As left-leaning Catholic clergy criticize President Donald Trump’s border policies, a church leader from just outside the nation’s capital is stressing that the religion certainly would support a “common sense” approach to immigration.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, located right across the river from Washington, D.C., issued a statement reminding the public that the Catholic Church does not support open borders but rather “a common sense approach where the duty to care for the stranger is practiced in harmony with the duty to care for the nation.”

Burbidge’s statement came as Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), suggested that some of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration “are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences,” prompting Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, to describe himself as “heartbroken” by the USCCB’s response to the efforts to stem the border crisis.

Burbidge’s statement draws on Catholic teaching on the importance of sheltering migrants, emphasizing in his statement that “the Church teaches, as does our Constitution, that a political community exists to protect the family and human dignity. We always defend and protect the most vulnerable, even as we defend the rights and duties of nations to govern themselves and to safeguard the common good.”

But he also pointed out the two-fold premise that this rests on: “to uphold human dignity and the common good.”

“As principles of Catholic social teaching, human dignity and the common good must not be brought into conflict,” he wrote. “As Catholics, we understand the common good as inclusive of the individual good of each and every member of society. We also understand that the rule of law is to defend and promote the common good. For this reason, I have confidence that comprehensive immigration reform need not harm the dignity of any person. Even when immigration reform includes repatriation of those persons who have committed violent crimes, or who otherwise violate the terms of a right to remain, human dignity can be respected. We must not presume a conflict between human dignity and the rule of law.”

READ MORE: Why Leftist Catholics Are At Odds With Church’s Long-Standing View On Immigration

Burbidge acknowledged that there are many immigrants in the Diocese of Arlington who “contribute so much to our Church and to our country,” immigrants from countries including Afghanistan, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Mexico, Gambia, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Venezuela who have “enriched our diocese with their great faith, their devotion to our Lord, their families, and their service to Christ’s Church.”

He specifically asked those responsible for law enforcement not to enter “our sacred spaces,” meaning churches, unless “absolutely and unequivocally necessary to ensure the safety of all persons.”

Significantly, Burbidge also emphasized that “as a consequence of our respect for the common good, the Church has always shown the greatest concern for all that is right and just.”

“We implore all leaders to strive to keep our nation safe for the sake of thriving and healthy families, including migrant families,” Burbidge wrote. “Sadly, some of those who have entered our country, legally or illegally, have committed serious crimes. There must be consequences for such behavior, as there is no place for violence, trafficking, or gang activity in our society. Our laws exist to safeguard the good of all, and they must be respected.”

“We therefore also recognize all those law enforcement officers, including many immigrants and children of immigrants, who work diligently to uphold our laws and protect our communities, often at great risk to themselves,” Burbidge continued. “They deserve and receive our prayers. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes, Catholic teaching does not support an open border policy, but rather emphasizes a common sense approach where the duty to care for the stranger is practiced in harmony with the duty to care for the nation.”

Burbidge encouraged Trump and congressional leaders to “develop a national immigration policy that reflects the Catholic commitment to human dignity and the common good.”

“Americans earnestly look to our elected officials for a humane and peaceful immigration policy that is just, compassionate, and restores confidence in the rule of law,” he wrote. “American law must always include pathways for legal entry and as citizens we should always celebrate the contributions of immigrants, ensure the protection of the vulnerable, and uphold the common good which is the condition for ordered liberty and public safety.”

Burbidge’s nuanced approach to the topic may draw fire from more left-leaning clergy. The Catholic view on illegal immigration is a topic that politicians on both sides of the aisle have long struggled with. But over the past century, leaders of the Church have frequently pointed out that migration cannot be unrestricted, and must be handled with prudence.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically notes that “more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find his country of origin.” But it also states that “immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

And while figures like the new Archbishop of D.C., Cardinal McElroy, have said that “indiscriminate” mass deportations are incompatible with Catholic teaching, Trump’s Border czar Tom Homan told The Daily Wire this week that the administration’s actions are anything but indiscriminate.

Homan’s job is to enact Trump’s executive orders: to protect the American people from the invasion at the southern border and to “execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people.”

“We have a targeted enforcement sheet,” Homan told The Daily Wire, “we go out into the field and we know exactly who we are going to arrest, and pretty much where we are going to find them. This is far from indiscriminate arrests, these are targeted enforcement operations, concentrating on the worst of the worst.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is taking further action against the 50 former intelligence officials who falsely suggested Hunter Biden’s laptop was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” instructing agencies to also ban those individuals from stepping foot in secure U.S. government facilities, according to a memo obtained by The Daily Wire.

The Jan. 29 cabinet memorandum, first obtained by The Daily Wire, expands Trump’s day-one executive order, which revoked the security clearance for the 50 individuals. Sent “on behalf of the President,” it orders the country’s top national security agencies to “revoke unescorted access to secure U.S. Government facilities from the 50 former intelligence officials named in the Executive Order.”

“These individuals no longer possess a need to access secure facilities, and as outlined in the Executive Order, do not have the appropriate security clearances to access classified information,” the memo states.

Included in the list of individuals are prominent members of the intelligence community, including former CIA directors John Brennan, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta, who also at one time served as Secretary of Defense. It also includes the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and John Bolton, the longtime diplomat who most recently served under Trump as his national security advisor.

Image from cabinet memorandum issued by White House / The Daily Wire

The memo was sent to the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was also distributed to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, who is tasked with informing any other “clearance-granting U.S. Government entity” of the ban “to ensure compliance.”

The action comes as part of the Trump administration’s effort to weed out government officials who participated in political weaponization of their power. His initial executive order charged that “the signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.”

Trump on Friday ordered several FBI officials who served in the prior administration to resign, telling them they will be fired if they choose not to. Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, faced a contentious confirmation hearing on Thursday, and pledged to “de-weaponize” the intelligence community.

“America deserves a better brand of justice and I’m going to give it to them,” Patel said in the hearing.

The initial letter from the intelligence officials came in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, after the New York Post reported on emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The story stated that the laptop was left by the former president’s drug-addicted son at a computer repair shop. The letter, however, said the story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and this claim was used as an excuse to censor the reporting ahead of the election. The laptop and the emails on it proved to be authentic.

Trump’s newly confirmed CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, was Director of National Intelligence at the time, and from the beginning stated that there was no evidence of Russian involvement.

The full memo obtained by The Daily Wire can be read here.

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday in the wake of a tragic plane and helicopter collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

His action comes after an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 collided Wednesday night before crashing into the Potomac River. Authorities worked throughout the night to recover the bodies of the deceased, and said Thursday that there were no survivors out of the 67 people on both aircrafts.

Trump’s first executive order appoints Chris Rochelau as deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Rochelau will serve as the acting administrator since the administrator seat is currently vacant, the president’s staff secretary, Will Scharf, said at the signing.

The president’s second executive action is titled: “Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety.” It orders the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA administrator to “review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualification standards.”

“This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden Administration,” the order notes.

(Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

Trump laid out in the executive action, as he did during Thursday’s press briefing, how former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden took steps to minimize merit and competence by prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in the FAA.

“The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude,” his executive action says. “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence.  But the Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”

“On my second day in office, I ordered an immediate return to merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion, elevating safety and ability as the paramount standard,” the order reads. “Yesterday’s devastating accident tragically underscores the need to elevate safety and competence as the priority of the FAA.”

Trump stressed to reporters on Thursday that though it is unclear what role DEI measures played in the tragic plane crash, it is extremely important to his administration that employees be chosen on merit and competency.

“We want the most competent people,” he said. “We don’t care what race they are. We want the most competent people, especially in those positions. You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”

“All I’m talking about is competence,” he continued. “And we want, in that particular position, we have to have the most competent people in our country, because we’re talking about lives. Now, it may or may not have to do, but I don’t like that the helicopter was at the exact same level as the airplane. The helicopter should’ve been 1,000 feet or 500 feet above it, or something below it. The plane was at 300-400 feet.”

Trump described the fatal crash as “tragic” but preventable, asking: “Do you blame it on the air traffic controller too in addition to the pilots? They should’ve seen it. I would’ve thought they should’ve seen it.”

He also shared that he will be meeting with some of the families of the deceased.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump emphasized the need for “fast confirmations” in the wake of the tragic plane and helicopter crash in Washington, D.C.

The president took questions from the press at the White House on Thursday, where he shared that no passengers or crew had survived the Wednesday evening crash. Trump stressed the importance of eradicating measures that prioritize DEI over merit, stressing the need for stronger Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards.

Asked by The Daily Wire whether it is helpful to have his Secretary of Transportation confirmed only a day before this tragedy, and whether this incident intensified his interest in getting his other nominees confirmed quickly as well, Trump responded: “We want fast confirmations and the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them. They’ve taken too long.”

.@MaryMargOlohan: "Is it helpful to have your Secretary of Transportation confirmed, and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees confirmed quickly as well?"@POTUS: "We want fast confirmations. And the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them." pic.twitter.com/EOCBzqawxP

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 30, 2025

“Very good people, everybody knows, are going to be confirmed, but we’re struggling to get them out faster,” he continued. “We want them out faster. It’s a good question, actually we — we’ve been pushing Sean [Duffy], everyone knows Sean, for a long time. We got many, many Democrat votes, but they want to take as long as they can.”

Trump nominees Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard sat before their respective Senate committees in their nomination hearings as Trump spoke.

The president took a jab at NBC News White House Correspondent Peter Alexander, who had loudly berated Trump while asking a question moments before.

Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images)

“They ask questions like some of the questions that Peter would ask that were totally irrelevant and not good questions, but they want to just keep it going,” Trump said. “They want to keep it going as long as possible. I was very honored, actually, that you got so many Democrat votes. That was really good. That was really good.”

Trump began the briefing by calling for a moment of silence for the deceased victims and their loved ones. There are no survivors of the U.S. military helicopter’s collision with the passenger plane, which carried 64 people, authorities said.

“I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation,” the president said. “This was a dark and excruciating night in our capital and a tragedy of terrible proportions. We grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so sadly.”

And the president argued: “We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. Only the highest aptitude – you have to be the highest intellect — and psychologically superior people, were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.”

“We have to have our smartest people,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. What matters is intellect, talent. The word talent. They have to be talented geniuses,” he continued. “We can’t have regular people doing that job. They won’t be able to do it.”

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence will vow to intensely focus on ensuring the “safety, security, and freedom” of all Americans during her confirmation hearings on Thursday, according to excerpts of her opening speech obtained by The Daily Wire.

Tulsi Gabbard will be in Washington, D.C. on Thursday as she sits before the Senate Intelligence Committee and answers questions from senators, many of whom are hostile towards her nomination. In her opening remarks, she will say there is a “clear mandate” for Trump to revamp the intelligence community, and that she’s the person to carry that mission out.

“President Trump’s reelection is a clear mandate from the American people to break this cycle of failure, end the weaponization and politicization of the IC, and begin to restore trust in those who have been charged with the critical task of securing our nation,” Gabbard will say, according to embargoed remarks obtained by The Daily Wire. “If confirmed as DNI, I will fulfill this mandate and bring leadership to the intelligence community with a laser like focus on our essential mission: ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s panel has nine Republican members and eight Democrats, and Gabbard likely cannot afford to lose a single Republican vote.

Republican senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine have indicated they have concerns about Gabbard, and Collins sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Gabbard also plans to draw on her experiences as a veteran, saying: “My experiences on the battlefield and in the halls of Congress have given me a deep understanding of the complex challenges our nation faces. I’ve been a consumer of intelligence as a member of congress and a member of our armed forces for over two decades. I know first-hand how essential accurate, unbiased and timely intelligence is – to the President, to Congress, and to our warfighters – and the heavy cost of intelligence failures and abuses.”

Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images

She will also reportedly highlight the controversy that her nomination has received and mention criticism from her opponents.

“The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet,” Gabbard will argue. “You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November.”

Gabbard will also swear her loyalty to the United States Constitution on Thursday: “My life is a testament of the truth of my loyalty to God, country and the Constitution. If confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, I will continue to live by the oath I have sworn at least eight times in my life both in uniform and as a civilian: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

The hearing is set to begin at 10:00 ET and can be viewed on Daily Wire.

The White House received over 7,400 new media requests over the past 24 hours, a White House official shared with The Daily Wire on Wednesday.

The thousands of new media requests came in after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Tuesday that the White House is making room for “new media” in the press room, allowing nontraditional, news-related content producers to directly question the press secretary and other administration officials.

Leavitt, who called on the press to focus on sharing the truth about the Trump administration, gave her first press briefing on Tuesday, during which she announced a “new media seat” for nontraditional media, as well as a link for bloggers, podcasters, social media influencers, and others to apply to for White House press access.

“We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House,” she said.

(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media who are seated in this room, because according to recent polling from Gallup, Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low,” Leavitt said.

“Millions of Americans, especially young people, have turned from traditional television outlets and newspapers to consume their news from podcasts, blogs, social media, and other independent outlets,” she continued. “It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”

Leavitt also said on Tuesday that the White House will restore the media credentials of over 400 journalists who lost access during the Biden administration.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says President Donald Trump’s immigration policies violate church teaching. But prominent Church leaders, as well as top White House officials, are pushing back, leaning on long-standing church teaching that clearly gives nations latitude to restrict immigration.

“Many of the issues President Trump addresses in his recent Executive Orders, along with what may be issued in the coming days, are matters on which the Church has much to offer,” wrote Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in a much-discussed Wednesday statement. “Some provisions contained in the Executive Orders, such as those focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees … are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

Cardinal Robert McElroy, the controversial new Archbishop of Washington, debuted in his role shortly before Trump’s inauguration by arguing that the president’s deportation plans are “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” McElroy said that “plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

Prominent Catholics in the administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Tom Homan, the man heading Trump’s deportation effort, don’t agree. Homan says the administration’s actions are anything but indiscriminate.

Homan’s job is to enact Trump’s executive orders: to protect the American people from the invasion at the southern border and to “execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people.”

“We have a targeted enforcement sheet,” Homan told The Daily Wire, “we go out into the field and we know exactly who we are going to arrest, and pretty much where we are going to find them. This is far from indiscriminate arrests, these are targeted enforcement operations, concentrating on the worst of the worst.”

Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, also pushed back on the remark over the weekend, describing himself as “heartbroken” by the USCCB’s response to the efforts to stem the border crisis.

“We are going to enforce immigration law, we are going to protect the American people,” continued Vance. “Donald Trump promised to do that, and I believe the [USCCB], if they are worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex-trafficked because of the wide open border of Joe Biden, let them talk about people like Laken Riley who were brutally murdered.”

The strife is indicative of larger dynamics at play between the Trump White House and the Vatican under Pope Francis, who is not only left-leaning, but also critical of traditional Catholics and openly anti-Trump. President Joe Biden headed the most pro-abortion administration the United States has ever seen without personal critique from Pope Francis. In the run-up to the 2024 election, Pope Francis also said that both Kamala Harris and President Trump were “against life,” even though Trump’s Supreme Court picks led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

The pope also said ahead of Trump’s inauguration that the president’s deportation plans “will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance,” adding, “It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things.”

(Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)

And though the USCCB slammed Trump’s deportation plans, the conference remained mum on a slew of Biden’s actions against religious Americans — including his jailing of pro-life activists, and Trump’s pardoning of those same activists this week.

The Catholic view on illegal immigration is a topic that politicians on both sides of the aisle have long struggled with, given the often devastating plight of the migrant and the Catholic Church’s emphatic focus on respecting the dignity of every human person. But over the past century, leaders of the Church have frequently pointed out that migration cannot be unrestricted, and must be handled with prudence.

“As always the welfare of the country must be considered as well as the interest of the individual seeking to enter, and in the nature of things circumstances will at times dictate a law of restriction,” Pope Pius XII said in 1947 when addressing a Senate committee on immigration.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find his country of origin.” But it also states that “immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

That’s a far cry from the situation at hand, conservative leaders argued to The Daily Wire.

“Two things can be true at once,” said The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, in an early January interview shortly after McElroy’s appointment. “On the one hand … when we encounter, as individuals, anyone in need, including an immigrant, that of course we’re going to make sure that they’re taken care of.”

“But it’s also true that every single illegal alien who’s come into this country has broken the law, and you can’t continue America’s civil society without first securing the southern border,” he added. “And those of us who are lay Catholics think that. The Vatican’s making a mockery of church teaching and those of us who work in public policy in Washington by appointing [McElroy].” 

Progressives like Father James Martin, a Jesuit who pushes LGBTQ issues, argue that Jesus Christ and his mother were refugees and stress the importance of loving one’s neighbor to condemn Trump’s border policies. But commentators like Josh Mercer, the vice president of Catholic Vote, point to the duties that Catholics have to uphold the law.

“One problem with appealing to Christian love as a basis for lenient immigration policies, is that we must also have that same love for those who stand to be harmed by those policies,” explained Mercer.

“In His final judgment of the world, Christ may indeed identify Himself with an immigrant whose dignity we disregarded,” Mercer argued. “Yet by the very same principle, it seems equally true that He may hold some of us responsible for the lives and livelihoods we irresponsibly allowed some illegal immigrants to take. Matthew 25 suggests both possibilities — because it pertains to all kinds of injustice, regardless of what is politically fashionable.”

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, known in political circles for his defense of the unborn and his pastoral critique of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, pointed The Daily Wire to “A Pastoral Letter Concerning Migration from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States,” written in 2003 to address immigration into the United States and how Catholic bishops should view the issue.

The letter lays out five principles that must be respected when dealing with issues surrounding immigration, Cordileone explained. The first is that people have a right to find opportunities in their homeland. The second is that people have a right to migrate to support themselves and their families for just reasons, which might include poverty, economic reasons, persecution, fear, lack of basic necessities, etc. Importantly, the third principle is that sovereign nations have a right to control their borders.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (Scott Strazzante/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

The archbishop notes that these have to be balanced off each other: “People have a right to immigrate for legitimate reasons, and the nations also have a right to control their borders.”

The fourth principle of the 2003 document is that refugee and asylum seekers should be afforded protections, and the fifth is that human dignity and human rights of undocumented migrants should be respected.  

Taking these factors into account, “indiscriminate deportations” would be a violation of those principles, Cordileone said.

“There has to be a vetting,” he explained. “Some people need to be deported, you know, criminals, felons, human traffickers, drug traffickers, terrorists, who are coming into the country clandestinely. Yes, they do need to be deported. Others who have come without proper documentation or overstayed their visas, especially in the first category, because many of them are unskilled laborers, but they’re fleeing dire conditions in their own country, and I think we favor them getting their legal status regularized and with the proper conditions to be put on a path to citizenship.”

Homan stressed to The Daily Wire that the Trump administration’s actions are not indiscriminate, but targeted. And he added: “Catholic charities have made millions of dollars over the last four years because of massive illegal immigration. They need to protect children.”

Catholic charities have repeatedly drawn fire for their assistance of illegal immigrants: an investigation by the Heritage Foundation found that non-governmental organizations, including Catholic charities, “operate as the final link in a vast, transnational human-smuggling operation.” One of these agencies is currently in the news over its video teaching migrants how to evade United States immigration law.

Asked if he’s investigating Catholic Charities specifically, Homan responded with a laugh, “I’m not. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Monday banning military members from using taxpayer dollars to get gender transition surgeries, The Daily Wire has learned.

Trump will direct the Department of Defense to update its guidance on trans-identifying medical standards for military service, and to rescind the Biden administration’s guidance that is “inconsistent with military readiness,” according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order.

Trump’s order, first reported Monday by the New York Post, will prohibit males from using or sharing sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities that are designated for females. The order will also rescind Biden’s Executive Order 14004, which allowed for all sorts of accommodations of gender identity in the military, and opened wide the door for gender ideology and taxpayer-funded transgender interventions within military ranks.

The move stems from a desire to prioritize military readiness and lethality — both of which are seriously impacted by military members who seek transgender surgical procedures.

“During the Biden Administration, the Department of Defense allowed gender insanity to pervade our military organizations, family, and culture,” the White House document states. “This included not only permitting the military to increase the number of individuals not physically or mentally prepared to serve, but also ordering the Department of Defense to pay for servicemembers’ transition surgeries, as well as those of their dependent children—at a cost of millions of dollars to the American taxpayer.”

Service members who undergo so-called transition surgeries can take a minimum of 12 months to recover, often using heavy narcotics, and during this time they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements, the White House document notes. They also require consistent medical care, which is not conducive to deployment or other readiness requirements.

“Fitness, health, welfare, and readiness standards must ensure that our military members are able to deploy, fight, and win,” the document states. “On the battlefield there can be no accommodation for anything less than resilience, strength, and ability to withstand extraordinary physical demands.”

(Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

“President Trump’s priority to have a ready, able, and lethal military will remain a core tenant of his second term,” the document reads.

The Biden Defense Department refused to tell The Daily Wire how many trans-identifying service members are in the military. But activist groups have maintained for years that there are upwards of 15,000 trans-identifying service members.

A Daily Wire investigation in December found that this number does not match up with recent figures from the DOD. One DOD leader said in 2021 that there were 2,200 trans-identifying military members who had gender dysphoria and sought medical care. Experts on the topic suggested that the activists were pushing the figure to suggest the military might collapse without its trans-identifying population.

William Thibeau, an Army Ranger veteran and director of the Claremont Institute’s American Military Project, told The Daily Wire on Monday that Trump and his newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are fulfilling campaign promises with “broad support among the American people” — changes that are also “common sense for defense readiness.”

“Transvestite service members are nothing more than a political football for cultural virtue signaling that even some generals adopt to prove their compliance with the former liberal regime,” Thibeau argued. “The ban is necessary to restore Americans’ faith that the military is no longer an institution meant for politics and ideology, but lethality.”

And Jay Richards, a leading voice on gender ideology who directs the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire it was “encouraging to have a president who cares far more about military readiness than treating our armed forces as a laboratory for social engineering and gender ideology boosterism.”

Back in 2016, Barack Obama ended the military’s ban on trans-identifying individuals. Trump had reversed the policy allowing trans-identifying troops, citing concerns that these troops required “substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery.” The Supreme Court sided with Trump on the matter in January 2019.

Biden, however, repealed that ban shortly after taking office. Biden’s Pentagon has made waves with its aggressive promotion of radical gender ideology both online and within military ranks.

Trump has pledged to reverse that trend, warning ahead of the 2024 election: “There’s woke at the top…You need people that want to win. They want to win wars. That’s what their purpose is, to win wars not to be woke.”

Hegseth himself has thoroughly discussed the topic and its impact on military readiness, including in his book, “The War on Warriors.”

“In 2016, the Obama administration conducted a study to test whether it was a good idea … to allow transgender soldiers to openly serve in the military. That study found that post-surgery-transitioned soldiers would be nondeployable for 238 days or 34 weeks,” Hegseth wrote. “When this report was brought to then-incoming president Donald Trump’s attention, he promptly banned transgender soldiers from serving.”

Hegseth added of Biden’s policies allowing military members to get taxpayer-funded gender transitions: “This change to the standards meant that men and women could join the military for the express purpose of transitioning, be nondeployable for a year, and take life-altering hormone therapy that would mean they would be nondeployable unless the military could guarantee the supply of medication (you know, in some shithole country).”

“Yes,” he added, “your tax dollars pay for mentally unstable boys to become girls, chops off their body parts, then sit out of training for a year, pay for ongoing medical treatments, and demand everyone call them a new name. Man, I wish I had one of those super soldiers in my platoon in Iraq.”

As President Donald Trump swiftly pardoned January 6 political prisoners and pro-life activists targeted by the Biden Justice Department, another victim was anxiously seeking help as he realized the former administration’s case against him was being accelerated.

Texas Children’s whistleblower Eithan Haim and his wife got on the phone with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican who has been aggressively outspoken on the weaponization of the government against Americans, specifically on culture issues like abortion and transgender ideology. Hawley spoke out in Haim’s defense when Haim initially sounded the alarm about transgender procedures being performed on children at the Texas hospital.

“He was very worried that a warrant might be issued for his imminent arrest and the DOJ was pushing to start the trial as quickly as possible,” Hawley shared in a Friday evening phone call with The Daily Wire. The senator suggested that these officials sought “to make it difficult to do what DOJ ultimately did today” — which was to drop the charges against Haim. 

The Haims asked Hawley if there was anything he could do to help them. So the senator got on the phone with Acting Attorney General James McHenry.

“I called him this morning,” Hawley said. “I just told him that I talked to Dr. Haim…I said, ‘Here’s where I think this stands. Your U.S. attorney in the Southern District does not appear to be dropping this case at all. In fact, they appear to be accelerating.’ He was alarmed by this. And said, ‘Well, I wanna look into this immediately and see what we can do.'” 

“Two hours after we got off the phone, they issued the one sentence dismissal,” Hawley said.

The Missouri Republican described that swift action as “an incredible testament to this administration.”

The Daily Wire’s Brent Scher was on the phone with Haim when his wife gave him the news that he was no longer being prosecuted. Haim, ecstatic at the news, celebrated: “The judge just signed it! It’s f***ing over!”

(Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)

“I have never seen or heard of an administration moving this quickly,” Hawley told The Daily Wire. “They moved super fast on the pro-life prisoners…with Dr. Haim, I hope and trust someone has been reviewing his case at main DOJ, but to really jump into it today and just BOOM, say, we’re going to draw this to a close, which is the right thing to do, I think is incredibly impressive.”

Asked if the Trump DOJ has interest in looking into the officials hastening Haim’s case, Hawley said that McHenry seemed surprised that the U.S. attorney in the Southern District was accelerating the case.

“I assume that U.S. attorney will be replaced,” Hawley said. “Hopefully that change will come soon. All I can say is, he was great to talk to, he said he would look into this immediately, and man, he did very quickly.”

The Justice Department dropping charges against Haim is an “incredible vindication for the rule of law,” Hawley said, “but also for his courage, because the truth is he came forward to expose illegal gender transition surgeries.”

“Under Texas laws and regulations, they were not supposed to be being performed by this hospital on minors, and the hospital was doing it anyway and concealing it. And so he came forward and by the way, he did it in full compliance with the law. He was very careful not to reveal any personal information, but he exposed the fact that the hospital was violating state law, and who knows how many people’s lives, how many children’s lives, he may have saved by doing that because they had to stop after he exposed them,” the senator shared.

“And of course,” he concluded, “for that courage, the Biden administration prosecuted him and would have thrown him into federal prison. That was their goal. It’s unbelievable. This is a vindication of him. It is a vindication of his courage, and it’s a real vindication for the rule of law.”

This was not the only major culture case Hawley was involved in over the past week. Hawley spoke to Trump on Thursday morning, shortly before the president pardoned the pro-life activists.

“What I said to him is, ‘This is a great time to pardon all those folks,'” Hawley shared, noting that the March for Life would take place the following day.

“All credit to him, they were clearly working on it, ready to go, and he pulled the trigger on it,” the senator said. “I think the credit goes to them….the bureaucracy doesn’t usually move this quickly unless you have someone at the top who really wants it to move.”

Hawley was the first to receive strong assurances from Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that Kennedy would protect life if confirmed. That revelation pacified many in the pro-life community, who were concerned about Kennedy and his past comments on abortion. On Friday, Hawley shared that he had also urged Trump himself to reinstate HHS conscience protections immediately, saying there is no reason to wait on these pro-life policies that Trump had adopted in his first term.

“I had a great conversation this morning with @realDonaldTrump about the pro-life prisoners unjustly persecuted and imprisoned by the corrupt Biden Administration,” Hawley tweeted shortly after his Thursday call with the president. “I urged him to pardon them swiftly. They have done nothing wrong!”

I had a great conversation this morning with @realDonaldTrump about the pro-life prisoners unjustly persecuted and imprisoned by the corrupt Biden Administration. I urged him to pardon them swiftly. They have done nothing wrong!

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 23, 2025

For now, Hawley is confident that Trump will enact these pro-life protections. And he has a growing cohort of Americans who are very grateful to him for his intercession.

WASHINGTON — JD Vance delivered his first public remarks as vice president at the 52nd annual March for Life on Friday, vowing to the pro-life movement that the Trump-Vance administration stands by them, and will continue to march with them through the years.

“It is a blessing to know the truth, and the truth is that unborn life is worthy of protection,” he told the thousands of pro-life demonstrators gathered on the National Mall on Friday morning, promising to be back next year. “So please, go forth, not with frustration, but with joy. We are joyful to March for Life. We are joyful to know that that picture on an ultrasound, that is a picture of a baby with hopes and dreams and potential to come. It is a joy and a blessing to fight for the unborn, to work for the unborn, and to March for Life.”

.@VP JD Vance delivered his first public remarks as vice president today at the 52nd annual March for Life. He was met with massive enthusiasm and excitement from the young people in the crowd. Everyone I spoke to was impressed.

“It is a blessing to know the truth, and the… pic.twitter.com/ovQiZIlY0H

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) January 24, 2025

“I want to be clear that this administration stands by you,” he promised the crowd. “We stand with you, and most importantly, we stand with the most vulnerable and the basic principle that people exercising the right to protest on behalf of the most vulnerable should never have the government go after them ever again.”

It was an emotional moment for many of the pro-lifers in the crowd — families pushing strollers and wiping their children’s faces clean, teenagers traveling with their high school teachers, priests and nuns in cheerful groups, and college students from all across the country, joking, flirting, and cheering together. This is a crowd that largely voted for Donald Trump, but many of them are single issue voters, and some were anxious when they went to the ballot box this year. Roe’s overturn had made abortion politically toxic, and they were unsure what their footing was with the former president.

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Yet they trusted that if elected, Trump would once again head a pro-life administration, and they remembered that he was the most pro-life president the United States had ever seen — the man who appointed the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

And many of those present at the March for Life on Friday told The Daily Wire that his actions in this first week of his presidency alone have reassured them that the Trump-Vance administration will defend life throughout the next four years.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 24: US Vice President JD Vance speaks on stage as people attend the annual March for Life rally on the National Mall on January 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. Anti-abortion activists attend the annual march that marked the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s, now overturned, 1973, Roe v. Wade ruling which legalized abortion in all 50 states. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

On Thursday, Trump pardoned 23 pro-life activists targeted by President Joe Biden’s administration for their pro-life advocacy. On Friday evening, shortly after the March for Life had ended, Trump signed an executive order aboard Air Force One banning international non-governmental organizations that promote abortions from receiving federal funding. His action reinstates the Mexico City Policy — a serious priority for many pro-lifers.

And the president himself sent a video message to the march, as he traveled to view the damage that flooding and wildfires had done to North Carolina and California.

“In my second term, we will again stand proudly for families and for life,” Trump promised the crowd, praising the “tireless work and devotion” of the pro-life movement for helping to defeat Roe v. Wade, struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2022. He slammed Democratic extremism on abortion, pointing out that many Democrat-led states and lawmakers embrace abortion up until birth — and even allowing babies to die if they are born alive in botched abortions.

That message concluded: “To all of the very special people marching today in this bitter cold, I know your hearts are warm and your spirits are strong, because your mission is just very, very pure, to forge a society that welcomes and protects every child as a beautiful gift from the hand of our creator. Thank you for never losing hope and never giving up. Thank you for your tremendous support, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Vance emphasized his support and belief in the movement as well.

“You guys are the beating heart of the pro-life movement, and you have saved many lives already, and you’re going to save more again,” Vance told the pro-life movement on Friday. “You being here, this very march is a reminder of the incredible strength and unity of the pro-life movement and from the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you for being here, and thank you for marching here today.”

“Most importantly, in your works, you remind us that the March for Life is not just a single event that happens on a frigid January day,” he said. “The March for Life is the work of the pro-life movement every single day from this point forward.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday pardoning 23 of the pro-life activists targeted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.

“They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said as he signed the order. “Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this.”

The pardons are for 23 “peaceful pro-life protesters who were prosecuted by the Biden administration for exercising their First Amendment rights.” They were prosecuted under the FACE Act and a Reconstruction-era felony conspiracy charge first used for the first time against pro-life activists by the Biden administration.

The Thomas More Society, the law firm representing the activists, had asked Trump to pardon 21 pro-lifers: Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow. 

(Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

“Today, freedom rings in our great nation,” said Steve Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “The heroic peaceful pro-lifers unjustly imprisoned by Biden’s Justice Department will now be freed and able to return home to their families, eat a family meal, and enjoy the freedom that should have never been taken from them in the first place.”

Peter Breen, the executive vice president of the firm, added: “Today is a new day for the pardoned pro-life advocates who have suffered FBI raids, federal prosecutions, and severe punishment for peacefully and courageously witnessing for life. We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to these pro-life mothers, fathers, grandparents, pastors, and priests.”

“What happened to these peaceful pro-life individuals must never happen again,” he said in a statement. “We urge Congress to act swiftly in repealing the FACE Act to make sure that the Justice Department can never again weaponize this law to target peaceful pro-lifers with severe charges.” 

Many of those pardoned were convicted multiple times in trials in Washington, D.C., Nashville, Manhattan, and Detroit. While sentencing has not been completed in each case, several pro-lifers were already serving lengthy prison sentences. 

In D.C., a group of pro-life protesters sang songs, prayed, locked arms in front of the facility’s staff entrance, and attached themselves with ropes and chains to block doors inside the infamous Surgi-Clinic in October 2020, a late-term abortion facility. 

Those who were imprisoned over the D.C. protest include Lauren Handy (57 months in prison), John Hinshaw (21 months), William Goodman (27 months), Jonathan Darnell (34 months), Herb Geraghty (27 months), Jean Marshall (24 months), Joan Bell (27 months), Paulette Harlow (24 months), and Heather Idoni (24 months).

In Tennessee, a group of pro-life Christians gathered in a hall outside the Carafem Health Center in Mt. Juliet where they sang hymns, prayed, and urged women not to get abortions in March 2021. Calvin Zastrow, 63, is currently serving a six-month prison sentence over the protest and 75-year-old Chester Gallagher was sentenced to 16 months though he has not had to report to prison yet. 

In New York, Bevelyn Beatty Williams was sentenced to serve 41 months in prison after she was convicted of violating the FACE Act after she blocked the entrance to an abortion facility in Manhattan. 

The pardons should also bring relief to those who were awaiting sentencing, including 89-year-old Eva Edl. Edl, who survived a World War II-era Yugoslavian concentration camp, was convicted in both Nashville and Detroit and could have been sentenced to over a decade in prison over her convictions on FACE and a felony conspiracy charge.

When passed in 1994, the FACE Act was supposed to protect both churches and clinics, but the law has almost exclusively been used to prosecute pro-lifers. Data obtained by Roy shows that 97% of FACE Act cases brought by the Justice Department have been against pro-life Americans. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) renewed an effort to repeal the FACE Act this week, pointing out how it has been disproportionately used against pro-lifers. 

The response to the pardons has already been positive with Republican lawmakers and conservative activists praising the decision.

“President Trump’s pardon today of pro-life activists unjustly imprisoned under President Biden is a great credit to his legacy,” CatholicVote’s Tommy Valentine said. “We hope he will go a step further in undoing Biden’s unjust legacy by directing his Department of Justice to evenly enforce the FACE Act, for as long as it is on the books, against violent pro-abortion extremists who have been attacking pregnancy resource centers and churches for years.”

The news came shortly after the Daily Wire reported that Trump would pardon the pro-life activists within a matter of days. The plight of the imprisoned pro-lifers is an immediate priority to Trump’s team, two sources with knowledge of the matter shared with The Daily Wire.

Friday is the 52nd annual March for Life, where Vice President JD Vance will publicly speak for the first time since he was sworn into office, as The Daily Wire first reported on Thursday.

This is a breaking story; please refresh this page for updates.

Vice President JD Vance will speak at the National March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Friday, The Daily Wire can first report.

The event will mark Vance’s first public remarks since he was sworn in as Vice President of the United States. In 2019, Donald Trump became the first president to speak at the March for Life, several years before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Trump is scheduled to be in California visiting areas destroyed by the wildfires during the 2025 March for Life.

This year’s March for Life will take place on Friday, January 24, beginning by the Washington Monument. It comes two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, due in large part to Trump’s Supreme Court appointments.

News of Vance’s upcoming speech came shortly after the Daily Wire reported that Trump will pardon pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department in a matter of days. The plight of the imprisoned pro-lifers is an immediate priority to Trump’s team, and they will likely be pardoned within days, two sources with knowledge of the matter shared with The Daily Wire.

“We are thrilled that Vice President Vance has chosen the National March for Life for his first public appearance in his new role – a sign of his commitment to standing up for life,” Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life, and Jennie Bradley Lichter, President-Elect of March for Life, said in a statement. “President Trump governed as a pro-life president during his first term which resulted in a long list of accomplishments. We look forward to working with him and Vice President Vance as they dismantle the Biden Administration’s aggressive and unpopular abortion agenda and once again put wins on the board for vulnerable unborn children and their mothers.”

Besides Vance, speakers include House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, surfer Bethany Hamilton, Republican New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, pro-life activist Lila Rose, and more.

 (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

“When we see the image of a baby in the womb, we glimpse the majesty of God’s creation,” Trump said at the March for Life in 2019. “When we hold a newborn in our arms, we know the endless love that each child brings to a family.  When we watch a child grow, we see the splendor that radiates from each human soul.  One life changes the world.  From my family — and I can tell you, I send love and I send great, great love.”

He continued: “And from the first day in office, I’ve taken a historic action to support America’s families and to protect the unborn. And during my first week in office, I reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, and we issued a landmark pro-life rule to govern the use of Title X taxpayer funding.  I notified Congress that I would veto any legislation that weakens pro-life policies or that encourages the destruction of human life. At the United Nations, I made clear that global bureaucrats have no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that protect innocent life.Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.”

Trump issued a sweeping executive order on Monday that granted full pardons for about 1,500 criminal defendants related to the January 6 Capitol Riot, making good on a campaign promises to free those targeted by the Biden administration. His actions prompted many in the pro-life community to hope that he would similarly pardon the pro-life activists targeted by the Biden Justice Department under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

This is a developing story; please refresh this page for more updates.

President Donald Trump will pardon pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department within days, The Daily Wire has learned.

The plight of the imprisoned pro-lifers is an immediate priority to Trump’s team, and they will likely be pardoned within days, two sources with knowledge of the matter shared with The Daily Wire. The revelation comes a day ahead of the 52nd annual March for Life, a massive peaceful demonstration that takes place in Washington D.C. to bring awareness to the many babies whose lived are ended through abortions. The president is expected to appear at the rally in a pre-recorded video.

Trump issued a sweeping executive order on Monday that granted full pardons for about 1,500 criminal defendants related to the January 6 Capitol Riot, making good on a campaign promises to free those targeted by the Biden administration. His actions prompted many in the pro-life community to hope that he would similarly pardon the pro-life activists targeted by the Biden Justice Department under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

“I hope President Trump will shortly pardon the pro-life prisoners unjustly targeted & jailed by the Biden Administration,” Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley posted to “X” on Wednesday. “They deserve to be free.”

On Thursday, The Daily Signal first reported that Republican Utah Sen, Mike Lee had re-introduced a bill that would repeal the FACE Act once and for all.

“While President [Donald] Trump is stopping these outrageous prosecutions, we should ensure that no future administration has the ability to persecute Americans through unequal application of the law,” Lee told the publication.

(Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas introduced a companion bill in the House on Tuesday, saying Republicans needed to take advantage of their control of Congress and the White House.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the Biden DOJ for targeting pro-lifers on “outrageous charges,” promising on the campaign trail to “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s unjustly victimized by the Biden regime…so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong.”

The pardons would bring immediate relief to those currently imprisoned including Lauren Handy (57 months in prison), John Hinshaw (21 months), Jonathan Darnell (34 months), Herb Geraghty (27 months), Jean Marshall (24 months), Joan Bell (27 months), Paulette Harlow (24 months), Bevelyn Williams (41 months), Heather Idoni (24 months), and Calvin Zastrow (6 months).

These defendants were imprisoned over protests at abortion facilities in Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and New York.

The D.C. protest involved a group of pro-life protesters singing songs, praying, locking arms in front of the facility’s staff entrance, and attaching themselves with ropes and chains to block doors inside the infamous Surgi-Clinic in October 2020, a late term abortion facility. In Tennessee, a group of pro-life Christians gathered in a hall outside the Carafem Health Center in Mt. Juliet where they sang hymns, prayed, and urged women not to get abortion in March 2021.

Many of the defendants have already been imprisoned for over a year with many more months yet to serve.

“I would love to be home with my family,” 59-year-old Heather Idoni said in September. “I would love to hold my new grandson.”

Idoni was sentenced to two years in prison over the D.C. protest and was given another eight months to serve concurrently from the Nashville protest.

The pardons would also bring relief to those awaiting sentencing, including 89-year-old Eva Edl. Edl, who survived a World War II-era Yugoslavian concentration camp, was convicted in Detroit and could be sentenced to over a decade in prison over her conviction on FACE and a felony conspiracy charge.

The Thomas More Society, which represented many of the defendants during their federal trials, formally petitioned for the pardons last week, and urged Trump on Wednesday to issue the pardons. Wednesday is the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court struck down in 2022 largely thanks to votes from Trump appointees.

“Today would be an incredible day for him to do that,” Breen told The Daily Wire on Wednesday morning, discussing possible pardons.

President Donald Trump will make a big “infrastructure announcement” this afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.

Leavitt appeared on Fox & Friends the morning after Trump’s inauguration, where she shared “President Trump will be speaking to the press later this afternoon at the White House and we will have a big infrastructure announcement.”

“This man is already doing more in one 24 hours than his predecessor did in four years,” the new White House press secretary continued. “Yesterday was a historic day for President Trump, he signed memorandums and proclamations. He took more than 200 executive actions, on top of giving three speeches throughout the day and attending three balls late into early hours of the morning this morning, and he’s already off to work again.”

“The American people have a leader who is delivering on promise he made to them,” she continued. “President Trump sending shock and awe yesterday with his actions to secure southern border, release energy and bring jobs back home. The American people have a strong leader in President Trump, there is no doubt about that.”

Leavitt said she did not want to get ahead of Trump’s announcement, but elaborated that the  “massive” announcement will “prove that the world knows that America is back.”

“Foreign leaders and investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Main Street have confidence again in our economy and our markets and in President Trump because they know that here in America, he has promised to reduce taxes, reduce regulation, to reduce energy costs, and to make America the envy of the world,” she told Fox News. “He is going to bring investments from all over this country into our country, and so the American people will hear from him this afternoon on that very subject.”

Leavitt also criticized former President Joe Biden for “coincidentally” pardoning his entire family during Trump’s speech, “so that President Trump couldn’t directly respond until much later when Joe Biden was already out of office.”

“I think it is a disgrace Joe Biden did this on his way out the door,” she added. “It is an admission of guilt. For years, Joe Biden said that he and his family did not commit crimes, but then yesterday’s pardons prove that he knew they were guilty and he wanted to protect them in his last hour as president of the United States. We are looking forward now, and President Trump looks forward to restoring our Justice Department and law and order in this country and ending the weaponization of justice that has taken place against him and his supporters over the last four years under the Biden, Harris administration.”

President Donald Trump will issue an executive order Monday aimed at ending the weaponization of the federal government, The Daily Wire can exclusively report.

Trump, hours after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America, will sign an executive order directing the incoming attorney general to aggressively scour government records and activities from President Joe Biden’s administration to uncover every action that was taken to punish perceived political opponents.

The attorney general — potentially Trump nominee Pam Bondi — will then compile these instances of weaponized government, as well as recommendations on how to address this weaponization and wrongdoing, into an actionable report, and deliver that report to Trump.

The order is aimed at delivering accountability to federal agencies that used their power to violate the rights of American citizens, The Daily Wire has learned.

An incoming White House policy adviser shared that the executive order is “about executing on a key campaign promise,” one that “Americans feel very strongly about.” 

That adviser shared examples of weaponization: wealthy figures who started speaking out against the Biden administration and “all of a sudden” found themselves with more than 20 investigations by “all the three-letter agencies”; people jailed for posting memes; parents targeted over education; and the Justice Department spending tens of millions of dollars prosecuting more than 1,500 people associated with January 6 — then dropping the majority of the Black Lives Matter cases from the 2020 rioting.

Trump is expected to sign more than 200 executive orders on Inauguration Day, Fox News reported. The orders will jumpstart many of the president’s policy priorities, like strengthening the border, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government, and ending Biden’s various green energy policies and mandates. Many of the orders will reportedly be “omnibus” directives that each include dozens of individual orders.

Trump’s order will also include investigations of how the federal government was weaponized against “disfavored people,” the adviser noted, including “sidewalk counselors and the like,” an apparent reference to pro-life activists like Mark Houck, a Catholic father arrested at gunpoint by the Biden Justice Department in front of his children.

All of this is in addition to the “number one weaponization of the federal government, which was an unprecedented attack against a political rival,” the policy adviser said. 

“There’s never been a president who has gone after a political rival ever and certainly not in the multiple ways that President Biden and prosecutors throughout the country did,” the adviser added.

Immediate areas of interest to the Trump team are the 51 members of the intelligence community who coordinated with the Biden campaign to suppress stories about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell,” The Daily Wire has learned.

Another, as mentioned, is the Biden White House and Justice Department’s memo and task force within the Justice Department’s Criminal Division focused on parents speaking up about harmful public school policies.

Trump also wants investigations into the IRS targeting of conservatives, and the Biden Education Department’s targeting of religious colleges for alleged discrimination of LGBTQ students.

“We will have a complete investigation into the use of police state tactics by federal authorities to arrest conservatives and Christians,” the order will say, “we will find out who ordered it, and we will hold them accountable.”

The House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement is set to hold a hearing on the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border and potential solutions the Trump administration could employ, The Daily Wire has learned.

The upcoming hearing, titled “Restoring Immigration Enforcement in America,” is set to take place on Wednesday, January 22nd, just two days after Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 47th president. It will be the first House Judiciary Committee hearing of the year, and “will examine how the Biden Administration dismantled immigration enforcement and what the Trump administration can do to restore integrity to America’s immigration system,” according to a description of the hearing obtained by The Daily Wire.

“The American people gave Republicans a mandate in November when they put us in the driver’s seat,” said Texas Rep. Brandon Gill (R.) who will participate in the upcoming hearing. “The Judiciary Committee Republicans are ready to hit the ground running, restore law and order back in our home districts, and secure the southern border.”

“With President Trump as our leader, we have momentum and energy as we hold our first Judiciary hearing of the year,” he told The Daily Wire.

Just under 11 million illegal alien encounters were between fiscal year 2021 and October 2024 under the Biden administration. The figure marks a colossal increase from President Donald Trump’s first term, when there were roughly 3 million nationwide encounters with illegal aliens. The Biden administration has even rushed to sell off border wall material for pennies on the dollar in the final days before Trump returns to office, The Daily Wire revealed.

Trump has pledged to strengthen border security through a slate of different policies and carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history, which is expected to initially focus on illegal aliens who have been convicted of violent crimes.

A series of polls have found that Americans are widely supportive of Trump’s immigration agenda. Nearly 60 percent of respondents to one poll said that they would support an effort to deport all illegal aliens from the United States, not just those who have been convicted of a violent crime. One poll from this summer found that a majority of American adults want less immigration into the United States.

Trump is expected to swiftly reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy upon retaking office. The measure, which required migrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed, was ditched by the Biden administration, which allowed migrants to be released into the United States. Some migrants were released into the country by the Biden administration and given immigration court dates in 2035.

Trump has nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security and tapped former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan as his border czar.

Noem said today in her confirmation hearing that the Trump administration will end the CBPOne App, a controversial program that allows migrants to remotely schedule their asylum appointments, increasing the flow of migrants into the United States. 

Donald Trump’s transition team released a video Thursday hyping the president-elect’s promise to “Make America Strong Again.”

The video is part of a series that the transition team is releasing every day ahead of Trump’s Inauguration Day, on Monday, January 20, to hype Americans up as Trump prepares his return to office.

Thursday’s edition features Trump meeting with world leaders as a voiceover of the president-elect promises: “We will return the world to peace through strength, and it will happen very quickly.”

“I will revive American strength abroad, and we will restore American strength at home, we will respect it … we will restore world peace, and it will be again peace through strength.”

Making America “the strongest and most powerful” nation “in the world” has been one of Trump’s most often repeated campaign promises. He has frequently criticized President Joe Biden’s image on the world stage, pointing to meetings with world leaders where Biden has looked weak or confused.

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When Biden met with world leaders at the G7 summit in June, for example, he wandered away from the group as they were taking pictures and watching a parachuting presentation outdoors. That group included Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, EU Council President Charles Michel, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

In February, the outgoing president confused the leaders of Mexico and Egypt during a press conference, prompting Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita to write on X, “Weak and sad.”

Trump has also said that the horrific October 7 Hamas attack on Israel would not have happened if he was president instead of Biden.

“What is needed is more than ever unwavering American leadership,” he said on the anniversary of the attack in October. “The dawn of new, more harmonious Middle East is finally within our reach. I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction. I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people. I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or our allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”

Monday, January 20, is Inauguration Day. Trump will attend church service at the historic St. John’s Church, then tea at the White House, before heading to the United States Capitol to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. He will bid farewell to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris before his departure ceremony, and then participate in the president’s “Signing Room Ceremony,” before heading to three inaugural balls on Monday evening.

The Daily Wire will be broadcasting live from Washington, D.C., throughout Inauguration Day.

Republican lawmakers are again introducing legislation to protect babies born alive in botched abortions, The Daily Wire can first report.

Led by Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, lawmakers will introduce the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act” on Thursday. The legislation would “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”

It’s a piece of legislation that Republicans have introduced repeatedly in the past, arguing that it is both common sense to support it and inhumane to vote against it. Yet every year, Democrats vote against the protections for born-alive babies, arguing that the legislation is a secret attempt to restrict women’s access to so-called reproductive healthcare.

“No child should be denied medical care simply because they are ‘unwanted,'” Lankford told The Daily Wire. “Today, if an abortion procedure fails and a child is born alive, doctors can just ignore the crying baby on the table and watch them slowly die of neglect.”

“That’s not an abortion,” he added, “that’s infanticide.”

The Oklahoma senator is joined by 38 of his Republican colleagues, including Jim Banks of Indiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa,  Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah. The legislation is also backed by a host of conservative organizations, including Concerned Women for America, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and more.

(Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Protections for unborn babies, limits on abortion, and federal abortion legislation are controversial topics within the Republican Party at the moment. But protections for born-alive babies have strong support from most, if not all, Republican lawmakers.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly highlighted Democratic support for laws that allow abortionists to end the lives of babies who survive abortions. Vice President Kamala Harris — who shook her head at Trump during their presidential debate and indicated he was lying as he discussed Democratic abortion extremism — voted against the Born Alive Infant Survivors Protection Act in 2020.

Given the controversial nature of abortion in the United States, it would seem that Americans should have access to quality reporting and statistics on the topic. But only eight states publicly report or respond to requests for statistics on babies who were born alive during abortion procedures, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

A Daily Wire review found that most of these states are not transparent with their reporting on whether the babies were given care after they were born alive following botched abortions. Minnesota appears to be the only state providing reasons — and Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor, did away with the state’s reporting requirement in May 2023.

Lankford’s legislation would require not only that abortionists “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age,” but also that the abortionist ensures that “the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.”

It would also mandate that health care practitioners, hospital staff, or abortion clinic staff report any knowledge of violations of this law, and states that anyone who intentionally “performs or attempts to perform an overt act that kills a child born alive…shall be punished…for intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being.”

Mothers of babies born alive may not be prosecuted under the law.

Over 100 people in the detransitioner community have signed a letter expressing support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services ahead of his confirmation hearings, The Daily Wire has learned.

“We believe that Kennedy will not dismiss our narratives,” says the letter, which was first obtained by The Daily Wire.

The message is directed to the United States Senate and argues that Kennedy has an “an impressive track record of advocating for true informed consent in healthcare.” It is signed by many individuals, especially young women, who tried to transition to another gender before realizing that such a thing was impossible.

Signers include detransitioners Chloe Cole, Laura Becker, Prisha Mosley, Abel Garcia, and Luka Hein, as well as family members of detransitioners, activists fighting against gender ideology, and members of the broader LGBTQ community who “feel strongly about health freedom.” That’s a group that has often been dismissed or downplayed by legacy media outlets, who echo the talking points of activist organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and praise gender transition procedures as “life-saving.”

“As members of the Detransitioners Community who have been directly harmed by the lack of informed consent in healthcare, we desperately need leaders in our government agencies, especially the chief of our health agency to be bold and to stand up for our rights in healthcare,” the signers wrote. “This especially includes ensuring that our medical system will not downplay the risks of any healthcare procedures, and will not manipulate our consent.”

The letter, which specifically states that it was grassroots-driven and entirely voluntary, recognizes that medical abuses within the United States are not limited to so-called “gender-affirming care,” the activist euphemism for transgender procedures, and expresses concerns about the healthcare system advocating and pushing for “more procedures instead of less.”

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“We trust in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only because he has risked losing his public reputation for parents who have sought his help, but also because of the many parallels we have seen in health freedom circles,” the letter states. “We have witnessed the lack of research integrity and selective research being used to push us towards more healthcare intervention. We have witnessed the healthcare system threatening some of our parents who have disagreed or disapproved of treatment. We have also witnessed the mental health stigma, the speech censorship of physicians and mental health providers who disagree with care standards, the difficulties of refusing unnecessary care, and of not knowing who to trust.”

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“We sympathize with the countless parents and patients alike who have been harmed by the healthcare regulatory system and believe that we need to heal as a country,” the letter continues. “We trust in Kennedy’s knowledge and awareness of the brokenness of our healthcare system, in the need for research and data transparency and access, and in championing true informed consent.”

Detransitioner Camille Kiefel, one of the signers, told The Daily Wire that she supports Kennedy because she agrees with his position that detransitioners “are not given true informed consent.” She believes Kennedy is genuinely concerned about American health, and that “with him in office, our nation will finally be healing.”

“The first approach allopathic doctors are taking for gender dysphoria is transition,” she explained. “Gender dysphoria is complicated, and allopathic doctors are not looking into underlying issues. An allopathic approach, including a non-binary mastectomy, did not improve my severe mental health conditions. My mental health would have never improved had I not addressed my physical health, including diet.”

Kennedy’s confirmation has not yet been scheduled, but it promises to be a contentious one. He has won strong support from many Republicans and health advocates, but bitter opposition from Trump opponents and even pro-life advocates, who fear that his past remarks on abortion demonstrate a possibility that he would head a pro-abortion HHS.

Kennedy, however, has promised Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri that he will be aligned with Trump’s pro-life priorities.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended individuals when no one believed in them,” said Diana Lufti, an independent healthcare research and policy consultant who heped organize the detransitioner support for Kennedy. “He has received more criticism, more media backlash, and been attacked from all sides because he truly believes in the best of people, and especially of individuals who have been harmed by the system. He has willingly risked his whole reputation and career doing so. He believes in the right of people to choose and to have open, honest, truthful conversations about their health, while acknowledging there are multiple ways to heal and that people have the right to control how they heal and who to trust.”

Lufti, who is the primary author of the Larger Detransitioners Community Amicus filed in United States v. Skrmetti, argued that Kennedy not only believed detransitioners during his campaign, but before.