Israel, Iran, and the Trump Doctrine

 

Israel, Iran, and the Trump Doctrine

Brian T. Kennedy, American Mind 

President Trump is already engaged in an old war—and he wants to make sure the U.S. wins it.

President Donald Trump, like the American Founders, believes that this republic is constituted to protect the citizenry against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When it comes to foreign affairs, we are not obliged to fight and die for anyone but our fellow citizens. Our social compact is with one another as Americans. Whatever we do militarily and strategically is first and foremost to preserve the freedom and well-being of the American people.

President Trump thinks this is just common sense.

There is a disagreement now over what America’s role should be, if any, in supporting Israel after its preemptive strike on Iran. President Trump has authorized the use of American air defenses to stop Iranian attacks on American assets and citizens: our military bases in the region, our consulate in Tel Aviv, and the Americans living in the surrounding area. This is not an endorsement of the Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and personnel. It is designed to protect the lives of Americans; the U.S. is well within its right to do so. It should be noted that we do not have an embassy in Iran, and for good reason.

Responses by the American Left to condemn Israel were not unexpected, as the Left has long sympathized with the anti-Western, anti-American hatred propagated by the Islamic world. More surprising is the reaction of some in the America First/MAGA movement, who seem to perceive President Trump’s policy as a betrayal of his promise to keep us out of new wars. Some perspective is required, because two decades of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have discredited the use of American military power and tarnished the strategic relationship between the United States and Israel.

Let us be clear: the idea that there will be no new wars, however attractive that may sound, misses the point. We are already in a “People’s War” that the Chinese Communist Party declared in May of 2019 when President Trump committed to stop their theft of America’s intellectual property. Communist China is in a strategic alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which includes massive contracts for oil—some 16% of China’s current imports. The CCP has been instrumental in both advancing Iran’s nuclear program through scientific cooperation with North Korea, and abetting Iran’s terrorist activities throughout the region, including Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

President Trump, therefore, has not endorsed the start of a new war. He is engaged in an old war—one that may well be seen, in retrospect, as World War III. He wants to make sure it is won by the United States.

Who is Israel to Us?

America has been friends with Israel since its inception in 1948. This friendship is founded in part upon our shared Judeo-Christian heritage, but mostly it arose pragmatically out of alliances formed during the Cold War. Israel was an outpost of the West—and still is. That doesn’t mean the Israelis are American or that we must die for them.

Separately from these calculations, Israel also evokes strong passions because of its status as the Jewish homeland. Many Americans—especially evangelical Christians—have a spiritual attachment to the Israelis that transcends mere politics. The Biblical teaching that the Jews are God’s chosen people lives in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, including a substantial portion of the MAGA base. Yet there are other Americans who embrace varying degrees of the anti-Semitism that has been with us from time immemorial.

Nevertheless, the tension between these two groups has been defused throughout most of modern American history by our shared commitment to defy the Communist world. It was the goal of the Communists to break the will of the West to fight, and to strengthen those progressive elements within Western societies—and especially within the United States—that would ally with terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization against Israel and America. Their purpose was to advance the cause of global Communism against the forces of freedom and Western Christendom, of which Israel is a part.

These bonds between Israel and America will not be broken easily, if ever. This does not mean that America’s strategic decisions do not begin and end with what is good, first and foremost, for America. What it means is that it is not a difficult call to wish the Israelis well in their attempt to permanently degrade Iran’s nuclear capability.

The Case of Iran

Many today suggest that American foreign policy is led by Israel. The U.S. experience with Iran tells a different story. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States for almost half a century. Its enmity for the U.S. was born of our cooperation in the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and the restoration of the Shah of Iran until his fall at the hands of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The overthrow in 1953 was part of a series of Cold War considerations that the United States made with our British allies to check the influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East and ensure Western access to oil.

The Cold War, clearly misunderstood by so many young Americans today, was an existential contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States was not engaged in the democracy promotion that came to characterize the discredited and failed efforts of the Global War on Terrorism. During the Cold War the United States and our NATO allies engaged in ruthless competition with the Soviet Union and its allies, such as Communist China, North Korea, and the terrorist movements represented by the PLO in the Middle East and Communist/terrorist groups in Europe such as Baader-Meinhof, Black September, and the Red Brigades. Communist China supported these groups every bit as much as the Soviet Union did. It was a global struggle for primacy. Such is the case in world affairs. Communist China’s current support of Communist groups in the United States such as “No Kings” is a reminder of this.

It was hoped that supporting the Shah of Iran would help create a pro-Western regime that could advance pro-Western interests. This held for a time, until the Shah was overthrown by a mixture of Soviet-backed Communists and radical Islamic clerics led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The failure of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, was in part due to his inability to maintain a regime that was authoritarian enough to suppress the Communists and the Islamists. Lacking a strong hand—the Shah, it was said, did not want to turn his guns on his own people, even if it meant his own downfall—Iran was a regime ripe for revolution.

The United States’s strategy during the Cold War was to promote stability in the Middle East through the hegemonic powers of Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. All of these were pro-Western regimes that, whatever animosity may have existed between them, would create a balance of power that benefited the United States and the West. This strategy would collapse over time. The Shah of Iran fell in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Saudi Arabia, an economic power because of its oil exports, would come to support anti-Western Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its more violent offshoots such as Al Qaeda. And Turkey, a member of NATO, has come to see itself as the vanguard of a new Islamic caliphate, and has allied with Islamic forces in the region that might help them achieve this, including Iran. Although President Trump has established good relations with the Saudis and Qataris, this is a work in progress. The remaining power on the side of the West is Israel.

The fall of the Shah in 1979 led to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard seizing the U.S. Embassy and taking hostage 52 diplomats and staff. They were released on January 20, 1981, while President Reagan was being sworn into office. By all definitions, this was a textbook act of war against the United States. And it was an act of war that was never addressed. That the Iranian regime was not punished for their action confirmed in their minds that the war against the United States was just.

Likewise, there was no action taken in April of 1983 when the Iranians, intimate in the art of proxy war, used Hezbollah forces to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people. Nor in October of 1983, when Iran used Hezbollah forces to blow up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. service members. Both of these were, again, textbook acts of war that should have been met with decisive action—war if necessary—to establish the principle that American citizens cannot be killed with impunity.

As expected, such attacks did not assuage Iranian grievances regarding the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. Far from it. The Iranian regime began the practice of having their schoolchildren recite, “Death to America and Death to Israel.” This is dismissed as mere Islamic rhetoric, the fervor of an oppressed people. In reality, it is a signal of a national commitment to wage war against the United States at the time and place of their choosing.

Iran undertook to couple this fervor with a large army, complete with advanced missilery and a developing nuclear weapons program. This was not a covert effort. It was well publicized in order to achieve the political effect of warning regional powers and the West that the Iranian military was lethal and not to be crossed.

During the war in Iraq following September 11, Iran regularly used various Shia forces to kill American soldiers using munitions made in Iran and coordinated by Iranian operatives. That our war in Iraq was misguided and badly executed does not obviate the fact that, once again, textbook acts of war were committed by Iran against the United States. Many on the America First Right today somehow dismiss all this as if it were irrelevant to how we should understand Iranian intentions. But the killing of Americans is wholly unacceptable, whether a war is widely supported or not.

It is not controversial among U.S. policymakers that Iran tested its ability to launch a ballistic missile from a ship twice, in the Caspian Sea in the early 2000s. The test missile launched had a non-nuclear warhead that created an explosion in the high atmosphere and simulated an electromagnetic pulse attack. There would be no other reason to test the explosion of a conventional warhead in the high atmosphere. This test was meant to relay to the United States that such an attack—an attack that could destroy the U.S. power grid and ultimately bring death upon hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens—could be executed against America. It beggars belief that anyone could believe Iran’s nuclear program is some kind of political theater rather than a program to wage war. Iran sits on one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. They don’t produce nuclear power for any other reason than enriching uranium that they will process for use in nuclear weapons.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in March that “the [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” However, she noted an increase in Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, describing it as “at its highest levels and unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

This has been seized on by some as proof positive the Israeli attack was unwarranted. But the Intelligence Community that Director Gabbard leads was inherited from the Biden Administration, which was and is highly politicized and historically not pro-Israel. What confidence can there be that the CIA or the DIA is right about this? These are the same agencies that promoted the idea that President Trump is a Russian agent.

It is not as if the creation or acquisition of a nuclear warhead is an impossible achievement. The Iranians are an extremely resourceful people, with a large military and very capable intelligence services. They have been working closely with the North Koreans for over 40 years on their nuclear weapons program. The aforementioned Scud III missile tested in the Caspian Sea was built on the North Korean Nodong missile design. That Iran could have acquired one or more warheads from North Korea is not inconceivable. Nor is the possibility that Iran acquired two warheads from Pakistan in the 1990s. Iranian scientists, working alongside Chinese and Russian scientists, must be at least as capable as those of the hermit kingdom.

Let it be said of Iran that for a nation that does not have nuclear weapons, it certainly behaves as if it does. What Prime Minister Netanyahu finds himself up against today is an Iran that is emboldened against the West, backed by Communist China, and unafraid to give financial and logistical support to assaults such as the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent Houthi attacks on U.S. sea power.

It would appear obvious that Netanyahu will never get a better U.S. president than Donald Trump. Although President Trump wishes for world peace, he understands we are in a conflict between great powers that will determine the future of the world. President Trump has also said unequivocally that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. If you are Netanyahu, you will have three-and-a-half more years of President Trump’s leadership with which to reconstruct the Middle East politically. And the president understands well the asymmetric capabilities of an Iranian nuclear missile, as indicated by their tests in the Caspian Sea. His Golden Dome missile defense system includes an open architecture to account for such possibilities, and he has urged that they be deployed as soon as possible.

Proponents of an immediate attack to finish the Iranian nuclear program point often to Iran’s millenarian version of Shia Islam, which holds that there will be a return of the 12th Imam in the course of an apocalyptic event; it is certain some hold this view. Whether they are in power at this moment in Iran is unclear. Claremont Institute scholar and International Relations professor Angelo Codevilla would often say that the Iranians may be crazy, but they are not stupid. It will be amply clear to many in Tehran that the age of the Mullahs has come to an end.

The Persians may be an ancient people and the possessors of a once great empire, but they were conquered in the 7th century by the Arabs, who imposed Islam upon them. After 1,400 years, regular attendance at Friday Mosque services ranges from a high of 12% to perhaps as low as 1.5%, the lowest in the Middle East. That the Iranians could be liberated from this Islamic Republic and could live at peace with the West would be a highly desirable thing. To bring that about, however, will be the job of the Iranian people.

As we Americans consider what is good for us, we should calculate that a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel seems less likely than an attack on the United States from a ship-launched ballistic missile, or the importation of a nuclear device by terrorists who would wish our destruction. After all, an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel—which may be fatal for Israel—will certainly be met with the nuclear annihilation of Iran. An attack on the U.S. from Iran—the strategic ally of Communist China—may well be hard to trace in the scenario just described. Retribution will not therefore be swift in coming. The need for the Golden Dome missile defense system in the U.S. is ever more clear.

Whatever decision President Trump makes during the next days, weeks, and months will be arrived at with the best intelligence at the time and with his signature resolve to put America first. Let us pray for God’s blessing on his decisions and on these United States.

Brian T. Kennedy is Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, President of the American Strategy Group, and a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute. Follow him on X at @BrianTKennedy1 and on Gettr and Truth Social at @BrianTKennedy.

Neville Singham Funding Anti-ICE and Pro-Hamas actions

 

Amazing how many faces are identified from demonstrations coast to coast

Funding Anti-ICE and Pro-Hamas actions

House Oversight Committee Launches Investigation into Neville Singham, the Maoist Millionaire Funding Anti-ICE, Pro-Hamas Demonstrations

Debra Heine, American Greatness 

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is about to focus its investigative powers on Neville Roy Singham, the pro-China Marxist multimillionaire behind many of the destructive far-left demonstrations plaguing the United States in recent years.

The Committee is reportedly issuing a formal document request to Singham over his alleged financial support of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)—an extremist Marxist group that has been helping to organize violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

As the main funder of The People’s Forum, Singham, 71, has also bankrolled the “Free Palestine” protests that erupted after 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The People’s Forum works closely with other organizations in Singham’s network, including PSL and the ANSWER Coalition, all of which have been involved in the anti-Israel protests and anti-ICE riots.

PSL describes itself as a revolutionary socialist party that believes “only a revolution can end capitalism and establish socialism.”

The group supports the Communist Party of China (CCP) and argues that “militant political defense of the Chinese government” is necessary to stave off “counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment.”

As part of their national anti-Israel mobilization efforts, ANSWER and PSL have promoted slogans such as “Intifada revolution” and “resistance is justified.”

A prior member of the PSL, Elias Rodriguez, opened fire outside of the Jewish Museum in Washington DC on May 21, resulting in a Jewish couple being murdered.

A witness at the scene of the attack stated the shooter chanted “there’s only one solution, Intifada revolution,” raising concerns about PSL’s radical messaging and documented connections to Iran.

The group is currently helping to organize anti-ICE demonstrations in LA, San Antonio, Oakland, Chicago and other U.S. cities.

Singham, a Maoist who lives in Shanghai with special permission from the Chinese government as a “friend of the Party,” works closely with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state media to help spread pro-Chinese government propaganda, according to a the New York Times investigative report in August 2023. Singham reportedly manages this by donating to various groups and news organizations through his non-profit groups and shell companies.

Following the NYT report, then-Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to open an investigation into Singham’s dark money operations for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Biden’s Justice Department took no action.

The American-born tech entrepreneur reportedly helped finance the pro-Hamas encampments and student uprisings that began at Columbia University and spread to other campuses last year.

Over the weekend, data expert @DataRepublican reported on X that Singham has funneled over $20 million into far-left organizations in the U.S. though his dark money network.

“Thanks to the investigative work of Data Republican, House Oversight will issue a formal document request to Neville Singham regarding his funding of a communist group linked to the LA riots and the CCP,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X Tuesday evening. She added: “IF HE REFUSES TO APPEAR, HE WILL BE SUBPOENAED, AND IF HE IGNORES THAT HE WILL BE REFERRED TO THE DOJ FOR PROSECUTION.”

In a short video posted on social media, Luna asserted that the PSL is only using the immigration issue as a political wedge to promote its Communist agenda.

In response to Data Republican’s posts, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, signaled what questions could be asked of the Marxist multi-millionaire.

“Is this war on ICE and America being funded by Neville Singham. Is it being funded by China? Was BLM riots funded by China? Are Antifa Communists funded by China? Are the cartels linked? This is an actual war being waged against our country,” Greene wrote on X.

Singham  is married to Marxist antiwar agitator Jodie Evans, 70, who co-founded Code Pink with Medea Benjamin in 2002 to protest the Iraq War.

In 2020, Evans launched a “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign, leading a series of webinars on Code Pink’s YouTube page where she praised China’s “beautiful history” and Communist political structure.

Singham was once “a big fan” of Venezuelan Communist dictator Hugo Chavez, describing the beleaguered country under his rule (February 2, 1999 to April 11, 2002 and April 14, 2002 to March 5, 2013) as a “phenomenally democratic place.”

On Wednesday, several leftist groups, including PSL, planned to hold “ICE-OUTs”  in American cities, including Eugene, Oregon and  Seattle, Washington.

Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

Trump Should Crush the L.A. Riots

 

Trump Should Crush the L.A. Riots—with a Subtle Hand

How the president can restore order and win the war for visual symbolism

Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal 

Los Angeles is burning. Earlier this year, seasonal fires ripped through the Southern California city, but now, the fires are entirely manmade. In response to the Trump administration’s deportation policy, left-wing activists and opportunistic rioters have taken to the streets to vandalize property, incinerate automobiles, and assault law enforcement officers. The images emerging from the city are shocking: thugs hurling rocks from an overpass onto police; men spinning motorcycles around burning debris; a masked, shirtless rioter waving a Mexican flag atop a burned-out autonomous car.

In short, the Left is giving President Trump all the visual symbolism he needs to advance his immigration agenda. Most Americans see chaos in the name of a foreign flag and find it repellent. Though Trump’s language about a migrant “invasion” has sometimes been dismissed as hyperbolic, it seems that the Left is intent on turning it into a material reality.

The question: How should the president respond? Many on the right may feel an instinctual reaction to “send in the troops.” While this concern for law and order is natural and merited, it must be pursued in a way that maximizes the chance for success and minimizes the chance for blowback. As the president considers his options, he might keep in mind a number of strategic points that, if implemented, will increase his leverage in the fight for large-scale deportations.

The administration must deny the Left a strong visual counterargument. It’s easy to see how scenes of militarization, abuse of demonstrators, or a violent death could reverse public sympathies and present the administration as abusing its authority. The language of politics is visual—and therefore emotional, which means that a single mistake can reverse the flow of opinion and imperil the president’s immigration agenda. Left-wing tacticians have trained their foot soldiers to bait law enforcement into confrontation and to play victim for the press, to great effect.

To prevent this scenario, Trump has a number of strategic options available to him. First, rather than sending in more troops to stop the fires, the president might be better advised to hold off. Right now, California governor Gavin Newsom has sided with the demonstrators, but if the riots spread further, this stance will cost him in public opinion, and eventually, he will have to assume the mantle of authority. The public will expect Newsom to restore order, and he’ll have to incur the risk of using force.

Second, the president should pressure local leaders to buy in to the task of quelling the riots. He could wait for Governor Newsom to request the National Guard or appear at a press conference with Los Angeles County officials, bringing state Democrats into the risk-reward calculus and creating the option for the president to shift the blame in the future if they fail to respond effectively. California Democrats are anticipating that Trump will assume all the authority and, therefore, relieve them of any responsibility. He should resist the temptation to be the only player on the field with skin in the game.

Third, the president should direct federal agencies to create a hard-soft, or visible-invisible, approach to riot control. In public, the National Guard should mobilize with enough manpower to smother the protests and avoid protracted conflict or hand-to-hand combat, which carries with it the highest level of risk. At the same time, as we saw demonstrated in Portland, Oregon, during the George Floyd riots, the agencies should dispatch unmarked vans to follow key agitators and snatch them from the streets while the media are not looking. The most effective riot control is to take movement leaders off the field, infiltrate their networks, disrupt the flow of funding, and roll them up in federal investigations. Denying the Left trained protest leaders now will create a strong precedent for the rest of the president’s term.

President Trump has often tweeted “law and order” in all capital letters. This is a powerful formulation—half a century ago, it won Richard Nixon a landslide reelection—but especially in today’s media environment, it must be carried out subtly and with an eye toward visual language. To reestablish order on the streets but lose the war for public opinion would constitute an empty victory and a real danger to the president’s agenda. The desire to quell rioting is a noble one, but the president should remember that, ultimately, California is responsible for California’s streets.

The president’s approach to the rioting and lawlessness should be guided by a higher goal: enacting his immigration agenda. The mayhem in downtown L.A. represents his first real test in that effort.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution.

Trump’s Battle With Watchdog Agency

 

Trump’s Battle With Watchdog Agency

What to Know About Trump’s Battle With Watchdog Agency Over Federal Spending

The president can decline to spend money appropriated by Congress, with restrictions. Trump wants to reduce or clear away those restrictions.

Joseph Lord, congressional reporter for The Epoch Times 

The stage is set for a constitutional battle between President Donald Trump and a federal watchdog over the extent of presidential authority on spending, as Trump seeks to make sweeping federal spending and personnel cuts.

Trump and administration officials want to reduce existing restrictions on the president’s impoundment power, which allows a president to decline to spend money appropriated by Congress.

According to Trump, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974—which requires the president to seek permission to rescind, or officially end, funding—violates the Constitution and the separation of powers.

Specifically, Trump argues that the chief executive has broad authority to interpret and make decisions about congressionally mandated spending—including the decision not to disburse funding.

His critics, meanwhile, say that the White House is transgressing Congress’s power of the purse.

Since taking office, Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have sought to identify and implement budget cuts, through actions such as shuttering or reorganizing federal agencies, mass staff reductions, and blocking funds.

In response, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—the watchdog that oversees the Impoundment Control Act—has opened dozens of investigations into the executive branch.

The office issued its first finding on May 22, saying that the Department of Transportation had violated the impoundment law in its directive to revoke electric vehicle-related funding that had been mandated by Congress.

A series of lawsuits related to the issue is also pending in federal courts, meaning the issue could make its way to the Supreme Court.

Here’s what to know about the legal conflict and the potential court showdown.

Impoundment Use

In legal terms, impoundment refers to a situation in which the president declines to spend money appropriated by Congress.

It has been used often by presidents throughout history, beginning with President Thomas Jefferson.

In that instance, Congress called for the construction of 15 new gunboats at a cost of $50,000. Jefferson decided against it. In October 1803, in his third annual address, he informed Congress that the boats remained unconstructed and the money unspent.

The legislation had “authorized and empowered” Jefferson to build “a number not exceeding fifteen gunboats.”

Devin Watkins, an attorney at the right-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank, wrote that this was entirely within Jefferson’s power as Congress had not explicitly required him to spend the money or build the boats.

Supporters of presidential impoundment point to the unilateral decision as the basis for the practice in U.S. law.

In Kendall v. U.S. ex Rel. Stokes, the Supreme Court ruled that there were limits to the doctrine, however. The president could not unilaterally refuse to delegate funding when Congress’s intention was clear, the court found.

The issue has been barely litigated since then—meaning that many of the questions involved still haven’t been defined by the courts. Those questions primarily have to do with the separation of powers.

The Impoundment Control Act

Impoundment gained more attention during President Richard Nixon’s tenure in office.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 authorized federal funding to municipalities including New York City to combat water pollution.

Nixon initially vetoed the legislation. Congress overrode his veto by a two-thirds vote.

After the law was enacted, Nixon sought to block funding to New York City, prompting the city to sue.

In Train v. City of New York, the Supreme Court ruled 8–0 that Nixon had superseded his authority in refusing to disburse the funding.

Congress said that Nixon’s actions had crossed from the executive function into the policy-making function—a prerogative of Congress.

In response, it passed the Impoundment Control Act. It was the first legislative effort to define the limits between Congress and the president on the impoundment issue.

“[Impoundment] wasn’t an issue until Nixon made it an issue,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told The Epoch Times.

Watkins said that the perception of policy-making through impoundment was the main driver behind the 1974 law, in which Congress imposed new limits on the president’s power.

The law requires the president to send a rescission request to Congress if he wishes to reduce or alter spending previously required by Congress. Congress then has 45 days of continuous session to respond to the request.

Within that time, Congress must vote to either approve the president’s request and rescind the funding, or reject it, in which case the president is obligated to spend the funds as originally appropriated.

GAO Investigations and Lawsuits

The GAO says it’s investigating various moves made by Trump that may violate the legislation.

U.S. Comptroller General and GAO head Gene Dodaro told a Senate panel in April that 39 investigations into impoundment violations are currently open.

If any of those investigations yield evidence of violations of the Impoundment Control Act, the GAO could bring a suit against the administration.

In the past, Watkins said, Impoundment Control Act disputes have often arisen between the GAO and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB): “A lot of times, what you see is this jousting between OMB and the GAO.”

Russ Vought, Trump’s director of the OMB, has been an outspoken critic of the Impoundment Control Act, vowing to work to strengthen the president’s impoundment power in Trump’s second term.

It’s rare for an impoundment issue to make it all the way to trial, however.

In the 1970s, the GAO brought a suit against President Gerald Ford for his use of impoundment in Staats v. Ford. However, the case was resolved before being litigated.

In Trump’s first term, he faced challenges from the GAO over his handling of federal funding related to the temporary impoundment of $214 million in military aid to Ukraine.

That act was referenced during the first impeachment proceedings against Trump, though the GAO didn’t file a lawsuit.

The GAO’s May 22 report marks the first escalation of the dispute.

That report centers around a Feb. 6 Transportation Department (DOT) announcement of a freeze on new electric vehicle infrastructure grants under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. That legislation appropriated $5 billion toward constructing new charging stations and other electric vehicle infrastructure as part of President Joe Biden’s push to phase out gas-powered vehicles.

The GAO said that the move to cancel funding appropriated by Congress is in violation of the 1974 law. It said the 2021 infrastructure law included a “mandate to spend,” so the department “is not authorized to withhold these funds from expenditure and DOT must continue to carry out the statutory requirements of the program.”

The report said the administration needs to resume funding to comply with the law, but proposed that the department could also send a rescission request to Congress.

Responding to the findings, Vought posted on X that over the next few months, the GAO is “going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt.”

Other agencies besides the GAO have also brought suits against the Trump administration’s spending cuts and federal worker firings, arguing they are unlawful uses of impoundment.

Most of these have failed to result in court action.

One exception is State of Rhode Island v. Trump, an ongoing case involving a suit from 21 attorneys general, who argue that Trump’s sweeping executive moves to shrink the federal bureaucracy violate the Impoundment Control Act and other separation of powers laws.

A judge granted a preliminary injunction in the case.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sued on similar grounds, contending that a Jan. 24 State Department notice suspending federal funding for refugee and asylum programs violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Both a temporary restraining order and an injunction were denied in this case.

Purse Strings and Executive Authority

Trump has made the case for broad presidential impoundment authority, saying it is simply a means for the president to exercise oversight on taxpayer funding.

“This disaster of a law is clearly unconstitutional—a blatant violation of the separation of powers,” Trump said in a 2024 campaign video. He vowed to attempt to overturn the Impoundment Control Act during his second term.

However, Democrats and other critics say that Trump’s use of impoundment transgresses congressional authority.

“From day one, President Trump has unilaterally frozen or contravened critical funding provided in our bipartisan laws,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said during the April Senate hearing in which Dodaro testified.

“That is really not what the Constitution envisioned. Congress has the power of the purse period, our presidents cannot pick and choose which parts of a law that they can follow.”

Rahmani echoed Murray’s perspective, saying he disagrees with the argument that the Impoundment Control Act unfairly intercedes on executive authority.

“The bottom line is … Congress passes a law. The president can’t choose to ignore the law, especially when it comes to the appropriation of funds. So this is a pretty clear issue,” Rahmani said.

He suggested Republicans wouldn’t be as open to a Democrat exercising such power over funding.

In contrast, Watkins argued for a more expansive interpretation, noting that presidents throughout American history have refused to spend appropriated money for a variety of reasons.

The 1974 legislation could be interpreted as making changes to the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches, he said—which could render some components of the bill unconstitutional.

Congress foresaw this concern, stating in the opening to the legislation that nothing in it “assert[s] or conced[es] the constitutional powers or limitations of either the Congress or the President.”

Watkins argued that the 1974 law was a legislative overcorrection “with significant interpretive challenges,” and proposed that the criteria for impoundment be based on whether Congress explicitly set terms around the use of funding.

Often when Congress appropriates funds, it doesn’t “specify either the amount of money or who that money should be going to, or when that money should be spent,” he said.

In less clear cases, he said, the presumption should be in favor of presidential authority.

Several congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are currently pursuing legislation that would repeal the Impoundment Control Act altogether.

However, that faces long odds in the Senate, where at least seven Democrats would need to sign on for the legislation to pass.

Trump Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll

 

Trump Admin Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students

The DHS secretary posted the announcement on X.

Aaron Gifford, The Epoch Times 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revoked certification of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced on social media platform X on Thursday.

The decision prohibits Harvard from enrolling international students.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem wrote.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. “

Noem’s May 22 statement said a combination of infractions by Harvard, including collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and fostering an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, violence, and “pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus,” led to this action.

The revocation also means existing foreign students must transfer to another school or lose their legal status, the statement said, adding that many of the agitators who harassed Jewish students, hosted and trained members of the CCP, and were complicit in the Uyghur genocide were from other nations.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem said.

Harvard University called the federal government’s action in this matter unlawful.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University—and this nation—immeasurably,” Harvard University spokesman Jason Newton said in an email to The Epoch Times.

“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

The DHS terminated $2.7 million in grants to Harvard last month. Noem said university administrators refused to comply with her April 16 demands requesting information about “criminality and misconduct” of foreign students on its campus.

And, finally, Comey

And, finally, Comey

Byron York, Jewish World Review 

There has been a certain escalatory logic in the resistance to Donald Trump‘s rise to the presidency. In the very beginning, when few took him seriously, they laughed at him. Then they tried to defeat him in the 2016 election. Then, some frantically searched for a way to prevent him from taking office.

Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies spied on his campaign and opened an investigation into him. Then, they hoped the investigation would lead to impeachment, which would then lead to his removal. Then, when the Trump-Russia investigation conducted by former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller went bust, they turned on a dime and impeached Trump for something else.

Then, after Trump left office — he departed still awaiting trial on a second impeachment — a Democratic attorney general in New York filed a lawsuit to destroy his business empire. Then, a Democratic prosecutor in New York filed criminal charges over his businesses. Then, a Democratic prosecutor in Georgia indicted him over the 2020 election. Then, a prosecutor appointed by his successor's administration indicted him twice, once over the 2020 election and once for his handling of classified information.

Trump's adversaries dearly hoped the legal attacks, known as lawfare, would work — and by "work," they meant prevent him from becoming president again. But they didn't work, and Trump was elected again in 2024.

So, where could the escalatory logic go from there? They tried to stop him with ridicule, then at the ballot box, then with investigations, then with impeachment, then with lawsuits, then with indictments — and none of it worked. It wasn't brought up much in polite company, but everybody knew in the back of their minds that the next step was to kill him.

And so on July 13, 2024, a would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, fired several shots at Trump. It was an absolute miracle that he was not killed. He was saved by a last-second turn of his head that meant the high-powered bullet clipped his ear but did not otherwise harm him. Had he turned his head any other way, he would have died instantly. One man in the audience was killed, and others were wounded. Secret Service agents killed the would-be assassin, about whom little is known, even after nearly a year.

Then, in September 2024, a man who had been planning for months to kill Trump was arrested in Florida after lying in wait with a rifle in the bushes by the course where Trump was playing golf. A Secret Service agent took a shot at him, he fled, and he was arrested later.

That brings the story to James Comey. In early 2017, when he was head of the FBI and when Trump was president-elect, Comey ambushed Trump with the false story that Trump watched, and was recorded on videotape, as prostitutes performed a kinky sex act in 2013 in a hotel room in Moscow. Comey worried, with good reason, that Trump would think he was "pulling a J. Edgar Hoover" on him. Indeed, that is exactly what Trump thought, after getting over his initial surprise. The Trump-Comey relationship went downhill from there, and Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Since then, Comey has been a pretty open resistance sympathizer.

On Thursday, Comey posted a picture on social media of shells arranged on a beach to make the number "8647." Comey wrote, "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

The "8647" formulation is a resistance thing — the "86" being slang for dump, get rid of, or kill, and the "47" being Trump, the 47th president. In Trump's first term, when he was the 45th president, resistance types liked "8645." Back then, you could buy stickers and other stuff printed with "8645" on Amazon. There is a picture on social media of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) with an "8645" sign on her desk. Now, people can do the same thing with "8647."

In his post, Comey seemed to pretend that the photo was just a "cool shell formation," but he must have known what it meant. In any event, Trumpworld jumped into action, accusing the former head of the FBI of threatening to assassinate the president. Donald Trump Jr. posted an image of Comey's post with the comment, "Just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered. This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!!"

Then, the president himself weighed in. "He knew exactly what that meant," Trump told Fox News. "A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination, and it says it loud and clear."

So was Comey actually calling for Trump's assassination? He says no. He took down the "8647" post and wrote, "I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assume were a political message. I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down."

Comey seemed to be saying yes, he knew the shells were an anti-Trump message, but he thought it was a dump-Trump sort of thing and not a call to assassination. Indeed, that is how many in the resistance would view it. So, assume, even though after the things he did as FBI director, he doesn't really deserve the benefit of the doubt, that Comey was not calling for Trump to be killed.

On the other hand, in the context of last summer's assassination attempts, one could also say that "8647" has a new, and even darker, meaning. One can't casually call to "get rid" of Trump without the knowledge that there are some out there, resistance sympathizers, who would like to accomplish that with a gun. So using "8647" today has a sinister, post-Butler feel to it — more so than before an assassin took shots at Trump. In any event, it is remarkably irresponsible for a former head of the FBI to do something such as that.

Okay to Deport Venezuelan Illegals

 

SCOTUS Lifts Injunction on Deporting Venezuelan Illegals

State of the Union: The lower-court injunction staying deportations affected 350,000 Venezuelan nationals in the U.S.

Joseph Addington, The American Conservative 

The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Monday staying an injunction that prevented Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem from revoking the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) that prevented Venezuelans illegally living in the U.S. from being deported. 

The injunction was issued by Senior District Court Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee, who agreed with the plaintiffs—the National TPS Alliance—in finding that Noem’s order to revoke was motivated by racial animus. “Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote.

The government is appealing the decision and requested a stay of injunction from the Supreme Court, which granted the stay pending appeal. The court’s order will allow the Trump administration to begin deporting the more than 350,000 Venezuelans currently living in the country illegally.