Author: The Daily Signal

About 25 years ago, James Whitford and his wife founded a ministry to the poor and homeless in Missouri. Not long after starting the ministry, Whitford felt led by the Lord to see for himself what it was like to be homeless. 

 

After several conversations with his wife, the couple agreed that Whitford would take a short period of time to live on the streets, and Whitford left his home with nothing but the clothes on his back. 

 

Whitford found himself sitting on a street corner next to a young homeless man in his 30s named Ralph. Whitford had known Ralph for some time and had ministered to him many times, but now, the two were homeless together. It was well into the day and Whitford was hungry. Ralph pulled out a sandwich and offered Whitford half. 

 

“And if you put yourself in that position of a homeless person offering his food to you, how do you respond? I didn't say it,” Whitford recalled, “but I remember feeling or thinking, well, ‘no, I'm not gonna take your sandwich, Ralph. I'm not gonna do that. I can go somewhere if I need to, and you're the ministry, and I'm the minister.” 

 

At that moment, Whitford says he realized he had been “treating Ralph and thousands of other people as objects of my good intentions … rather than subjects who have autonomy, capacity and agency.” The experience changed Whitford’s perspective on serving the poor, and permanently affected the way he led his ministry, moving from a “handout model to a hand-up model.”

 

“If we're not engaging people in reciprocity in our charity, we are failing them horribly, doing them a disservice and not really upholding the inherent human dignity that is in every person,” Whitford said. 

 

Unfortunately, Whitford says much of the government's programs intended to help the poor, and many charity programs, don’t engage the recipients dignity and have instead created significant harm through creating dependence on programs instead of empowerment. 

 

Whitford, co-founder and CEO of True Charity, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss his new book, “The Crisis of Dependency: How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty Are Trapping People in It and What We Can Do to Foster Freedom Instead.”

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: 

• Ukrainian President Zelensky admits he will sign the U.S. minerals deal after a disastrous Oval Office meeting. The Left responded to things about like you'd expect.
• Democrat governors in Massachusetts and Maine cling desperately to DEI.
• Updates on the South Carolina wildfires and executive actions to reduce wildfires in the future.

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A tense altercation between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ensued in the Oval Office today.

The bottom line: The United States of America will not be extorted by a country whose leaders are more interested in what they can get out of the American people than peace.

The point of the meeting? To sign a U.S.-Ukraine mineral deal. Trump is “very tired of subsidizing and paying for far-distant problems when we’re running a $37 trillion national debt,” and this deal would not only offset those costs but also, by inviting “American business into Ukraine, to help rebuild it and to profit … [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will be less eager to attack you if he understands there’s a thriving American concession there,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

“Donald Trump is incurring a lot of criticism lately on the Ukrainian war. He's trying to negotiate an end to the war. Remember, there's probably somewhere around 1.5 million dead, wounded, missing, and captured on both sides, together. That is the largest casualty rate figure total in Europe since the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943. In his “Art of the Deal” style he came in and he said some things the last week that got people very angry. I'll just give you two examples. He said that Zelenskyy was a dictator and that he ‘should have stopped the war and never started it.’

“That got people anguished because we know that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th of 2022. So, why did Donald Trump say that? Of course, he doesn't believe that Zelenskyy started the war because he has campaigned himself on the following narrative: ‘Under George Bush, in 2008, Russia invaded Ossetia and Georgia.

“‘In 2014, under the Obama administration, they invaded the Donbas and Crimea. On February 24th of 2022, under Joe Biden, they tried to take Kyiv. However, of the last four administrations, there was one in which they did not leave their borders to invade another nation—my administration. Why? Because unlike the prior three presidents, I was able to establish deterrence.’”

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: 

 

• A historic heated exchange between President Trump and President Zelenskyy plays out in front of the world in the Oval Office.
• Vice President Vance spoke at the 20th National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. 
• The religious liberty legal defense group Alliance Defending Freedom has launched an investigation into censorship of Americans’ free speech within the government’s science agency.

 

Also on today’s show: 

• President Trump signs an executive order declaring English as the official language of the United States.
• President Trump says he believes that the cocaine found in the White House in 2023 belonged to either President Biden or his son Hunter.

BIG Announcement: 

Some exciting changes are coming to Top News in 10! Starting in March, Top News in 10 will be released as a morning show, and The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett will be the new regular host of the show. 

Former hosts Rob Bluey, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Virginia Allen will still appear on the show occasionally, but will be spending more of their time writing the stories you love for The Daily Signal. You can find all their work, and the work of the entire team, at https://www.dailysignal.com/. 

Links From Today’s Show:

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/28/exclusive-adf-investigates-free-speech-violations-government-science-agency/ 

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Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women 

The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown 

 

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There is a growing outrage against Elon Musk, including threats to his life over DOGE’s work to find and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the U.S. federal government. On this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” a Daily Signal original series, Hanson delves into the reasons behind this backlash, its broader implications and how the Left is making the “chemotherapy”, DOGE’s work, out to be worse than the “cancer”, wasteful government spending.

 “We're starting to see, kind of, an outrage where people are threatening a life, even, of Elon Musk and defending all sorts of indefensible expenditures.”

“One thing I think is lost in this messaging, this tough love, this effort to restrain the government is that, I think, the Trump administration and Musk must convey that.

They must say we don't enjoy putting people out of work. We don't enjoy rounding people up, but we have to because these people, the Left, the Biden people, the Jacobins, they put us in that position. They were the ones that destroyed institutions. They were the ones that broke the law. They were the ones that are bankrupting us.”

00:00 Introduction to Tough Love Messaging

04:38 The Necessity of Tough Actions

04:42 Blaming the Left for the Crisis

04:53 Destruction of Institutions

04:56 Breaking the Law

04:58 Economic Bankruptcy

For Victor’s latest thoughts, go to: https://victorhanson.com/

Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqkXbgqrDrDVInBMSoGQgQ

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: 

 

• Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will go into effect on March 4th, according to President Donald Trump. 
• Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House.
• The Trump administration is moving ahead with aggressive plans to root DEI out of our school. Today, the Department of Education launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov.

 

Also on today’s show: 

• Andrew Tate arrives back in the U.S.
• Actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico home.

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Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women 

The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown 

 

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Although the Elon Musk-endorsed Alternative for Deutschland garnered over 20% of the vote in the country’s recent elections, the “ultra-far-right” party will likely be blocked from joining a majority coalition in the parliament, further alienating an increasing number of concerned Germans who believe their country is no longer the “powerhouse” of Europe, argues Victor Davis Hanson on this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

“But here's my point, even though they have about half of the support of all German voters, it's likely that the Alternative for Germany will not be represented. And the seats that will comprise the majority will be made up by either a socialist party or the green party, or both.

“Here's my point, again, there's a populist, nationalist backlash, a counterrevolution to the craziness of Europe. And we know JD Vance has outlined that craziness: low fertility, high energy prices, bans against fracking, open borders, dishonorment, deindustrialization, etc. But the conservatives will not have a voice under their parliamentary democracy, even though they earned a voice. And that's only going to make them more polarized. …

“Mr. [Friedrich] Merz said in a speech that given the trajectory of America under Donald Trump, he's distancing himself and he doesn't really consider the United States an ally anymore, at least he said Trump's America.

“Think about that for a second. Now, I don't want to go through ancient history, but we fought two wars with Germany. And we defeated them both, but we also came to their rescue. I think we rescued them in World War I from kaiserism. And that allowed them to have a brief romance with democracy. And then we rescued them from Nazism. They paid a terrible price. But they did lose two wars they should have lost. And then we protected them in the Cold War. … ”

For Victor’s latest thoughts, go to: https://victorhanson.com/

Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqkXbgqrDrDVInBMSoGQgQ

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: 

 

• President Donald Trump holds his first Cabinet meeting.
• The House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency held a hearing today. The heating was titled, “America Last: How Foreign Aid Undermined U.S. Interests Around the World.” 
• Trump’s Department of Homeland Security says it will use “every available tool to compel illegal aliens to self-deport.”   

 

Also on today’s show:

• The Trump administration issues a memo directing federal agencies to prepare for large-scale layoffs.
• Rep. Byron Donalds has announced his candidacy for Florida governor in 2026.
• President Trump announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington on Friday.

Links From Today’s Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zds7WnHiUP0 

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In this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson discusses a recent heated exchange between President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet T. Mills at a White House meeting of governors.

The confrontation centered on Trump’s executive order banning males from participating in female sports, which Mills resisted. 

Hanson argues that Mills’ stance is not only out of line with public opinion, but also basic constitutional principles:

“[Gov. Janet T. Mills’] wrong on public opinion and she’s wrong on sporting authorization. She’s wrong in the idea that a state law can supersede a federal law.

“Because, if she were right, she would destroy female sports as we know it. …

“Under our Constitution, when a state and federal law are in conflict, the federal law predominates. The alternative is something that caused the Civil War. … 

“I would remind her that there’s some things that she’s not thinking about. No. 1, that issue, according to liberal polls, is about 80-to-20 in favor of keeping female sports for biological females. The person, most recently, who won a pole vault contest in Maine was a biological male. And they usually have about a 20% higher rate of performance in pole vaulting because of their muscular skeletal frame. …

“Remember, women who transition to men, that is biological women, do not win male sports. And that should tell you something. It’s that the idea of genderism, transgenderism, is not a third sex. It’s primarily predicated on whether you’re a biological male or a biological female. If you’re a biological female, you do not do well as a transgendered male.”

For Victor’s latest thoughts, go to: https://victorhanson.com/

Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqkXbgqrDrDVInBMSoGQgQ

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On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: 

 

More than 6 in 10 voters believe President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency will significantly reduce federal government spending over the next year. 

 

Up until now, most Republicans have cheered Elon Musk’s cost-cutting measures at DOGE. But there are signs of frustration in some quarters of Washington. 

 

Customs and Border Protection encountered only 200 illegal aliens at the U.S. southern border on Saturday. That is the lowest number of apprehensions in a single day in over 15 years. 

 

Plus, our news flash: 

 

The White House announced a big change for the press pool, the group of journalists who cover Trump’s activities. 

 

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also forcefully defended the choice of Dan Bongino to serve as deputy director of the FBI. 

 

Rachel Maddow took aim at her own employer Monday night after MSNBC fired Joy Reid. 

 

Keep Up With The Daily Signal 

 

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The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-tony-kinnett-cast  

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The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown  

  

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