Parental Rights vs California Lunacy

 

Cleverly masked...

California Told Us to Deceive Parents, but We Said No

Teachers shouldn’t be forced to lie to parents about their child’s asserted gender identity.

Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, National Review

etween us, we spent more than five decades teaching in California public schools. We both won Teacher of the Year awards. We coached teams, mentored struggling students, and built the kind of trust with families that only comes from showing up year after year. We didn’t enter education to become plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit. We entered it because we believed in children and in the partnership between schools and parents.

Then California told us to start lying to those parents.

Under policies enforced by Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, California schools were required to conceal a child’s asserted gender identity from parents, even when a student was living as a different gender at school with a new name and pronouns. These policies apply to children as young as two. We were told to participate or face consequences. As educators, and as women of faith, we couldn’t comply.

So we sued. In December 2025, Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California ruled that the state’s parental exclusion policies are unconstitutional. He found that schools cannot hide a child’s social gender transition from that child’s own parents and that teachers who want to share such information cannot be prohibited from doing so.

Consider what those policies did to real families. One family in our case discovered that their daughter’s school had been secretly transitioning her and treating her as a boy since the start of seventh grade. For 13 months, her mental health deteriorated while her parents knew nothing. She attempted suicide. Her parents learned the truth not from any teacher or counselor, but from doctors at a hospital. Even after this tragedy, school administrators continued to withhold information about their daughter’s gender identification, citing California law.

The daughter in another family was secretly transitioned beginning in fifth grade. Her parents found out only because another mother let the secret slip. When they confronted the principal, they were told that state law prohibited sharing information about a child’s gender identity without the child’s consent.

California defended its approach by claiming that it protects students. But after more than two years of litigation and full discovery, the state could not produce a single piece of admissible evidence that parental involvement causes harm. Its own expert witnesses did not meaningfully disagree that parental notice and involvement is best for the child.

Our refusal cost us personally. Someone broke into one of our classrooms to put up malicious posters. Students harassed us, encouraged by school employees who circulated protest videos. One of us was placed on involuntary leave after retaliatory complaints from colleagues. The other went on leave, fearing for her safety. Even after winning a preliminary injunction, we had to fight for months before being reinstated. The years-long legal battle took a heavy toll.

What began as two teachers refusing to comply grew into something much larger. Other educators joined our case, some under pseudonyms for fear of retaliation. Then parents came forward, including the families of children whose stories are now cited in a Supreme Court opinion. What started as a stand on conscience became a certified class action on behalf of teachers and parents across California, the largest of its kind in the country.

On Monday night, the Supreme Court vindicated those families. In a 6–3 decision, the Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s stay and restored Judge Benitez’s injunction for parents across California. The per curiam opinion held that the state’s secrecy policies likely violate parents’ rights under both the free exercise clause and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. The policies, the Court said, “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”

The Court’s order formally applies to parents, not teachers. But the logic of the decision protects us, too. If parents have a constitutional right to know about their child’s gender transition at school, then California cannot punish a teacher for providing that information. You cannot have a right to receive the truth if the person who would tell it can be fired for speaking. The state was ordering us to violate parents’ constitutional rights every single day. The Supreme Court has now said those rights are real.

The debate over parental rights in public schools continues to rage across the country, and the Court has signaled that further issues in this arena will probably come before it. But the Supreme Court has spoken with unmistakable clarity: California’s secrecy policies likely violate parents’ constitutional rights, the harm those policies inflict is real and irreparable, and the state’s interest in concealment cannot justify it.

We refused to lie to the parents who trusted us with their children. California punished us for it. The Supreme Court has now told California it was wrong.

Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West are the lead plaintiffs in Mirabelli v. Bonta, represented by the Thomas More Society, a national nonprofit public-interest law firm.

The Trump Doctrine Is Here

 

The Trump Doctrine Is Here. It Ends Forever Wars.

Marc A. Thiessen, The Washington Post

Critics say President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran is a violation of his promise not to engage in “forever wars.” In fact, the opposite is true. Trump is not starting a forever war in Iran; he’s ending one.

For 47 years, the Iranian regime has been waging war against the United States. That war began in 1979, when Iran seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 50 Americans hostage for 444 days. The war continued as Iran orchestrated the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 258 Americans, followed by the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans. It continued in 1998, when Iran provided “direct assistance” to al-Qaeda for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, training its “operatives about how to blow up buildings,” according to a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

After the 9/11 attacks, Iran provided sanctuary to senior leaders of al-Qaeda fleeing U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and allowed the group to use Iranian territory as a pipeline to move money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East. (It still harbors Saif al-Adel, successor to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as leader of al-Qaeda, in Tehran). Iran also provided training and bomb-making equipment to insurgents in Iraq, including “explosively formed penetrators” that killed and maimed thousands of American troops.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Iran’s proxy Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 innocent people – including 46 Americans – and took 12 Americans hostage. The Iranian regime has also attempted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, including a 2011 plot to set off a bomb in Cafe Milano in Washington to kill the Saudi ambassador, a plot to kill former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other senior U.S. officials, and a plot to assassinate Trump himself. And the regime that did all this was pursuing nuclear weapons and refused Trump’s repeated demands to peacefully disarm.

Now, Trump is taking decisive action to bring this reign of terror to an end. If he succeeds, the impact will be profound, opening up the possibility of enduring peace in the Middle East and beyond.

The Iranian threat is a primary reason the U.S. has to spend billions on large deployments in the Middle East. If that danger is eliminated, and a new government — one whose mantra no longer is “Death to America” — takes power in Tehran, the United States can finally draw down those forces, execute the long-promised “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific and focus on defending American interests in our own hemisphere.

As important as what Trump is doing is how he’s doing it. With Operation Epic Fury, we are witnessing the birth of a new doctrine to guide U.S. global leadership in the 21st century: the Trump Doctrine.

When Trump came to office, he faced a situation similar to the one Ronald Reagan inherited in 1981. In the wake of the Vietnam War, Americans had no appetite for sending U.S. troops to fight in distant lands. Reagan had to find a new way to lead on the world stage. So, he forged the “Reagan Doctrine,” supporting anti-communist freedom fighters across the globe to roll back the tide of Soviet Communism. That strategy helped win the Cold War.

Today, after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is similarly no popular appetite for U.S. boots in foreign hot spots. So, Trump, too, is pioneering a new way to lead. From Caracas to Tehran, he is using sanctions, tariffs, diplomacy and other tools to impose America’s will on its adversaries. If those adversaries don’t yield, then he is employing military force to decapitate regimes that threaten the American people. And he is controlling events on the ground through his willingness to strike those regimes again and again until leaders emerge who will work with America.

At this moment, the U.S. is striking Iran from the air — eliminating the regime’s leadership, its retaliatory capabilities, its nuclear program and its infrastructure of repression. Expect this campaign to last for weeks, not days. After that, what happens will be up to the Iranian people. As Trump proclaimed on Saturday: “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. … When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

In other words, there is no need for a U.S. invasion force. The Iranian people are the boots on the ground, and the fate of the country is in their hands. And if things do not turn out as we hope, and a government emerges that resumes its hostile posture toward America and its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Trump can eliminate it as well.

This much is certain: Donald Trump is making history. There have been just 45 presidents since the founding of our republic. Of those, only a handful truly transformed the world. In the modern era, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Nazi fascism and Ronald Reagan defeated Soviet communism. If he succeeds in defeating Islamic radicalism in Iran, Trump will take his place alongside them as one the most consequential presidents in U.S. history.

 

Fall of the Mullahs

 

Operation Epic Fury and the Fall of the Mullahs

Forty-seven years after the mullahs seized power, the countdown ended in fire, and Trump wagered that decisive force—not talk—would finally clear the path to Iran’s liberation.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness

On January 25, just over a month ago, I wrote here that “The Countdown to Iran’s Liberation Has Begun.” Yes, there were peace talks. Donald Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, jetted off to talk to Iran’s agents. Had Iran acceded to Trump’s key demands—above all, the abandonment of its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons—war might have been averted.  As Churchill almost put it, it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. But the ticking sound that was clicking throughout Iran this last month or so was not diplomacy.  It was, I speculated, “a death-rattle, as a murderous regime nears judgment and a brutalized people pray that liberation, at last, is real.”

The countdown reached zero—liftoff!—yesterday, February 28, at about 8:15 a.m. Tehran time.  That is when the first wave of the assault to destroy the hideous, 47-year-old Islamicist regime commenced.  Code-named Operation Epic Fury (“Roaring Lion” in Israel), the initial assault targeted sites across the country in Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, Tabriz, and elsewhere. According to some reports, a meeting in Tehran with the Supreme Leader Khamenei and several top aides was a primary target.  Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the judiciary in Iran, was killed in the strike. He had hundreds of Iranian citizens executed, so good riddance. Ditto for Mohammad Pakpour.  He was, as one wag put it, “the new head of IRGC that replaced the previous new head of IRGC who was eliminated after he replaced the previous head of IRGC who was eliminated.” The same fate embraced Amir Hatami, the defense minister. It was he who directed the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranian protestors in January. When I sat down to write this, the fate of the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei was unknown. I had to come back to this sentence with the good news that he, too, has gone to meet his 72 virgins. He had been oppressing Iranians and exporting terrorism since 1989, so good riddance to him, too.

Meanwhile, Iran responded to the attacks by launching missiles at Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and possibly Saudi Arabia. So far, one civilian casualty has been confirmed in Abu Dhabi from falling debris. Apparently, all the other missiles were intercepted.  As one commentator observed, “Iran just converted every neutral and semi-neutral state in the Gulf into a potential co-belligerent. Every nation whose airspace was violated, whose civilians were killed, whose sovereignty was breached now has legal and political justification to join whatever coalition forms next.”

Early yesterday, both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered statements to announce the military action. Trump delivered his on Truth Social. “For 47 years,” he noted,

. . .the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.

Among the regime’s very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days.

In 1983, Iran’s proxies carried out the marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel.

In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole. Many died. Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq.

The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels and international shipping lanes.

It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer. From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained, and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts.

And it was Iran’s proxy Hamas that launched the monstrous October 7th attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.

Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.

Trump went on to iterate his number one demand: that Iran never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. He concluded with an appeal to the Iranian people. The “massive and ongoing operation” that had just started would clear the way for the Iranian people to finally assert themselves and form their own government. “We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” Trump promised. “We are going to annihilate their Navy. We’re going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world. . . . When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”

For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed many of President Trump’s points.  He also went out of his way to thank the president for his “historic” leadership and courage. Trump has been, he noted, “Israel’s greatest friend in the White House of all time.”

Here at home, The New York Times instantly got its anti-Trump chorus on stage. “Trump’s case for striking Iran rests on questionable claims,” sniffed one headline, while an official editorial demanded to know “Why Have You Started This War, Mr. President?” Naturally, Kamala Harris was there with her incontinent anti-Trump bloviating, as were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s rich Muslim Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.  Right on cue, clumps of unhappy white females, real and honorary, congregated outside the White House with their “Hands Off Iran” signs and other memos of mental madness.  Pathetic. But Democratic Sen. John Fetterman once again broke ranks by coming out in support of the strike. “President Trump,” he wrote, “has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region.” Good for him.

Iranians across the globe agreed.  In Tehran, there are many scenes of Iranians playing music and dancing in the streets. “Everyone waited for this day,” wrote one Iranian activist. Young students are cheering Trump, women are celebrating, Iranian exiles are cheering (and here and here), and one clever, technically inclined memer posted a video of Trump dancing to Iranian music (I don’t suppose there are many YMCAs in Iran).

What happened yesterday is not the end of the story.  The fury unleashed by Israel and America is just in its opening phase. It is unclear how many casualties lie ahead. But so far, Trump’s actions in this crisis confirm something I have been saying for some time: that Trump is a great man of history. I am pleased that the red-pilled activist Bill Ackman agrees.  “President Donald Trump,” he wrote on X, “will go down in history as one of the greatest and most consequential presidents we have ever had.” Does that sound odd? Donald Trump? The real-estate mogul and reality TV host?  It may sound odd.  It doubtless bothers the well-coiffed in Harvard Yard, CNN, and the Bulwark.  But it is the truth. The New York Times will not like it, but Trump will occupy a spot alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and Ronald Reagan as one of our greatest presidents.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).

Profane Race to the Bottom

Profane Race to the Bottom

Newsom and foul-mouthed spokesman lead Democrats’ race to the bottom

Jonathan Turley, California Post

“Respectfully, f–k off.” Those words by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, summed up the current race to the bottom of American politics.

Democrats appear in a competition of the profane where voters are now subject to a virtual carpet-bombing of f-bombs and other indecent language. 

Gardon’s response was to a standard media inquiry after Newsom’s controversial statement to a black interviewer.

In an Atlanta event, Newsom declared: “I’m like you … I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy … literally a 960 SAT guy. You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.” It was widely denounced as racist, but Newsom insisted that he was only talking about his struggle with dyslexia. 

The spin quickly fell apart after his statement, “I’m like you … I’m no better than you,” which suggested he thought the audience in Atlanta had low scores. 

Reporters followed up to ask for proof about his disability, including his claim that “I cannot read.” The response was an f-bomb from Gardon.

Newsom, too, unleashed a profane attack on Sean Hannity of Fox News — who gave the California governor a chance to respond to his critics.

When Hannity criticized Newsom’s comments in Atlanta, the governor posted several four-letter words on X, concluding with: “Spare me your fake f—ing outrage.”

There was a time when political leaders maintained basic standards of civility and avoided profanity in public. Presidents like Lyndon Johnson could be quite salty in private, but drew a line in public.

Notably, one of Richard Nixon’s objections to his tapes being made public was the inclusion of foul language used in the Oval Office. He noted in his book In the Arena that “since neither I nor most other presidents had ever used profanity in public, millions were shocked.” 

It was not long ago that Trump’s then-new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci shocked many with a profane diatribe. He defended it as “an Italian thing.”

At the time, I wrote that, as someone who was raised in an Italian family, we clearly had a different upbringing. I noted that if I used that language in public, my Sicilian grandmother would have ended the diatribe with a backhand.

Profanity sometimes added to the mystique of military leaders who sought to convey that they were unconcerned with social norms as warriors.

Gen. George Patton was known to drop some doozies. In one scene in the famous eponymous movie, Patton is asked about the Bible next to his bed and whether he really prayed. Patton responds, “I sure do … Every godd–n day…”

Politics was different. The public once looked to political leaders as role models who exemplified social norms.

It now appears that profanity is viewed as an essential element of political speech on the left.

Katie Porter this week thrilled a crowd by waving around a sign reading “F–k Trump.” Porter was previously criticized for using such language to abuse staffers to “get out of my f–cking shot” in an interview.

At the State of the Union, Rep. Rashida Tlaib wore a button on the House floor reading “F–k Ice.” 

Such behavior is not just limited to Democrats. President Trump has used profanity on occasion.

However, the Democrats appear to have made profanity a signature element in their campaigns.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, seems a perpetual profanity machine, regularly telling figures like Elon Musk to “f–k off” and dropping the f-bomb at a higher rate than prepositions. 

Some are virtually giggly over swearing in public. Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) declared, “I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to f–k Trump. Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.” The crowd roared with approval that Dexter was feigning being naughty with dirty words.

There is a belief that profanity is a way to connect to younger voters who trash-talk and seem to like what was once called “potty mouths.”

However, there is also a clear use of profanity as a way to establish your bona fides with the mob.

Trashing conventions in favor of civility and decency is a way to convey that you are part of a radical chic. 

Figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have tried cringeworthy efforts to connect with voters by dancing or cooking burgers. Schumer then joined his colleagues in dropping the f-bomb to show that he is very, very angry.

The use of profanity has risen alongside the rise in rage rhetoric.

Democratic politicians now regularly call Trump, Republicans, and law enforcement “Nazis” and “Gestapo.” Many are promising to carry out a crackdown on Trump supporters once they are returned to power, including through criminal prosecutions. 

The devolution of American politics is occurring as politicians and pundits call for radical changes to our constitutional system. Showing that you do not respect social conventions adds to your cache as a radical leader.

In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore comparisons with our current politics and the conditions that led to the French Revolution.

There is a value to dehumanizing one’s opponents to justify radical, even violent, action. Profanity conveys your self-authenticating anger to the mob. You may be an establishment politician, but you are one of them.

It rarely lasts. Revolutions tend to devour their own.

Swearing up a storm will not satisfy the mob very long. Democrats hope to ride the rage wave back into power and assume that, once they have that power, the mob will simply disappear in gratitude. 

It is likely that politicians of both parties will continue this trend toward potty-mouth politics. If you are speaking with civility, you are not mad enough.

These politicians are feeding a rage addiction in this country by showing that they do not respect any limits of decency or decorum in seeking radical changes.

Mark Twain said that “under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” The difference today is that the profanity itself is a prayer by politicians seeking power.

There is a belief that, if you want to be sworn in as the new governor of California or senator from Texas, you’d better start swearing now.

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

Two Republican Candidates lead CA governor polls

 

Dems quake as two Republican Candidates lead polls

Bianco says ‘Democrat policy is indefensible’ as GOP candidates top California governor polling

https://biancoforgovernor.com/

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton top early polling in state's jungle primary system

Foxnews 

California Democrats are reportedly panicking over the possibility that the state’s jungle primary system could send two Republicans to the November ballot, a scenario Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told Fox News Digital is the result of "decades of complete Democrat failure."

The New York Post reported that Democratic lawmakers are privately warning a crowded and "uninspiring" field of candidates could split the vote in California’s top-two primary system, allowing Republicans to advance to the two-person runoff in a state long dominated by Democrats.

One Democratic state legislator described the situation as a "sh**show," while another criticized party leadership for doing little to consolidate the field, according to the Post. Under California’s system, only the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

Polling cited by the Post shows former Fox News host Steve Hilton leading with 17% support, followed by Bianco at 14%. Rep Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., also polled at 14%, with former Rep. Katie Porter at 12% and billionaire Tom Steyer at 9%.

The concern comes as Democrats gather this weekend in San Francisco for their state party convention, where candidates are expected to make their case to party activists ahead of the June primary.

Nancy Pelosi took to the stage as well as gubernatorial hopefuls Swalwell and Porter at Moscone Center.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa dismissed the possibility of two Republicans advancing.

"At the end of the day, everybody has a right to run," Villaraigosa told the Post. "The notion that two Republicans can win [the primary] is poppycock."

Bianco disputed that assessment.

"Yeah, so yes, I think it's a little bit odd that they're panicking about that, and they don't recognize that it's because of decades of complete Democrat failure," Bianco told Fox News Digital.

"It's not because of a lack of a Democrat candidate, it's the lack of a Democrat policy that they can show has helped California. The Democrat policy is indefensible in California."

Responding to Villaraigosa’s dismissal, Bianco pointed to polling trends.

"Obviously, polling contradicts that statement," he said. "Two Republicans have been ahead in the polls for the last six months."

Bianco said he believes voter sentiment is shifting more broadly.

"California is looking for change. They are looking for honesty, integrity, transparency, and leadership," he said. "And that is why they're looking at me to be their next governor."

The California Democratic Party did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

It is still unclear which of the eight Democrat gubernatorial candidates will receive the party's official nomination leaving the convention this weekend.

The New York Post reported that Democrats fear vote-splitting among multiple candidates could allow Republicans to capture both top spots, a scenario that could put a Republican in the governor’s office for the first time since Arnold Schwarzenegger left in 2011.

Jasmine Baehr is a Breaking News Writer for Fox News Digital, where she covers politics, the military, faith and culture.

Marco Rubio: More Than Just the Good Cop

Marco Rubio: More Than Just the Good Cop

Michael Barone, Jewish World Review

My first reaction to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's speech, delivered on Valentine's Day, at the Munich Security Conference, was, "Last year, President Donald Trump sent the bad cop, Vice President JD Vance. This year, he sent the good cop, Rubio. Progress." In February 2025, the audience at Munich took Vance's comments as insults. In February 2026, the audience, as evidenced by its standing ovation, took Rubio's as compliments.

Yet, as even journalists writing on deadline quickly discerned, Rubio's words were no less critical than Vance's of what have been European elites' cherished policies.

"Mass migration," Rubio said, is "a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West." He decried a "climate cult" and "energy policies" that "impoverished our people." He condemned policies that "outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions" and invested in massive welfare states."

Red meat substance, suitable for delivery at any of the three Trump Republican National Conventions — more than have nominated any one person, the president might remind you, except for President Richard Nixon. But leavened, as the above quotations suggest, with frequent employment of the first-person pronouns and adjectives — "we" (69 times in the text, by my count), "us" (11), "our" (65).

"What comforted worried attendees," wrote Michael Froman, head of the Council on Foreign Relations and Obama trade negotiator, "was the undertone of the secretary's remarks."

But it wasn't just the undertone that had many Republicans and others start thinking of Rubio as a possible future presidential candidate, despite his recent avowals of support for Vance for the Republican nomination in 2028.

And as a national leader with an intellectually serious grasp of history. Rubio began by summoning memories of the first Munich conference, in 1963, when the Iron Curtain ran through a divided Germany and the Berlin Wall was just two years old.

Halfway through the speech, he went further back, to the postwar years when "our predecessors," faced with a "Europe in ruins" and expanding Communism, "recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make." An interesting way to frame the decisions that produced the Truman Doctrine and the NATO treaty.

Against that, he described the post-Cold War euphoria that "the rules-based global order" would replace national interest. "A foolish idea," he said unemolliently, that "has cost us dearly." A Trumpian take, followed by an implicit denunciation of opening up trade relations with China.

Rather than dwell on that critique, however, he segued back to "centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry," all parts of "the common civilization to which we have fallen heir."

This might have rankled, and perhaps was intended to rankle, the European Union leaders who, out of secular conviction or for fear of angering Muslim immigrants, successfully blocked mention of Europe's "Christian roots" in the EU charter.

As he neared his peroration, Rubio celebrated Christopher Columbus and the English, Scots-Irish, French, German, Spanish and Dutch roots of Americans from Davy Crockett to "the cowboy archetype ... born in Spain." Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), in Munich for her first security conference, ridiculed that last claim, apparently unaware that the Americas had no horses until Hernan Cortes brought some to Mexico in 1519.

More importantly, Rubio's emphasis on America's European heritage is a rebuke of the Franz Fanon-inspired theory, fostered on campuses for decades and sweeping the streets in post-Oct. 7, 2023, "anti-Zionist" demonstrations, that colonialism was the greatest evil in history, and that Europeans and Americans should do penance for their complicity.

Europeans are or should be aware, from the totalitarian tides of the 20th century, that there are worse evils than colonialism — and that to exclude difficult-to-assimilate immigrants is to commit another Holocaust.

But rather than belabor that last point, Rubio instead made the point earlier that "it was here, in Europe, where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born." Including "the rule of law, the universities and the scientific revolution," plus Mozart and Beethoven, Dante and Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Leonardo, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Europe should be "proud," a word he repeated half a dozen times, "of its heritage and its history." Proud of a "spirit of creation and liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization," with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive."

Among American and European elites, open expression of pride is something, well, just not done. They prefer to denounce the "systemic racism" of their fellow citizens or the "oppressive colonialism" of their forebears, to disparage the motives of "settlers" and idealize the virtues of the "indigenous."

But pride in one's nation and one's civilization, properly understood, is not a warrant for self-satisfaction but a summons to duty, a reminder that for us to whom much has been given, much is asked. In Munich, Rubio was not just Trump's good cop but a mature American leader towering above the crowd.

Mamdani’s heist

 

Mamdani’s heist

Mamdani’s heist on Hochul and New York’s middle class

Post Editorial Board, California Post

Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared war on the city’s middle class Tuesday, insisting that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s refusal to raise personal taxes on the rich and boost corporate taxes leaves him “no choice” except to hike city property taxes nearly 10%.

We told you so, gov — that Mamdani would stab you in the back at the first chance, and he did.

She’s given him his child-care program, and $1.5 billion for the city budget gap; he repays her with blatant political extortion

Plus: So much for his promise to reform property taxes.

And so what if the hike would also lead to big rent increases, the reverse of his campaign promises?

He’d also draw down the city “rainy day” reserve, which is supposed to be for emergencies, when then only “crisis” is a lack of cash to chase his socialist dreams.

“We do not want to have to turn to such drastic measures to balance our budget,” the mayor announced as he released his preliminary budget, “but, faced with no other choice, we will be forced to.”

“Forced to” because he wants to boost city outlays by 10%, $11 billion, to $127 billion total. He’s not being forced. He’s being greedy and irresponsible.

Of course, the other way to balance the budget doesn’t involve raising anybody’s taxes: It’s the same solution every household faces when not enough money’s coming in to pay for everything it would like to buy — namely, to spend less.

Mamdani keeps blaming the “budget crisis” on Mayor Eric Adams’ supposed “underbudgeting,” yet Mamdani’s fellow lefties always slammed Adams for not spending enough.

The new mayor demands these tax hikes to fund his own “free stuff” agenda.

E.g., he wants to add over $1 billion in new “cash assistance” benefits “related to caseload increases” over the next two years, and $2.3 billion in “re-estimated” rental-assistance funding for the same period; why not keep cash giveaways at today’s level of $700 million and deduct the savings from the “gap” that Mamdani insists he can only close by raising taxes?

The Department Education already eats 40% of city outlays, yet he’s budgeting more than half-a-billion bucks to cap class sizes, a gift to the teachers union — without any demand or plan for improved student outcomes.

And other new spending is downright toxic: The mayor means to hire hundreds of new lawyers — signaling a clear intent to bleed local businesses in the name of “consumer protection” — and to add 50 Department of Finance auditors to squeeze city taxpayers

There’s all kinds of ways to save money that the left refuses to see.

Retired city employees pay nothing toward their lifetime health insurance, for example; the city’s legally on the hook for pension obligations, but health-insurance costs are negotiable, and could mean big savings.

Mamdani also aims to eliminate the “2-out, 1-in” rule for new hires, which keeps employee headcount under control. Getting rid of this standard will accelerate agency headcount, which means added payroll costs for decades.

Don’t fall for Mamdani’s insistence that the city is deep in a budgetary crisis. The left always claims that not having more of your money to spend is a dire emergency.

How Deep Is the Deep State?

How Deep Is the Deep State?

The deep state resists exposure—but not forever. Patience, persistence, and power may yet cauterize the Leviathan.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness

How deep is the deep state?  That’s a question I have thought and written about a lot.  I had something to say about it recently at The Spectator on the occasion of Abigail Spanberger’s recent election as governor of Virginia. It saddens me to report that every time I think I have taken the measure of the Leviathan that is the deep state, new precincts and vistas open up beyond the boundaries I had delineated.

Sometimes I think the deep state is like an onion. Peel back one layer, and another layer presents itself.

Sometimes I think it is like a basement with an endless procession of sub-basements. Excavate one, and you encounter another below it.  It is like that bit of Hindu cosmology that envisions the world resting on the back of a turtle, which rests on the back of a larger turtle, which rests on the back of a still larger turtle.  Asked what that larger turtle stands upon, the answer is that it is “turtles all the way down.”

That said, I suspect that the difficulty in surveying the deep state is not its depth but its extent.  That is, I suspect that its roots are shallow while its area is both indefinitely large and protean.

The deep state also seems to resemble the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology.  Hercules was sent to dispatch this multi-headed monster in the second of his twelve labors. Not only did the beast have poisonous breath, but its blood was so toxic that even its scent was fatal. Furthermore, the hydra had this alarming characteristic: if you cut off one of its heads, two grew back in its place. Hercules overcame this problem by having the stump of each head cauterized as soon as he had cut it off.

Another curious feature of the deep state is that exposure often fails to elicit effective condemnation.  This is due in part to the propaganda arm of the deep state, sometimes called “the media,” which does not so much report the news as echo the narrative fabricated by the deep state.

Consider the revelations about the Somali fraud in Minneapolis.  I thought, and I continue to think, that that massive fraud perpetrated by Democrats will (to continue with Hercules) cauterize one head of the deep state hydra.  What is interesting, though, is the alacrity with which the deep state stepped up to replace or at least drown out that revelation with the cacophony about ICE murdering innocent protestors.  At the end of the day, I do not think that gambit will work in the court of public opinion. If you drive your car into an ICE agent, you should first be sure that your life insurance premiums are current.  The same can be said about carrying a military-grade handgun to a protest and then getting into a fight with ICE agents.  It’s not a recipe for longevity.

Nor has the deep state been effective in countering the ongoing revelations pouring out of Georgia about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats have denounced the actions of the Trump administration, going so far as to try to prevent it from investigating election records, ballot boxes, and voting machines across the country.  A bad look, that.

Also ham-handed was the attempt by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) to smear Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, over a fake whistleblower complaint. Gabbard skewered that effort like Errol Flynn dispatching a baddie. “It is a hoax,” Gabbard wrote on X. “And they don’t even bother rewriting the script: same deep state, same counsel, same playbook. Democrats in Congress & the propaganda media fall in line every time.”

You can’t blame the Democrats for wanting to shut up Gabbard.  She has been one of the administration’s most effective tools for exposing deep state corruption.  The latest revelations concern the direct, personal involvement of Barack Obama in the effort to take down Donald Trump in the aftermath of his election to the presidency in 2016. Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, outlined the findings in a press conference with Gabbard:

While pretending to engage in a peaceful transfer of power, Barack Hussein Obama, in private, went to great and nefarious lengths to sow discord among the public and sabotage his successor, President Trump.

The new evidence released by the Director of National Intelligence confirms that the Obama administration manufactured and politicized intelligence, which was later used as justification for baseless smears against President Trump—an effort to delegitimize his victory before he even took the oath of office.

The truth is that President Trump never had anything to do with Russia, and the Russia collusion hoax was a massive fraud perpetrated on the American people from the very beginning. The worst part is that Obama knew the truth, as did all the other officials involved, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and many others.

I suspect that other stumps are about to be cauterized. Last summer, in another meditation about the persistence of the deep state, I drew upon J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to describe its astonishing longevity.  Voldemort, Rowling’s chief villain, had a clever way of preserving himself. Rightly worried that the forces of good might try to destroy him, the Dark Lord devised a way of infusing living bits of himself into various objects and people. Rowling called the resulting magical charm a “Horcrux.”

“If the body of a Horcrux owner is killed,” we read in a Potter gloss, “that portion of the soul that had remained in the body does not pass on to the next world, but will rather exist in a non-corporeal form capable of being resurrected by another wizard.” Nice work if you can get it. As I said last July,

I have often wondered whether the architects of the deep state have been inspired by Rowling’s tale. For, like Voldemort, they have taken care to distribute their essence in external objects and institutions. Wizards like Donald Trump and Elon Musk pronounce anathema upon their activities. They cast death spells that evaporate the elixir that imparts life—dollars in all their glory—but somehow the deep staters manage to evade death.

One problem is that a Horcrux cannot be destroyed by conventional means. It cannot be destroyed by being smashed, ripped, or burnt, for example. What is needed is Basilisk venom, the Sword of Gryffindor, or a magical, inextinguishable flame. You won’t find any at your local Costco or Walmart.

That’s one bit of bad news. Another is that it is generally difficult to discover where a Horcrux resides.  Often, they take up residence in unlikely people or places. How many smiling GOP faces, ostensibly anti-deep state campaigners, are actually hosts for the agents of darkness?

One bit of good news is that Donald Trump and his lieutenants, like Hercules, have unraveled the mystery and the methods of the deep state.  Initiatives like the SAVE Act, for example, which requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, will help frustrate the efforts of the deep state to rig elections.

What is needed to destroy the deep state is patience, persistence, and power.  Donald Trump, in his second term, has marshaled all three. The deep state is clever. It is insidious. But it is not invulnerable. Trump and his team have assembled an extraordinary range of legal and political weapons to undo the machinations of the deep state. Trump has also managed a sort of economic miracle, bringing down inflation and the cost of many consumer goods while boosting wages, the stock market, and employment.

Will all that be sufficient unto the day? I hope so. I think so. It is not too much to say that the future of the republic depends on its being so.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier). 

Trump keeps the world guessing

 

Trump keeps the world guessing 

From Venezuela to Tehran, Trump keeps the world guessing — to his advantage

Martin Gurri, California Post

We Americans are a parochial people — we’re homebodies.

War with Iran?

We’d rather watch the Super Bowl.

Overthrow a South American dictator?

Are you kidding?

Let’s talk about the Epstein files — sex, a supposed suicide and CIA all wrapped in one lurid package.

It’s one of our better traits.

Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.

Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.

If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.

If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Everything is in an uproar, everything looks different — mostly, I must say, to the president’s advantage.

Venezuela surprise

The Western Hemisphere can stand as Exhibit A of Trump’s global hyperactivity.

In Venezuela, a US carrier fleet steamed offshore for months, as a warning to the anti-American dictator of that country, Nicolás Maduro.

To most wise observers, myself included, the move looked like a simple application of pressure. It felt like a bluff, to see if Maduro would fold.

The reality is that Trump blusters a lot.

The reality also is, sometimes he means it.

In one of the most remarkable episodes in recent history, US special forces swooped down on Maduro’s fortress, slaughtered his Cuban bodyguards and removed the dictator and his wife from their bedroom to New York City, where both will face trial on drug-running charges.

Trump then told Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, that she could stay in charge if she did exactly what he told her.

A nervous Rodríguez immediately agreed.

Unlike the Iraq operation, the US surgically transformed a hostile regime into a dependent one, without getting stuck with having to fix a broken country.

Venezuelan oil is now being sold by American companies — a fact almost as astonishing as the night raid itself.

Normally, Latin American governments of all political stripes condemn US military interventions in the region.

It’s a conditioned reflex.

Not this time.

An unprecedented trend has seen the rise of pro-US and more specifically pro-Trump leaders in Latin America, starting with Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador but including the recently elected presidents of Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras and Costa Rica.

After the raid, Milei called Maduro a “narco-terrorist” and offered his “full support” to Washington.

Also after the raid, Panama booted out the Chinese company that had managed the ports at either end of the canal — just to make sure Trump stayed happy.

Meanwhile, the Cuban economy, already in free fall, suffered a devastating blow from the loss of subsidized Venezuelan oil.

Trump appears determined to starve the island of fuel until the communist regime collapses.

Is he bluffing?

Does he mean it?

Nobody knows.

But we do know that after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum decided to send oil to Cuba for “humanitarian” reasons, all it took was a phone call from Trump for Sheinbaum to change her mind.

Right now, the Western Hemisphere is Trump’s sandbox to play in whatever way he chooses.

Tehran faces a test

Matters are more complicated when it comes to Iran.

The ayatollahs have been battered by recent events — first, getting crushed in a 12-day war with Israel, then watching Trump drop bunker-busting bombs on their precious nuclear facilities, finally enduring a massive street revolt that unmasked the brutality and illegitimacy of their rule.

The regime is at its lowest point, probably ever.

So naturally Trump wants to negotiate.

First, though, he ordered yet another carrier fleet off the Persian Gulf.

It is now in place.

The Iranians are unlikely to yield to Trump’s demands.

The country is a much larger and harder target than Venezuela.

Snatching Ayatollah Khamenei in his pajamas won’t accomplish much.

So what’s next?

This is a good place to bring up some of the president’s personal qualities that must unnerve his foreign opponents.

First, he’s utterly unpredictable.

I said that before — sometimes he’s bluffing, sometimes not. Which time is this one?

Second, he’s willing to take tremendous risks.

Most heads of state in democratic countries tend to plan small so they can survive failure.

Trump, builder of gilded towers, is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

Lastly, he is not bound by the rules and rituals of traditional statecraft.

His is a strange and original mind.

Picking off Maduro was foreseen by absolutely no one.

If Trump decides to act in Iran, it will be at a time and in a fashion that will surprise not only the Iranians but the rest of us Very Smart People too.

These are the thoughts that trouble the heads of the Iranians as they stare across the table at the American negotiators.

China in turmoil

With China, the president has been handed an unexpected gift.

China is our strongest geopolitical antagonist — the rising economic and military power, ambitious to replace the US as the alpha dog in the global pack.

 An image collage containing 2 images, Image 1 shows Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 17, 2026. , Image 2 shows A protester calls on President Donald Trump to "Act Now" against the Iranian regime during a protest outside the US Embassy in London, England, on Jan. 31, 2026

Iran’s supreme leader warns any US attack would spark ‘regional war’

To get there, China must first attain supremacy in its own region — and to achieve that, it must conquer Taiwan, which it has always viewed as a breakaway province.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese communist regime has spent much of its considerable wealth building up potent military and naval forces, with the immediate objective of invading Taiwan.

Since the US is unofficially committed to defending the island, this would precipitate a shooting war between the two nuclear superpowers.

Fortunately, palace intrigue has intervened.

For reasons that are at best opaque, Xi has decimated the top leadership of the Chinese military.

The purge has sent old-school, well-respected generals to prison.

It could be argued that Xi is now in a stronger position — but I doubt it.

The whole episode smacks of fear and weakness.

The Chinese military caste likely feels that Xi and the Communist Party are the enemy.

The top echelons must be in disarray.

Whoever replaces the disgraced generals will be either resentful or terrified — both emotions are reasonable under the circumstances.

Invading Taiwan, at the moment, is a distant dream.

Trump could have faced in Xi a cunning, hyper-rational adversary, the kind of strategic thinker who might have lured the president into making a false move.

Instead, through no effort of his own, he finds himself dealing with a paranoid emperor intent on smashing rival domestic centers of power even at the cost of his country’s geopolitical objectives.

At the other end of the world, among the Europeans, the president has gotten his way as well.

Europe is the Joe Biden of continents — aging, self-destructive and thrilled by the sight of hordes of arriving immigrants.

Like Biden, most European leaders think of Trump as a cross between Attila the Hun and a Marvel supervillain, someone who loves to shatter the tranquility every culture in decline desperately craves.

European theater

The president wanted just two things from the Europeans.

One was that they pay for their own defense and not rely on Uncle Sam for protection.

This proposal greatly amused the Europeans — until Trump began to walk away from the Ukraine War and the mockery turned to panic.

In the end, all on their own, the Europeans decided to spend more money beefing up their military establishments — and the joke is that they thought they were doing this to spite Trump, even as they were bending to his will.

The president’s other demand related to Greenland.

Out of kindness to my readers, I’m going to skip over most of the theatrics surrounding this issue.

Yes, Trump threatened to snatch the island away by force, as if it were a gigantic version of Nicolás Maduro.

And yes, that time he didn’t really mean it.

But the threat made possible some wonderful comic fantasies, such as a war between the US and Denmark, and some even funnier moments, such as the trickle of soldiers sent symbolically to Greenland by Europe’s biggest countries.

Britain, home of awesome warriors, sent a single officer to defend the island.

Once again, while the Europeans squealed with delight because an invasion had been averted, Trump got everything he needed from them on Greenland — without the burden of having to pay for or run that Arctic icebox of a place.

Our last stop is Russia, a once-formidable enemy now stuck in the muck of the Ukraine war.

Because bombing has largely destroyed Ukraine’s power grid, the Russians had a winter window of opportunity to break through to victory.

But it’s already February.

The Ukrainians are freezing yet they remain unbroken.

Dealing with Russia

If spring arrives with few changes at the front, it will become clear, maybe even to Vladimir Putin, that Russia will never win this war.

For many reasons, not least to wean Russia away from total dependence on China, Trump wants to end the conflict.

During the presidential campaign, he boasted that he would do it on “Day 1.”

That didn’t happen.

The issue throws a spotlight on an unexpected aspect of the president’s character.

Trump has a frantic style. He flits from controversy to controversy without a pause for breath — his policy-making appears afflicted by an attention disorder.

In fact, he’s relentless.

He has come back to the Ukraine negotiations again and again.

He’s ticked off one side then the other.

As always with Trump, offending his interlocutors is part of the fun.

But he is completely outcome-oriented — he doesn’t give a hoot about process, he wants peace.

At worst, the fighting will continue, leaving Russia a greatly diminished antagonist.

I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if some sort of armistice was concluded under American auspices before the end of 2026.

Were that to occur, it will be one more hint that, at present, we are all living in Donald Trump’s world.

Trump Must Help Iranians

 

Trump Must Help Iranians Bring Down the Islamic Regime

With Diplomacy on the Verge of Faltering, Preparations for an American Military Strike Are Proceeding Apace

Jonathan Spyer, The Spectator

With diplomatic talks between the US and Iran set to take place in Muscat, Oman, today, the prospects for de-escalation between the two countries appear slim to non-existent. Teheran is clear that it is prepared to discuss only its nuclear programme and has so far refused the White House’s demands to put its ballistic missile programme, support for regional proxies, and internal repression on the agenda.  

With diplomacy on the verge of faltering, preparations for an American military strike are proceeding apace. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has now reached Middle Eastern waters and the area for which United States central command is responsible. Additional military assets – F15E strike aircraft, THAAD and Patriot PAC 3 batteries, tanker aircraft – have also been deployed. Action against Iran could come at any time. President Trump will keep the regime guessing until the last moment.

Substantively, however, historical precedent and reality don’t suggest that a one-and-done US airstrike or special forces operation in the vein of Venezuela could rapidly destroy the Islamic regime in Iran. Trump’s stated preference for ‘swift and decisive’ military action that delivers this collapse is no easy feat when the Iranian ayatollah has more than one million armed fanatics under his control. These are true believers who haven’t hesitated to murder many thousands of unarmed Iranian civilians in the past few months.

The choice available to the US and its allies is either concerted, strategic action along a variety of lines and over an extended period of time or no action at all. If the latter course is chosen, the murderous regime of the mullahs is likely to survive. The former course doesn’t guarantee success for America either. But it makes it possible.  

If a single, spectacular act cannot bring down the nearly 50-year-old regime in Tehran, what course might be adopted? Unless the US or someone else wants to send a large military force on the ground into Iran to destroy the regime, the remaining available option is to assist the Iranian people in their own efforts. Once this is understood, a number of options become feasible.

Firstly, the single most significant factor currently absent on the Iranian scene is a divide within the Iranian security forces. Potential fissures exist. Perhaps the most significant is between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Artesh, the conventional armed forces of the country. Any work which can be done in reaching and incentivising commanders of the Artesh to defect from the regime would be of immense value. The regime lacks legitimacy and is teetering. Increasingly it remains in power because of the naked exercise of force. The US and other anti-regime countries possess the capacity to reach and incentivise Artesh commanders to do their bidding.

Secondly, ongoing actions from the air (and if possible, via covert action on the ground) to disrupt the regime’s own efforts to suppress unrest are both feasible and advisable. Killing senior IRGC commanders, destroying bases, striking regime IRGC military and civilian infrastructure would all serve the dual purpose of weakening the regime’s capacity to respond to protests and building the morale of the protestors themselves.  

Thirdly, the regime understood what it was doing when it prioritised shutting off the internet last month. A people which can’t communicate with the outside world or with one another can be slaughtered in silence. It is therefore of paramount importance to take the necessary measures to enable communication. Independent satellite internet services are vital here. State-directed efforts to ensure the presence of Starlink terminals and other technical means on Iranian soil have a crucial role to play.  

Offensive cyber actions to disrupt the regime’s own abilities to manage and rule Iran should be undertaken. The US is the world leader in this field.  

Finally, there should be practical assistance on the ground to provide both medical facilities and weaponry for a growing Iranian insurgency. The need for protestors to seek medical assistance in state medical facilities is a key vulnerability. This problem could be remedied through direct assistance from America or any other anti-regime country. 

Sporadic acts of armed resistance against the Islamic regime have already begun. At present, they appear to be mainly restricted to peripheral parts of the country and to involve Iran’s ethnic minorities, in particular its Kurds. The determined but small Kurdish paramilitary groups mustn’t and can’t be left to fight the regime alone. An insurgent counterforce needs to be built, in the same way that the US and regional powers built the insurgency that challenged the Assad regime in Syria, and the coalition of ground units that destroyed the ISIS ‘caliphate’.  

In some ways, the situation in Iran currently resembles Syria 15 years ago, when the Assad regime sought to drown a civil uprising against its rule in the protestors’ own blood. Instead, Assad’s brutal measures generated an insurgency which eventually consumed his regime. Iranians don’t have 15 years to wait, of course, and the regime they face is more sophisticated and better organised than Assad’s authority. 

The Iranian regime’s bloody footprint extends across the world, but it lost control of events after Hamas’s 7 October pogrom in 2023. Yahya Sinwar’s diabolical rampage inadvertently hastened the downfall of Iran’s regional terror shield as Israel engaged in an existential battle for the Jewish state’s survival. It is now for the courageous people of Iran – who have long detested the regime’s prioritisation of terrorism – to remove it and usher in a new Middle East. To do so, the West needs to step up and support the efforts of the Iranian public. Time is of the essence.

Jonathan Spyer is a journalist and Middle East analyst. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum and the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.

Khamenei has gone underground

 

Khamenei has gone underground

Iran’s supreme leader retreats underground, warned of likelihood of US airstrikes

Shane Galvin, New York Post

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has gone underground, reportedly hiding out in a bunker out of fear of being wiped out by US airstrikes — as the USS Abraham Lincoln steams toward the Persian Gulf.

The 86-year-old supreme leader has moved to a fortified shelter in Tehran connected to a series of elaborate underground tunnels after senior military officials warned of the increasing likelihood of an imminent US attack, Iran International reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Khamenei has left his youngest son Masoud Khamenei, 53, in charge of running the day-to-day management of the Islamic Republic, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Masoud Khamenei’s emergency duties include being the primary communication channel with the regime’s executive branch, according to the report.

Iran has deemed the likelihood of US airstrikes to be high after President Trump announced that warships were headed to the Middle East as a warning to the ayatollah, following a continuing war of words between the two leaders in recent days.

Trump boasted Friday that the US Navy was sending a massive “armada.”

The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, which includes three destroyers, is currently motoring from the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf region of Iran, Stars and Stripes reported.

Publicly, Tehran has not backed down from heightened tensions with the US as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened to treat any attack against the supreme leader by the US or Israel as “an all-out war against us.”

Iran’s national security parliamentary commission also declared this week that any attack against the embattled Khamenei would trigger a declaration of jihad, the Iranian Students News Agency reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Khamenei, who is frequently active on social media, has not posted on X since Jan. 17, though it is not known when he allegedly entered into hiding.

It’s not the first time the supreme leader has holed up underground. Khamenei also went silent after retreating to a bunker last June, during the 12-Day War with Israel. He reportedly had even drafted a list of potential successors in the event he was killed in the short-lived conflict.

His latest X post this year threatened to go after both internal and international “criminals” who he claimed were responsible for the widespread protests that have gripped the nation since Dec. 28.

Those protests — against a disastrous economy that came on the back of the worst drought the country has seen in decades — have seen regime forces gun down at least 3,000 civilians, with some groups claiming the death toll as high as 20,000.

The American Grizzly

 

The American Grizzly

Richard Jordan, Law & Liberty

The first year of Trump 2.0 has seen extraordinary changes in American foreign policy. Last December, the new National Security Strategy (NSS) made waves, and like everything about President Trump, responses were never tepid. From “alarming” (the NYT) to “beautiful” (The American Conservative), our twittering elites were glad to have a new reason to rant about foreign policy. In any case, the recent spectacle in Venezuela certainly demonstrated the administration’s resolve to put its new NSS into practice.

Still, many commentators, even on the right, have been frustrated that Trump’s new NSS doesn’t offer a “doctrine.” As everyone who studies international relations knows, every president needs a doctrine: some readers may remember the Truman Doctrine, and in my lifetime we’ve had a Powell Doctrine, a Bush Doctrine, an Obama Doctrine, and even (bless his heart) a Biden Doctrine. So where is the Trump Doctrine?

In short, there isn’t one. In both domestic policy and foreign policy, Donald Trump has never peddled an ideology. From the beginning, “America First” has been much more of an attitude than a blueprint. With the new NSS, his bold moves in Venezuela, and even his rhetoric around Greenland, Donald Trump is offering what he has always offered: a character, a WrestleMania narrative for America abroad.

This need for character, not doctrine, has always tripped America’s elites. For all his brilliance, Henry Kissinger saw his foreign policy eclipsed by Ronald Reagan’s, because Reagan understood American character and Kissinger did not. Americans do not want realism or “restraint”—though Donald Trump’s foreign policy could arguably fit both. Rather, Americans want to understand their role in the world. They want to understand how American character fits into the script of international politics. Elites talk about worldviews. Normal Americans don’t. They talk about stories.

So what is the American character, and what does that character look like on the international stage?

That question is engaged directly, and unapologetically, in the last of Hollywood’s great sword-and-sand adventures, The Wind and the Lion (1975). Starring Sean Connery as a Moroccan bandit chief (complete with Scottish brogue), the film centers on the kidnapping of Eden Pedecaris (Candice Bergen) and the efforts of Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) to recover her. John Milius, one of Hollywood’s most gifted screenwriters (Apocalypse Now) and rare conservatives (he preferred to be paid in kind with guns rather than cash), wrote and directed the swashbuckling desert epic. While overshadowed at the box office by Jaws, it has long since cemented its status as a classic. And fifty years later, it is hard not to see it as a commentary on modern America and our own twenty-first-century larger-than-life populist.

At the start of his first term, Donald Trump chose Old Hickory’s portrait to hang in the Oval Office. He might have done better to choose the Rough Rider.

Under Teddy Roosevelt, the United States for the first time stepped fully into the role of a Great Power. Milius intuited that in the first decade of the 1900s, American character on the world stage was being redefined, and this redefinition was embodied in the man of Theodore Roosevelt. You cannot understand how America sees itself in the world without understanding it. And Milius understands it well.

The Wind in the Lion opens in Tangier, where Mrs. Pedecaris, an American citizen, is kidnapped by desert brigands. The film tracks the initial, failed diplomatic efforts to secure her release, and it culminates in a spectacular American show of force that, in a single day, upends the Great Power politics of the region, with the fate of Morocco firmly in the hands of a singular American president. (One can’t help but draw parallels to the current situation in Venezuela.) But unlike most films about foreign policy, even exceptional ones like Argo, The Wind and the Lion does not keep its characters in constant danger or its audience in constant suspense. The opposite of Hamas, these Muslim brigands treat Mrs. Pedecaris with respect, and the tension in her scenes is usually thanks to Sean Connery’s sex appeal rather than any immediate threat to this heroine’s life or limbs. The film revels in landscapes and horses and Winchester rifles, but above all in the American soul and the way Roosevelt embodied so much of what is best in our country.

Although a grand adventure story, and one that took several crowd-pleasing liberties with its historical source material, the film centers on a pensive monologue given by Roosevelt in Yellowstone. That monologue is worth quoting in full:

The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times … but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous. … Loneliness. The bear lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered—but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them are as great as he. … The world will never love us. They respect us—they may even grow to fear us. But they will never love us. For we have too much audacity. And we’re a bit blind and reckless at times, too.

Teddy Roosevelt bequeathed to America the Roosevelt Corollary and the Big Stick—both of which, incidentally, Trump has now wielded in Venezuela. But what Roosevelt really stamped upon the face of America was not a doctrine but an ethos. Ever since, American foreign policy has been something of a grizzly bear: strong, audacious, and (mostly) alone.

America is strong. The Wind and the Lion revels in the martial parades, swagger, and iconography that once captivated Americans and still captivate our president. Roosevelt is portrayed, accurately, as a man’s man: a powerfully built and virile boxer; an impeccable shot; and a loving and authoritative father. Unlike his willowy Secretary of State (a delightfully sly and cynical John Huston) or the stooping Washington creatures who mill about him, Roosevelt—like the crowds that adore him—is upright, energetic, and imposing.

The same vim enlivens American policy. Where Europeans had paid handsomely for their ransomed nationals, Roosevelt defies the Moroccan bandits with clear threats and bold action. The Europeans sent gold; Roosevelt sent warships. And in a Kiplingesque touch, Keith’s Roosevelt and Connery’s Raisuli gradually come to admire each other: they respect the strength and daring of the other man, and each, of course, wants to “find out what kind of weapon the old ****** uses.”

Along with this strength, the United States has historically exercised a brash disregard for Old World niceties. International law is often the first casualty of our gumption. At one point in the film, Secretary Hay objects, “But that’s illegal,” and Roosevelt responds, “Now why spoil the beauty of a thing with legality?” Yet this blithe treatment of international norms does not mean America is warmongering: Roosevelt, like Trump, brokered many peace deals and started no wars, and the film depicts the Japanese celebrating the new “American wind” that blows against injustice—not unlike the Venezuelans who are rejoicing in the streets, even as comfortable elites wring their hands over legal indelicacies.

A second casualty is our opinion of Europe, and theirs of us. Donald Trump is by no means the first president to recognize in the Old World a tendency to authoritarianism, decadence, and debility; Milius gives us the same glimpse in 1904 Tangier. Indeed, if anything, the semi-barbaric Muslim Berbers are portrayed with much greater sympathy than the Europeans. Moreover, Milius does not try his audience’s patience with ahistorical depictions of Islam as a tolerant and egalitarian “religion of peace.” Rather, he paints the Berbers in all their raw virtues and vices. Roosevelt feels a kinship with this kidnapping desert brigand, and so too does Mrs. Pedecaris, because they are all strong-willed and audacious characters who thirst for great things, whereas the Europeans do not.

And this is perhaps the most poignant theme of the film: greatness means loneliness. Roosevelt cautions his daughter Alice that he does “not pity any man who has the good sense not to [pursue] it.” Aristotle made the same point about his great-souled man. Whether Donald Trump understands this truth on a personal level, I cannot say; but on a national level, he does seem to grasp that American greatness sets it apart. When I was an undergraduate, elites felt a great deal of anxiety about anti-Americanism. At the same time, I noticed that ordinary Americans did not share this anxiety; instead, they expressed a certain (deserved) contempt for the French and the Germans, but also tended to accept that our country could not exercise great power without arousing a certain amount of envy. America, I hope, will not return to isolationism, but it will always be isolated. It is part of who we are.

At the beginning of the Cold War, Charles Burton Marshall warned that “a world power cannot lead a double life.” Its policies, he insisted, must match its character. Too often our policy elites, on the left and right, have demanded doctrines and worldviews but neglected this more elemental matter of the nation’s personality. Our rulers and prognosticators pay great attention to national security, but they ignore national character. For the past few decades, both our realists and our idealists have been obtuse because they have been denationalized: the idealists have thrown overboard Woodrow Wilson and anything that might make them distinctively American, while the realists have forgotten Teddy Roosevelt, and with him any narrative that might once again capture the American imagination. Thankfully, that seems to be changing.

At the start of his first term, Donald Trump chose Old Hickory’s portrait to hang in the Oval Office. He might have done better to choose the Rough Rider. Roosevelt’s swagger and bravado, his contempt for dandified, out-of-touch elites, his willingness to flaunt convention—these are all hallmarks of Roosevelt and, in truth, hallmarks of the American personality. Of late, our storytellers have stopped exploring these facets of our national ethos. I believe that is all the more reason to revisit an old favorite. In The Wind and the Lion, John Milius presents us with a spectacular vista of American greatness—in all our power, audacity, and solitude, a nation at times terribly near-sighted, and yet somehow also indispensable, indomitable, and good.

Richard Jordan is an associate professor of international relations at Baylor University, where he studies grand strategy, game theory, and imagination.