s been made by local law enforcement in Chicago (or, more accurately, by the Democrats who run the city). It is an admission — which they also put in writing, by the way — that local police are unable or unwilling to maintain law and order. That is, and has always been, a valid justification for invoking the Insurrection Act and sending in the U.S. military. I don&#8217;t need to recount all of the scenes of violence and anarchy because you&#8217;ve probably seen hours of it at this point.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 JUST IN: COUNTLESS anti-ICE “protestors” have now taken over the streets of Chicago
Maybe CHICAGO should be the next city I visit to expose 🤔 <a href="https://t.co/ucucexyOSq">pic.twitter.com/ucucexyOSq</a>
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) <a href="https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1976095784169836607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @nicksortor/X.com
ICE officers are being shot at. They&#8217;re being ambushed on the streets, run off the road, boxed in, pelted with objects, and so on. Rioters are blocking federal vehicles on the roadways. Mobs are parading through the streets, preventing people from going where they need to be. The mayor of Chicago, meanwhile, is establishing &#8220;ICE-free-zones,&#8221; in a clear effort to interfere with federal law enforcement:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson just announced he signed an executive order creating &#8220;ICE Free Zones&#8221; to ban ICE agents from city property.
This is SICK. He is aiding and abetting criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, traffickers, and gang bangers. <a href="https://t.co/LaMbxaqePP">pic.twitter.com/LaMbxaqePP</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1975210976728518974?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @RapidResponse47/X.com
The red line has always been: state and local governments can decide not to actively assist federal officials, but they can&#8217;t decide to actively interfere with federal officials, either. That&#8217;s how federalism works. It&#8217;s how our whole constitutional system works. But the city of Chicago, and many other cities, have decided to break this covenant. They aren&#8217;t hiding their intentions. As a result, no reasonable person can deny what&#8217;s happening or that the Insurrection Act is the only available remedy to stop the mayhem, as many conservatives have said.
But there is one other major benefit of invoking the Insurrection Act, which a lot of people aren&#8217;t talking about. It would finally force federal judges to openly declare their rebellion against the Executive Branch. The Chicago Police Department has just explicitly declared its own rebellion, as you just heard. And if a single federal judge tries to stand in the way of Donald Trump&#8217;s invocation of the Insurrection Act, then the judiciary would be doing the exact same thing. The judges couldn&#8217;t hide behind legalese or strained interpretations of the law in order to justify their fraudulent decisions. If they attempt to overturn Donald Trump&#8217;s use of the Insurrection Act, the only way they can do it is by admitting that they&#8217;re waging open warfare on a duly elected branch of government.
Here&#8217;s why. The Insurrection Act, by design, leaves no room for judges or lawmakers to intervene. The law is based on the president&#8217;s constitutional authority to act as commander-in-chief of the military, as well as his responsibility to ensure domestic security. 
Article 1, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C15-1/ALDE_00001077/">Section 8</a> of the Constitution states, &#8220;[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.&#8221; 
And with the Insurrection Act, Congress awarded the president the unilateral authority to decide when an insurrection exists, and how to deal with it. 
You can <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I/chapter-13">pull up the law</a> and read it for yourself. Here&#8217;s the relevant portion.
<blockquote>Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s it. There are no qualifiers. There&#8217;s no provision that the president&#8217;s declaration of insurrection has to be &#8220;reasonable&#8221; in the eyes of Congress, or anyone else. There&#8217;s no provision that puts a time limit on the president&#8217;s authority. There isn&#8217;t even a definition of the word &#8220;insurrection.&#8221; It&#8217;s completely up to the president.
If you&#8217;re a blue-haired professor at Berkeley Law School, you might hyperventilate about this. Surely, you might say, there have to be &#8220;checks and balances&#8221; somewhere. But actually, no, there don&#8217;t have to be checks and balances. At some point, one branch of government has to be supreme over the others. There&#8217;s no way to avoid that. It&#8217;s as inevitable as the laws of physics. And the Founders understood that. Yes, they created an intricate system of government, in which the three branches of government serve as a &#8220;check&#8221; on each other&#8217;s power. That&#8217;s the ideal situation. That&#8217;s how things should work. But the Founders also understood that, if things break down, and one branch of government decides to &#8220;check&#8221; another branch into oblivion in an attempt to destroy the entire country and our democratic system of government, then there has to be a failsafe. There has to be a &#8220;break glass in case of emergency&#8221; type of safeguard. And the Insurrection Act — which again, is based very closely on the Constitutional text — is that safeguard. The Insurrection Act says, if things get really, really bad, then the elected president of the United States — who has more of a democratic mandate than any court, or any lawmaker in Congress — can use the military to restore order.
To be clear, undoubtedly, Left-wing judges would try to issue injunctions anyway. I&#8217;m not denying that. But the point is that, like the Chicago police department, they&#8217;d have to be very, very transparent about what they were doing. The Insurrection Act doesn&#8217;t give them any room to weasel out of it. They&#8217;d have to state, essentially, that they don&#8217;t care about the Constitution, or laws passed by Congress, and that they&#8217;re declaring open warfare against the Executive Branch.
Additionally, many of these judges — and all of the Left — are on the record already stating that January 6 was an &#8220;insurrection.&#8221; Several courts, including the Supreme Court of the state of Colorado, attempted to kick Trump off the ballot in the last election, on the theory that he had committed an &#8220;insurrection.&#8221; So they&#8217;ve already gone out of their way to declare, in no uncertain terms, that a group of old ladies wandering around the Capitol for a few hours constitutes an &#8220;insurrection.&#8221; Their standard is that, if a few windows are broken, and someone sits on Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s desk and steals her lectern, then an &#8220;insurrection&#8221; has taken place.
If that&#8217;s the standard, then there is no conceivable way, morally or logically, to argue that cities like Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles aren&#8217;t in a state of open insurrection against the United States. If a mob loitering inside the Capitol for a few hours counts as an &#8220;insurrection,&#8221; then coordinated and violent attacks on law enforcement, endorsed by state and local officials, certainly qualify as well. They have boxed themselves into this corner. There&#8217;s no way around it. 
That&#8217;s why the arguments from the Left are growing increasingly frantic and incoherent. On social media at the moment, various left-wing figures are doing their best to stoke outrage because they suspect a declaration of insurrection is coming. 
Here&#8217;s Robert Reich, for example. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Trump wants to invoke the Insurrection Act to punish anyone who opposes him, and he’s following a four point plan to do it.
Here’s what you need to know about it — and some thoughts on how to respond. <a href="https://t.co/QZZOSM4aON">pic.twitter.com/QZZOSM4aON</a>
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) <a href="https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1976053389143179695?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @RBReich/X.com
This is what their argument is going to be. They&#8217;re claiming that Trump wants to round up his political opponents and anyone else he doesn&#8217;t like. Of course, that&#8217;s precisely what Joe Biden&#8217;s administration did. They jailed every Trump aide — and ultimately Trump himself — in order to prevent a democratic election from taking place. And Joe Biden didn&#8217;t need the Insurrection Act to do any of that.
What people like Robert Reich won&#8217;t do, even though it would solve the whole problem, is admit what they&#8217;re really interested in. In the first Trump administration, the argument from the Left was that he &#8220;put kids in cages&#8221; and &#8220;separated families&#8221; or whatever. That argument never made any sense — families are separated all the time when the parents commit crimes — but it&#8217;s what they went with. This time around, their argument is even more tenuous. They&#8217;re saying that ICE agents are the modern-day Gestapo because they&#8217;re rounding up illegal aliens while wearing masks and making lawful arrests in public places. They say ICE is arresting &#8220;American citizens,&#8221; even though there isn&#8217;t a single case of ICE deporting an actual American citizen, anywhere. (There is a case of an illegal alien taking her children with her, as she was deported, which is obviously a completely different scenario.)
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What&#8217;s really going on here, although no one on the Left wants to say it, is that the Democrat Party demands open borders. They do not want any federal immigration enforcement of any kind. That is their platform. But they never say it out loud, explicitly, because they understand how unconvincing and unpopular it is. So Leftist judges hide behind various legalese, while Democrat activists make outlandish claims with no basis in fact. That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re forced to do. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s been happening for the last 10 months.
As a result, we have arrived at the absolute limit of &#8220;checks and balances&#8221; in our system of government. And if the courts and local governments want to keep pushing things, they will rapidly find out that, under our Constitution, they will lose any one-on-one battle with the Executive Branch. That is how our Constitution was structured. It&#8217;s how the Insurrection Act was structured. In an ideal situation, of course, this failsafe wouldn&#8217;t be necessary. We shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on a final line of defense like this. But at the moment, we do. Democrats are daring the administration to invoke the constitutional response to their lawlessness and depravity. In response, the administration has no other choice but to follow the guidance of the Founders and send in the military to quell an insurrection that has rapidly spiraled out of control.

National Guard To Be Deployed In Portland, Oregon

It’s Time To Crush The Leftist Insurrection Once And For All

Chicago

Deportations

illegal immigrants

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

insurrection

Judges

Portland

Along with Tulsi Gabbard, who now serves as Director of National Intelligence, three Republican members of Congress were surveilled by the now-defunct TSA “Quiet Skies” program, independent journalist Matt Taibbi <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/not-only-tulsi-three-members-of-congress">reported</a> on Tuesday.
According to documents handed over to the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, two of the three Republican representatives were placed on a surveillance list before they were elected, but remained there after joining Congress. According to the Senate committee’s notes, “a cursory review would have revealed them to be a member of Congress, or a decorated U.S. veteran or service member,” Taibbi reported.
The names of the members of Congress and the states they represent were redacted in the government documents.
The TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program, which began in 2010, came under intense scrutiny last year after whistleblowers revealed that Gabbard — then a former Democratic congresswoman who was highly critical of the Democratic Party — was followed by Air Marshals and bomb-sniffing dogs under the TSA program. “Quiet Skies” was ended by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in June. Noem <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/05/secretary-noem-ends-politicized-tsa-watchlist-program-has-failed-prevent-single">said</a>, “It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration — weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends.”
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The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee also revealed that TSA approved a watchlist, or “enhanced screening,” for people “suspected of traveling to the National Capital Region” in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The watchlist was deemed appropriate for people “believed to pose an elevated risk” but for whom “there is a current lack of specific information relating to unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol.”
Gabbard was surveilled on at least eight flights during the summer of 2024, according to documents handed over to the committee. The former Democratic lawmaker was listed as a “possible affiliate” of a member of the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). According to The New York Times, Gabbard landed on the list after she attended an event “at the Vatican that was organized by a European businessman who appeared on an F.B.I. watch list.”
A text exchange between Marshals assigned to follow Gabbard from July 22, 2024, also pointed to the TSDB as the reason that Gabbard was placed on the list.
“So Gabbard is an affiliate with a TSDB, and since she’s no longer in Congress that’s probably why she hit for the rule,” one Marshal wrote.
“Yeah I talked with [redacted] about it and that’s the conclusion we came to as well,” a second Marshal replied.
“Cool cool.”
One former Marshal, however, told Taibbi that the decision to place Gabbard on the list wasn’t necessarily made by an automated database.
“Obviously, there is a way for human beings to influence the decision tree above our level,” the former Marshal said.
Taibbi testified before the Senate committee on Tuesday and ripped the federal government’s “Quiet Skies” surveillance program.
“Before Quiet Skies was discontinued by this administration, it was a symbol of the steep decline of federal enforcement since 9/11. The government spent $200 million a year following up to 50 people a day for a program that in its history never once led to an arrest, or thwarted a single criminal act,” Taibbi told the committee. “Despite its demonstrated inutility and grave civil liberties concerns it was re-funded year after year because this is what our government does now: it gathers information on its own citizens as an end in itself.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
The full opening statement of <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mtaibbi</a> <a href="https://t.co/NJ2fRqNeWX">https://t.co/NJ2fRqNeWX</a> <a href="https://t.co/TaGBhBfYY1">pic.twitter.com/TaGBhBfYY1</a>
— Emily Chapple (@blonde4thewin) <a href="https://twitter.com/blonde4thewin/status/1973065367527260667?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

TSA, Tulsi Gabbard

Three GOP Congress Members Were Placed Under TSA Surveillance Program That Targeted Tulsi Gabbard

Politics

Republicans

Surveillance

Tulsi Gabbard

As conditions in northern Nigeria continue to deteriorate, the U.S. State Department inexplicably approved a potential sale of <a href="https://www.dsca.mil/Press-Media/Major-Arms-Sales/Article-Display/Article/4273754/nigeria-munitions-precision-bombs-and-precision-rockets">$346 million</a> in arms to the Nigerian military. The multimillion-dollar deal comes as northern Nigeria further descends into violent turmoil as killings, kidnappings, and raids continue to destabilize communities throughout the region.
After years of <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/">working in the region</a>, I&#8217;ve seen arms deals like this before. They rarely, if ever, work. In fact, they often make things worse. The U.S. has a terrible habit of assuming money or weapons can resolve every conflict, while ignoring the unique cultural and historical factors that created the problem in the first place.
The Nigerian government indeed needs assistance in providing and maintaining security. Terrorist groups like Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), Boko Haram, and a host of factional bandit groups have successfully destabilized nearly the entire northern territory of the country. The Nigerian military is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges.
The International Society for Civil Liberties has calculated that more than <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/christians-killed-nigeria-religion-2116416">7,000 Christians were killed</a> during the first 220 days of 2025. Although the violence is predominantly focused on the Christian community, Muslims are suffering at the hands of these extremist groups, too. Just this month, armed extremists entered a mosque in northern Nigeria and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/bandits-kill-least-27-northern-nigeria-mosque-attack-officials-say-2025-08-19/">killed 27 worshippers</a>. This year is already the deadliest in recent memory, and by year&#8217;s end, it will very likely be the deadliest ever in Nigeria’s history.
In the face of rising violence and extremism, from 2000 to 2021, the U.S. State Department dumped $232 million in “<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/chrhs/files/chrhs/imce/partnerships/Civ-Mil/Nigeria-May-2022-Factsheet.pdf">security sector assistance</a>,” $593 million in foreign military sales, and $305 million in “direct commercial sales” from private companies into Nigeria. All in an effort to stop the rise of terrorism and suppress newly formed terrorist groups, including Boko Haram.
Did it work? Absolutely not.
Since Boko Haram’s formation in 2002, they have only grown in strength and numbers. What started as a handful of extremists with Jihadi ideals to rid northern Nigeria of anything western has grown into an army of thousands. And while the U.S. was still throwing money and weapons at the problem, another, more menacing group was forming. In 2015, ISWAP was born when a group within Boko Haram defected and pledged its allegiance to ISIS. This group has grown into an army of 20,000.
While both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses tried to solve the problem with money and arms, the problem only grew. 
By the end of 2020, an estimated <a href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/nigeria-s-silent-slaughter-62-000-christians-murdered-since-2000">60,000 people were directly killed</a> by the violence of these two groups alone. And according to a 2021 report by the United Nations Development Programme, the insurgency had <a href="https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/ng/Assessing-the-Impact-of-Conflict-on-Development-in-NE-Nigeria---The-Report.pdf">caused the death of 350,000 people</a> from the conflict’s indirect consequences (like lack of food, healthcare, etc).
Anyone looking at the policy of selling arms to Nigeria would be hard pressed to say, “Job well done.”
Arms sales to Nigeria are a debacle for two reasons. First, Nigeria is notorious for its corruption. Corruption is woven into the very fabric of Nigeria’s culture. As quickly as the U.S. sends money and arms, the resources are often diverted from their intended destination.
In 2016, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-military-some-officers-selling-arms-to-boko-haram/3493038.html">Nigeria’s military was forced to admit</a> that many of its officers were selling arms and ammunition to Boko Haram and fraudulently diverting hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted to help suppress the insurgency. One four-star general was even accused of <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-military-some-officers-selling-arms-to-boko-haram/3493038.html">skimming $24 million</a> to build a shopping center in Abuja. He was relieved of his command but never convicted.
For a State Department that seems set on getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse, I don’t think sending unsupervised money and weapons to Nigeria is a wise step in the right direction.
Secondly, the Nigerian military has been known to make serious mistakes that cost innocent lives. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0y30766kjo">latest example</a> happened in May, when the Nigerian Air Force bombed a local self-defense group, mistaking them for insurgents. Ironically, the <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/nigeria/">State Department&#8217;s Annual Human Rights Report</a> warning that Nigerian air strikes kill civilians was released the same week the department approved the latest weapons sale.
The reality is this: Nigeria needs help to suppress the growth of terrorist groups in the north and they cannot fight stone-cold killers with peace signs and flowers.
However, this is an extremely complex problem, and the solution is not unilateral. It will take a multi-layered approach to see any degree of success. Any funding and weapons should never be approved without a plan for oversight and strict accountability – something that has never been part of our weapons aid in the past.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I know <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/">northern Nigeria</a>. I know the language, the culture, and the people. And one thing I am sure of is that if all the U.S. is prepared to do is throw guns, ammunition, and money at the problem, we will only get more of the same.
* * *
<a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/ourfounder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brad Brandon</a> is the founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Across Nigeria</a>. Since 2018, he has been actively serving in predominantly high-risk, highly persecuted areas like Northern Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

military equipment ammunition and camouflage uniform

Why The Latest U.S. Arms Deal With Nigeria Will Only Fuel More Violence

Africa

Military Weapons

Nigeria

A week ago, President Donald Trump <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2025/08/11/trump-says-marijuana-rescheduling-will-be-decided-within-weeks/">said</a> that he would soon decide whether to move cannabis from Schedule I to III for purposes of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA), which would take marijuana out of the category of drugs that cannot be used for any purpose. Doing so would be a huge mistake. Huge.
Congress placed cannabis in Schedule I — the category for drugs that have no legitimate medical use, that are potentially addictive, and have no safe use even under a physician’s supervision — when it passed the CSA 55 years ago. While Congress empowered the U.S. Attorney General, after consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to reschedule cannabis, in the ensuing half-century, no Republican or Democratic attorney general has done so, and no court has ruled that they must do so.
In 2023, however, cannabis advocates finally found a friend. Admiral Rachel L. Levine, HHS Assistant Secretary for Health under President Biden, <a href="http://www.jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2834954">recommended</a> that Attorney General Merrick Garland transfer cannabis into Schedule III. To justify that conclusion, Levine invented a newfangled test that relied heavily on the fact that multiple states have adopted medical cannabis programs. As a matter of law, that rationale is wrong for multiple reasons.
First, Congress could not have been clearer that it is the exclusive responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the states, to decide whether a drug is safe, effective, and uniform. Levine’s rationale effectively and unlawfully transfers decision-making authority from the FDA to the states.
Second, the FDA has never approved the botanical form of cannabis as a safe, effective, and uniformly made drug. The FDA has approved the synthesis of compounds found in the plant by legitimate pharmaceutical companies, but has not approved the interstate distribution of the cannabis plant enjoyed by Cheech and Chong and Harold and Kumar fans.
Third, the FDA could not find that the cannabis plant is safe, effective, and uniformly made.
Start with its safety. The cannabis sold today is <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">far more powerful</a> than the version smoked at Woodstock. At that time, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content — the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis — was 3-6%. Now, some concentrated cannabis products can have a 90% THC content. That difference is like comparing near beer to grain alcohol.
Growing evidence also links cannabis use to a host of <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">adverse physical outcomes</a>, such as oral, head, and neck cancers; cardiovascular disorders; pulmonary disease; and numerous adverse psychological effects, such earlier onset of psychosis; reduced IQ; childhood poisonings; amotivational syndrome; increased school absenteeism; and a reduced likelihood of graduating high school, enrolling in a university, or completing higher degree requirements. Heavy cannabis users and people who begin its use as minors and continue into adulthood are particularly <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110381/witnesses/HHRG-116-IF14-Wstate-VolkowN-20200115.pdf">susceptible</a> to these harms.
Plus, botanical cannabis can be adulterated with a host of dangerous, unhealthy, or downright disgusting contaminants. Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Congress in 2020 that “individuals across the country are using cannabis strains and extracts that have not undergone the rigorous clinical trials required to show that they are safe and effective for medical use, and are not regulated for consistency or quality.”
As I explained in an <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">earlier article</a>, among the “hodgepodge” of dangerous contaminants found in the cannabis sold today are E. coli, fungi, mold, toxins, hazardous chemical solvents such as butane and propane, pesticides, heavy metals (such as arsenic, lead, and mercury), and other harmful and disgusting substances such as formaldehyde and insects. The FDA would never allow such contaminants to be present in any drug sold to the public.
Cannabis can also lead to physical dependence in users. Heavy or long-term use can lead a person to develop a tolerance to THC, requiring ever greater quantities of the chemical to experience the same euphoria. As drug policy experts Wayne Hall and Rosalie Pacula have explained, there is a 10% risk of addiction for people who have ever used cannabis, a 20-33% for people who use it more frequently, and a 50% risk — &#8220;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">a coin flip</a>” — for people who use it daily. Driving while stoned can, of course, lead to motor vehicle accidents that maim or kill pedestrians or other drivers and their passengers.
Keep in mind that the FDA has <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">never</a> given approval for a drug to be smoked. Why? There is no uniform depth or length of any one inhalation, and no uniform number of inhalations that users follow. Moreover, the nation concluded over 60 years ago that smoking burnt carbon products damages a smoker’s health, which explains why major medical institutions such as the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Royal College of Physicians have <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">not</a> recommended smoking as a legitimate drug delivery system.
The raw cannabis plant also is not “effective” for purposes of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Only a handful of controlled studies have examined whether pot can be used as a legitimate treatment for disease or injury; the results are <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/09/17-2-Larkin-Madras.pdf">inadequate</a> to draw any scientific conclusion.
The most common justification offered is that its psychoactive calming effect makes it a legitimate analgesic alternative for pain. But that argument is medically <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2019/09/17-2-Larkin-Madras.pdf">unsound</a>. Cannabis is too weak to substitute for opioids as a treatment for severe pain — indeed, it hinders cessation of opioid use by anyone trying to kick an opioid <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4127123/pdf/nihms609765.pdf">dependency</a> — and scientific proof that THC is a valid treatment for lower levels of pain is also lacking.
To be sure, smoking a joint can get you “high,” but that is not the test for a medicine’s effectiveness. As Dr. Peter Bach, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-weed-is-medicine-so-is-budweiser-11547770981?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAh7LaDEYv_vcqs-izvRtTLHvE4_TMMU_qu3NyDxy9OXughPlX3zaBL-&amp;gaa_ts=689c8e99&amp;gaa_sig=tzI2Ti78lH5zRhqIjd3w0ZVcT308pAa8r1GA3Re1URauoN8dYXnoBs5EqZYAmoitDwKaFsuYPpeZooGzKZ9AwA%3D%3D">explained</a>, “[E]very intoxicant would pass that sort of test because you don’t experience pain as acutely when you are high. If weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser.”
Finally, the cannabis plant is not a <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">uniformly made product</a>. As Brian Thomas and Mahmoud ElSohly <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">explained</a> in their book The Analytical Chemistry of Cannabis, “The number of parameters on which cannabis can vary is enormous,” and differs according to “strain, growing conditions, harvesting methods and handling,” to “storage and processing of the raw material to combining them with a wide variety of foods and other excipients in manufacturing, and to “methods of administration (eating, smoking, ‘vaping,’ applying to mucous membranes)” and so forth.
Botanical cannabis also varies according to potency and the presence of cannabinoids (i.e., biochemically active compounds), which tends to <a href="http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SR275.pdf">offset or moderate</a> the potential adverse effects of high THC consumption, such as anxiety, cognitive impairment, amotivational syndrome, dependence or addiction, and psychosis.
In sum, the Levine recommendation from 2023 is wrong as a matter of law and medically unsound, indeed dangerous. If the President truly wants to Make America Healthy Again, he should reject that recommendation.
* * *
Paul J. Larkin is the John, Barbara &amp; Victoria Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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