From:: Daily Signal – Feed

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that he wouldn’t allow transgender individuals to serve in the military:

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

I think he made the right decision—and as someone who lived as trans-female for several years, I should know.

When I discovered Congress voted earlier this month to not block funding for transgender-related hormone therapies and sex change surgeries, I wondered if they considered how devastating this will be to the fitness, readiness, and morale of our combat ready troops.

In July, the House of Representatives voted down Missouri Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would have banned the military from funding such treatments.

Paying for transition-related surgeries for military service members and their families is beyond comprehensible.

Perhaps they have forgotten that our military was forged to be the world’s strongest fighting force, not a government-funded, politically correct, medical sex change clinic for people with gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria, the common diagnosis for one who feels at odds with his or her birth gender, develops from prolonged anxiety and depression. People are not born that way.

The “proof” for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is having strongly held feelings—but feelings can and often do change over time.

The military is expected to prepare its members in warfare: to kill, destroy, and break …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

Florida truck driver James Matthew Bradley isn’t the mastermind of the human smuggling ring that led to the grisly deaths of 10 illegal immigrants in his rig, which authorities found at a San Antonio Walmart over the weekend.

He’s just a cog in the machine.

Bradley may now face the death penalty for transporting up to 100 people crammed in the trailer of his 18-wheeler. But what about the open-borders overlords making a real killing off this insatiable racket?

I’m looking at you, America-bashing corruptocrats in Mexico.

For years, our nation has been subjected to endless complaints, race-baiting insults, and vicious attacks by politicians south of the border.

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon trashed our immigration laws on U.S. soil before the California state legislature.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox dropped F-bombs at President Donald Trump and millions of law-abiding Americans who support construction of an effective border wall.

Current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took to CNN’s airwaves to bash U.S. citizens who support strong borders as “exclusionary and discriminatory.”

Last year, Nieto defiantly proclaimed at the United Nations that “there are no barriers that can stop either the movement of people or the fusion of cultures.”

Meddling Mexican consular officials in the U.S. have lobbied aggressively from New York to Texas to California for mass amnesty, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, discounted tuition for illegal immigrant students, and systematic sabotage of interior enforcement and deportation policies.

Armed incursions by the Mexican military have targeted our immigration enforcement agents for years.

After vehemently denying a Mexican government helicopter fired on Border Patrol personnel in 2014, our “friends” were forced to admit the incident happened when Judicial Watch obtained homeland security documents detailing the attack near Sells, Arizona, on the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation.

In fact, Department of Homeland Security records have tracked at least “300 documented incursions by Mexican military and …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

Some House Republicans are taking another shot at blocking funding for gender transition surgeries in the military, projected to cost about $3.7 billion over the next decade.

Earlier this month, 23 House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat an amendment by Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., to block the funding for transgender treatments in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. The NDAA sets priorities for military spending.

“We are $20 trillion in debt and the taxpayers … are projected to spend $3.7 billion in the next 10 years for sex-reassignment surgeries,” @RepScottPerry says.

The military budget is already strained, said Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation.

Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general, recalled one enlistee diagnosed with asthma who would need an inhaler. Even though he wanted to serve, he couldn’t.

“We don’t permit others to join the military if we know they will require future medical treatment,” Spoehr told The Daily Signal. “I don’t know why it would be different here.”

However, Spoehr said he wouldn’t want to delay the entire appropriations bill.

“I don’t want to see a continuing resolution,” Spoehr said. “I hope Congress can do the right thing and pass the bill and pass the amendment.”

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., has offered an amendment to the “Make America Safe Act,” which could be voted on this week. This is the Defense Department appropriations bill that essentially funds the NDAA priorities.

Dan Holler, vice president of communications and government relations at Heritage Action for America, said Heritage Action supports the Perry amendment, but doesn’t yet have a position on the larger bill.

Heritage Action previously endorsed the Hartzler amendment to the NDAA.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis delayed admitting new, openly transgender military members until after Jan. 1, when the matter can be reviewed. The NDAA looks ahead at funding priorities for …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

Here’s part of President Donald Trump’s speech in Poland:

The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

After this speech, which was warmly received by Poles, the president encountered predictable criticism. Most of the criticism reflected gross ignorance and dishonesty.

One example of that ignorance was penned in The Atlantic magazine by Peter Beinart, a contributing editor and associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York.

Beinart said, “Donald Trump referred 10 times to ‘the West’ and five times to ‘our civilization.’ His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means.”

He added, “The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.”

Intellectual elites argue that different cultures and their values are morally equivalent. That’s ludicrous. Western culture and values are superior to all others.

I have a few questions for those who’d claim that such a statement is untrue or smacks of racism and Eurocentrism.

Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value?

Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent?

In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment, and education.

Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

Immigration hawks and law enforcement–two key elements of the coalition that helped elect Donald Trump as president–rushed to the defense of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday, as Trump continued his public criticism of his longtime political ally.

“We will see what happens. Time will tell,” @POTUS says.

Trump could face grave political consequences if he fires Sessions over his frustration with a special counsel’s expanding Russia investigation, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“This would do broad and long-lasting harm to the Trump administration,” Krikorian told The Daily Signal.

“Other Cabinet officials would wonder if he would do this to Jeff Sessions–his original supporter–what will he do to us?” Krikorian said.

As a conservative U.S. senator from Alabama and former state and federal prosecutor, Sessions gave important early backing to Trump that was a rare show of respect from a Washington fixture when many politicos wrote off the celebrity businessman and developer.

“There is a lot Trump supporters will forgive, because they can say: ‘At least Jeff Sessions is the attorney general.’ Krokorian said. “If Jeff Sessions is not the attorney general, you don’t have that clause at the end of sentences.”

In the Senate, Sessions routinely sought to hold the line on illegal immigration and its costs to American taxpayers, helping block amnesty proposals promoted by both President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush.

Sessions became the first senator to endorse Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

The president especially could irk social conservatives, opponents of illegal immigration, and law enforcement officers if he pushes Sessions out.

“Attorney General Sessions has proven beyond any doubt his commitment to enforcing the law, and particularly the immigration laws that have been neglected for decades to the detriment of American workers,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a group that favors …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

The jobs of 89 federal workers involved in estimating the budget impact of legislation in Congress would be eliminated under a proposal from members of the House’s upstart conservative caucus.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said Monday that members would deploy an obscure rule that allows a House member to seek changes in an agency by offering an amendment during the budget process.

Called the Holman rule, it dates to the decade after the Civil War, hasn’t been used since President Ronald Reagan’s first term, and was revived by House Republicans when the new Congress convened in January.

Federal News Radio reported that the entire Budget Analysis Division of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, comprising 89 employees and about $15 million in salaries, would be “abolished” under the amendment offered by Meadows and three other Republicans–Reps. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

Meadows and the other three House members attached the amendment cutting the CBO to a so-called “minibus” of spending bills for fiscal year 2018 that includes defense, military construction, veterans affairs, energy, and water, according to Federal News Radio.

The Holman rule “gives us the tool to go in and cut the funding without cutting an entire agency,” Meadows said in an appearance at the National Press Club.

Cutting personnel at the Congressional Budget Office who “score” the cost and other effects of legislation such as the main House and Senate health care bills is where the caucus decided to begin, he said.

The Freedom Caucus chairman said that independent CBO process could be replaced by aggregate scores of budgetary impact from think tanks, and he named American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and Urban Institute.

“We ought to take a score from Heritage, from AEI, …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed

Hostility toward religion is on the rise in the United States, according to a new report.

A report recently released by the Family Research Council shows an increase in the number of incidents involving “religious freedom violations” since the first report was released in July of 2014. The original report spanned over a decade and contained 90 incidents. In the last three years, 69 new incidents have been added.

“The recent spike in government driven religious hostility is sadly not surprising, especially considering the Obama administration’s antagonism toward biblical Christianity,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in a statement. “The report underscores the legitimacy of the actions taken by the Trump administration to end the policies and practices in federal agencies that fan the flames of this religious intolerance.”

Perkins added the report’s findings also show “ the growing courage of Christians, especially young Christians, to defend both their faith and their freedoms.”

The report found that antagonism toward religious beliefs on sexuality was fueling much of the increase:

“Hostility to religious beliefs on natural marriage and human sexuality … [included] 42 incidents in the report’s first edition. In the time since then, 48 new incidents have been added to these sections. Thus, the number of these religious freedom violations more than doubled …”

In the introduction to the report, the Family Research Council writes that the attacks on religious teaching on marriage and sexuality “is the product of more insidious forces which ultimately will erode civil liberties for all Americans, even if they hold a different viewpoint than our own.”

Included in the religious liberty violations listed in the report was one about a survey distributed by a major financial firm.

In 2014, JP Morgan Chase, a vocal advocate of LGBT rights, sent out a survey to its employees …read more

From:: Daily Signal – Feed