Justice Gorsuch, 'Heros of 1776'

Justice Gorsuch on 1776,

His Court Colleagues, and the Patriotic-Education Gap: Transcript

Dan McLaughlin, National Review

‘I know we’re missing something . . . and I’m very distressed by it,’ the justice said of declining civics and history education, in an interview with NR.

Last week, I conducted an interview with Justice Neil Gorsuch about his new children’s book, Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the coming 250th birthday of the nation, his memories of the 1976 Bicentennial, the importance of patriotic education, the continuity of the Supreme Court, our age of political violence, and the continuing relevance of the declaration and the American Revolution. The full transcript (and video) of that interview follows, lightly edited for clarity:

Dan McLaughlin: All right, Justice Gorsuch, great to have you here. Tell us a little bit about — this is a children’s book. What do you see as the target age for this book?

Justice Gorsuch: Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. It’s a great pleasure to be with National Review. I remember it being very influential when I was the age of these guys behind the camera, and, as we were talking about earlier, James Buckley was a deep influence on me as a judge and one of the most gentle men I knew.

All right, so, target age of the book. I kind of think we had two groups in mind. So, I wrote this with one of my former law clerks, Janie Nitze. And she is one of the most talented lawyers I know, clerked for me and for Justice Sotomayor and is now a mother of three young children and started her own preschool because she was dissatisfied with their offerings. And we wanted to reach both kids and their parents. And I hope parents will enjoy this and learn a few things along the way that they didn’t know about the Declaration of Independence and the signers. I think C. S. Lewis said, you know, it’s a pretty crummy children’s book if the parents don’t enjoy it too.

McLaughlin: Yeah, because, looking through it, it certainly, the illustration certainly looks as if it was aimed mainly at kids who are old enough to read it themselves, but, I guess some people will be reading it aloud as well.

Gorsuch: Yeah. And you’re right, the illustrations I think will draw in the little ones, right? Chris Ellison, our artist, he should win a prize for his work. It’s just stunningly beautiful. It’s all hand painted. No AI, no computers, you know, no cartoons, and he really brings these people to life. And little details, like we talk about how much Jefferson loved nature and that he had a mockingbird that went around with him on his shoulder named Dick. And if you look, little children are gonna find Dick throughout the book in various places.

McLaughlin: So, you were eight for the Bicentennial.

Gorsuch: Yes, that’s about right.

McLaughlin: So, what is your memory of that and what stuck with you from that?

Gorsuch: Yeah, I’m — we’re probably not too far off in age. I suspect you’re a little younger—

McLaughlin: I was four, so I remember it, but not perhaps—

Gorsuch: Okay, I do remember it very vividly. The country — if we think we live in tough times, everybody always thinks they live in tough times is what I’ve figured out, okay? But in 1976, we’d just come out of Watergate. We had an unelected president. We were suffering from stagflation, you know, interest rates like 18 percent or 20 percent. I mean, think about that. You guys could never buy a house, you two. Inflation, extraordinarily high. Vietnam had just ended and there were a lot of young men who I knew who had come back from Vietnam in our neighborhood or our church who were not the same people who left. And it was a deeply troubling time after the civil rights movements, you know, the assassinations, all of that. And it was a moment that kind of brought us together again and made us realize that for all our differences and troubles, there’s a lot that unites us and a lot more that unites us than divides us. And it was just simple things from painting fire hydrants, red, white, and blue. I remember the Gemma family across the street, big Italian family, and they had one of those VW buses. You remember those things?

And they painted the American flag, stars and stripes with the 13 stars on the side of their red VW. And of course the giant ships in the harbors on the East Coast — we all watched with fascination because there’s no water in Colorado. And I hope that the 250th is something like that.

McLaughlin: Yeah, it’s a shame that Semiquincentennial doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way.

Gorsuch: But think about what it means. What does it mean? It means halfway to 500. It denotes that we’re on a journey, and that’s exactly how I think of our declaration, right? I mean, those three big ideas in the declaration that all of us are equal, that we all have unalienable rights that come from God, not from government, that we have the right to rule ourselves. I mean, those are perfect ideas. They speak to every soul, they exclude no one, but it’s a journey to realize those ideas. It’s been a journey and it will always be a journey.

McLaughlin: And our generation had Schoolhouse Rock.

Gorsuch: Yeah, that was 1976 as well that it came out to celebrate the Bicentennial.

McLaughlin: And there was a lot of, I think, patriotic education at the time. Is there — do we have as much of that today, do you think? Or, are we — is this filling a need, a hole that you think is missing?

Gorsuch: I know we’re missing something, and there are a variety of reasons why we don’t teach history and we don’t teach civics anymore. And I’m very distressed by it because, you know, surveys suggest like 13 percent of eighth graders are proficient in history at grade level, 22 percent in civics. And if you think it’s bad for them, let’s go to college. Turns out like 18 percent of colleges require a course in American history. One lousy course. And adults: Six in ten cannot pass the citizenship test that my wife took, and I can tell you it’s not hard, right? So yes, we have a deep problem and Janie — it was really Janie’s idea. She said, “You know, you’ve been complaining about this for a long time, old man, we should do something about it.” And so yes, this is an attempt to help.

McLaughlin: You mentioned your wife is British. Did she come to this with a different background and view of 1776?

Gorsuch: You know, I think my wife likes to focus on how much we mimic and how much we derive from England, and she’s not wrong, right? I mean, if you look around the country, virtually every other state and every other town is named after a British king or queen, right? Virginia, Maryland as she would say, all right? I mean, it just goes on and on. So she likes to focus on that, but you know, it wasn’t always thus, right?

I mean, in the book, we talk about the Franklin family. Ben Franklin, you know, one of the leading patriots, of course, we all know that. Do you know about his son William? You know about his son William, but he was a deep loyalist, right? At that time, you have to remember only about 40 percent of the people believed in independence and even during the debate over independence, it was a close-run thing whether they’re going to declare independence. And 30 percent or so were loyalists and the rest were kind of uncertain in between, you know. William wound up moving to England and the two men didn’t talk for years and years. And Franklin — Ben, that is — was deeply, deeply angry and distressed because by signing the declaration, he kind of signed his own death warrant. I mean, we forget that this was an act of treason, subject to death by hanging, and they really took that seriously. And we can talk about the suffering of those people, but his son was among those who were effectively seeking his death. That’s how he saw it. It was very personal and very real.

McLaughlin: You talked in your last book that you and Janie Nitze did, Over Ruled, talked about the individual stories, to illustrate overregulation. And I feel like this book is trying to do some of the same thing with the signers of the declaration, get to the individual stories?

Gorsuch: Well, how do you get somebody hooked on an idea? And I think facts and figures, you know — all right, they’re 13 percent, 18 percent or whatever — kind of don’t speak to us the way stories do. That’s how we relate to one another. You know, I wanna know your story, you wanna know mine, right? And that’s how we learn, really. And, we figure if you’re gonna get interested in the Stamp Act, right? And if you’re gonna get interested in the Articles of Confederation, it might be because of the people behind them. And the 56 signers were incredibly, incredibly interesting people, and their stories are moving.

We forget that the revolution was eight bloody long years. A third of the signers had their homes destroyed. Many of them were imprisoned. Some of their wives were imprisoned. Some of their children were imprisoned. And many of them gave their fortunes to the revolution and died poor as a result of it. So, telling those stories of courage and sacrifice we hope might inspire a few young minds and make them realize the declaration’s three big ideas are not inevitable. They were not inevitable, and their preservation is not inevitable, and that the torch passes to each generation. We’re a creedal nation. What unites us is not a religion, it’s not a race; it’s a belief in those three ideals. That’s our mission statement as a country. And if the people don’t get inspired to learn about them and believe in them, the baton drops.

McLaughlin: I mean, that was why Ronald Reagan in his farewell address, that was his argument — we need to teach informed patriotism to the next generation.

Gorsuch: It was also George Washington’s speech toward the end of his administration where he was advocating for a national university to teach civics and virtues and he wasn’t afraid to talk about virtues that are necessary to maintain a republic. And that is something that all of the Founders agreed on. I mean, Jefferson said, you know, if you expect a country to remain free and ignorant, well, you want something that’s never been and never will be.

McLaughlin: And that’s the old debate, virtue or liberty, but you really need one to get the other.

Gorsuch: Yes.

McLaughlin: I mean, just for perspective, I mean, you’ve been on the Court now just about nine years — so it’s only one year longer than this war continued. I mean, to think of all that has happened in the news, say, in the last eight years, that the revolution ran that long.

Gorsuch: Well, I’m not about to say my suffering matches theirs if that’s what you’re getting at, but it’s been a while, yes, yeah.

McLaughlin: Now you’re on a Court with a lot of strong personalities, with strong opinions about big things. The justices — you and your colleagues sometimes disagree, and quarrel even with the people you usually agree with, even with the people who agree with you that day. You attracted some attention in the tariff case with your concurring opinion, and we’ve seen other concurring opinions like that that are taking to task kind of everybody else, the people on your side today, the people on your side on other days. Does that give you — that experience of sitting on the Court — does that give you some more sympathy or insight into those men in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, hammering out the declaration, quarreling over what should be in, what should be out, what our — what is our next step?

Gorsuch: Boy, that was a very clever bridge from present day back to 1776. Let me take both halves of that.

So today you guys give us 70 of the hardest cases in the country every year and you are a litigious bunch. You all file about 50 million lawsuits every year in this country. Think about that. I’m not counting your traffic tickets over there, all right? They’re real lawsuits and you give us the ones where lower court judges have disagreed. I mean that that’s what this Court does. It resolves disagreements over the meaning of federal law that have split the circuits. You know that as a lawyer. That’s — so you’re giving us stuff that’s hard, and you’re asking nine people from across the country, appointed by five different presidents over the course of 30 years, to work together to resolve those cases. Can you guys agree on where to go to lunch? None of you? Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, right, exactly, all right.

And I actually think it’s kind of magical, our rule of law in this country, because first of all there are only about 60 or 70 cases a year in which the lower courts seriously disagree over the meaning of federal law. One could argue there’s a few more, a few fewer or whatever, but it’s not that many. It’s kind of incredible. You can — you know your rights and duties in this country under the law, much more so than almost any place on the planet or in the history of the world. Okay, fine. Of those 60–70 cases, the nine of us are unanimous about 40 percent of the time. Think about that. Think about what it takes. Am I ever gonna convince Sonia Sotomayor to become an originalist? I kind of doubt it, right? Is she ever gonna—

McLaughlin: Hope springs eternal.

Gorsuch: It does, it does. Ideas tend to win out over time, but I, you know, I understand that she has a different way of approaching law than I do, and she appreciates that I do, too. We know that. We don’t get angry over that. We get on with it, okay? And we start by saying, where — if I listen to you talk — we sit around a room in a conference room. I just got out of there, okay? And we sit around and we listen. We don’t interrupt. There are no raised voices in the conference room ever, right? And I listen. They listen. We find where we can agree, and we’re able to become unanimous in cases the lower courts have disagreed on about 40 percent of the time.

Now, I know what’s going through your head. You’re thinking, well, what about those 5–4s, and 6–3s? Okay, fine. That’s about a third of our docket, all right? But only about half of that third of the 5–4s, and 6–3s you might imagine, and the rest of them are scrambled every which way. All right, now those two figures, that 40 percent and that third, same as they were more or less in 1945 when Franklin Roosevelt had appointed eight of the nine justices of the Supreme Court. So, the one thing I know about the Supreme Court is very little changes, right?

We have different philosophies on how we approach the law, but I sit across from the table with people I know love this country. Love the Declaration of Independence. Love our Constitution as much as I do. All right, now you want to go back to 1776. All right, fine. Did they disagree? Oh my goodness, we just talked about — they had a hard time getting unanimity on independence, all right? And let’s take Jefferson and Adams, who are two of the central figures in the book, along with a lot of people you don’t know about, or are less well known. Jefferson and Adams were peas in a pod when it came to the declaration. They were the instigators in a lot of ways, and they worked on the document itself together very closely. Dear friends. And then of course, they completely disagreed on how to implement the declaration and the Constitution. One wanted a very strong central government, the other a much, much weaker one. They fought. They didn’t speak for years. And then toward the end of their life, a friend kind of interceded and said, “Come on, you two.” And they started writing letters and they exchanged over 140 of them in the last part of their life. And what they realized is what I realized and what I try to remember when I’m disagreeing and we’re going hammer and tong over some statutory interpretation case, that that person loves this country as much as I do.

McLaughlin: And Hamilton and Madison, the same — Federalist Papers and then opposite sides.

Gorsuch: And Andrew Jackson walked around with two bullets in him from duels that he fought, you know, and, when an assassination attempt with him just across the street of the Capitol failed, he went after the guy with a cane, and they had to rescue the poor guy from the president.

I mean, you know, democracy is a rough and tumble business. It is. I’m not here to tell you it isn’t, but it’s magical, and it’s through those debates and disagreements that we are — that’s actually our strength if we can harness it. Because the fact that we all can speak our minds freely — and we can have a contest of ideas — means the best things emerge and because we have to compromise with one another and listen to one another, we find ways to mediate our differences so we can live together that, you know, that’s why we’re much more robust and resilient than a monarchy or you know, a despotism which is so much more brittle. What’s the weakness of a democracy? If we start taking those disagreements beyond disagreements and fail to recognize the humanity of the person across from us.

McLaughlin: Yeah, I sadly enough — I feel like, at different times when I’m interviewing somebody, I can say, well, look what just happened this week, and it seems like it’s an every week thing these days.

I get that. But, you know, you go — and that’s why I think looking back through history is so important for our kids because they think, and we all think, our times are unique and our troubles are profound. And I’m not here to tell you we don’t have our challenges. But I will tell you it has always been thus.

McLaughlin: What role should the declaration play in understanding the Constitution and interpreting the Constitution?

Gorsuch: Well, I think of the declaration — is kind of our mission statement. If you’re a corporation, if you want to put it like that, or a kid or your report card, how are you doing? Here are these three ideas we are really aspiring to. And I think of the Constitution as a how-to manual, right? The nuts and bolts of how we’re gonna try and get to those ideas, and so my job is to apply my part of the how-to manual, all right? Now, I’m, you know, one-third of one-half of the manual, right? The manual’s got three branches of government, it’s got federalism on top of that. So I gotta pay attention to my part of the manual and kind of stay out of other people’s part of it. And if we all do our bit, maybe we’ll progress toward those ideas.

McLaughlin: Are we teaching enough? Are law students learning enough of the Founding era?

Gorsuch: No, no, no, they’re not. They, I get disturbed when I — so we’re sitting in the conference room and there’s Charles Evans Hughes and, you know, Taft over there and I have law students in here who don’t know those men, can’t recognize them. I bring them into my chambers and they don’t recognize James Madison. Okay, smart young law students. And I just think it’s tragic. They all want to change the world. Great. I say great. There’s a lot of improvement to be made. All right. But if you don’t know your history. If you don’t know why the gate is there — why it was put there — you just want it removed. Well, watch out. Here come the buffalo. You need to know your history.

McLaughlin: That’s a very Western metaphor.

Gorsuch: Well, mixed in with a little bit of Chesterton.

McLaughlin: Yeah — I mean almost nobody’s read the Articles of Confederation, for example, which to know how we got the Constitution, you gotta know what, what they tried first.

 First, you need to know why we rebelled, right? What were the complaints? You know, why did they feel the need to do that? Is it just tea in Boston Harbor? Did it have something to do with juries and judges, a lack of independence of them? And did it have — a lack of representation in their voices did have a little bit to do with the ideas that we think about with federalism. And then of course, you’re right, with the experiment with the articles, you know, why did we get rid of those? Maybe we went too far in the other direction. We wanted to decentralize in our fight against the king, and we went to the opposite extreme. Maybe the Constitution was a way to try to find a middle ground. But yes, no, nobody learns about that anymore.

McLaughlin: And one of the miracles is that in the middle of all of this they don’t just write the declaration and send home, you know, delegates to find out what their state legislatures are instructing them to do. They write this Constitution. Even if it didn’t work, they write all of these state constitutions. They hold elections in states that are half occupied by the British.

Gorsuch: Oh, I mean, one of the stories in the book is about the first printing of the declaration, with the signers’ names on it. Where were they? They’re in Baltimore. Why was Congress meeting in Baltimore? I thought it was Philadelphia, huh? Huh. Well, the British were attacking Philadelphia, right? And Congress — I mean, this is how fragile, how contingent all this was — had retreated to Baltimore, but they needed to get the declaration out. They had to get it out fast because as we discussed, not everybody was behind this project and they needed to rally people, they needed to persuade people. And so, they turned to a local printer, a Patriot printer, M. K. Goddard, who published a Patriot newspaper and always put at the bottom of the newspaper printed by M. K. Goddard. Well, M. K. Goddard is Mary Katharine Goddard and used her initials for obvious reasons at that time. When it came to the declaration, what did she do? She put at the bottom of that document printed by Mary Katharine Goddard in Baltimore, Maryland, because she wanted to be identified as a patriot too, even though it could have cost her her life as well.

McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean, the amount that they had to put themselves on the line, really, really should, should be part of what we appreciate about all of this, about the sacrifices they had to make.

Gorsuch: Thomas Nelson, you know, one of, one of the signers, was the head of the Virginia militia at the Battle of Yorktown. He saw that the British were using his house as one of their headquarters — is one of the stories in the book. And he didn’t hesitate to have his men fire on it. And when he died, he died very poor, having spent most of his fortune in support of the revolution. They really did pledge their lives, their sacred honor, their fortunes to the cause, and he was asked on his deathbed, you know, do you have any regrets? And he said, I’d do it all over again.

McLaughlin: There’s, of course, you have in here the great story of Ben Franklin advising Jefferson as he saw some of his favorite pieces of the declaration get cut out. His story of the hat maker starts off with a long sign, and it ends up with just a name and a picture of a hat. I guess we’ve all read majority opinions of the court down through the years that look a little bit like the hat sign with nothing but a picture of name on it.

Gorsuch: Understand, Jefferson called them mutilations. It’s a pretty perfect document in a lot of ways. And of course there’s a big debate over who should write the declaration. There’s a great story about that, and Adams wrote this down, so it’s recorded in his words in the book, and it’s kind of priceless, I think, you know, Adams says to Jefferson, “You know, you should write the declaration,” and Jefferson says, “Oh no, no, no, no, no, you do it.” And Jefferson, Adams said, didn’t utter more than three sentences in a row ever during that meeting of the Continental Congress. I mean, he was very quiet, in public. And so he was very reticent. Adams is like, “No, no, no, no, you gotta do it. I’ll give you three reasons. First, you’re a Virginian, and a Virginian should be head of this business because, you know, those Massachusetts guys were a little rabble rousing. They need to bring other people along and Virginia was the wealthiest, largest colony. Okay. Second, I’m obnoxious, I am suspected and unpopular, and you are very much otherwise. And reason third. You write ten times better than I do.” And so that’s how they resolved how to do it. But it was a process, that’s for sure.

McLaughlin: What do you think is the most important thing for — whether it’s students of the Constitution or students of the revolution to know about why they rebelled?

Gorsuch: I think it has to do with those three ideas we’ve talked about. They really believed in those three ideas. And they seem like the air we breathe today, we take them so for granted, like the water a fish swims in [and] doesn’t even notice it. But you have to remember that in 1776, those were unbelievably crazy radical ideas. The idea you rule yourself? Nobody in Europe did that. You have rights. No, you have grace from the king. Right, we’re all equal. Kings and serfs, goodness, no. Those — a British newspaper called the Declaration of Independence — Americans had declared for themselves the unalienable right to talk nonsense, Okay? And a lot of people still think it’s nonsense around the world today, and if we don’t take care to learn about them, to preserve them, and to recommit ourselves to them in every generation, there’s nothing inevitable about their continuity.

McLaughlin: George Washington’s justices — or the justices he appointed, I guess they, once in, they’re not his justices anymore — but Washington’s appointees to the Court spent a lot of time riding circuit, not only riding circuit, but giving speeches and explanations to local juries and grand juries about the Constitution. Here’s what it says, here’s what it means. Is that part of your role? Do you think it to be something of a public ambassador for the Court and the Constitution? Is that part of what you see as your job?

Gorsuch: Well, I actually think if you brought the Founders back today and said, “Walk around the executive branch, walk around Congress, now come over here to the Court.” I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I think the one institution they’d probably recognize most easily is this institution. Nine older people sitting around arguing about whether this dangling modifier modifies this, that, or the other thing, right? And what does the First Amendment mean? And I think that’s something I take some pride in that, you know, we do our own work and it would be recognizable. We don’t ride circuit anymore, but in terms of books, I think Supreme Court justices have written over 350 books. And I don’t think I’ll ever match the output of my friend Steve Breyer. But he is a wonderful teacher — completely wrong about everything he thinks about law — but a dear friend and a wonderful teacher.

McLaughlin: And on that note, I will thank you for being gracious with your time today.

Gorsuch: Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it and thank you guys too.

The Moral Malaise

 

The Moral Malaise: 

The New York Times Makes the Case for “Microlooting” to Murder

Jonathan Turley, jonathanturley.org

Below is my column in The Hill on the recent New York Times podcast exploring the justifications for crimes ranging from theft to murder. The podcast with radical Hasan Piker, the New York Times Opinion Culture Editor Nadja Spiegelman, and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino captured the moral relativism that has taken hold of the left in American society. Reading the manifesto of the accused White House Correspondents Association Dinner shooter Cole Tomas Allen shows the ultimate expression of a society where rage has replaced morality and decency.

Here is the column:

“It is so hard to live ethically in an unethical society.” That lament heard this week from New York Times opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman could well be the Democratic Party’s epitaph.

Spiegelman was interviewing two left-wing influencers about how everything from shoplifting to murder may be excusable today in light of the unfairness they see in society.

The podcast, a product of the nation’s newspaper of record, reveled in the moral relativism that has taken over the American left. It featured the ravings of the antisemitic Marxist streamer Hasan Piker, who calmly explained how the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson was perfectly understandable. His rationalization came from Marxist revolutionary Friedrich Engels, who had called capitalism “social murder.” If capitalists are “social murderers,” then why not kill them? The logic is liberating and lethal for some on the left looking for a license for violence.

Mind you, this same newspaper had once condemned and effectively banned a U.S. senator for writing an op-ed advocating the use of the military to quell violent protests during the summer of George Floyd’s death. The Times even forced out its own opinion editor for having the temerity to publish such an opinion.

But glorifying murder? The suggestion of open hunting season on corporate executives did not appear to shock or repel Spiegelman. After all, we are living in “an unethical society.” She explained that many felt that the murder of Thompson, the father of two, meant that “finally, someone can actually do something about health care.”

Even liberal comedians are practicing a literal version of slapstick. Margaret Cho this week declared that “we need a feral, bloodthirsty, violent Democrat.”

To be fair, Spiegelman did concede that it might seem a bit “scary” for some to start murdering our way to social justice.

She also explained that shoplifting can be justifiable because people are “stealing from Whole Foods — not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification.”

New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino also contributed to the podcast, titled “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” She immediately threw in her own experience with “microlooting” and explained why it is arguably moral: “I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big-box store [isn’t] significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest.”

She detailed her own past thefts and added, “I didn’t feel bad about it at all, in part because the store was a corporation. And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was like, this is not a big deal. Right, guys?”

Not in the confines of the New York Times, where apparently you are entitled to all goods that are fit to pilfer.

The bizarre exchange highlighted the moral chasm that is opening its maw on today’s political left. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I write about how rage helps people excuse any offense or attack. It dismisses the humanity of others and provides a license to hate completely and without reservation.

It is not really murder or theft if there are no real humans on the other side, is it?

Other columnists have defended such property crimes. Washington Post writer Maura Judkis ran a column mocking shoplifting stories as the “moral panic” of a nation built on “stolen land.” It is reminiscent of those who excused rioting in past summers “as an expression of power” and demanded that the media refer to looters as “protesters.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones went so far as to call on journalists not to cover shoplifting crimes.

At its core, it is a denial of transcendent values and rights. It is a decoupling of our society from a grounding in moral or universal truths. It is a trend that extends not only to attacks on individuals but also to attacks on our constitutional system. There is a growing denial of our founding based on Enlightenment principles of natural rights, which come not from government but from God.

Some people seem to have forgotten this. In 2024, a celebrated political journalist memorably asserted that belief in God-given rights is a form of “Christian nationalism” — an odd claim about a concept the nation’s founders literally wrote into our Declaration of Independence.

Last year, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — a man who represents Thomas Jefferson’s own state — attacked a witness in committee for espousing Jefferson’s immortal assertion that human beings’ natural rights are endowed by their Creator. Kaine disparaged this idea as something worthy of Iran’s mullahs.

The result is the type of moral free-fall and rejection of personal responsibility expressed on the New York Times podcast. Simply because they condemn our entire age as unethical, they feel justified in asserting a moral right to commit any offense, from microlooting to murder. This underpins the increasingly frequent justifications made for attacks against conservatives or law enforcement as a form of “defending democracy.”

Yet the feeling of “anger and moral justification” does not make an act moral. It is the morality of mayhem; a spreading decay within our society. History has shown us how democracies can become mobocracies.

During the French Revolution, journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan observed that “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” The sad fact is, it is not just the danger of fellow revolutionaries deciding that you are the next reactionary to be guillotined. It is the self-consumption of radicals who untether themselves from any higher order or purpose. It is the knowledge that all mortals carry the Saturn gene; all mortals share the capacity to become monsters.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

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Who Owns American History?

 

Who Owns American History?

The battle over slavery intensifies

as we approach America’s 250th birthday.

John Fonte, The American Mind

Why did the National Park Service regularly denigrate the events of 1776 prior to the Trump Administration? In the Claremont Review of Books’ 25th anniversary issue, Jeffrey Anderson describes a visit to Independence National Historical Park, situated in the heart of old Philadelphia and run by the National Park Service. Congress created Independence Park for the purpose of “preserving” historic sites associated with “the American Revolution and the founding and growth of the United States,” as Anderson notes.

Anderson found an overwhelming emphasis on slavery and race—25 of 30 signs at the park’s President’s House, where George Washington and John Adams lived during part of their presidencies, “focus on slavery or race relations.” He writes that Washington and other founders “stand accused” of “‘injustice’” and “‘immorality.’” The first U.S. president’s “actions [are] characterized as ‘deplorable,’ ‘profoundly disturbing,’ and as having ‘mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.’”

How did this situation come to pass?

We must go back 24 years to the formation of the Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC). A lawyer, community activist, and founding member of ATAC, Michael Coard, expressed the mindset of the group in a July 4, 2021, essay in the Philadelphia Tribune:

July Fourth is a celebration of kidnapping, transporting/buying/selling human beings, separating families, torture, whippings, rapes, castrations, lynchings and enslavement…. So why do many Black folks continue to do their flag-waving, fireworks-blasting, and swine-barbecuing thing on July Fourth? The answer is obvious. They’re ignorant or they’re traitors or they’re both.

Incidentally, ATAC sponsors “Anti-Fourth of July Day” events annually—and its mailing address happens to be Coard’s law office. To describe the group as anti-American and particularly hostile to patriotic African Americans is an understatement.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that beginning in 2002, ATAC “worked with local scholars, lobbied elected officials, and negotiated directly with Independence Park to ensure the history of slavery was centered at” the President’s House. The Inquirer noted that “It wasn’t until roughly six years after their advocacy began, when [ATAC] felt like focusing the site on slavery was a done deal.” Michael Coard stated, “We all agreed that slavery was going to be prominent.” “The question was how prominent?” Coard credited the late Mary A. Bomar, the former National Park Service director under President George W. Bush, as being cooperative with ATAC.

The President’s House, with an overwhelming emphasis on slavery, opened in December 2010. It was immediately attacked by cultural critic Edward Rothstein, then with the New York Times. Rothstein rejected the argument of the site’s adherents that the new interpretation was based on history previously not examined. In a rebuttal, the Times writer argued it was far more beholden to identity politics advocacy than nuanced historical analysis: “It is not really a reinterpretation of history; it overturns the idea of history, making it subservient to the claims of contemporary identity politics.”

He continued:

After $10.5 million and more than eight years; after tugs of war between the city and the National Park Service and black community organizations; after the establishment of a contentious oversight committee and street demonstrations, overturned concepts and racial debates, it bears all the scars of its creation, lacking both intellectual coherence and emotional power.

Most importantly, Rothstein contended in a follow-up piece that the new ideological interpretation ignored what was significant for American history in the President’s House: the fact that the Washington and Adams administrations were influential in creating a new nation, a constitutional republic. Rothstein writes, “In the upstairs world of Washington and Adams, so blatantly ignored in the Philadelphia site, was the beginning of a national experiment: the faltering and difficult task of shaping a new society in which equality and liberty would indeed be governing principles, ultimately weakening the institution of slavery.”

Criticism also came from Williams College Professor Michael J. Lewis in Commentary Magazine in April 2011. In an essay entitled “Trashing the President’s House,” Lewis writes that its exhibition is akin to “making a national monument to the sins and failings of the Founding Fathers.”

Restoring History

Fortunately, on March 27, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” declaring that there has been a “widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and to promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historic milestones in a negative light.” The executive order called for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.”

In January 2026, in keeping with the implementation of Trump’s executive order, the National Park Service NPS began removing the current signage from the President’s House, replacing the ideologically driven interpretation with a more comprehensive and nuanced one for America’s 250th anniversary celebration. However, the City of Philadelphia, strongly allied with activist-advocacy groups, sued to block the removal of the signage. District Court Judge Cynthia Rufe agreed with the city and ordered the NPS to put the signs disparaging Washington and his presidency back up. She maintained that the NPS could not act unilaterally because it had entered into a series of cooperative agreements with the City of Philadelphia.

Judge Rufe declared that by removing signage developed by activists, including the anti-July 4th Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, revisionist historians, and the Democratic political leadership of the City of Philadelphia, the Trump Administration’s Department of the Interior (DOI) was involved in “dismantling objective historical truth.” Ruge continued, noting the “government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove, and hide historical accounts…. Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984.” Rufe contended the removal of the signage “undermines public trust, and compromises the integrity of public memory.” Further, she maintained that it has harmed “the City’s tourism” and the “promotion of its history in advance of the founding of the United States of America.”

An appeals court temporarily stayed Judge Rufe’s order until further proceedings can determine the status of the President’s House. Meanwhile, Trump’s DOI posted on its website alternative signage to replace the City of Philadelphia’s activist narrative.

Patriotism Versus Anti-Americanism

The crucial question for any honest proponent of an objective, fact-based American history is which framework—the city’s or the Interior Department’s—best presents to millions of visitors (citizens and foreigners alike) a comprehensive overview of both freedom and slavery in America’s past?

As noted earlier, the Philadelphia-activist version overwhelmingly references slavery and race. George Washington is discussed mostly in negative terms. His actions are “deplorable” and “mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.” Rather than seriously examining the administrations of the two men who lived in the President’s House, the activist signage dismisses their accomplishments, stating that as “Washington and Adams governed the new nation, slavery continued to grow.”

In contrast to the tendentious Philadelphia-activist interpretation of slavery, the proposed Trump DOI signage provides a complex discussion of the tension between slavery and freedom in the founding period in a section entitled “Presidents Washington and Adams on Slavery.”

It tells us that two years before the Declaration of Independence, “Washington helped draft the Fairfax Resolves at Mount Vernon. These condemned the slave trade as ‘wicked,’ cruel,’ and ‘unnatural’ and called for putting ‘an entire Stop’ to it.” The proposed signage also acknowledges that as president, Washington “signed legislation that both upheld and limited slavery.” He “approved the Fugitive Slave Act” but “also signed measures restricting slavery’s expansion, including the 1789 Northwest Ordinance, which banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, and the 1794 Slave Trade Act, which barred the participation of American ships in the transatlantic slave trade.”

The Interior Department signage also notes that Washington freed his slaves in his will and “made provisions that the elderly and sick be supported by his estate for the rest of their lives.” The Trump DOI’s interpretation concludes: “Although Washington placed national unity above immediate abolition, he hoped for gradual legislation that would eventually bring slavery to an end.”

Since John Adams was a lifelong opponent of slavery and never owned any slaves, he could not serve as a useful foil to promote the Philadelphia activist’s claim that “the American founding is all about slavery.” Therefore, Adams is barely mentioned in their signage, although he, like Washington, lived in the President’s House throughout his administration. The Interior Department interpretation reminds us that “During the Adams administration the United States supported” Toussaint Louverture’s slave rebellion in Haiti “economically with trade and supplies and militarily with arms and U.S. Navy ships.”

Besides providing a much more thorough analysis of the slavery issue during the Washington and Adams administrations, the DOI’s signage includes a much richer presentation of the history of the anti-slavery and abolitionist movements. Unlike the Philadelphia activist interpretation, the Interior Department version examines the history of the Underground Railroad, the careers of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln’s role in achieving the final abolition of slavery.

The interpretation of the history of slavery and the founding offered by the Trump Administration’s DOI is not “erasing history” in “Orwellian” fashion as Judge Rufe and advocates for the Philadelphia activists’ signage contend. Instead, it is comprehensively expanding our historical understanding of the detailed and nuanced history of the tension between slavery and freedom in our constitutional republic. If anyone is substituting propaganda for history, it is the Philadelphia-activist narrative, as New York Times critic Edward Rothstein pointed out 16 years ago.

John Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Sovereignty or Submission?, winner of the ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) book award for 2012.

THE STRAIT IS OPEN…

 

~ THE STRAIT IS OPEN ~

John Hinderacker, Powerline

…and President Trump says a deal with Iran is at hand:

Iran has opened the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessels, its foreign minister has announced.

Abbas Araghchi said that the key oil artery would be “completely open” for the remaining period of the ceasefire in Lebanon, which expires on April 26.

In response, Donald Trump thanked the Islamic Republic, but insisted the US navy blockade of ships entering or leaving Iranian ports would remain in place.

“The naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete,” he said, referring to a likely peace deal.

“This process should go very quickly in that most of the points are already negotiated,” he added.

One report suggested that in-person talks could resume in Pakistan as soon as Sunday.

The price of crude oil plummeted immediately after Iran’s announcement, and stock markets soared. President Trump says that Iran has agreed to hand over its nuclear materials, although the details are apparently not yet decided.

Meanwhile, European leaders are looking rather silly. They have gathered in Paris for talks over the Strait:

Germany and France are at odds over whether to cut Donald Trump out of patrolling the Strait of Hormuz once the war in Iran ends.

Before a summit to draw up plans for a naval coalition to reopen the waterway, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, insisted he wanted to “discuss the participation of US armed forces” in the mission.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, however, wants to exclude “belligerent countries” – the United States, Israel and Iran – from any deployment.

Planning is under way to build a “coalition of the willing” to send warships and other mine-clearing vessels under British and French leadership to the Strait of Hormuz.

They are a little late, but if, going forward, they are able to muster a few ships in the Gulf, fine. I am not holding my breath in the meantime, and the idea of France “cutting us out” of anything is absurd.

What did the trick, evidently, was our naval blockade of Iran’s ports. The blockade quickly brought Iran to the brink of economic collapse. It appears that the IRGC is giving in, in hopes of being able to hang on to power.

What we really want is freedom for Iran’s 92 million people–an end to Islamic tyranny. The agreement now being negotiated presumably won’t include scheduling of elections by the regime. We can hope that the conflict that is now apparently ending has discredited Iran’s regime to the point that Iran’s people will be able to rebel successfully, but that isn’t likely as long as the IRGC has all the guns.

The Abraham Accords

 

The Abraham Accords

Middle East Institute, here

Introduction

The Abraham Accords are a series of bilateral agreements brokered by the United States whose core original intent has been to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab countries. The first agreements were signed on September 15, 2020, between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Israel and Bahrain. Israel and Sudan agreed to normalize relations in October 2020; however, the formal signing of the documents — originally expected to take place in Washington in 2023 — was delayed due to Sudan’s domestic turmoil and the ongoing war in Gaza. In December 2020, Israel and Morocco established official diplomatic ties. Kazakhstan formally joined the grouping on November 6, 2025, although it has had normalized relations with Israel since the 1990s. The Abraham Accords represented the first formal normalization of Arab-Israeli diplomatic relations since Israel’s 1994 peace treaty with Jordan and the 1979 Egypt-Israel agreement following negotiations at Camp David. The name “Abraham Accords” was chosen to emphasize the shared Abrahamic roots of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — the majority faiths of the original participant countries and their diplomatic convener.

The Abraham Accords built on efforts by previous US administrations to promote closer ties between Israel and other Arab states, which had been developing under the radar since the signing of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. The accords process was part of an “outside-in” approach focused on fostering bilateral diplomatic, trade, and security relations with Arab states not directly party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As such, the resulting agreements did not significantly address the Palestinian issue, the resolution of which had been considered a prerequisite to formal relations with Israel. This prompted criticism that the accords undermined the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which sought to advance a two-state solution and ensure a just resolution for the Palestinians in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel and normalization of relations.

Arab Motives for Normalization with Israel

In June 2020, following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledges to annex parts of the West Bank, Emirati Ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba warned that annexation would jeopardize the prospects for diplomatic relations with Arab states, including the UAE. Amb. Otaiba communicated to the White House that the UAE would agree to normalization if Israel formally suspended its annexation plans. A deal based on this proposal was finalized during a three-way conference call between President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and then-Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Within hours of the announcement of this agreement on August 13, 2020, senior Bahraini officials informed the White House of their desire to become the next country to formalize ties with Israel. That agreement was concluded on September 11, 2020, during a call between President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and signed four days later.

Morocco subsequently agreed to normalize relations with Israel in return for US recognition of its disputed claims over Western Sahara. The Trump administration pledged to open a US consulate in the Western Saharan city of Dakhla, though that initiative stalled under President Joe Biden’s administration. After this agreement was signed on December 22, 2020, Israeli-Moroccan ties quickly developed. Direct flights between the two states began in July 2021, and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid visited Rabat and Casablanca a month later. The two countries also signed a cybersecurity cooperation agreement.

Sudan: Partial Normalization

On October 23, 2020, Khartoum declared its intention to normalize relations with Israel after the US agreed to remove Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and Israel promised an aid and investment package. Sudan signed an Abraham Accords Declaration on January 6, 2021, during a visit by the US secretary of the treasury, accompanied by an additional promise of assistance with obtaining loans from the World Bank. The move was widely unpopular in Sudan, and the bilateral agreement with Israel was never signed. Following the overthrow of the Sudanese government in October 2021 and the country’s descent into civil war in April 2023, Sudan drew closer to Iran and progress on relations with Israel came to a halt.

Kazakhstan: Maintaining the Momentum

The second Trump administration has been pushing to expand the Abraham Accords beyond their initial signatories since coming to power. Progress on bringing in additional Arab states faltered while Israel maintained its military operations in Gaza and beyond. Meanwhile, US Special Envoy Steven Witkoff traveled to Baku in March 2025 to persuade Azerbaijan to join the accords as well as convince post-Soviet Central Asian governments to sign on. These accessions would be largely symbolic, as each of these former Soviet republics had recognized Israel soon after becoming independent. On November 6, during Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to the White House, President Trump announced that Astana was formally joining the Abraham Accords. As part of the visit, Astana and Washington signed 29 deals reportedly worth $17 billion. No details initially emerged of how Kazakhstan’s accession to the Abraham Accords may change the nature or intensity of its existing relationship with Israel.

The American Role

During the presidency of Barack Obama, Washington kept high-level channels open between Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab Gulf states. In 2015, the US hosted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders at Camp David to deepen missile-defense and maritime security cooperation, aligning the Gulf states and Israel around shared threat perceptions, particularly regarding Iran, which made strategic cooperation more politically feasible. That same year, Israel quietly opened a mission to the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi, and in 2016, the US signed a record $38 billion security memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Israel, making normalization with regional neighbors less risky from the latter’s perspective.

Over the following three years, the Trump administration built on and transformed these conditions into public agreements. On his first trip abroad, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the West Bank, where he spoke about the need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a prerequisite to broader Israeli-Arab normalization; and he pointedly referenced peace between Israel and its neighbors as necessary for creating a coordinated anti-Iran bloc. Trump charged top-level White House advisors with leading back-channel talks that culminated in the August 13, 2020, UAE-Israel Abraham Accords deal, followed by Bahrain’s entry and the White House signing ceremony. To help push through the Emirati-Israeli agreement, the US advanced a $23 billion F-35 and drone sale to the UAE. Trump’s approach effectively sidelined the Palestinian issue.

“On his first trip abroad, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the West Bank, where he spoke about the need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a prerequisite to broader Israeli-Arab normalization; and he pointedly referenced peace between Israel and its neighbors as necessary for creating a coordinated anti-Iran bloc.”

The Biden administration built on the Abraham Accords with the inaugural Negev Forum conference, hosted by Israel in March 2022, which saw the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, and the US travel to Israel — a first for the Emirati, Bahraini, and Moroccan foreign ministers — to discuss regional security and economic cooperation. The group reconvened in January 2023 in Abu Dhabi with an agenda that included “initiatives that could strengthen the Palestinian economy and improve the quality of life of the Palestinian people.” That working group meeting was the largest single gathering of Arab and Israeli officials since the 1991 Madrid peace conference. Morocco was slated to host the next high-level Negev Forum conference, but it was postponed and ultimately canceled in June 2023, amid strained diplomatic relations following Israel’s announcement of new settlement expansions in the West Bank.

The Biden administration also concentrated on bringing Saudi Arabia to the table by offering a comprehensive US-Saudi defense treaty, including security guarantees and assistance developing the kingdom’s civil nuclear program. This arrangement, which was reportedly nearing completion shortly before Hamas carried out its terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, included undefined assurances that steps would be taken to improve the lives of Palestinians — a noted departure from previous Saudi insistence on a two-state solution.

Hoping to expand the Abraham Accords with new regional members, second Trump administration officials and diplomats have repeatedly raised the prospect of normalization with Israel in various Arab capitals, including Beirut, Damascus, and Riyadh.

Congress has also taken steps to support the Abraham Accords. In January 2022, a bipartisan group of US representatives founded the House Abraham Accords Caucus to strengthen the existing agreements and lay the groundwork for further normalization deals. The caucus was relaunched in February 2025, and that June the same lawmakers formed the bipartisan Gaza Working Group to engage Abraham Accords countries on planning for the “day after” in the devastated coastal strip. The US Senate counterpart of the House caucus pushed for passage of the 2021 Israel Relations Normalization Act, charging the US State Department with developing a strategy for expanding and strengthening the Abraham Accords; the 2022 DEFEND Act, requiring the Defense Department to find new approaches for Arab partners and Israel to implement an integrated air-defense network; the 2023 MARITIME Act, tasking the Pentagon with developing a regional integrated maritime domain awareness and interdiction capability; and several National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provisions enhancing diplomatic, military, and intelligence cooperation with Middle Eastern partners.

“Washington advanced the Abraham Accords with the hope they would serve multiple core US interests in the Middle East.”

US Interests in Advancing Israeli-Arab Normalization

Washington advanced the Abraham Accords with the hope they would serve multiple core US interests in the Middle East, including support for partners, regional stability, freedom of navigation, counterterrorism, and the containment of Iran. By expanding a US-aligned security architecture that enhances intelligence sharing, integrated air and missile defense, and maritime coordination among regional partners, the accords were expected to strengthen deterrence against hostile actors and ensure the flow of energy resources through vital maritime chokepoints. They opened durable channels for government-to-government and private-sector collaboration in sectors such as energy, logistics, aviation, and technology, creating economic interdependence with the potential to reinforce political stability and reduce the likelihood of conflict. They also provided a scalable diplomatic framework, through mechanisms like the Negev Forum working group, that Washington could use to coordinate multilateral responses to security crises, advance counterterrorism cooperation, and promote non-proliferation goals, ultimately reinforcing a regional order favorable to US interests.

Beyond those goals, the Abraham Accords were envisioned as aiding the US in achieving its broader strategic objectives by limiting China’s growing economic and diplomatic inroads in the Middle East. By fostering multilateral economic ties, via trade, mutual investment, and people-to-people exchange, the accords offered a regional counterbalance to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, reinforcing US influence and offering partners alternatives to Beijing-driven infrastructure and investment strategies.

Economic and Strategic Consequences

The Abraham Accords marked a strategic realignment in the Middle East between Israel and several Gulf states, driven in part by their shared perception of Iran as a regional threat. Following the signing of the accords, the UAE and Bahrain exchanged diplomatic representatives with Israel.

These diplomatic ties opened the door for new bilateral business partnerships, leading to increased investment and economic opportunity in the region. One of the most significant outcomes was the signing of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between Israel and the UAE in 2023. This deal — the largest between Israel and any Arab country — sought to boost bilateral trade with the aim of reaching more than $10 billion over five years. However, the real rise in trade flows has been fairly modest, following a brief spike in 2022, and was adversely affected by the war in Gaza.

In the years following their signing, the Abraham Accords provided a foundation for broader regional integration efforts and the establishment of new transcontinental trade corridors. One mechanism for furthering such ties was the Negev Forum, which brought together Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, the US, and Israel for a series of meetings on regional security and economic cooperation. At the group’s initial meeting, held in Israel in March 2022, the participants agreed to form six working groups on clean energy, education and coexistence, food and water security, health, regional security, and tourism. Yet subsequent tensions over the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and later the war in Gaza, interrupted additional progress under this format. In July 2022, Israel, India, the UAE, and the US created the I2U2 Group focusing on joint investments and new initiatives in water, food, transportation, energy, space, and health, and in September 2023, the Biden administration pushed for the development of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). However, the Gaza war likewise put most of those plans on hold.

Tourism also flourished following the signing of the accords, at least for a time and mostly in one direction: Israel and the UAE lifted visa requirements for each other’s citizens, and by 2023, more than 1 million Israelis had visited the UAE, supported by 106 weekly direct flights. By contrast, only about 1,600 Emiratis had traveled to Israel since normalization, and officials noted that this figure dropped even further after October 7, 2023. Bahrain opened its airspace to facilitate traffic between the two countries, though actual tourism exchanges were minimal, with only a few hundred Bahrainis visiting Israel in the early years of normalization.

In addition to trade and people-to-people ties, the accords spurred the development of strategic Israeli-Arab military cooperation and security agreements. In January 2021, the US Department of Defense transferred Israel from the US European Command area of responsibility to that of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), following the coordination of joint military exercises between Israel and the UAE in 2020. Taken together, these policies facilitated the creation of the US-led integrated regional air-defense shield to counter the missile threat from Iran — first prominently put to the test in April 2024, when Iran directly targeted Israel with mass missile and drone salvos. In addition to this operational coordination, Arab states accounted for 24% of Israel’s $12.5 billion in defense exports in 2022. Israel’s agreement to supply the SPYDER air-defense system to the UAE in September 2022 and to sell anti-drone systems and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Bahrain in July 2022 were key elements of this defense-industrial cooperation.

“In addition to trade and people-to-people ties, the accords spurred the development of strategic Israeli-Arab military cooperation and security agreements.”

Shared cybersecurity threats have been another important area for greater coordination. Cyber intelligence and diplomacy cooperation between the UAE and Israel rapidly accelerated following the accords, as seen with reports of intelligence sharing between Israel and the UAE to counter Hizballah cyberattacks in 2021 and Dubai’s role hosting the Israeli cyber conference “Cybertech Global” in April 2021. In February 2023, the US Department of Homeland Security convened the first dialogue between US, Israeli, Emirati, Bahraini, and Moroccan cybersecurity officials, with commitments to extend intelligence sharing through the Abraham Accords framework.

Current Status and Prospects for Further Enlargement

Unlike previous diplomatic agreements such as the 1978 Camp David Accords, the 2020 Abraham Accords centered primarily on the normalization of diplomatic relations with states that had not been in open conflict with each other. And while the accords were accompanied by beneficial trade and economic deals, the signatories were criticized for abandoning a long-standing Arab condition for normalization: the establishment of a Palestinian state. President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas condemned the agreements as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian people.”

Opposition to the accords became much more widespread, especially among Arab publics, after the onset of the war in Gaza. The resulting humanitarian crisis for the Palestinian population strained regional relationships involving Israel and chilled potential new agreements. President Trump’s stated “Gaza Riviera” proposal, which called for relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt or to South Sudan, alienated Arab states and effectively contradicted the Abraham Accords members’ understanding that normalization with Israel would be accompanied by a process toward eventual Palestinian statehood.

Despite the criticism and periods of ongoing or recurring conflict in the region — including in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, all of which have involved Israel to varying degrees and have deteriorated since the accords were signed — the Abraham Accords largely remained intact as they reached their fifth anniversary. No signatory country has formally severed diplomatic ties with Israel or withdrawn from its commitments, although the accords are outwardly in a state of suspended animation. In the UAE, most existing partnerships remain, but few new deals have been signed. Bahrain’s parliament suspended relations with Israel in November 2023 and recalled the Bahraini ambassador, but this move was largely symbolic as the executive branch retains control over the country’s foreign relations. In Morocco, air links with Israel were suspended and tourism dropped.

The prospects for further enlargement of the accords seem unclear, particularly among Israel’s Arab neighbors. On the one hand, the initiative remains a point of focus for the US president and his team. Trump explicitly referenced the Abraham Accords in his speech to the Israeli Knesset on October 13, pledging to add new countries soon and “have that whole thing filled out” — a sentiment he reiterated in a Fox Business News interview later that week. Other high-level administration officials routinely speak about expanding the accords too. Yet on the other hand, Kazakhstan is still an exception to the current lack of progress. Much recent speculation focused on Lebanon and Syria, thanks to the election of a government in Beirut dedicated to disarming Hizballah and the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus — though neither capital is ready to take that step as long as Israel continues to carry out military operations on their soil. Attention has also continued to focus on Saudi Arabia; however, Riyadh has repeatedly made clear that it refuses to normalize ties without concrete steps toward the realization of a Palestinian state. As a candidate, Trump mused that Iran could be incorporated into the Abraham Accords, though that remains highly unlikely. The Trump administration has also floated ideas about further expanding the accords to South and Southeast Asia; and it contends that other Muslim-majority former Soviet republics of the Caspian region, which already have normalized relations with Israel, will follow Kazakhstan in signing on.

Meanwhile, the shared Israeli-Gulf perception of the Iranian threat that, in part, undergirded the Abraham Accords has increasingly come under stress, particularly after Israel’s post-October 7, 2023, retaliatory campaigns against Hamas and Hizballah, and the subsequent Israeli-Iranian conflict in 2025. Israel and the Gulf states have pursued divergent paths, with Israel taking a maximalist military approach toward Iran and its allies, while the Gulf states have prioritized stability, seeking to normalize ties with Tehran and lower the temperature on regional tensions. The future of the accords, including whether states like Saudi Arabia might join them, may depend on whether this strategic divide widens or narrows.

This backgrounder was researched and written by MEI summer 2025 intern Hannah Marx, with additional work by Research Assistants Eryn Gold and Hamad Alshamlan, and input from Senior Fellow Brian Katulis.

Don't Bailout Chicago

 

Don't Bailout Chicago

Bailing Out Chicago Would Send a Dangerous Message

Taxpayers nationwide would pay the cost—and other mismanaged cities would get in line at the federal trough.

Thomas Savidge, City Journal

Chicago has seen better days. The city is losing residents and businesses and is digging itself deeper into debt just to maintain the status quo. Yet city officials show no intention of cutting back on spending.

This crisis, however, will have nationwide implications. An unconditional bailout will signal to other fiscally mismanaged cities that their irresponsibility can be rewarded.

At its core, Chicago’s fiscal problems are straightforward. For decades, the city has committed itself to unsustainable spending levels. While its ridership is declining, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is flush with funds thanks to sales tax and driver fees. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) expenditures keep growing despite declining student enrollment. In addition to structural budget deficits, Chicago has some of the nation’s largest unfunded pension liabilities.

Meantime, residents are fleeing both Chicago and the State of Illinois. In the year ending last July 1, Illinois lost over 40,000 residents, many from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. The Chicagoland area lost more than 35,000 residents either to other counties in Illinois or to other states. Despite an influx of 44,000 international migrants, blunting the effect of net domestic outmigration, government officials can’t conceal the city's fiscal irresponsibility.

Residents, bond investors, and credit rating agencies see the writing on the wall: the Windy City is headed over the fiscal cliff. Chicago’s credit ratings have been downgraded to BBB+, with rating agencies citing fiscal issues. While Illinois has enjoyed credit-rating upgrades in recent years (thanks to support from federal Covid-19 funds set to expire this year), Illinois still remains the worst-rated state.

It’s worth considering Illinois and Chicago’s financial predicament in a larger context. Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy is often compared with Chicago’s fiscal crisis since the Motor City suffered from similar problems: massive unfunded pension liabilities, budget shortfalls, and rampant corruption. But at the time of Detroit’s bankruptcy, Michigan was in far better fiscal shape than Illinois is now. Pension reforms in the late 1990s improved Michigan’s solvency, leaving it better positioned (both before and after the Great Recession) than if the reforms had not been made.

Overall, research consistently shows Michigan outperforming Illinois on fiscal strength, even in the period when Detroit was navigating bankruptcy. Illinois, by contrast, is in no position to help Chicago.

Chicago’s fiscal stress more closely resembles that of New York City in the 1970s and Puerto Rico in 2015. As with New York back then, if bond investors remain skeptical of Chicago bonds, it could lead to increased borrowing costs, impaired market access from a lack of willing underwriters, and even default. The scale of such a default could rival that of Puerto Rico’s, with consequences affecting both Chicago and Illinois.

When stimulus funds from the Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan expire on December 31, Illinois and Chicago will be stuck with billion-dollar deficits. The state and city may turn to Washington, D.C. for a bailout.

Six years ago, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon sent a letter to the Illinois Congressional Delegation detailing a federal bailout request. Most requests in this letter pertained to budgetary issues that long predated Covid-19, including a $15 billion “no-strings-attached block grant.”

While the feds rejected that specific item, Illinois and Chicago received billions of federal dollars through various stimulus programs. Illinois also received a first-of-its-kind loan from the Federal Reserve. Many proponents of the Covid-19 fiscal expansion still defend this massive spending, with former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stating last year that the stimulus was necessary.

The door is open, then, for Illinois and Chicago to return to D.C. and ask for federal assistance. If granted, taxpayers nationwide will pay for the Windy City’s fiscal recklessness. And the bailouts likely won’t stop there. Officials in other cities, such as Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, will be watching closely. If Chicago can get a bailout, why not the Big Apple?

Rather than properly manage their budgets, city and state officials may scramble to secure the next spot in line at the federal trough. Fiscal responsibility will erode as state and local officials pay more heed to federal policymakers and the terms of federal funding than their obligations to their constituents.

The only constructive way forward is for federal officials to make an explicit warning against bailouts. When fiscally mismanaged states and cities see that Washington won’t enable their behavior, they may finally make the necessary and painful adjustments to restore fiscal solvency.

How Chicago manages its fiscal situation going forward will tell us a lot—both about the city’s financial future and about Washington’s response.

Thomas Savidge is a Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. Follow him on Twitter/X: @thomas_savidge.

Iran's Fantasy of Strength

 

Iran's Fantasy of Strength:

When Bazaar Tactics Collide with Reality

Pierre Rehov, The Gatestone Institute

This is not containment. It is disarmament. It is the eradication of Iran's nuclear ambitions as a strategic variable. And it is accompanied by equally stringent regional and military demands: the cessation of financing, arming, and directing the organizations of the proxy terrorist network that has defined Iranian power projection for decades.... The United States is not seeking behavioral change. It is demanding total transformation.

The regime in Tehran still stands, which is its all-encompassing objective. Iran's territory is not occupied and its capacity to inflict damage — through missiles and proxies — has not been fully neutralized. The costs Iran has imposed on its neighbors and adversaries, both militarily and with political pressure... are perceived as significant. From this perspective, the war might not appear lost to them. In an ongoing war, one does not surrender. One bargains.

Most importantly, Tehran is betting on time. After all, Trump just promised not to bomb Iran's power plants for another ten days. Trump, in their reading, is a dealmaker, not an occupier. He seeks outcomes, not endless wars. And in the echo chambers of Western media, where narratives of American overreach and impending quagmire are readily amplified, Tehran finds confirmation of its own illusions.

In the end, the outcome will not be determined by rhetoric or by the theatrical posturing of preconditions. It will be determined by the hard realities of power. It is overwhelmingly, decisively, and unmistakably tilted against Iran. Those now in charge of Iran... may no longer recognize that.

US President Donald J. Trump has reportedly laid out a 15-point peace plan to Iran — with conditions that, taken together, amount to Tehran's near-total strategic capitulation.

In response, the Iranian regime has not merely rejected them; it has countered with a series of conditions so detached from reality that they raise a fundamental question: is Tehran negotiating or hallucinating?

What is unfolding is not a classic diplomatic standoff between two adversaries seeking a middle ground. It is a confrontation between a superpower-backed coalition imposing terms from a position of overwhelming superiority, and a regime that behaves as though it were dictating the outcome of a war it is, in fact, losing.

The substance of the American demands is not improvised but instead reflects a coherent objective: the dismantlement of Iran's entire nuclear infrastructure combined with a permanent ban on uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, the transfer of enriched uranium stockpiles to the IAEA, and the imposition of intrusive, unlimited inspections.

This goes far beyond anything envisioned in the 2015 Obama-era JCPOA "nuclear deal". This is not containment. It is disarmament. It is the eradication of Iran's nuclear ambitions as a strategic variable. And it is accompanied by equally stringent regional and military demands: the cessation of financing, arming, and directing the organizations of the proxy terrorist network that has defined Iranian power projection for decades — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraq's PMF. Add to this the requirement to maintain the Strait of Hormuz as an open international waterway and the elimination of ballistic missile capabilities, and the picture becomes unmistakable. The United States is not seeking behavioral change. It is demanding total transformation.

Yet, in classic Trump's "art of the deal" fashion, the offer includes sweeteners: lifting sanctions, support for a civilian nuclear program, and the removal of the "snapback" mechanism. In other words, a pathway is offered to survival, under new rules. The only inconsistency lies in Tehran's response.

What Iran is putting on the table so far is not a counterproposal. It is a daydream built on an apparent misreading of reality. Tehran demands the recognition of its sovereign right to enrich uranium, the preservation of its nuclear infrastructure, and the limitation of IAEA inspections. It demands the full and immediate lifting of all sanctions before talks even begin, along with guarantees that no future US administration will reinstate them — an absurdity under American constitutional constraints. It demands explicit assurances of regime survival, and the end of covert operations and targeted strikes. It refuses any reduction of its regional proxy footprint, insisting on maintaining influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, and on preserving alliances with terrorist organizations in those countries. It rejects meaningful constraints on its ballistic missile program. And, in a final act of surreal audacity, it demands financial compensation for damage inflicted by US and Israeli strikes—including, in some formulations, "moral damages" for eliminated operatives.

How can such a gap exist between reality and Iran's perception of it? The answer might lie in a combination of ideological rigidity, strategic miscalculation, and possibly the intellectual degradation of the Iranian leadership itself. Over the past year, and especially through targeted operations attributed to Israel, many of the regime's most capable strategists, military planners, and scientific minds have been eliminated. What remains is not the intellectual elite that once shaped Iran's long-term strategy but a second-tier leadership —less sophisticated, less disciplined, and perhaps more prone to operate according to instinct rather than analysis. These may not be grand strategists but rather functionaries steeped in a culture of transactional bargaining and accustomed to the logic of the bazaar, where the first offer is deliberately absurd and the negotiation is a theatrical performance of endurance.

Protecting the Free World, however, is not a bazaar, and Trump is clearly not a carpet merchant.

The first shock, for any observer, is that Iran seems not to perceive itself as being in a position of defeat. From a Western perspective, the United States and Israel, since the first day of the war, have been dominating Iran militarily, technologically, and operationally. Iran's military and nuclear assets have been decimated, its networks disrupted, and its vulnerabilities exposed. All the same, the regime in Tehran still stands, which is its all-encompassing objective. Iran's territory is not occupied and its capacity to inflict damage — through missiles and proxies — has not been fully neutralized. The costs Iran has imposed on its neighbors and adversaries, both militarily and with political pressure — particularly on a US president navigating domestic constraints — are perceived as significant. From this perspective, the war might not appear lost to them. In an ongoing war, one does not surrender. One bargains.

The second shock is applying bazaar tactics to high-stakes geopolitics. Extreme demands are just the opening move. One starts at the maximum to negotiate down to the acceptable. The objective is not to reflect reality, but to shape the negotiation space. By presenting conditions that are, on their face, unacceptable, Tehran is attempting to see if Trump desires a rapid resolution. Tehran may believe that if Trump fears a prolonged conflict that could evolve into a Vietnam-style quagmire — or, in more contemporary terms, a Ukraine-style stalemate — then he will make concessions.

This calculation is reinforced by Iran's belief — whether genuine or feigned — that it retains leverage. The Strait of Hormuz remains under its influence, a maritime chokepoint through which a significant portion of the world's oil and gas flows. From Lebanon, Hezbollah continues to bombard Israel with hundreds of rockets, while the Houthis in Yemen have not yet escalated. Iran's economy, battered but not collapsed, has adapted to decades of sanctions. Most importantly, Tehran is betting on time. After all, Trump just promised not to bomb Iran's power plants for another ten days. Trump, in their reading, is a dealmaker, not an occupier. He seeks outcomes, not endless wars. And in the echo chambers of Western media, where narratives of American overreach and impending quagmire are readily amplified, Tehran finds confirmation of its own illusions.

Even within serious analytical circles, this perception is bolstered. The Wall Street Journal has noted that Iran behaves as though it believes it is winning — and therefore demands a steep price to end the conflict. In the ideological framework of the Islamic Republic, the regime cannot afford to lose face. Its legitimacy is built on resistance — against the "Great Satan" and the "Zionist entity." For Iran's regime to accept negotiations under terms that reflect defeat would be to undermine the very narrative, however illusory, that sustains it. For the leadership, acknowledging strategic failure is not merely a diplomatic setback; it is an existential risk. It signals weakness. It invites internal dissent. It fractures the illusion of invincibility that authoritarian systems require to survive. Therefore, the regime does what such systems always do: it doubles down on rhetoric, inflates its demands, and projects strength even where weakness is evident.

On the US-Israel side, there is a structured, coherent strategy backed by overwhelming force and clear objectives. On the Iranian side, there is a negotiation posture shaped by ideological rigidity and a cultural reflex toward exaggerated bargaining.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is not simply a diplomatic impasse. It is a collision between two fundamentally different ways of understanding power. For Washington and Jerusalem, power is measurable, operational, and cumulative. It is expressed through capabilities, alliances and outcomes. For Tehran, in its current degraded state, power is performative. It is asserted, declared, dramatized — sustained through narrative rather than grounded in reality.

This premise is why Iran's position appears so irrational to Western observers. It is not that the regime is unaware of its vulnerabilities. It is that acknowledging them would be even more dangerous, internally, than ignoring them. So it constructs a parallel reality in which it acts as if it is still calling the shots — hoping to remain a regional power and a force to be reckoned with — despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

There is, however, a limit to how long such a dissonance can be maintained. Negotiation, by its very nature, is a process of convergence. At some point, positions must align with reality or with one another. The question is not whether Iran will eventually adjust its demands, but at what cost and under what pressure. The current posture is not sustainable. It is a delaying tactic, a psychological shield, a final attempt to negotiate from a position that no longer exists.

And this is where the strategic asymmetry becomes decisive. Trump is negotiating from a position of leverage, timing and control. Unlike the bazaar merchants of Tehran, he does not need to start high to negotiate low. He can start high and stay there.

In the end, the outcome will not be determined by rhetoric or by the theatrical posturing of preconditions. It will be determined by the hard realities of power. It is overwhelmingly, decisively, and unmistakably tilted against Iran. Those now in charge of Iran — like Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, who was offered so many off-ramps that he refused to take — may no longer recognize that.

Pierre Rehov, who holds a law degree from Paris-Assas, is a French reporter, novelist and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of six novels, including "Beyond Red Lines", "The Third Testament" and "Red Eden", translated from French. His latest essay on the aftermath of the October 7 massacre " 7 octobre - La riposte " became a bestseller in France. As a filmmaker, he has produced and directed 17 documentaries, many photographed at high risk in Middle Eastern war zones, and focusing on terrorism, media bias, and the persecution of Christians. His latest documentary, "Pogrom(s)" highlights the context of ancient Jew hatred within Muslim civilization as the main force behind the October 7 massacre.