By Ginny Montalbano

First lady Melania Trump caused a stir this week when she publicly called for the removal of deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel. While this particular statement was unprecedented, it is a long-held tradition that the nation’s first ladies have influence in their husbands’ administrations. The mainstream media is all over this story, and it’s a reminder that they haven’t always covered the first lady fairly.

We’re dedicated to calling out double standards, hypocrisy, and media bias every week—and there is a lot of it. But sometimes it’s important to shine a light on positive examples.

Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw, a veteran, was the target of a poorly received joke made by Pete Davidson on “Saturday Night Live” regarding the eye he lost in an IED explosion in Afghanistan.

The “Today” show had Crenshaw on and had a fair interview that highlighted the civility and unity shown by Crenshaw when he agreed to actually go on “SNL” and roast Davidson back, but more importantly, forgive and recognize Davidson’s dad, who was a firefighter killed in 9/11.

To get the latest in outrageous media bias, be sure to follow us on Facebook, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and send us your Media Misses to [email protected].

The post Media Misses: Coverage of Melania vs. Michelle appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Thomas Jipping

Rumors swirl that the Senate, originally set to adjourn on Dec. 14, may pack it up a week earlier. Since Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after the election that confirming judges would be his “top priority” for the rest of the 115th Congress, let’s take stock.

We are in the longest period of triple-digit judicial vacancies since the early 1990s, when Congress created 85 new judicial positions. More than half of the current vacancies are designated “judicial emergencies” because the positions have been open so long that they’re worsening judicial caseloads.

Vacancies today are 13 percent higher than when President Donald Trump took office. Four of the last five presidents had reduced vacancies by an average of 19 percent at this point.

The Senate has so far confirmed 84 judges in the 115th Congress. The average for Presidents Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama at this point was 81. As a percentage of the president’s nominees, however, the current confirmation rate of 55 percent lags behind the past average of 74 percent.

>>> Check out The Heritage Foundation’s Judicial Appointment Tracker

Since Congress expands the judiciary now and then, it’s useful to consider confirmation totals as a percentage of judicial positions. By this measure, the 115th Congress ranks 46th among the 58 congresses since the turn of the 20th century.

That helps put in perspective where we are today, so let’s turn to the opportunity that still remains in the 115th Congress.

Trump has been making nominations, and the Judiciary Committee has been holding confirmation hearings, at a much faster clip than in the past.

As a result, 32 judicial nominees, some of whom were first nominated more than a year ago, are ready today for a final Senate vote. That’s only a few more than the 27 Obama nominees confirmed by the Democrat-led Senate after the …read more

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By Evie Fordham

More than 3.6 million middle and high school students were current e-cigarette users in 2018, a “dramatic” uptick that ended years of decline in overall youth tobacco use, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published in a survey Thursday.

The FDA released the e-cigarette portion of its National Youth Tobacco Survey early as it cracks down on tobacco companies like Juul Labs, which the agency accuses of pushing flavored products that appeal to teens and get them hooked on nicotine.

The number of high school students who reported vaping in the previous 30 days—what the FDA defines as “current e-cigarette users”—skyrocketed 78 percent between 2017 and 2018 to 3.05 million, according to the survey. That’s roughly 21 percent of high schoolers, according to the FDA.

E-cigarette use among middle schoolers shot up by 48 percent to 570,000, or 4.9 percent of middle school students, during the same time.

The FDA linked the increases with the prevalence of discreet e-cigarettes like those sold by Juul Labs, which has become a multibillion-dollar company since its products first hit markets in 2015. Juul’s products are so small students often bring them to class and take hits when teachers aren’t looking, reported California Healthline.

“These products … have a high nicotine content and come in appealing fruit and candy flavors,” the FDA stated in a Thursday press release. “The increased popularity of e-cigarettes among youth raises a number of other health concerns: risk of addiction to nicotine early on in life; potential harm from nicotine exposure to the developing adolescent brain; and exposure to chemicals associated with adverse health effects.”

After rumors of an FDA crackdown, Juul said Tuesday it is deactivating its Facebook and Instagram accounts, where the company posted photos that made using Juuls seem glamorous and mature, reported MarketWatch.

“Juul’s social media marketing fueled …read more

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By James Gattuso

Neomi Rao, the Trump administration’s regulatory “czar,” may soon have a new job. On Tuesday, she was nominated to fill the vacant seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals left by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Rao is a good choice for the D.C. circuit, considered the second most important court in the land. Her nomination, however, leaves a hole in the administration’s regulatory reform efforts.

Since last year, Rao has served as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Often called the most important federal agency no one has heard of, OIRA is tasked with reviewing new federal rules to ensure that they are necessary and consistent with the president’s policies.

Since last year, as the agency’s administrator, Rao has spearheaded efforts to reduce the burden of red tape on Americans. In a report released last month, Rao trumpeted the administration’s successes in that struggle.

Her clearest success was in reducing the number of new regulatory burdens being imposed on American consumers each year. The number of significant new rules coming out of the administration is now lower than at any time since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration.

Rao also worked to roll back existing regulations, with the goal of not just limiting, but actually reducing the burden on Americans. Despite her best efforts, however, less than $1.6 billion in annual costs have been taken from their shoulders. And achieving such rollbacks will only get harder in the future.

The “deregulation” achieved thus far has largely been simply undoing the out-of-control regulatory excesses of the Obama years, which still is costing Americans over $120 billion annually. But many of the costliest targets among the Obama rules have already been challenged, if not always successfully repealed. And addressing pre-Obama regulations will be an even more difficult task, …read more

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By Katrina Trinko

On this week’s “Problematic Women” edition of The Daily Signal podcast, we cover the “sex recession,” the fanfare surrounding former first lady Michelle Obama’s new book, and the absurd new ad promoting gender-neutral clothing. Plus: We cover a heartwarming push from the Down syndrome community.

We also cover these stories:

• Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., says he won’t vote for any of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees until a bill protecting Robert Mueller is brought up for a vote.
• More teens are using e-cigarettes, and the government’s not happy. The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that unless stores could check for age, they can’t sell certain flavors of e-cigarettes.
• CNN’s Jim Acosta is still fighting the White House to get his press credential back. Judge Timothy Kelly will issue a preliminary decision today as to whether the White House has to give him his press credential back.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

The post Podcast: The Consequences of the Sexual Revolution Continue appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Rachel del Guidice

Conservative Republicans are calling for a busy lame-duck session of Congress between now and Jan. 3, when Democrats will retake the majority in—and control of—the House.

“Republicans still have an opportunity to do what we said,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

“We should fund the border-security wall, pass a farm bill that requires able-bodied adults to work if they receive welfare, and keep working to hold the FBI and [Justice Department] accountable for their misconduct during and after the 2016 election,” Jordan said.

Funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies runs out Dec. 7, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday that he would like to see the Republican Congress do what it can to balance the budget before Democrats take over the House in the 116th Congress after the first of the year.

“I would like to see my conference actually pass my resolution to balance the budget,” Biggs said.

“We’ve got seven portions of the budget, seven bills you are going to see wrapped into one,” which will probably come out around Dec. 7, he said.

“I’m just so tired of us saying that we really care about balancing the budget, but we are not going to be able to touch that for two years,” Biggs said.

The Arizona lawmaker said he thinks House Republicans should work overtime to protect the gains they have made from attacks once House Democrats take back power.

Congress needs to be willing to come here and work next week, through Thanksgiving. I think we need to work the last two weeks in December or three weeks, or whatever they are going to do, to try to get out super-early.

I think we need …read more

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By John-Michael Seibler

Recently released documents from a lawsuit involving the Obama administration’s “Operation Choke Point” are casting more light on federal financial regulators’ unlawful shakedown of disfavored businesses and their financial institutions.

The documents also show how tempting and easy it could be for state bureaucrats to launch similar operations, so long as their legislatures empower them with broad regulatory authority.

Now, just such a scheme is coming to light in New York, where the National Rifle Association has sued Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Department of Financial Services for allegedly threatening banks and insurers into severing business ties with the association.

While the Justice Department deserves credit for denouncing Operation Choke Point in August 2017, it will be interesting to see how the Operation Choke Point and NRA lawsuits proceed and whether the courts will rein in the various regulators’ abuses of power.

During Operation Choke Point, Obama administration officials targeted disfavored businesses, including firearms dealers and short-term money lenders, by disparaging them and intimidating banks with whom they did business.

In a memo, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an independent agency tasked with maintaining “public confidence in the nation’s financial system,” listed those lawful businesses as “‘elevated-risk’ merchants.” And in 2013, Justice Department officials mailed that list to financial institutions, along with administrative subpoenas, to “warn” them of those “high-risk merchants/activities.”

In 2014, an industry coalition of payday lenders sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, claiming that it violated their due-process rights through intimidating their business partners, even threatening “some banking officials with criminal prosecution if they persisted in banking payday lenders. And when the banks inevitably yielded to this unbearable pressure,” the lenders argued, “the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] then immediately demanded that the decision be portrayed as a voluntary action to whitewash the agency’s backroom pressure tactics.”

In August …read more

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By Katrina Trinko

“The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia. The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.” Those are the sobering words from a report released Wednesday by the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission. Air Force veteran and Heritage Foundation senior communications manager John Cooper joins us to discuss. Plus: Forget taking your kids to work—taking your parents to work is now what the cool kids are doing.

We also cover these stories:

• The Justice Department released a memo saying that Matthew Whitaker’s appointment as attorney general is consistent with the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and it cited an example from 1866 when an acting attorney general served without confirmation by the Senate.
• Rep. Kevin McCarthy. R-Calif., will be the next GOP leader in the House after defeating Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a vote.
• As election results continue to come in from some of the closest midterm races, Democrats are gaining. In fact, they’ve now picked up more House seats than they’ve ever picked up since Watergate.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [email protected]. Enjoy the show!

The post Podcast: New Report Shows Our Military Isn’t Prepared for Conflict With China, Russia appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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By Fred Lucas

Marc Elias has a history of turning Democrats who lost on election night into winners after recounts.

The lawyer representing Sen. Bill Nelson in the recount of Florida’s contest for Senate has been at the center of nearly every major election controversy for the past decade.

BREAKING: In Florida we have sued in federal court to ensure that every county has a chance to complete the machine and manual recount without facing an unreasonable and arbitrary deadline. #CountAllTheVotes

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) November 13, 2018

Elias is chairman of Perkins Coie’s Political Law Group, which was behind the opposition research document that fueled the Trump-Russia investigation. Before that, he was highly instrumental in getting Al Franken into the U.S. Senate.

Nelson, the incumbent Democrat, trails by less than half a percentage point behind Gov. Rick Scott, his Republican challenger. That’s close enough to trigger a recount in Florida, but the deficit of over 10,000 votes is more than than any previous recount has overcome.

Nevertheless, Elias has predicted victory, and he has a winning record at his back in high-profile races.

“I have a pretty good track record on that prediction elsewhere,” Elias told reporters on a conference call last week.

The results of the governor’s race to succeed Scott as Florida governor also qualified for a recount.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., leads Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, by more than 30,000 votes statewide, though, so the DeSantis win is less likely to be overturned.

Elias, who isn’t involved in the DeSantis-Gillum contest, didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.

Both The Washington Post and CQ Roll Call referred to Elias as the “go-to” lawyer for Democrats. In addition to representing the presidential campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and John Kerry in 2004, Elias has represented …read more

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By Troy Worden

Conservative leaders gathered Tuesday night at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., to posthumously salute Jack Kemp–one of the conservative movement’s most outspoken advocates of economic freedom–and honor his present-day followers.

“He understood that capitalism without capital is just an -ism,” Jimmy Kemp, president of the Jack Kemp Foundation, said about his late father in opening remarks at the soccer stadium in Buzzard Point that is home to the pro team D.C. United.

Jack Kemp, who died in May 2009, was a professional football player on U.S. and Canadian teams, a nine-term congressman in the House of Representatives, housing and urban development secretary under President George H.W. Bush, and the Republican vice presidential nominee in 1996.

At its seventh annual dinner, the Jack Kemp Foundation–established to carry on his legacy of advancing the values of the “American Idea” of growth, freedom, democracy and hope–honored philanthropist and former Facebook CEO Sean Parker with the 2018 Jack Kemp Leadership Award.

Also recognized at the dinner were Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and President Donald Trump’s elder daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka Trump.

Parker, Scott, and Ivanka Trump launched a successful effort to include “opportunity zones,” one of Kemp’s signature economic proposals, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress late last year.

Unrealized at the time of Kemp’s death, “enterprise zones” or “opportunity zones” are designed to attract companies and business to invest in economically distressed communities, with the federal government offering incentives such as eliminating the capital gains tax.

“Everybody’s anxious for capital to descend on their communities,” Scott told the audience. “With opportunity zones, I believe opportunity can shout from the mountaintops.”

Scott, who was the 2017 Kemp Leadership Award recipient, presented Parker with the award for his work toward fulfilling Kemp’s vision of implementing opportunity zones.

Kemp’s son said the award goes …read more

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