SEN McCORMICK: Secretary Rubio sets the course for NATO’s future. Will Europe listen?

Europe stands at a crossroads. To save itself and our cherished Transatlantic alliance, it must not only change policy but also recommit itself to the common inheritance of Western civilization.

That was the message Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered this weekend at the Munich Security Conference in a defining foreign policy speech of our time. 

At an affair best known for platitudes and navel-gazing, he diagnosed the roots of Europe’s decline and provided a clear vision for how America and its European allies can unite, again, to preserve the most important alliance in human history. It could not have come at a better time.

Formed in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, the NATO alliance has underpinned American, European and even global security for decades. It held back the march of Communism. It brought peace to a continent reeling from centuries of brutal warfare. It reunified Europe.

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It is an alliance bonded by sacrifice and history. Like generations of American soldiers before and since, I fought alongside our NATO allies in the 82nd Airborne, crossing into Iraq with a French unit at the outset of the first Gulf War. And when America was attacked on 9/11, our NATO allies answered our call. They spilled blood in the mountains of Afghanistan and streets of Iraq alongside our young men and women in uniform.

That bond remains, but, Secretary Rubio warned, it has grown weaker as our allies have pursued policies of managed decline. They have crippled their productive capacity with so-called “green energy” policies, allowed deindustrialization to neuter their defense capabilities and neglected the very fabric of their own societies through mass, uncontrolled immigration. They have failed to live up to their end of the bargain in the alliance, and the marriage between the United States and Europe now needs fixing.

However, the roots of decline run deeper than policy choices, to the very soul of Western society. Secretary Rubio sees this truth, and that’s why all Americans should hear his speech.

The remarks remind us what leaders in the United States and throughout Europe are tasked with defending: a sacred inheritance from the forebears of Western civilization, the civilization that gave us Beethoven, established the rule of law, built the Sistine Chapel, sustained a rich philosophical tradition and took us to the moon — but which now faces grave and existential threats.

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It is this shared bond of history and cultural inheritance — alongside the cold realities of geopolitics — that holds our nations together. Not vague abstractions, impotent international organizations, or even transatlantic trade.

Our European allies have forgotten this fact. Too often, they have traded national interest and hard power for vague and moralistic appeals to international institutions and a bloated welfare state. The Trump administration, as articulated in Secretary Rubio’s speech, has rejected that failed status quo and championed an honest, hard-nosed view of foreign policy designed to promote our national interests.

Under President Donald Trump, this administration put that policy to action. It has reasserted American sovereignty and our nation’s exceptional role as a leader on the world stage. American leadership, not the United Nations or any other international body, has brought peace to the Middle East, toppled Iran’s nuclear program and ended the reign of a narco-terrorist dictator.

This isn’t a divorce from Europe, retreat from the world stage or an abdication of America’s role as a world leader. Nor is it the misguided doctrine of internationalists who were eager to spend blood and treasure to export ideology to far-off lands. It’s a sober understanding of the realities of power and what it takes to secure the United States and Europe as we face a changing world together.

Secretary Rubio’s speech marks a defining moment for the U.S.-led global order. Just as crucially, it serves as a powerful call for the champions of the West to defend a shared civilization with a beautiful past — and a future that must be met by an alliance built on this deep and enduring bond.

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I trust many in Europe will heed the call. On a recent visit to Norway, Finland, Estonia and Denmark with several of my U.S. Senate colleagues, we met with leaders laser-focused on rebuilding their hard power, deterring the Russian bear on their borders and restoring the heart and soul of the NATO alliance. Many of those I spoke to understood what is at stake. They had learned the hard lessons of the War in Ukraine and Europe’s inept response.

I hope those voices will trumpet Secretary Rubio and be “unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance.”

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DAVID MARCUS: Democrats’ Munich meltdown exposes left’s intellectual void

When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a galaxy of left-wing, even socialist, intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal whose works were like an inkwell that politicians and commentators could draw from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has run dry.

Take this gem of a comment on global order from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of the democratic socialists: “What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes.”

Allow me to translate this into English: “The West is bad and mistreats the marginalized rest of the world.”

The use of 25-cent words and highfalutin sentence structure cannot hide the banality of what AOC is saying. Not even the assuring allure of assonance would help, given the asinine simplicity of her word salad.

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Not to be outdone, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, after apologizing for being less well-versed in foreign policy than AOC, offered this take on the war in Ukraine: “Ukraine’s independence, keeping their land mass, I mean, um, the support of all the allies, I think is the goal, from my vantage point.”

There is just nothing here but empty words that paint a picture of the facile progressive worldview, completely divorced, not only from reality on the ground, but from any sound intellectual framework whatsoever.

The American right has a core of intellectuals, from Christopher Rufo to Victor Davis Hanson to Mark Dubowitz and on and on, who can be referred to or drawn on in policy debates both foreign and domestic.

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In fact, about a decade ago we had the Intellectual Dark Web phenomenon with figures like Jordan Peterson and Bari Weiss, who are broadly seen, if not as conservative, as right-leaning. Who are their counterparts on the far left?

Who is the contemporary socialist intellectual who AOC could have referenced to support her claim that what is needed is massive global redistribution of wealth? 

I would posit that outside of the very narrow corridors of race and gender, such far-left public intellectuals no longer exist and for two very important reasons.

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The most obvious cause for the current dearth of popular far-left, socialist intellectuals is the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. At least for the next two decades, the game was up, the experiment had failed and nobody wanted to be called a socialist.

The second reason is what took the place of outright socialism, which was cultural Marxism, specifically in the form of critical race theory. 

In their brilliant 2013 Harvard Education Review study, “McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education’s Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism,” the Midwestern Whiteness Collective, a left-wing group of teachers, argued that centering race and identity in everything was stifling intellectual discourse.

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This was clearly true because the shibboleths of race and identity, what was allowed and not allowed to be expressed, went completely unchallenged. In fact, challenging them was punished.

So, once race and identity became a part of everything, then nothing could be legitimately questioned. It was equity, not equality, over everything else.

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We saw this in practice this month at Sarah Lawrence College, where non-socialist liberal intellectual Ezra Klein was shouted down during a discussion about Israel. The position of the protesters was not that Klein should be disagreed with but that he should be silenced, that his ideas are too dangerous to utter.

Why do AOC and Whitmer sound like babbling idiots when they seek to defend their positions against even the slightest criticism? Because they have never had to. In all the rooms and meetings they’ve experienced, their nonsense is greeted with grins and finger snaps of approval.

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The danger here is of the highest order because we may be electing socialists who literally do not know how to make things work. Zany Zohran Mamdani has been mayor of New York City for just over a month. He couldn’t handle the snow, he can’t remove the trash and people are freezing to death on the streets.

The sad bottom line is that the American left, which has taken over the Democratic Party, has no true intellectual underpinnings. Like Seinfeld, it is ultimately a political ideology about nothing and the clearest danger to American values that exists today.

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San Francisco residents band together to shut down reparations fund, claiming it’s ‘dividing’ the city

Richie Greenberg, one of the plaintiffs suing San Francisco over its reparations fund, claimed the measure is divisive because it solely favors Black residents.

“It is dividing the city rather than trying to unite. So, what we really need is to be focusing on how to uplift everybody rather than focusing on one group giving everything to that one group. And then everyone else is then responsible for paying for that one group,” Greenberg told Fox News Digital. 

Greenberg formerly identified as a Republican and currently identifies as a centrist-conservative Democrat.

The city was sued over its reparations fund on grounds its taxpayer money is being “unlawfully” used for a policy that allegedly violates the equal protection clause.

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According to the Pacific Legal Foundation, several San Francisco residents and Californians for Equal Rights Foundation sued San Francisco Thursday, challenging an ordinance that establishes a fund for Black residents. 

The lawsuit alleges that the ordinance is discriminating on the basis of race because it allows taxpayer money to be funneled into the fund. The plaintiffs said a win would protect taxpayers from supporting a government-based racially motivated program and establish boundaries for other cities implementing similar policies.

“Acknowledging past injustice does not give the government license to spend public resources on programs that sort people by race and ancestry today,” said Andrew Quinio, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. 

“The Constitution requires the city to address proven harm directly, not through sweeping racial and ancestral classifications. This lawsuit is about ensuring that all Americans are treated as individuals under the law and not forced to subsidize government policies that collectively bind them to history that they did not experience or inflict.”

Greenberg led the effort in shutting down the fund when he heard buzz about the fund being revived after it was initially put aside for some time. He ended up creating a website, rejecttheplan.com, calling for residents to band together to stop the approval of the plan. 

However, their efforts were futile.

“The reality is that much of the media — both local, state and federal, national media outlets — did not pay much attention to this. They didn’t think that it would actually go through,” Greenberg said.

“It was being pushed through regardless of its legality, so I went ahead, and I set up a website.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a measure to create the fund. 

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The ordinance, passed by the Board of Supervisors in December, was signed by Lurie two days before Christmas. It establishes the legal framework for the fund but does not allocate funds or guarantee payments. The fund can be financed with private donations, foundations and other non-city sources. Any taxpayer-funded reparations payouts would require separate legislation, an identified funding source and mayoral approval. 

Lurie told Fox News Digital in December that no taxpayer money would be paid into the potential pot, citing the city’s $1 billion budget deficit. 

“I was elected to drive San Francisco’s recovery, and that’s what I’m focused on every day,” Lurie said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “We are not allocating money to this fund. With a historic $1 billion budget deficit, we are going to spend our money on making the city safer and cleaner.”

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The plaintiffs allege a “misuse of government power” because the city’s Human Rights Commission administers the program.

According to the complaint, “By directing an agency funded almost entirely by taxpayer dollars to administer funding solely dedicated to implement race-exclusive benefits, the city is using public money, public employees, and public authority to carry out an unconstitutional racial spoils system that allocates benefits and opportunities based on race and ancestry.”

“Taxpayer funds cannot be used to manage the assets of an unlawful program,” Quinio said in a statement to Courthouse News.

“We need to stop this because it is a tremendous, tremendous amount of funding that would, eventually, basically kill the city. It would destroy the city of San Francisco, and it would set up an unworkable situation of who within the city gets preference as opposed to everyone else that would not,” Greenberg said.

Fox News Digital reached out to the mayor’s office, the reparations committee and the city attorney for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

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As America turns 250, Trump should restore Washington, DC’s original borders

Virginia Democrats just proposed an electoral map that would potentially give Democrats 10 of the state’s 11 representatives in the House. In a state that voted 46% for Trump, it is outlandish to only give Republican voters roughly 9% of the state’s representation. Virginia should be careful though. 

The only reason it has that much representation is because of its racist past. Perhaps President Trump should rectify that historical wrong with a long overdue fix.

You see, 179 years ago, Arlington, once part of the District of Columbia, was given to Virginia for the express purpose of continuing slavery in Northern Virginia. 

Now, Arlington, once part of the District of Columbia, is home to nearly 200,000 Virginians, a great many of whom are D.C. bureaucrats who now enjoy the benefits of living in the states while also exerting disproportionate influence over the federal government. They receive essentially double representation. 

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If Arlington residents want to influence Washington, they should be in Washington, just as the founders intended.

Some history: In 1790, the District of Columbia was created. Its location was seated directly in between Maryland and Virginia, with both states ceding 5 miles of their land. 

But in 1847, after the District pressed for abolition of slavery, Alexandria, now Arlington County, was officially retroceded after President James K. Polk issued a proclamation and the Virginia legislature accepted.

Like the Civil War that followed, while there were financial, strategic and voting interests at stake at the time, it is hard to argue that slavery was not the primary motivator. Virginians were afraid that “slaves” would simply walk across the boundary into the District and become free. 

With the physical barrier of the Potomac River parting Virginia from the District, slaves would be unable to gain their freedom. And, indeed, as a result of retrocession, slavery expanded in Virginia even after the District abolished it.

The Supreme Court never weighed in on whether this maneuver was constitutional. It did acknowledge the transfer but in a tax dispute. 

The D.C. Circuit issued a ruling that presumed constitutionality, but in an estate case.

As a result, legitimate constitutional questions have been left to linger for 179 years. The contract clause of Article I of the Constitution states, “No state shall enter into any … law impairing the obligation of Contracts.” 

In Virginia’s agreement with the United States, it “forever ceded and relinquished … in full and absolute right and exclusive jurisdiction ….” The land was given for the “permanent seat” of government. If the agreement was “permanent” and “forever,” how then could a state initiate a law that impairs that contractual agreement?

There are additional constitutional concerns. Numerous agencies are housed in Arlington County. Yet, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution describes the “seat of government” as a tract of land that had been “by cession of particular states.” In other words, the Constitution contemplated the seat of government to be independent of any state.

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This makes sense. By placing a substantial portion of the federal government in a single state, that state, by logical extension, gains more power than the rest. That is precisely why separate land was so important to the founders. Everything was about balance and separating power and influence.

An attempt to restore the District would not be unique to President Trump. Subsequent presidents, like Abraham Lincoln, called for undoing retrocession. President William Taft, who said it was not even constitutional, called for restoring the land back to the District. 

An article at the time noted that the entire effort for retrocession was “to prevent fugitive slaves escaping from Virginia.”

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In a time of efforts to undo historical injustices around race, it is hard to understand how this has not been revisited, but not for racist motives. The land would have remained a part of the District “permanently” and “forever,” just as both the states and President George Washington intended. 

Thus, practically, legally and from a historical injustice perspective, it makes sense that “recession” (i.e. restoring the original cession) be revisited.

President Trump should consider issuing an executive order directing the DOJ (or other agencies) to explore the constitutionality of the 1847 retrocession and, potentially, actions that could be taken to restore the District to its original intended boundaries and purposes. 

As we prepare to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, it would be a fitting moment for him to return Arlington residents to their constitutionally-approved residence. Virginians could also sleep better knowing they had righted a centuries’ old wrong.

No date? No worries; why friends are the real Valentine’s lifesaver

My friend recently told me that her favorite Valentine’s Day was a few decades ago in second grade, when her playground crush called to say he loved her. 

“It’s been all downhill from there,” she joked.

Another friend said her most cherished memory was when her fifth-grade love interest bought her a bracelet. “And nothing positive since,” she told us, in jest, during the same conversation.

While Valentine’s Day can be a meaningful reminder to celebrate a cherished romantic relationship — even after elementary school — it can also be fraught with dread, obligation and the letdown of unrealistic expectations.

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A male friend once told me he refuses to celebrate Valentine’s Day because he resents being told by a calendar when to be thoughtful. Instead, he programs his phone to remind him to buy his wife flowers every 45 days. He admits the irony without hesitation but insists it’s different because his wife doesn’t know about the alerts and is genuinely surprised every time.

He might be onto something. If his wife is genuinely surprised — and actually enjoys flowers — research suggests the unexpected treat triggers a stronger dopamine response. Husbands and boyfriends, however, are often stuck navigating the delicate balance between the joy of surprise and the risk of disappointment when flowers or gifts are expected and fail to appear.

On the other hand, people not in romantic relationships might dread the heart and candy day, when grocery store aisles are overrun with pink and red chaos because it’s a not-so-subtle reminder of their singleness — and, for some, a pang of loneliness.

But there’s hope. Celebrating Valentine’s Day — or any festive occasion — with good friends can boost your well-being and even increase your longevity. In an article last month, oncologist and former Obama White House Special Advisor for Health Policy Ezekiel Emanuel argued that the key to living longer is close friendships. Citing the Health and Retirement Study, he noted that people with the most close friends — an average of 7.8 — had a 17% lower risk of depression and a 24% lower risk of death than those with fewer close friends, who averaged just 1.6.

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When I was in high school, my father told me I’d be lucky to have five real friends over the course of my lifetime. I thought he was completely out of his mind and assured him I had dozens. Now it turns out he wasn’t pessimistic. He was practically doing longevity math. Five may be fewer than 7.8, but it’s close enough to feel medically reassuring.

One of my favorite memories is celebrating Valentine’s Day with close college friends a few years before I married. We went to dinner, where we very publicly unwrapped unexpected — and absolutely humiliating — gifts from my friend, who would later become my maid of honor. Then we danced like fools until the club kicked us out. By the time we returned home, my sides hurt from laughing so hard I thought I might cry. I’d like to think we can bank that kind of happiness and draw on it during life’s duller phases.

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I can’t imagine my husband, father or brother ditching their, ahem, better halves to grab dinner and go dancing with their buddies on Valentine’s Day. Still, the freezing, midwinter Hallmark holiday offers a perfect excuse to pick up the phone and tell friends how much they matter.

Maybe that’s the real gift Valentine’s Day has to offer — not roses on demand or perfectly timed romance, but a reminder to notice the people who show up again and again, the friends who make us laugh until our sides hurt, who know our embarrassing stories and who stick around long after the candy is gone. 

Romantic love can come with pressure and high expectations, but friendship — including the kind we share with our spouses — has a way of surprising us quietly, reliably and over a lifetime.

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Welcome to the dating recession: Why young Americans are giving up on love

Remember “Netflix and chill?” About 10 years ago, the slang emerged like a Gen Z mating call: “Wanna come over and … hang out?”

Maybe it wasn’t the most elegant dating scene, but at least it was a dating scene. According to new study from the Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, today’s young adults are in a “dating recession” — 2026 is all Netflix and no chill.

Our 2026 “State of our Unions” report, which surveyed 5,275 single adults between the ages of 22 and 35, found that only one in three of eligible young adults are actively dating. Nearly three quarters of women (74%) and two-thirds of men (64%) had not a single date, or dated only a few times, in the last year.

So, what’s throwing cold water on what’s supposed to be the most sexually charged phase of adult life?

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One of the most significant barriers to dating is an epidemic loss of self-confidence among young adults. Only about one in three said they felt comfortable approaching someone they were interested in, and less than 40% said they felt confident in their ability to talk about their feelings with a dating partner. 

That’s not altogether alarming — vulnerability with a new person is always uncomfortable. Dating has always been a high-risk, high-reward game. What’s more alarming than that fear of intimacy is our finding that only 36% of young adults say they’re confident they can read social cues on dates. They don’t know how to be with someone else.

This hints at a bigger cause: kids aren’t just avoiding dates, they aren’t socializing at all. Last year, the Institute for Family Studies found that the average time young adults spent in person with friends in a given week has fallen by 50% since 2010. Other research has found that American adults are spending more time alone today — even post-pandemic — than ever before.

American teens spend an average of nearly four hours a day on social media and even longer on their smartphones generally. Is it any wonder that kids buried in a virtual world don’t know how to make eye contact or read body language? You can’t learn to read social cues unless you try reading social cues. Maybe Netflix actually killed the chill. 

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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes so much smartphone use also arrests development of resilience. Young people who don’t take risks don’t learn how to weather failure. Our research found another significant reason (48%) that young people aren’t asking each other out is their fear of repeating a painful past dating experience.

Still, the ‘dating recession’ is not for lack of desire. Despite their loner tendencies, 86% of our survey respondents said they hope to get married one day. 

That, at least, is encouraging: our research also suggests married adults, particularly married parents, consistently report the highest levels of personal well-being and happiness. Recent research found married mothers and fathers 18 to 55 are almost twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives, compared to their single and childless peers. 

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Unfortunately, if today’s trends continue, at least one in three adults who are in their twenties today will never marry. That means fewer people will have children, too. A dating recession will make those numbers even bleaker.

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One of the most significant barriers to dating is an epidemic loss of self-confidence among young adults. 

That means more young adults risk the fate of Elizabeth, a charming and ambitious young lawyer living in Texas. Elizabeth says she’s always desired marriage, but didn’t prioritize dating in her college years. “I thought, let’s wait until I’m established, and have gotten through my education and I’m settled somewhere long-term for my career before I really look for someone,” she said.

Fast-forward to Elizabeth’s graduation from law school, when she finally came up for air and found that marriage seemed farther away than ever. “Having not been in any serious relationship before, I didn’t really know how to do it,” she said.

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By pop-culture standards, Elizabeth did everything right: she worked hard, built an impressive career, and didn’t get ‘tied down’ too early. But visiting her sister recently, who took the opposite path — got married young, and had just had her third baby — Elizabeth said she was gutted to realize she’d have given “every dollar in [her] bank account” to have her sisters’ life.  

This Valentine’s Day, young adults who desire a relationship should embrace the risk. They might not feel particularly confident, but there’s good news: according to our research, neither does anyone else. That’s ok. Love is messy. But it’s what makes life worthwhile. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM BRAD WILCOX

BROADCAST BIAS: ‘The View’ isn’t news — it’s Democratic talking points on repeat

Too often, watching the ladies on ABC’s “The View” is like finding the five more partisan Democrat accounts on Instagram or X. You’ll get every Democratic National Committee talking point, with an emphasis on how the left is amazing and the right will end democracy as we know it.

This week, “The View” crew repeatedly gushed over the allegedly marvelous Super Bowl halftime show of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, because he hates President Donald Trump and ICE. The fact that it was almost entirely in Spanish (except for a Lady Gaga interlude) was a point of pride and proved that Americans are backward people. “This country seems to be one of the only countries in the world that is so proud of being monolingual and not being able to communicate in more than one language,” Co-host Sunny Hostin complained. “And, the fact of the matter is, in about 20 years, multi-ethnic people will be the majority in this country! So, if you don’t understand Spanish, maybe start taking a little Duolingo course!”

Co-host Joy Behar added disdain to the Bad Bunny critics: “These are not exactly the same people that go to the opera where they speak Italian and French. But let’s not go there. The country, in my opinion, has a misplaced set of values.”

Try to imagine Behar feeling morally superior as she goes to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to see the new woke version of Bizet’s “Carmen,” where the setting is MAGA – “an industrial American town” in flyover country – and the villains are ICE agents. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s in French.

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The only hope in the coming weeks is that Alyssa Farah Griffin’s maternity leave results in a little more conservative dissent on this remarkably one-sided program. Already, fans of the show are up in arms that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is going to pop in, as if she was unacceptably ultraconservative in her decade on the show. It’s easier for the liberals to feel smart when nobody calls them out for sounding stupid.

On Thursday, after Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before Congress, Hostin accused Bondi of ruining the Department of Justice, which had supposedly never been a partisan agency under Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Joe Biden. “The Justice Department is in shambles. So, the people of the United States have that person who is deeply unqualified, who is deeply unserious as their protection, as the person that is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America! I am so disgusted! I am so saddened by what is the destruction of one of the biggest and strongest institutions in our country!” Nobody pushes back on these speeches.

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Then Behar typically came unglued: “By the way, you know, just a little history, during the Watergate scandal President Nixon did not go to jail but John Mitchell did. John Mitchell was his attorney general. So, at the end of the day, Miss Bondi, you’re looking at some prison time.” For what? Who needs to look it up? Emotion in search of an applause line is everything.

Minutes later, she played historian again, in the fight between Trump and Democrats in Congress like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who nudged military personnel to defy Trump: “Again, I hate to bring up history again but there’s something called the Nuremberg defense, which basically states that acting under orders, illegal orders does not relieve a person of responsibility under international law.” They always have to compare Trump to Hitler and his Nazi underlings.

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She continued: “These people were saying, you do not have to obey an illegal order. And the illegal orders are the following,” she said, reading from a paper. “Telling generals to send members into major cities to use them as training grounds. Suggesting that troops shoot protesters in the legs. Ordering unlawful military strikes on boats in international waters…. the Nuremberg Trial proved that going against an illegal order is legit.”

Nobody should want these ladies as their experts on history or politics or culture. But they are reliable robots on the social-media memes and themes that the Democrats use in their efforts to win every news cycle. It’s shocking that this show is under the ABC News umbrella, because there’s nothing in this show that sounds like journalism. 

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Some states have let unqualified foreign drivers on the road and Americans pay the price

Once again, America is mourning because our commercial driver’s licensing (CDL) system failed.

Federal authorities say a Kyrgyz national behind the wheel of a semitruck crossed into oncoming traffic in Jay County, Indiana, killing four people and injuring several others. ICE has since arrested the driver. But for the families of those lost, enforcement after the fact is cold comfort.

Operating an 80,000-pound commercial vehicle is not a right. It’s a responsibility. And when that responsibility is handed to someone who is not properly vetted nor qualified to operate it, the results can be catastrophic.

The state of Pennsylvania issued this truck driver a non-domiciled CDL, a credential given to someone who is legally allowed to work in the U.S. but doesn’t permanently live in the state issuing the license — often foreign nationals working under temporary U.S. work authorization. But they must meet the same rigorous federal standards as all CDLs.

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Federal audits have repeatedly shown that some states are cutting corners. Weak oversight and poor enforcement have allowed unqualified drivers to slip through the cracks and onto America’s highways, putting law-abiding motorists and professional truck drivers at risk.

We’ve seen the consequences before. Last summer in Florida, a driver who was in the country illegally killed three people after making an illegal U-turn on the busy Florida Turnpike. That driver had failed his commercial driver’s test 10 times yet still held a CDL, rightfully triggering the need for enhanced state review and federal legislation to create new safeguards around how CDLs are issued. 

Investigations have exposed glaring systemic failures in states like California, where audits found a staggering share of non-domiciled CDLs were issued in ways that failed to comply with federal safety and immigration standards, including instances tied to a fatal Ontario, Calif., highway crash in October that claimed three lives.

Professional truck drivers endure intensive training, strict drug and alcohol testing, English proficiency requirements, and continuous oversight. These are core safety protocols designed to protect everyone on our roads. When it comes to highway safety, rules and regulations only matter if they’re enforced.

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Allowing individuals who do not meet these standards to operate big rigs is not just irresponsible. It’s outright dangerous, and the preventable crashes in Florida and California, and now this latest crash in Indiana are stark reminders of what can — and does — go wrong.

The Trump administration deserves credit for stepping in where states failed. Under President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the federal government has tightened oversight of non-domiciled CDLs, expanded audits of state licensing agencies and held states accountable when they fail to verify legal status, qualifications and basic safety requirements. But we can’t stop there. As I testified on Capitol Hill in January, Congress has an opportunity to take decisive action and build on the Department of Transportation’s ongoing efforts to restore nationwide uniformity, improve the integrity of driver vetting and credentialing, and rebuild public confidence in the safety and reliability of the commercial driving workforce.

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Too many families have already suffered unimaginable loss. We must not wait for the next tragic headline to drive reform. Ensuring every CDL holder is qualified is essential and states must be held accountable when they fail to uphold federal law.

America’s highways demand professionalism and accountability. Anything less is a disservice to the American people.

Cuba is approaching its Berlin Wall moment — America must help them break through

The brutal regime in Cuba is collapsing in real time. Its economy is in free fall, its people are starving, and its communist dictatorship is running out of money, fuel and legitimacy. After more than six decades of repression, the regime is weaker today than at any point in my lifetime — and I know that personally. I lived under it. I fled it. And today, I am the only Cuban-born member of the United States Congress.

This moment demands clarity and resolve from the United States. We are closer than ever to ending the tyranny in Havana, but only if we act decisively and refuse to repeat the failed policies of the past.

The situation on the island is dire by every measure. Cuba faces severe shortages of food, medicine, electricity and fuel. Hospitals lack basic supplies. Power outages last for days. Families ration meals and struggle simply to survive.

RUBIO SCHEDULED TO APPEAR BEFORE SENATE TO OUTLINE TRUMP’S VENEZUELA POLICY

Make no mistake: this crisis is solely the responsibility of the regime. It is the inevitable result of socialism, corruption and decades of catastrophic mismanagement by a cynical dictatorship that prioritizes regime survival over human dignity.

For years, the regime survived by exporting repression and importing lifelines — Venezuelan oil, remittances, tourism dollars and shoddy business deals that funneled hard currency directly into the hands of the military and intelligence services. Those lifelines are finally being cut off.

Thanks to President Donald Trump’s decisive leadership and the aggressive enforcement of U.S. law — championed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the regime is being hit where it hurts most: its ability to finance repression. Oil shipments are drying up. International partners are pulling back. Havana is running out of options.

That is exactly why this time is different.

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History teaches us that dictatorships do not reform when they are weak. They crack down harder. When faced with collapse, the Cuban regime does what it has always done: silence dissent, jail protesters, and search for new patrons abroad.

Increasingly, the Cuban regime’s new patron is Communist China.

Beijing has disturbingly expanded its intelligence and strategic footprint on the island, just 90 miles away from Florida, turning Cuba into a base of operations aimed directly at the United States. A collapsing dictatorship aligned with America’s greatest geopolitical adversary is not just a humanitarian tragedy — it is a serious national security threat.

The United States must not provide any lifeline to the Castro regime.

First, we must enforce existing law — fully and without exception. No licenses. No loopholes. No fake “humanitarian” carve-outs that enrich regime-controlled entities while ordinary Cubans see none of the benefit. President Obama pursued engagement. It failed — spectacularly.

Second, we must cut off any remaining financial flows that prop up the dictatorship, including remittances and travel mechanisms captured by the military’s business conglomerates. These funds do not empower the Cuban people; they empower their oppressors.

Sanctions do not hurt the Cuban people more than the regime already does. As history showed with South Africa, sustained pressure weakens dictatorships and accelerates FREEDOM.

Ronald Reagan once said that communism “is not a permanent condition. It will end because it is against human nature.” We saw that truth when the Berlin Wall fell — not because dictators suddenly reformed, but because FREEDOM proved much stronger than fear.

Cuba is approaching its Berlin Wall moment.

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I lost my homeland as a child. I was raised in Miami’s Cuban exile community — exceptional men and women who had everything stolen from them, yet built new lives in the greatest nation on Earth. We are deeply grateful to America, and unwavering in our belief that FREEDOM is worth fighting for. My community overwhelmingly backed President Trump because we know strength, not appeasement, is exactly what puts America First.

Finally, we must speak directly to the Cuban people: America stands with you — not with your jailers. Our goal is not chaos or suffering. It is FREEDOM.

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The communist regime is on its knees. This is not the time to blink. It’s time to finish the job — by enforcing the law, applying maximum pressure, and standing proudly on the side of FREEDOM.

President Trump, the time for a free Cuba is now.

CAROL ROTH: Trump is right to worry about interest rates — but there’s a price to pay

This administration was handed a fiscal mess, and with that a difficult path. Our debt/GDP is in the neighborhood of 120%, the level of an emerging market in crisis, held together by the U.S. dollar still being a major reserve currency and trade currency, as well as the importance and relative stability of our economy and financial markets.

Our government continues to run massive deficits — the type you might see during a recession or war, not during a time of GDP expansion. And we are now in a place where interest expense on our national debt exceeds our spending on defense. As historian Niall Ferguson’s eponymous Ferguson’s Law says, “Any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.”

Given that higher interest rates beget higher debt servicing costs, and that we have an increasing amount of debt to finance, as well as trillions of dollars in debt to refinance this year, President Donald Trump is right to be concerned about interest rates.

But there is no free lunch.

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While the Fed has lowered its target interest rates, that more directly relates to interest rates at the short end of the yield curve (that is, short-dated Treasury securities). The market controls the long end of the curve (that is, longer-dated Treasury securities, like the 10-, 20- and 30-year maturities). And we have seen that those yields stay stubbornly elevated.

Ultimately, there will likely need to be some form of yield curve control (measures that bring and hold down the longer-term bond yields). If we continue to see our interest expenses rise, that will drive a larger deficit. That means more debt financing, which will drive up yields, make interest more expensive again and create a debt spiral until the U.S. and global bond markets are thrown into turmoil.

But, as we have seen with Fed meddling and government overspending, there is a cost to Fed intervention. The price paid will likely continue to inflate assets (on a nominal basis). While we need this because the value of stocks and housing decreasing over a period of time would likely directly and indirectly lead to a decrease in government receipts (aka tax revenue), it has the same effect on increasing deficits and exploding the cost of debt. This, again, means that some action will be taken.

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This is also why the positioning of Fed Chair appointee Kevin Warsh as a hawk (one who prefers tighter Fed policy) vs. a dove (one who prefers looser monetary policy) doesn’t really matter. Our fiscal situation and basic math will force him and the Fed to intervene in markets and lower interest rates one way or another.

The price paid for holding our fiscal house together will likely be inflation. This will continue to erode the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and drive a bigger wedge between the wealthy and the middle class in America.

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But intervention is only a temporary solution. It buys time, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

Unless government spending is reduced, not only through lowering interest expense, but across all categories, or growth is so massive that in either scenario the deficit is eliminated, the core problem doesn’t go away. It just gets held back for a short period of time and then we will be in the same situation again.

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Our government continues to run massive deficits — the type you might see during a recession or war, not during a time of GDP expansion. 

If you are familiar with Congress, there doesn’t seem to be any political will from either of the major political parties to spend within an actual budget.

So, yes, interest rates are a problem, as is government spending. Warsh will be forced to help, whether he likes it or not, and we will all pay a price.

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MARK HALPERIN: The real reason Trump keeps beating the media at its own game

There are many reasons why covering Donald Trump is the journalistic challenge of a lifetime.

His temperament. His velocity. His volume. The sheer fact that he can generate three news cycles before most reporters have finished their first cup of coffee.

But there is one explanation that is often overlooked, and it may be the most important of all: Donald Trump understands the business of news better than any modern president — better, in many cases, than the people who work in it.

That may sound surprising. It shouldn’t.

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Trump did not grow up in politically friendly territory. Things were different for him before he entered the campaign world as a Republican. As a businessman and then a reality TV star, Trump luxuriated in dishy and usually aggrandizing gossip items, including in the August columns of New York Post legend Cindy Adams. His friendly, bantering relations with the press helped turn him into a larger-than-life figure.

But that all changed when he joined the political fray. Like George W. Bush before him, Trump learned how the press really works in a hostile environment. He was never granted automatic goodwill. He was rarely given the benefit of the doubt. He had to study the system, test it, provoke it, and sometimes fight it just to survive.

So he learned.

And he learned well.

Trump treat the media it as a rival, a foil, a stage and a punching bag. He studies it like a brilliant Ph.D. student. He probes it like a boxer testing defenses.

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Other recent presidents — Democrats Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — operated in a media climate that, while not always gentle, was structurally sympathetic. They were criticized, yes. But they were also understood. Interpreted generously. Given time. Granted patience. Their mistakes were often softened by context and explanation.

Trump never had that luxury.

So long before he descended the escalator in 2015 — long before rallies, red hats and chants — he was paying attention. Watching. Noticing patterns. Studying how stories were framed. Who was treated as “serious.” Who was treated as “dangerous.” Which narratives stuck. Which faded. Which sins were forgiven. Which were never forgotten.

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And he reached some conclusions.

He saw, first, a cultural bias — not necessarily in every article or every reporter, but in the air newsrooms breathe. In assumptions about what is normal and what is radical. In who is presumed reasonable and who is presumed reckless. Conservatives, he concluded, were playing uphill — and tens of millions of Americans knew it. It made them angry.

He saw, second, elitism: newsrooms clustered in a handful of coastal cities; journalists with similar educations, similar friends and similar politics. The press spoke endlessly about “ordinary Americans” while growing more distant from them every year. It struggled to grasp why illegal immigration worried so many families or why trade deals felt like personal losses in factory towns.

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He saw, third, a broken business model: newspapers and networks that missed the digital revolution; revenues shrinking; newsrooms shrinking; panic setting in. A few outlets found lifelines. Most did not. Layoffs became routine. Survival became uncertain.

And from these three problems flowed the fourth: collapsing trust.

When audiences see bias, distance and desperation, confidence erodes. And once credibility is gone, it is almost impossible to restore.

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Here is the great irony:

When Trump began attacking the media for these flaws, he did not fix them. He intensified them.

His criticism put news organizations on the defensive. They closed ranks. They hardened. They became more ideological, more insular, more brittle. Every attack convinced them they must be doing something right. Often, it meant the opposite.

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Trump, meanwhile, turned his feud with the press into a permanent political weapon.

Before him, Republicans sometimes complained about coverage. But Trump transformed grievance into theater. He did not merely dispute stories. He made the media itself a character in his drama — the villain, always lurking, always scheming.

With humor. With ridicule. With exaggeration. With showmanship.

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And it worked.

It still works.

This was never accidental.

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Behind the scenes, Trump and his advisers learned the incentives of modern journalism. They know which outlets crave clicks. Which reporters thrive on conflict. Which controversies spread fastest. Which phrases become headlines. Which outrages travel farthest.

They understand the machinery.

They know how to trigger it. How to flood it. How to redirect it. How to exhaust it.

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They know that outrage is oxygen. That conflict is currency. That attention is power.

And they know their supporters love watching it all unfold.

Criticism becomes proof of persecution. Coverage becomes confirmation of importance. Attacks become fuel.

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Knowledge, in politics, is power. And Trump’s knowledge of the media has given him power — over the press and over his own movement.

He plays the system as it exists, not as journalists wish it were.

He understands that modern news is part information, part entertainment, part combat sport. He understands that narratives matter more than footnotes. That emotion beats nuance. That speed beats reflection.

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So he moves fast. He moves loud. He moves relentlessly.

For reporters and news organizations, this is the real challenge:

Not simply covering what Trump says and does — but covering someone who understands their industry’s financial, cultural and psychological vulnerabilities and presses on them constantly.

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Every weakness becomes leverage. Every habit becomes a pressure point.

Trump is not just running against and competing against Democrats.

He is running against and competing against the media.

He treats it as a rival, a foil, a stage and a punching bag. He studies it like a brilliant Ph.D. student. He probes it like a boxer testing defenses.

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And he knows exactly where it is fragile and vulnerable.

In an age when trust is scarce and attention is priceless, that knowledge may be his greatest political asset.

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Better than any president in modern history — perhaps better than almost anyone in public life today — Donald Trump understands how the news business really works.

And he knows how to use that understanding to his advantage.

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AI raises the stakes for national security. Here’s how to get it right

Regulating advanced AI isn’t a game of checkers. It’s a game of chess.

Every move matters. You have to think several steps ahead. And if you focus only on the next play — or worse, react after the fact — you risk losing the long game.

Today, the United States finds itself at a turning point on AI, where real policy choices are being made. You can see it in the actions underway in both the states and Washington.

In recent months, leaders in both New York and California have passed landmark AI safety legislation. California’s SB 53 took effect on January 1, while New York’s RAISE Act was signed into law by Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul in December and will take effect in 2027.

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Both states are moving toward approaches that align state and federal law — recognizing that a fragmented, state-by-state patchwork isn’t sustainable. Given their size and economic impact, these moves create a clear path forward for federal action while positioning New York and California to lead the nation into the AI era.

There’s a word for this kind of alignment between state and federal action: harmonization. The federal government sets one clear national standard for the most powerful AI systems — the issues that affect national security and the country as a whole. States continue to focus on the issues closest to people’s daily lives: consumer protection, civil rights and how AI is used in schools, workplaces and public services. Each level of government plays to its strengths.

Think of it as one rulebook with two clear roles and one urgent mission: ensuring the United States maintains its competitive advantage in a technology central to national security and global economic leadership. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said bluntly that whoever leads in AI will lead the world. The United States can’t afford to drift — or to divide itself — at this critical moment.

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That’s because AI leadership is increasingly an issue of national security — and national security requires prevention, not punishment after the fact.

When states act alone, they are often forced into a liability-only approach — holding companies accountable after harm has already occurred. Preventing the most serious risks requires access to the technical expertise and classified systems that only the federal government possesses.

That is why our North Star must remain clear: deploying frontier models safely and in a way that best positions the United States to maintain its innovation lead.

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That prevention-first approach already exists in practice. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation — created by the Biden administration and updated by the Trump administration — gives the federal government the ability to test and evaluate advanced AI systems before they are widely deployed. That kind of centralized testing is essential for managing risks that no single state or company can address on its own.

Without harmonization, AI companies would face a confusing patchwork of conflicting state requirements that slows innovation without improving public safety. With it, companies get clarity and consistency, the public gets stronger protections and states are given clear room to act where they add the most value.

Today, the United States finds itself at a turning point on AI, where real policy choices are being made. You can see it in the actions underway in both the states and Washington.

At the same time, states play a vital role, and the recent moves in New York and California show what that balance looks like in practice. By moving away from fragmented approaches and toward alignment, the two largest innovation economies in the country are helping create a de facto national standard that exists alongside, and not instead of, state action.

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This is what harmonization looks like in practice: Washington focuses on the highest-stakes safety issues, while states address kitchen-table ones. It is a third way forward — avoiding both unregulated acceleration and fragmented overreach.

Think about how we handle car safety. We don’t wait for accidents to happen and then rely solely on lawsuits to make cars safer. The federal government sets clear national safety standards. It requires rigorous testing. And it makes seatbelts, airbags and braking systems mandatory — with strict rules for how well they must perform — before cars ever hit the road. Liability still matters, but prevention comes first because the stakes are too high to get it wrong.

That balance isn’t new. It’s how the United States has governed aviation, food and drug safety, financial markets and telecommunications. In each case, the federal government set clear national standards for systems that power the entire country, while states continued to play a critical role closer to home. The result wasn’t less innovation or less growth. It was regulatory clarity, economic growth and American leadership.

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I saw this dynamic firsthand in 1996, when I was working in the White House just as the internet was beginning to reshape the economy.

Washington faced a choice that feels familiar today: apply old rules to a new technology, or agree on a new national framework built for what was coming next. Democrats and Republicans chose the latter.

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The result was the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It wasn’t perfect, but it got the big things right. It created clear national standards, gave innovators room to build and helped position the United States to lead the internet era that followed.

Think of it as one rulebook with two clear roles and one urgent mission: ensuring the United States maintains its competitive advantage in a technology central to national security and global economic leadership.

The lesson is straightforward. When America sets smart, national standards for emerging technologies, we don’t fall behind — we lead.

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The chessboard is set. If the United States focuses on prevention, harmonizes state and federal efforts, and keeps its eyes on that North Star, we can once again lead a defining technological era.

That’s how you win the long game: by playing chess, not checkers.

DAVID MARCUS: Guess who has done more than anyone to expose Epstein’s evil exploits

It has now been confirmed that Donald Trump has spent nearly two decades trying to expose the evil actions of Jeffrey Epstein, starting as far back as 2006, when the future president was already assisting Florida police.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him,” Trump told a sheriff when word of the 2006 investigation of Epstein got out, adding, “Everyone has known he was doing this,” while also telling authorities to focus on Ghislaine Maxwell, who he described as the creepy financier’s “evil” “operative.”

That investigation led to a slap on the wrist for Epstein, who thought he was out of the woods legally, and might have been had it not been for that pesky Palm Beach neighbor named Donald Trump.

That is because eventually, Trump would become president, and, during his first term, the federal investigation by his Department of Justice into Epstein would be revived, the monster would be arrested, and, well, we all know what happened next.

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Even if Epstein did take the coward’s exit, killing himself and denying his victims and the public a trial and full accounting of his crimes, Trump eliminated the threat. No child would ever be a victim of Epstein again.

Fast-forward to Trump’s second term, and his White House has produced millions of pages of documents surrounding Epstein, even though the president, quite correctly, had expressed fears that innocent people could be harmed by the release.

Three million pages of documents were released last week. Laid end to end, they would stretch across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and even though redactions were legally necessary, Congress has access to the unredacted files.

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To put a fine point on it, for 20 years there has been nobody on the planet who has done more to bring to light the truth behind Epstein’s crimes and associations than Trump. Yet Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and the GOP’s constant contrarian Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., still ludicrously insist the administration is hiding some vital and dark truth from us.

What is amazing, and a cynic might call suspicious, is that these Democrats and Massie expressed little to no interest in Epstein until Trump was sworn in for his second term.

For four years under the Biden administration, no Democrat said a word about Epstein. It went back to being the crossword puzzle answer for “Horshack’s sweathog pal,” as far as they were concerned.

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It looks an awful lot like the Democrats and their little mascot Massie have focused so much attention and energy on Epstein, not to support victims, which they could have done under Biden, but to harm Trump politically.

We know there is truth to this because everything the Trump administration does, be it bombing Iran or investigating fraud in Minnesota, is treated by Democrats as a “Wag the Dog” situation where the president’s real goal is to distract from Epstein.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on social media this week called Trump the leader of the “Pedophile Protection Party,” and called for his execution, even though, as we saw above, Trump tried to stop Epstein for decades.

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At the Grammy’s, alleged comedian Trevor Noah falsely claimed that Trump partied on Epstein island, and every foreign social media bot account funded by our enemies is gleefully parroting the Democrats’ lies about Trump.

There is only one thing left that Trump could do to bring more light to Epstein’s evil, and that would be to grant Maxwell the clemency she is seeking in exchange for her testimony about Epstein and his associates. But it’s unclear where Democrats stand on this.

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I reached out to Khanna, who, to his credit, will generally text you back if you ask what he had for breakfast, to see if he could support a deal for Maxwell, given his belief that there are men guilty of child sexual abuse who still need to be punished.

This time, I got no reply from Khanna. I suspect that was because there is no good answer. If this was a mob trial, you’d flip Maxwell to jail bigger fish, but if that happens, the Democrats lose Epstein as a political cudgel with which to lie about Trump.

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In all likelihood, just as with the John F. Kennedy assassination, there will always be a sizable chunk of the populace that believes all kinds of Epstein conspiracies for a very long time, maybe forever. We still debate how, or even if, Roman emperors were murdered.

But one thing is entirely clear to any fair observer: For 20 years, in and out of office, Donald J Trump has been exposing the evil crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, and he still is.

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STEVE FORBES: Radical ideology replaces competence at the NYC Health Department

New York City is facing serious public health challenges. Drug overdoses are surging. Mental illness is rampant. Emergency rooms are under strain. Life expectancy in parts of the city has declined.

So what are some employees at the New York City Department of Health reportedly studying? The effects of “global oppression” on health.

This is not a joke. It is a disturbing example of how ideology has displaced competence in city government — and how taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill.

A public health department has a straightforward mission: protect people from disease, respond to health emergencies and ensure basic safety standards. It exists to prevent outbreaks, combat addiction, improve maternal health and keep food and water safe. It is not a political theory workshop.

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Every hour spent theorizing about “global oppression” is an hour not spent addressing tuberculosis outbreaks, fentanyl deaths, or mental-health crises. These problems are not academic abstractions. They are immediate, measurable, and — when ignored — lethal.

This episode fits a broader pattern under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration. From day one, City Hall has signaled that ideological alignment matters more than operational performance. Agencies are encouraged to pursue political narratives rather than focus relentlessly on outcomes. Business confidence has weakened, regulatory pressure has increased and accountability has become diffuse. Instead of prioritizing growth, safety and efficiency, the mayor’s team has embraced a worldview that treats markets with suspicion and bureaucracy as an engine for social transformation. The result is a city government that talks a great deal about justice but delivers far too little in the way of results.

Under this governing philosophy, nearly every challenge is explained away as the product of abstract systems of oppression. That may play well in activist circles, but it offers no guidance for running a complex city of eight million people. It cannot reduce overdose deaths, speed emergency response times or restore public confidence in basic services.

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What it does is to try to divert attention from real problems.

New York is already one of the most heavily taxed and regulated cities in America. Businesses are leaving. Families are rethinking whether they can afford to stay. Tourists — once taken for granted — are increasingly uneasy about safety and quality of life. Against this backdrop, diverting scarce public resources toward ideological exercises is not merely irresponsible — it is self-defeating.

Public trust depends on focus and accountability. When citizens see health agencies chasing political theories instead of protecting public health, confidence in government erodes. And once lost, that trust is exceedingly difficult to rebuild.

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The tragedy is that New York knows how to do better. The city has thrived when leaders emphasized competence, growth, and accountability. When government focused on expanding opportunity rather than assigning blame, New York became a magnet for talent, investment and innovation.

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A serious administration would immediately refocus the Department of Health on its core mission. It would demand measurable outcomes, strict oversight and a clear separation between public service and political activism. Taxpayers are not funding ideology — they are paying for results.

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New Yorkers deserve a government that treats public health with urgency and seriousness. Studying “global oppression” may satisfy ideological appetites, but it will not make the city healthier, safer, or more prosperous.

It’s time for City Hall to stop chasing fashionable theories — and start governing again.

MIKE DAVIS: Red-state senators must pick up the pace to get Trump judges confirmed

Since President Trump resumed office, leftists have run to the courts in a desperate attempt to stop — or, at the very least, stall — his agenda. To defeat this lawfare, President Trump needs the Senate’s help to put constitutionalists on the bench. Democrat senators’ obstruction is unsurprising; not even one has voted for one of President Trump’s appellate court nominees. Many Republican senators, however, are lagging in streamlining nominations. The most serious breakdown is in filling district court vacancies in deep-red states, especially Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. With the midterms rapidly approaching, this glacial pace must accelerate in short order.

District courts are the engines of the federal judiciary, and vacancies there create immediate and tangible harm. These courts handle the bulk of federal litigation, from immigration to criminal prosecutions to constitutional challenges. Yet confirming district judges often proves harder than confirming Supreme Court justices. The problem lies in the blue-slip process. Home-state senators have a de facto veto on district court nominees, U.S. attorney nominees and U.S. marshal nominees.

For over a century, U.S. senators have had the power to hand-select the U.S. attorneys who could prosecute them, U.S. district judges who could oversee their trials, and U.S. marshals who could escort them to prison. Senators will never give up this veto power. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a lame-duck Republican who sits on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, made it crystal clear that he will oppose any nominee who lacks support from both home-state senators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley can do nothing about blue-slip obstruction when even one committee Republican can team up with Democrats to block any nominee.

There are roughly 15 district court vacancies in states with at least one Democrat senator. Because the blue slip is not going anywhere, it is unlikely that President Trump can fill many of these vacancies. Democrats are more obstructionist than ever. They caused the longest government shutdown in our history just a few months ago.

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The far more troubling problem is the sheer number of vacancies in states represented by two Republican senators. Staggeringly, there are nearly two dozen district court vacancies in red states (i.e., states with two Republican senators). The most dire vacancy crises lie in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. There are seven vacancies throughout Texas’ several judicial districts, for example. Texas deals with a massive amount of immigration litigation because it is a border state. There is no excuse for a deep-red state like Texas, which President Trump won by 14%, to have seven vacancies.

Texas sadly is not alone when it comes to an unacceptably slow pace in filling vacancies. Other deep-red states combined have over a dozen: one each in South Carolina, Louisiana, Alaska and Alabama; two each in Ohio, Oklahoma and Florida; and three in Kansas. President Trump won each of these states by double digits and most by over 20%. These states deserve judges who are strong constitutionalists in line with President Trump’s vision of the law.

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If Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reassumes the position of majority leader next year, he will grind the Trump judicial-confirmations train to a screeching halt. Grassley is a workhorse, so it is certain that he will expeditiously streamline President Trump’s nominees through the process this year. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has demonstrated remarkable efficiency in getting nominees swiftly confirmed. No judicial nominees remain on the Senate Executive Calendar. Only four remain in the Judiciary Committee, and they just had their confirmation hearing last week, meaning they will be on the floor and ready for a vote by the end of the month. Leader Thune and Grassley cannot process nominations if there are no nominees.

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Republican home-state senators need to focus on this crucial task and understand the urgency of the moment. Since the Senate sits only 3.5 days a week in most weeks, floor time is limited. Should a Supreme Court vacancy arise, Judiciary Committee time and resources must be invested overwhelmingly in confirming President Trump’s nominee. Delay is a recipe for disastrous defeat, and it must end instantly.

Republican senators must get moving in filling judicial vacancies.

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Project Vault: Trump’s bold plan to stop China from starving our military

Since the COVID pandemic, Americans have had a crash course on the importance of rare earth elements and recognized the unpleasant reality that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a near stranglehold on their mining and processing. Practically everything we manufacture in the modern world, from fighter jets to medical equipment to cameras, now requires some quantity of these materials, and we are almost entirely at the mercy of the PRC for them.

Recognizing that this dependency is a potential national security crisis, President Donald Trump has directed an all-of-government initiative called “Project Vault” to protect the American people from immediate shocks while building up our ability to supply ourselves in the future.

The Chinese regime has shown itself very willing to use its rare earths advantage as blackmail against the United States as well as manufacturing allies such as Japan. At the end of President Trump’s first term, China issued veiled threats about limiting their exports to retaliate for U.S. tariffs on Huawei. Those threats became realities last year as China announced export controls and then outright bans on the export of rare earth elements to foreign militaries. When President Trump issued tariff threats of his own, the PRC backed down, but the scale of our vulnerability was clear.

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To be sure, much of this problem has been of our own making. After World War II, at the dawn of electronics manufacturing, the United States was dominant in rare earths, which were primarily extracted and processed at the Mountain Pass facility in California. In 1980, under President Jimmy Carter, however, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission placed some rare earths under the same rules as radioactive materials, severely restricting their extraction and processing and making even these limited activities prohibitively expensive in the United States.

The resulting decline in production was accelerated by the Mountain Pass wastewater spill in 1996, which resulted in the closure of that facility in 2002 on environmental grounds. Additional projects were not developed as permitting times average 29 years in America and so would have been economically unviable. Mountain Pass only resumed operations in 2017, but now, with the support of the Trump administration, will expand its facilities in 2026. But it will be a long and difficult battle to regain the advantage America once squandered in the name of climate purism.

Meanwhile, China seized the advantage with a much more permissive regulatory and permitting environment that allowed them to capture as much as 70% of extraction and 90% of processing of rare earths. During his first term, President Trump started righting this disproportionate advantage with Executive Order 13817, which identified 35 key elements and laid out a strategy to secure a ready supply of them. In 2020, the President declared a national emergency regarding rare earths, directing an interagency process to increase domestic production.

After President Trump’s re-election, his administration has taken further action to alleviate China’s staggering advantage through agreements with producing allies such as Australia that will give us a much more secure and reliable supply chain than buying from Communist China. Now, Project Vault is designed to further insulate America from dependence on the PRC for these vital materials.

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Modeled on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, established in 1975 to protect the U.S. from the energy shocks caused by the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Project Vault establishes a stockpile of rare earths for the use of the U.S. military and private sector in the event that China cuts off supplies.

In addition, the administration is continuing the hard work of deregulation and permitting reform that will allow American companies to begin to extract and process rare earths again here at home, unburdened by Biden administration “environmental justice” efforts such as the Justice40 Initiative that prevented them from taking meaningful action in this space.

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In order to counter the PRC predatorially preserving its rare earths monopoly, as a matter of national security, President Trump has directed the Export-Import Bank to support Project Vault with a $10 billion dollar loan that will support both the establishment of the stockpile and guarantee sufficient new American-controlled rare earth production at a rate that will ensure our defense industries are no longer at the mercy of PRC supply chains.

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ExIm has established a public-private partnership called Vault Company to oversee the project and ensure taxpayer money is responsibly invested so that the American extraction and processing sector can be quickly re-established and render further investment unnecessary.

As such, ExIm is an indispensable national security tool for repairing all the damage China has done in its campaign to corner the market on rare earths and use their dominance to blackmail America. Congress should therefore move swiftly to reauthorize the Bank to ensure that not only Project Vault succeeds, but also that ExIm can continue to support President Trump’s efforts to keep the American people safe from Chinese aggression.

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MORNING GLORY: President Donald Trump’s most important decision is coming

One door is marked “Truman/Reagan” and the other door is marked “Carter/Obama/Biden.”

President Donald Trump has to choose one. Again. And this time, the choice will define Trump’s place in history.

On three different occasions, the 45th and 47th president of the United States has walked through the first door.

Trump ordered the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, on January 3, 2020.

IRAN POSES A FAR MORE DANGEROUS MILITARY TEST FOR THE US THAN VENEZUELA, EXPERTS WARN

Trump followed that up with his second-term order to conduct Operation Midnight Resolve against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in June of last year and again with Operation Absolute Resolve to snatch Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro in January of this year.

President Trump ventured boldly three times and won big for the United States three times, restoring American deterrence along the way.

Trump had to restore American deterrence in 2020 because the Iranian regime had thoroughly worked over former President Barack Obama with the infamous “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” of 2015, a plan that secured for Iran billions in cash, hundreds of billions in sanctions relief and a guaranteed path to nuclear weapons. It was a surrender of the Middle East to the mullahs disguised in dense language and absurd timelines. But the Iranian theocrats knew they had won.

TRUMP’S LEADERSHIP CREATES ‘RARE OPPORTUNITY’ FOR CHANGE IN IRAN, FORMER IRANIAN POLITICAL PRISONER SAYS

President Trump has called the JCPOA the “worst deal in history” scores of times, and he’s always been right. It was the equal of the “Munich Agreement” between Neville Chamberlain and Hitler. The damage to the world was immense.

While President Joe Biden’s disastrous and chaotic retreat from Afghanistan did not concern Iran directly, it did deeply damage America’s standing in the world and define the Biden presidency as one mired in catastrophic failure from the jump.

President Trump worked to reverse the damage created by the JCPOA with the strikes on Soleimani and the Iranian nuke facilities.

IRAN PROTESTS PROMPT NEW TRUMP WARNING OVER DEADLY GOVERNMENT CRACKDOWNS

Now, however, the Iranians are countering with thousands of ballistic missiles which already threaten American bases across the Middle East, Israel and our Gulf allies. The nature of the regime has been fully revealed even to the appeasers on Team Obama and Team Biden: The ayatollahs ordered tens of thousands of their citizens gunned down or murdered with machetes this January. Does anyone doubt they would turn their missiles on American cities as soon as they develop the range? Crazed killers are going to kill, again and again and again.

Because of Presidents Obama and Biden, Ayatollah Khamenei and his IRGC thugs believe America always “blinks” in the end. They still don’t believe Trump is different from Obama and Biden. They see the one-day missions from Trump as brief aberrations from the Obama-Biden pattern of appeasement. The Iranians do not fear Trump. Yet.

The Iranians build enormous missiles with enormous warheads. There are more than a thousand missiles in their arsenal already, and they have accelerated the production of thousands more after the Trump strike on their nuclear weapons facilities last year.

IRAN RESPONDS TO TRUMP PRESSURE WITH WARNING OF RETALIATION: ‘FINGERS ON THE TRIGGER’

The Iranians are working to extend the range of their missiles. The longest range Iranian missiles can probably reach Europe now. They will threaten the U.S. sooner rather than later, and we don’t have Trump’s “Golden Dome” — yet.

So Trump must decide now what to do about those missiles and about the mass murderers who run Iran. Trump has ordered an immense build-up of American military assets build-up of American military assets within striking range of Iran, and deployed the defensive systems that we have to protect our bases and our allies.

Now he has to decide which door to walk through.

HEGSETH SAYS DEPARTMENT OF WAR ‘WILL BE PREPARED TO DELIVER’ WHATEVER TRUMP WANTS FOLLOWING IRAN WARNING

Truman and Reagan (and both Bushes) would order the strike.

Carter, Obama and Biden would back down and pretend they had defused a crisis when, in fact, they had decapitated American deterrence.

Rarely do we see such a stark choice presented to a president — a fork in his personal road as far as history is concerned, and very much a fork in America’s road for its future.

Trump can be remembered as the man who brought help to the Iranian people after nearly 50 years of fanatical dictatorship and secured America from an unfolding threat, or as the president who backed down more spectacularly than any president before him.

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On August 26, 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher talked to President George H.W. Bush about Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. “This was no time to go wobbly,” the PM told the president.

That was probably the least necessary encouragement ever, as the old fighter pilot from WWII was not the sort of man to back down. (HW was shot down twice and back flying his missions after both.) But Thatcher’s line went down in history because it is both so very British and so very useful in many contexts.

IRAN’S COLLAPSE OR SURVIVAL HINGES ON ONE CHOICE INSIDE THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARD

It is useful now. President Trump simply cannot go wobbly no matter how attractive the Carter/Obama/Biden door looks as an exit. Put another way, Trump “cannot go Obama.”

To repeat: President Trump’s choice will define his place in history. Everything else in his eight years will be secondary to what he decides in the near term.

Every other achievement will be secondary. Every criticism will be irrelevant when destroying the Iranian regime’s threat to the world is put on the table.

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President Trump can choose to do what no other president since Jimmy Carter has dared to do: Cripple or end the fanatical regime in Iran that already works to threaten and destabilize the Middle East every day and which will soon be able to threaten the U.S. if not stopped.

Pray he chooses wisely. America’s national security and the hope of the Iranian people and the future of the Middle East depends upon this decision.

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Border on the brink as cartel drones force US to act after years of paralysis

The sudden closure of airspace over El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, Feb. 11 was a big deal — but likely not for the reason you think.

For years, the Federal Aviation Administration has blocked meaningful action against rogue drones — whether mysterious swarms over sensitive U.S. military bases or increasingly bold incursions by Mexican drug cartels. The FAA’s perennial fear? That military countermeasures, from electronic jamming to kinetic options, might endanger civilian or commercial aircraft.

This paralysis persisted even as threats mounted.

MEXICAN CARTEL DRONES BREACH US AIRSPACE, ARE DISABLED BY WAR DEPARTMENT, DUFFY SAYS

I wrote about this bureaucratic inaction in October 2024, when unidentified drones — some up to 20 feet across — buzzed Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for 17 consecutive nights in late 2023. These intruders flew over the headquarters of Air Combat Command, home to F-22 Raptors, and neared the world’s largest naval station in Norfolk and other critical sites. The Biden-Harris White House was briefed, yet nothing was done. Suggestions to jam signals, deploy directed energy or simply shoot them down were rejected as too risky or unauthorized. A risk-averse culture prioritized avoiding mistakes over defending American soil.

The Feb. 11 incident in El Paso marked a dramatic break from that pattern — and a significant victory against the growing cartel drone threat.

Mexican cartels have grown alarmingly sophisticated in drone operations. Department of Homeland Security data show more than 60,000 cartel drone flights along the border in the second half of 2024 alone — an average of about 330 per day.

And these aren’t toys.

WESTERN HEMISPHERE DEFENSE CHIEFS CONVENE AFTER BORDER DRONE SCARE PROMPTS AIRSPACE CLOSURE

Cartels use them for three primary missions along the southern border: counterreconnaissance to track Border Patrol and military positions; aerial denial, deploying swarms to threaten U.S. aircraft and create de facto no-fly zones for smuggling; and direct drug delivery, with some drones carrying large payloads.

Reports indicate cartel operatives have even traveled to Ukraine, volunteering on the front lines against Russia, to master advanced drone tactics — including fiber-optic-guided FPV drones immune to jamming. Those same techniques have appeared in Mexico’s cartel wars, with gangs targeting rivals using precision explosives.

What happened over El Paso? The Department of War claims cartel drones breached U.S. airspace near El Paso International Airport and, critically, approached sensitive military facilities, stressing an urgent need to act.

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In response, on Tuesday night, according to media reports, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford decided to close the airspace for 10 days without alerting the White House, the Pentagon or local officials. Whether on his own or at the urging of career FAA employees, the FAA’s overreaction reeked of malicious compliance — bureaucrats following the letter of policy while producing an absurd, counterproductive result.

The Department of War swiftly neutralized the intruders, reportedly at least one cartel drone and, by some accounts, a stray party balloon.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the operation: “The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.”

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Reacting to the 10-day airspace closure, local leaders, including Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, highlighted the economic damage it would cause in a border city of nearly 700,000 residents.

Thankfully, within hours, after officials confirmed the threat had been eliminated, the restrictions were lifted and normal flights resumed. Common sense prevailed — for now.

This incident comes amid intense pressure from the Trump administration on Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her ruling Morena party. With Venezuela and Cuba — which Mexico provided energy and financial support to in exchange for authoritarian governance lessons — now largely neutralized by U.S. policy, and the USMCA trade deal on hold, Sheinbaum faces a stark choice: rein in the cartels or face consequences.

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But cartels must make money, and backing down is not in their nature. Escalation may be on the table. But what if the U.S. hits back? 

Mexico maintains the world’s largest consular network in the United States — 53 consulates — that have at times served as hubs for political agitation and influence operations within America’s immigrant communities. Those networks could amplify domestic unrest beyond current disturbances in cities such as Minneapolis.

And lurking in the background are America’s adversaries. China and Iran have clear interests in a chaotic southern border — whether through fentanyl precursors or violent proxy disruption.

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The El Paso action is welcome and long overdue — another step in last summer’s call by President Donald Trump for military action against the cartels. But one skirmish does not win a war. America must sustain this momentum: Equip Border Patrol and the military with robust counter-drone authority, streamline rules of engagement and hold Mexico accountable.

Our sovereignty and security demand nothing less.

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PETER NAVARRO: If we defund ICE, the body count of American lives would be too high

House and Senate Democrats are trying to turn two tragic federal shootings in Minneapolis into cause célèbres to shackle, slash and ultimately break the budgetary back of ICE. But let’s not pretend this political firestorm is about compassion or accountability. 

If Democrats are successful in abruptly halting the deportation of what some estimates put at as many as 20 million illegal aliens imported under President Joe Biden, hundreds of additional American citizens would be murdered and thousands raped, assaulted or robbed by a violent subset of Biden’s illegal-alien horde. 

Here is the statistical story behind America’s latest true-crime nightmare. 

Numerous studies have analyzed the link between illegal aliens and crime. Using large administrative data sets, researchers have calculated — with surprising precision — the rates at which illegal aliens commit various crimes. From those rates, it is simple arithmetic to estimate how many Americans would fall prey to new illegal alien violence.

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Start with homicide. 

The Cato Institute has examined one of the largest and most credible data sets available, drawn from the border state of Texas, and found that for every 100,000 illegal aliens, about 2.2 Americans are murdered. Using essentially the same Texas data, the Center for Immigration Studies corrects for delayed identification and other methodological issues and arrives at a homicide rate of roughly 3.9 per 100,000 in one illustrative year. 

Apply those rates to Biden’s 20 million new illegal aliens, and the result is stark: between 440 and 780 additional Americans would be murdered.

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That’s not a statistic. That’s a slaughterhouse. 

Past victims already have names. 

Laken Riley, 22, murdered in Georgia after prosecutors said she resisted a rape attempt by José Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal alien previously released after arrest.

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Jocelyn Nungaray, 12, was strangled to death in Houston in June 2024. Two Venezuelan nationals — Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel and Franklin Jose Peña Ramos — are charged with capital murder. Both had entered the United States illegally, were apprehended near El Paso, Texas, and were released with notices to appear before the killing. They remain in the Harris County Jail awaiting trial, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. 

Rachel Morin, raped and murdered on a Maryland trail by the El Salvadoran Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez. 

Apply those rates to Biden’s 20 million new illegal aliens, and the result is stark: between 440 and 780 additional Americans would be murdered.

Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old Maryland woman with autism, raped and strangled by Walter Javier Martinez, an illegal alien from El Salvador who had entered the United States only months earlier.

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Future victims would have names, faces, families and dreams, too — every bit as sympathetic as Renée Good and Alex Pretti. 

And homicide is only the tip of Biden’s illegal alien iceberg. 

According to a National Institute of Justice–funded study published in 2020 using Texas Department of Public Safety arrest data (2012–2018), felony arrest rates per 100,000 undocumented immigrants were 11.3 for felony sexual assault, 77.8 for felony assault, 18.2 for felony burglary, and 136.0 for felony drug violations.

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Scaled to 20 million illegal aliens, that arithmetic implies roughly 2,260 more Americans would be sexually assaulted, 3,640 American homes burglarized, 15,560 Americans violently assaulted and 27,200 felony drug arrests involving dealers, traffickers, smugglers and hard-core possession cases. 

These are the kind of inconvenient statistics Hill denizens like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Democrat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and sanctuary politicos like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Illinois Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker and Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz don’t want to compute — and pure evil they don’t want you to see. 

As misdirection, the left also loves to point out that many studies conclude crime rates among illegal aliens are marginally lower than those of American citizens. But that is the wrong yardstick.

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Even if illegal aliens have a lower crime rate — and the data is far from clear — when millions of illegal aliens enter the country, the absolute number of crimes increases. You don’t need to be a mathematician — or illegal alien crime victim — to understand that. 

There is also this: the older data sets used by many analysts today almost certainly understate the danger posed by the most recent Biden-era wave. Why? 

Because countries around the world like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela deliberately opened their prisons and released violent criminals during the latest border breakdown — both to reduce crime at home and export crime to America.

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That’s the statistics. Here’s the politics. 

The strange bedfellows coalition out to kneecap ICE is led by Democrats playing the long electoral game who view illegal aliens as political pawns and funded by corporate interests that benefit from cheaper labor and wage suppression. Throw in the drug and human-trafficking cartel supply chains and a legacy media blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome, and you have today’s government shutdown crisis.

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Future victims would have names, faces, families, and dreams, too — every bit as sympathetic as Renée Good and Alex Pretti. 

It is our job to resist. Because “defund ICE” doesn’t just mean fewer deportations. 

It means more empty seats at dinner tables. More funerals. More shattered lives — in addition to all the jobs American citizens lose.

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Republicans must do a far better job holding ranks on Capitol Hill and messaging these essential Secure Border Trump truths. 

And Democrats would do well to remember one of the major reasons why they lost the last election. A supermajority of Americans wants both secure borders and mass deportations. For their safety. For their jobs. For their wages. For their culture. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM PETER NAVARRO

Border airspace breached: Cartel drones test US defenses and raise new fears

When the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shuts down the airspace over a major American city for “special security reasons,” Americans should pay attention.

On Feb. 10, the FAA grounded flights in and out of El Paso International Airport. The original notice referred to a 10-day flight restriction, but it was rescinded the same day. Flights resumed. The questions, however, remain.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later stated that the FAA and the Department of War had acted to address a cartel-related drone incursion, neutralizing the threat before reopening the airspace. No further operational details were released.

Subsequent reporting suggested the closure may have been precautionary and that full operational details have not been publicly disclosed.

Even without those details, the episode matters. It indicates that federal authorities assessed the drone activity as serious enough to affect civilian aviation. 

MEXICAN CARTEL DRONES BREACH US AIRSPACE, ARE DISABLED BY WAR DEPARTMENT, DUFFY SAYS

Cartels Are Adapting

For decades, Mexican drug trafficking organizations have moved illicit narcotics — including fentanyl — into the United States. Federal assessments consistently identify synthetic opioids as one of the deadliest threats facing American communities.

Cartels adjust when enforcement pressure changes. As land routes tighten and maritime interdiction increases, new methods emerge.

FBI RAMPS UP COUNTER-DRONE EFFORTS AS PATEL WARNS OF GROWING THREATS FROM CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS

In 2024, NORAD Commander Gen. Gregory M. Guillot testified that more than 1,000 drone incidents per month were occurring along the southern border, primarily for surveillance or smuggling. If routine drone activity has been tolerated along the border, then federal officials concluded the El Paso incident warranted halting operations at a major American airport. 

Commercial drone platforms are widely available and attractive to criminal organizations. They are inexpensive, difficult to detect and capable of carrying meaningful payloads. Around the world, similar systems have migrated from recreational use to combat applications.

Their use by cartels is not speculative.

AMERICA’S SKIES ARE WIDE OPEN TO NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS, DRONE EXPERT WARNS: ‘WE HAVE NO AWARENESS’

What appears new is the decision to disrupt commercial aviation in response.

That raises an obvious question: Was this an escalation in capability, proximity or perceived threat? Absent further disclosure, the public cannot know.

The Broader Drone Environment

Conflicts abroad have demonstrated how low-cost unmanned systems can be adapted for surveillance, targeting and even kinetic missions. Non-state actors learn from those examples. Criminal organizations are no exception.

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None of this establishes that weaponized cartel drones are operating over American cities. There is no public evidence of that. But the technological threshold continues to decline.

The airspace over the Southwest is no longer immune to innovation.

TRUMP’S WAR ON CARTELS ENTERS NEW PHASE AS EXPERTS PREDICT WHAT’S NEXT

A Shift in U.S. Policy

The El Paso incident also fits within a broader change in how Washington frames cartel activity.

In January 2025, the Trump administration designated several major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. That classification moved cartel networks beyond a purely criminal framework and into the national security category.

CARTEL DRONES POSE ‘DANGEROUS’ DRUG TRAFFICKING RISK IN BORDER STATE, OFFICIAL WARNS

Federal agencies were directed to apply structural pressure against cartel enablers — financial systems, coordination networks and international supply chains.

The FAA decision did not occur in isolation. It occurred within a posture that treats cartel activity as a cross-border security threat.

What the El Paso Shutdown Tells Us

Several conclusions follow.

First, federal authorities assessed an aerial threat serious enough to affect civilian aviation.

PENTAGON EXPLORING COUNTER-DRONE SYSTEMS TO PREVENT INCURSIONS OVER NATIONAL SECURITY FACILITIES

Second, the Department of War was prepared to respond.

Third, public transparency remains limited. Members of Congress, including Rep. Veronica Escobar, have noted that drone incursions along the border are not new. If this episode reflected a heightened or qualitatively different threat, that distinction should be explained clearly.

When civilian airspace is restricted, clarity strengthens public trust.

Temporary closures of this magnitude should remain exceptional — not routine.

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Policy Implications

Border Airspace

The United States needs a defined border airspace doctrine. That includes persistent detection capability, streamlined counter-UAS authority for DHS and DoD near the border, and clear standards for when civilian airspace restrictions are justified.

HEGSETH SAYS US STRIKES FORCE SOME CARTEL LEADERS TO HALT DRUG OPERATIONS

Reactive shutdowns are not strategy.

Deterrence

If drone incursions continue, interception alone will not suffice. Disabling individual aircraft addresses the symptom, not the network behind it. Financiers, suppliers and planners enabling these operations must face sustained financial, legal and diplomatic pressure.

MEXICO’S PRESIDENT FIRMLY REFUSES TRUMP’S PROPOSAL FOR US MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST CARTELS

Deterrence requires credibility. The United States has both the authority and the obligation to defend its territory and airspace. Persistent aerial incursions cannot become normalized.

Mexico remains central to a durable solution. Joint enforcement and intelligence cooperation are preferable to confrontation. But history shows that when cross-border threats harm Americans, the United States responds.

Cartels adjust when the cost of operating rises. The objective is to restore control before escalation becomes necessary.

Mexico’s Role

Mexico’s cooperation is indispensable.

Public escalation benefits neither nation. Quiet coordination—shared intelligence, joint surveillance, and coordinated counter-drone efforts—offers a more stable path. Quiet coordination, shared intelligence, joint surveillance and coordinated counter-drone efforts offer a more stable path.

TRUMP ADMIN TELLS CONGRESS IT DETERMINED US ENGAGED IN FORMAL ‘ARMED CONFLICT’ WITH ‘TERRORIST’ DRUG CARTELS

At the same time, persistent violations of U.S. airspace cannot be ignored. Bilateral security cooperation will either deepen or strain under pressure.

The Strategic Choice

The El Paso shutdown may prove to be an isolated episode. It may also mark the first visible sign that cartel operations have expanded decisively into the air domain.

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If criminal networks can probe American airspace without consequence, they will continue assessing its limits.

The administration now faces a choice: respond incident by incident — or establish durable control of the skies along the southern border.

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The ground border has dominated debate for years. The airspace above it may soon demand equal attention.

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DAVID MARCUS: Yes, even White, Irish illegal immigrants must be deported

Seamus Culleton, an illegal immigrant from Ireland was arrested last September by ICE, pursuant to a deportation order after he overstayed his 90-day visa by nearly two decades. Now, for the most cynical of reasons, he is the Left’s new anti-ICE cause celebre.

The pro-Culleton argument is that he had a work visa, a pending green card application, is married to an American and has committed no violent crimes. But none of this changes the fact that his underlying 20-year stay was illegal, and there was an active deportation order against him.

Culleton was given a chance to be taken directly to Ireland, but chose to stay and fight deportation, which he must and should do while in detention. Honestly, the only thing remarkable about this case, and here comes the cynical part, is that he is White and Irish.

A central allegation against Trump’s deportation efforts is that they are essentially racist, that ICE is out there rounding up Brown and Black people based on their skin color. It’s an allegation the Department of Homeland Security vehemently denies and which has not been substantiated.

DEMOCRATS CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN’T HIDE: AN IMMIGRATION RECKONING IS NEXT IN 2028

Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie opined on X regarding the detention, “This is appalling and I hope cuts through to the ‘heritage American’ types who otherwise could care less about due process for immigrants.” 

The assumption here is that racist supporters of President Donald Trump and his deportation policies will embrace Gillespie’s libertarian pro-illegal immigrant stance to protect a White guy. But it’s absurd, facile, and not happening.

Because there Culleton is in custody, and he’s not the only one. He told Irish radio in a recent interview that, in fact, he and his fellow English-speaking detainees are discriminated against by the mostly Hispanic staffers, who give extra food to Spanish speakers.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION VICTORY IN A MINNESOTA COURT IS A WIN FOR ALL LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS

Whether that is true or not, it is clear that the Trump administration is not recognizing any White privilege in this situation. Immigration status, not ethnicity is what matters.

The fact is, that if ICE raided midtown Manhattan, it is likely that dozens of Irish pubs would close instantly.

Now, I love tucking myself into an Irish pub for some shepherd’s pie as much as the next guy, but the law has to be the law, whether a restaurant plays Bad Bunny or the Clancy Brothers. If it employs illegals, they are subject to deportation.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN IN THE SPOTLIGHT AHEAD OF MIDTERMS AS FATAL MN SHOOTINGS IGNITE BACKLASH

Culleton is being presented as a kind of “model illegal alien,” leading many to ask, not entirely unreasonably, if the system should let him stay. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

If we allow affable Irish bartenders and tradesmen such as Culleton to skirt the rules, then so too can cartel members, or foreign terrorists, so long as they don’t get caught committing crimes. That’s not acceptable.

The Democrats and the political left think they have a winner here because they assume that conservatives are racists and will say, “Oh no, not a White Irish guy! That’s not who we want deported!” But that isn’t happening.

MORNING GLORY: TRUMP CAN END THE DREAMER STANDOFF BY TAKING ON SANCTUARY CITIES

Part of the purpose of the very public detentions that ICE has engaged in is to scare those in the country illegally into self-deporting, and according to DHS over 2 million did just that in 2025, while the monetary incentive to self deport has been raised to $2,600.

So, an Irish bartender, an Italian bricklayer or a Russian Uber driver in this country illegally have to ask themselves, “Is my immigration status in order, and if not, should I take the money, go home and come back the right way instead of risking detention?”

Over the past three months, including the period of all the mischegas in Minneapolis, Trump’s approval rating has remained remarkably steady after taking about a six-point hit in November. There has been no electoral backlash to deportations.

MINNESOTA SHAKEUP SHIFTS LEADERSHIP NOT STRATEGY, WHITE HOUSE SAYS, PUSHING BACK ON ‘RETREAT’ CLAIM

As one woman I spoke to in Virginia this week told me, “Sometimes it’s sad. I hated seeing that 5-year-old [who was detained by ICE after his father fled], but we have to have a border.”

If Democrats want to stop the deportations Trump was elected to do, they need to come to Republicans in Congress with a broad immigration plan that has more concessions in it than a VIP suite at the Super Bowl.

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For those in the country illegally, there must be no path to citizenship, hence no eventual voting, and some sort of penalty for being in the country illegally. But frankly, even that is probably not enough at this point.

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Joe Biden and his feckless administration allowed more than 10 million illegals into the country in four years, almost certainly under the impression that it could never be undone, that it was too many people to remove.

Maybe it is too many to actually remove, but Trump was elected to try and try he is, even if the illegal immigrant has a lovely, lilting Irish brogue.

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We’re Democrats. From food to housing, costs keep rising — here’s a serious fix

For millions of Americans, affordability is not an abstract policy debate. It is the daily stress of choosing between groceries and prescriptions, rent and childcare, gas and electricity. Families feel it everywhere, and they are right to demand answers.

More than a year past his self-imposed “day one” deadline to lower costs, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have not only failed to lower the cost of groceries, housing or healthcare, but are actively and intentionally making life more expensive for hardworking Americans.

The American people need a real plan to make life more affordable. Instead of addressing the problem, the president has dismissed affordability as a “fake narrative” that “doesn’t mean anything.” But there is nothing fake about families falling behind, workers stretching paychecks or seniors worrying about whether they can afford to age with dignity.

That’s why we’ve worked with our colleagues in the New Democrat Coalition to craft the New Dem Affordability Agenda, which lays out a commonsense roadmap to lower the five core costs that are crushing working Americans: healthcare, housing, energy, family care and everyday household goods like groceries.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: GOP TARGETS AFFORDABILITY WITH RECONCILIATION 2.0 PLAN AHEAD OF MIDTERMS

The New Democrat Coalition is the largest Democratic ideological caucus in the House of Representatives, with 115 lawmakers focused on breaking through gridlock and getting things done. Our agenda isn’t just another white paper wish list — it’s a workable path forward grounded in competition, expanded supply and policies that put working families first.

Groceries and Household Essentials

Prices at the checkout line remain high, in part because supply chains are fragile and markets are increasingly concentrated. President Trump’s trade policies have made matters worse. Broad tariffs function like a sales tax on everyday goods, and we all pay the price. Recent analyses estimate that tariff-related costs add roughly $1,600 per year to the average household’s expenses. The Affordability Agenda strengthens domestic supply chains, supports family and small farmers, and promotes competition to lower prices.

AFFORDABILITY: THE ISSUE THAT BOOSTED TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS IN 2024 DEFLATED THEM IN 2025

Healthcare

Healthcare costs continue to rise faster than wages, squeezing families and employers alike. Recent Republican healthcare legislation would make matters worse by shifting costs onto households and small businesses. Independent estimates project that more than 15 million Americans will lose coverage, while premiums double or triple for 22 million more. When coverage disappears or becomes unaffordable, families delay care, and employers face higher costs that limit hiring and wage growth. Our approach protects healthcare coverage, increases transparency, enforces accountability and expands competition so health care is affordable and predictable.

Housing

TRUMP ROLLS OUT ‘GREAT HEALTHCARE PLAN,’ URGES CONGRESS TO SLASH COSTS FOR AMERICANS

The United States faces a severe housing shortage, estimated at roughly 4 million homes nationwide, and the consequences are playing out in rising rents and fewer paths to homeownership. Years of red tape and outdated regulations have limited new construction. Our agenda cuts those barriers and commits to building at least 4 million new homes over the next decade. More supply will not fix everything overnight, but without it, affordability will continue to slip out of reach.

Energy

Household energy bills are rising, driven by underinvestment, permitting delays and uncertainty that slows progress. Families should not be left wondering whether next month’s utility bill will blow their budget. Our plan accelerates responsible energy development and modernizes the electric grid to keep power reliable and affordable.

HOUSE PASSES BIPARTISAN HOUSING BILL AS TRUMP ZEROES IN ON AFFORDABILITY CRISIS

Family Care

Childcare and elder care costs are forcing families into impossible choices. Too many parents cut back hours or leave the workforce entirely because care is unavailable or unaffordable. Too many seniors worry about how they will age safely. We’re working to expand access to child and elder care so that families can afford to work, care for loved ones and plan for their future.

Affordability is a core component of the government’s promise to the American people: if you work hard in this country, you should be able to provide a safe and comfortable life for yourself and your family. 

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We believe everyone should be able to afford the essentials — housing, healthcare, food, childcare, education, a retirement and more — with enough left over to buy that car, take that vacation and save for your future.

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That’s what our Affordability Agenda is about: renewing the promise of affordability to every American, not just to get by, but to get ahead. 

This is not about ideology. It is about whether Washington is willing to take affordability seriously and act with urgency. Families across the country are asking for relief. The New Dem Affordability Agenda is our answer.

JONATHAN TURLEY: NY Times columnist sinks to sick new low mocking JD Vance’s mom

In an age of rage, it is often difficult to stand out from the mob, as so many pander to the perpetually irate. However, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has found a way to win the race to the bottom. In a post on Bluesky, Bouie mocked the addiction of the mother of Vice President JD Vance, saying that she should have sold her son for drugs.

Bouie used Bluesky — a digital safe zone for viewpoint intolerance on the left — to post one of the most reprehensible attacks on Vance. Bouie wrote that “this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.” That is hardly notable on today’s rage scale. However, he then decided to use the painful addiction history of Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, against her son: “No wonder his mom tried to sell him for Percocets. I can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for Percocet if they knew he would turn out like this.”

Vance wrote a celebrated bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his difficult childhood with a mother who became addicted to pain medication and eventually found herself stealing drugs from her patients. It was a tragic account of how addiction tore their family apart, but also a tale of redemption: “I knew that a mother could love her son despite the grip of addiction. I knew that my family loved me, even when they struggled to take care of themselves.”

JD VANCE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOLD BY HIS MOTHER FOR DRUGS, NYT COLUMNIST SAYS

In April of last year, Vance celebrated his mother’s decade of sobriety.

As I discuss in my new book, Rage and the Republic,” a common element of past radical movements is the dehumanization of political opponents. In calling others “Gestapo,” “fascists” or “Nazis,” you gain a certain license to say and do things that you would ordinarily never say or do. By stripping them of their humanity and any right to empathy, you are free to discard the limitations of decency and civility.

Rage is itself a type of drug. It is addictive — and, while they never admit it, many relish it.

JD VANCE TELLS DEMS OUTRAGED OVER YOUNG REPUBLICANS’ LEAKED GROUP CHAT TO ‘GROW UP’

Bouie displays a striking lack of self-awareness in his hateful posts, objecting that “this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.” It is the ultimate example of transference; a self-description projected onto those he hates.

Rage is itself a type of drug. It is addictive — and, while they never admit it, many relish it.

On his New York Times biography page, Bouie insists that “I come from a left-leaning, social democratic perspective, but I strive for honesty, fairness and good faith in my writing.” He adds that “I abide by the same rigorous ethical standards as all Times journalists.” 

A THERAPIST’S WARNING: TRUMP DIDN’T BREAK AMERICA — PERMANENT OUTRAGE DID

If using Vance’s tragic childhood and his mother’s addiction is an example of the “fairness and good faith” of The New York Times, it is a chilling prospect.

In his book, Vance observes that the children of broken and impoverished homes often give up hope, as he did: “Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”

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He found that choices do matter in shaping your life. We all make such choices, as did Bouie in becoming another voice of rage — and as did the New York Times in choosing to amplify him.

It is the same choice that the Times makes in barring a U.S. senator and firing editors for exposing readers to alternative viewpoints while publishing those who advocate repression or rationalize political violence. To the apparent satisfaction of its readers, the paper now peddles outrage to feed a national addiction.

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In the end, Vance and his mother have overcome far greater challenges than this vicious columnist or the hatefest of Bluesky. From adversity, they found strength and a bond that has inspired many who are struggling with such addictions and poverty.

It is clear who is “wicked” in these postings. Perhaps it is even unintentionally edifying — and self-condemning. As Victor Hugo observed, “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.”

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Gradually, then suddenly, blue state America is heading for financial disaster

In his famous 20th century novel “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway’s character, Mike Campbell, was asked by a friend how his financial ruin had happened. Campbell replied to the question simply, “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

Just a cursory look at today’s headlines and one can see this very idea of “gradually and then suddenly” playing out in the fiscal health of many blue states. California, the poster child for a state heading down the road to financial ruin, is slated to lose four congressional seats in the 2030 census due to population loss.

Moreover, major companies such as Wells Fargo and Quantum, with others surely to follow, are moving their headquarters out of the Golden State to Florida. In fact, Miami was recently labeled by one national outlet as the “new Silicon Valley.”

Two of the other largest out-migration states in the country? Illinois and New York. Ken Griffin, the multibillionaire who runs the largest and most successful hedge fund in America, Citadel Hedge Fund, left Chicago in 2022 and moved his headquarters to Florida. Meanwhile, both Illinois and New York are slated to lose between two and four congressional seats in 2030 due to population loss.

BURGUM CALLS CALIFORNIA A ‘NATIONAL SECURITY RISK’ AS ENERGY CHIEF WARNS BLUE STATES ARE SKEWING COST AVERAGES

So, what is going on here? Well, in short, individuals and companies have had it with blue state taxes, wild spending, suffocating regulations and draconian environmental policies that stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. They are moving to red states like Florida and Texas that value capital, markets, free exchange and opportunity. Florida and Texas, incidentally, are projected to gain four congressional seats in 2030. 

Using any measure — GDP growth, job creation, capital investment, employment rates or the all-knowing U-Haul index of in and outmigration — red states litter the top 10 places to move with the occasional purple states of Arizona or Nevada breaking into the mix.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned California, Illinois, New York and many other blue states reside at the bottom. Americans have simply had it with bloated government and the nanny states that want to control every aspect of one’s money and life. And those Americans are voting with their feet.

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The left likes to say that warm weather and beaches are the reasons citizens are moving to red states, but that belies the truth. Last time I checked, Utah, Idaho and Montana had neither warm weather nor beaches and yet these states are routinely in the top 10 of these indices.

What does all of this tell us? Well, we’ve seen this coming for some time. California hasn’t gained a congressional seat since 2000. Illinois and New York? Last century. Blue states have seen their economies weaken and their populations slowly shrink since then, but politicians in those states refuse to acknowledge the reasons why.

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Now reality is sinking in, and with the loss of electoral votes comes the loss of political influence in Washington D.C., let alone financial ruin. 

Mike Campbell probably knew little of electoral politics, but he did know a thing or two about bankruptcy, and his acknowledgment of its occurrence being “gradually and then suddenly” is a cautionary tale for America. Blue states should take heed.

Federal welfare spending is a fraud magnet — and taxpayers are paying the price

Investigators have found a large underworld of fraud in Minnesota’s welfare programs. In one scandal, 57 people were convicted of stealing benefits from a children’s food program. In another scandal, investigators allege that Medicaid programs for housing, autism and assisted living have been looted. A third scandal is the apparent widespread fraud in daycare programs, as profiled by a YouTuber.

Republicans have jumped on the Minnesota scandals to highlight how the fraud spread in the Somali community under a Democratic governor. But there is a deeper lesson from Minnesota, stemming from the fact that the fraud-plagued programs in the news are all federally funded and administered by the state: State policymakers have little incentive to combat fraud when they are spending “free” money from Washington. Meanwhile, federal policymakers act as if they can borrow and spend without limits, and they focus on steering funds to their districts, not routing out waste.  

As a result, many federal aid-to-state programs — which account for $1.1 trillion in spending — suffer from fraud. In the $110 billion food stamp program, for example, there has been an explosion of “card skimming.” Since 2023, more than 670,000 households have had their food stamp benefits stolen by criminals rigging checkout terminals with fake card readers.

USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION

State governments could have solved this problem years ago by putting food stamp benefits on smartcards. But very few states have done so because the costs of fraud are covered by the federal budget, not by state taxpayers.

Another spigot of funding susceptible to fraud is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $60 billion in state aid. Last year, the New York City Housing Authority — which is two-thirds funded by HUD — was rocked by scandal as 70 employees were convicted of taking bribes for steering contracts to chosen vendors. The bribery scams had gone on for at least a decade, likely because federal policymakers were not paying attention and the housing authority was mainly spending federal money, not New York’s.

Much of HUD’s community development spending flows to thousands of nonprofit groups with opaque finances, which creates a breeding ground for scammers. Last year in Delaware, for example, leaders of the Dover Interfaith Mission for Housing pleaded guilty to stealing $600,000 of HUD funds. In another case last year, two Amarillo city workers were convicted of stealing more than $500,000 from HUD-funded homelessness programs.

In California, billions of dollars of HUD and state homeless aid to anti-poverty groups has gone missing. One company called Shangri-La allegedly stole $2 million in grants that were supposed to build low-income housing. A federal prosecutor said that he is finding massive fraud and criticized California leaders for letting corruption fester for years.

MINNESOTA DHS WHISTLEBLOWER DETAILS ‘SMEAR CAMPAIGN’ AFTER REPORTING FRAUD CONCERNS TO STATE

With all these scandals, the Trump administration’s crack-down on fraud is clearly needed. But executive actions won’t solve the underlying problem: the states have no incentive to be frugal with federal funds while federal lawmakers deficit-spend with no restraint.

The only durable way to slash fraud is for Congress to transfer the funding of welfare to state governments, which face the discipline of having to balance their annual budgets. It is true, however, that cutting federal welfare funding faces major political hurdles.

First, members of Congress build political support by steering federal spending to anti-poverty groups in their districts. Second, pro-spending lobbies know that the deficit-fueled federal budget is less constrained than state budgets, so they push to move welfare funding up to the federal level.

TREASURY SECRETARY ANNOUNCES CASH REWARDS FOR MINNESOTA FRAUD WHISTLEBLOWERS

Third, liberals fixate on tax distribution, fully aware that federal taxes hit the wealthy harder than state taxes. As such, they favor federal funding of welfare over state funding.

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Finally, liberals favor federalizing programs to curtail interstate competition. If the states funded their own welfare systems, many would decide to have leaner programs and lower taxes. Liberals fear such diversity, so they press for top-down programs that burden all the states equally with bloated programs.

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These are powerful barriers to reform but, strangely, partisanship may break down those barriers. Trump is targeting fraud because Democratic states and Democratic-favored programs are in the news. For taxpayers, this is good news, but even better news would be if Democrats launched their own fraud investigations of GOP-favored programs. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that up to 10% of federal spending gets stolen in fraud scams each year. In the near term, we need more auditing of both Democratic and Republican favored programs. But over the longer term, Congress should end funding of the most fraud-prone programs — and many of those are aid-to-state welfare programs.