Ayatollah’s arsenal vs American firepower: Iran’s top 4 threats and how we fight back

Ayatollah Khamenei on X ramped up threats to send U.S. warships to the bottom of the sea. “Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea,” he (or his minions) tweeted Feb 17.

Admiral Brad Cooper, who’s in charge of United States Central Command, has forces to counter Iran, and to carry out strikes if so ordered. Sadly, Iran has taken American lives over the years, and now the regime is desperate. With the airspace laid bare by attacks on integrated air defenses prior to Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran has little ability to defend against stealth aircraft. 

Count on Iran trying to hit U.S. ships and bases.

Here are the four top tactics in the ayatollah’s arsenal – and how the U.S. will fight back.

US MILITARY WARNS IRAN IT WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY ‘UNSAFE’ ACTIONS AHEAD OF LIVE-FIRE DRILLS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Ballistic missiles

Iran launched short- and medium-range ballistic missiles against the U.S. airbase at Al Udeid, in Qatar, on June 23, 2025. A skeleton crew of American soldiers with two Patriot missile batteries intercepted Iran’s missiles. “We believe that this is the largest single Patriot engagement in U.S. military history,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine in a Pentagon briefing the next day.

The U.S. Space Force will once again be on alert to detect the heat of Iranian missile launches and cue the target tracks. Iran’s ballistic missiles can attack multiple targets, but U.S. forces are ready to intercept. In 2024, American Navy destroyers sailing in the eastern Mediterranean nailed Iranian missiles with nose-on shots. They used Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), both the older Block 1 and the wide-coverage Block 2A. SM-3 is a hit-to-kill weapon: it smashed Iran’s missiles at 65,000 feet, in the exo-atmosphere, using just the 600-mph velocity. Bullet hits bullet. That’s why Navy destroyers are fanned out from the Med to the North Arabian Gulf.

IRAN TO HOLD LIVE-FIRE DRILLS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ WITH US ARMADA IN MIDDLE EAST

Drones

Iran manufactures a lot of drones, but they are going to die if they tangle with U.S. forces. A Marine Corps fighter pilot flying an F-35C from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln shot down one of Iran’s Shahed drones on Feb. 3. That was a Shahed-139 surveillance drone, which also carries glide bombs and can loiter for up to 24 hours. It got too close to the aircraft carrier, as Central Command put it.

Victory credit goes to the “Black Knights” of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron VMFA-314, as reported by USNI News. The drone kill was easy work for the F-35C, with its sensitive, long-range radar and vectoring by Navy E-2D radar planes, which fly with a massive dish radar to sort out good guys and bad guys. Forward surveillance by the E-2Ds will be essential if Iran launches waves of drones toward U.S. ships. USS Gerald R. Ford en route could add options for day and night combat air patrols against drones and missiles.

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If the attack is over land, look for the U.S. Air Force to pounce. Over the last two years, American pilots have become masters of anti-drone tactics. It started when U.S. Air Force F-15E “Strike Eagles” from an undisclosed Mideast base shot down waves of Iranian drones in April 2024. At one point, crew chiefs came out of bunkers while the base was under fire to pull the arming pins on weapons before the F-15Es took off. They are ready to do it again.

Swarming boats

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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy has a long history of harassment with small boats, and they like to boast about their exercises with “swarms” of boats. That’s over. Iran thug small boats can’t form up to “swarm” under the constant eye – and guns – of this many U.S. ships and planes. Foolishly, two Iranian small boats and a drone tried to “swarm” a Swedish tanker carrying fuel for U.S. forces. How did that work out? Well, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS McFaul ran them off, as Air Force land-based fighter planes zoomed out to assist.

Cruise missiles

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Iran is stuffed with cruise missiles of various types. Their low, snaking path makes them difficult targets. The good news is the U.S. Navy has done a lot of target practice on Houthi missiles , like when the destroyer USS Gravely deployed its “C-whiz” Phalanx Close-In Weapon System against a sea-skimming Houthi missile one mile from the ship back on Jan. 30, 2024. Typically, Navy missiles like the SM-6 and the Evolved Sea Sparrow can nail the cruise missiles a dozen miles out. F-35 fighters are good at chasing down cruise missiles, too.

U.S. forces have the edge over the ayatollah’s arsenal. But make no mistake. This is a combat zone. Constant vigilance will be key to survival. Navy sailors and the airmen, Marines, soldiers and Space Force Guardians will feel the pressure and intensity of 24/7 operations. Maintainers and ground crews at land bases have jets to fuel, arm and launch, even against incoming drones and missiles. Force protection is top priority and the reason for the sheer number of forces now in U.S. Central Command. You can see why Trump has long sought curbs on Iran’s missile arsenal, and why missile and drone production sites are likely top of the target list for U.S. forces if diplomacy fails.

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Team Canada star, who blew wide-open net chance, makes telling comment about loss

As expected, Team Canada was not happy standing on the ice receiving their silver medals in Milan after Jack Hughes’ overtime game-winner to give Team USA gold. 

Canadian star Nathan MacKinnon made an interesting comment after the game that sparked debate on social media. 

“You be the judge of who was the better team today,” the Team Canada assistant captain and Colorado Avalanche star said, via the Canadian Press.

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MacKinnon seemingly implied that Canada was the better team despite the result. Sure, they outshot the U.S., 42-28, and they were certainly in control of the puck more throughout the three periods in Milan. 

It even took some heroics from Team USA goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to keep the game tied at one goal apiece, including a miraculous stick save on Devon Toews point-blank chance in the second period. 

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But there were also a few miscues from Canada, and MacKinnon had a major one with 10:50 left in the third period. Hellebuyck was completely beat when the puck was swung over to MacKinnon, who had a wide-open net to work with. All he had to do was put it between the pipes and Canada would’ve taken a 2-1 lead. 

Instead, his shot hit the short side of the net, and Team USA caught a break as one of the best goalscorers in the world was denied by his own error. It’s one of those moments where MacKinnon may be thinking, “What if?” considering how the game ended. 

With both sides stuck in a draw after three periods, the Olympic overtime rules are that of the NHL regular season – 3-on-3 sudden death hockey. For Team USA, this format benefitted them considering what was happening in the second and third periods, with Canada handling them on both ends of the ice. 

But MacKinnon once again made a grave mistake in overtime, as it didn’t seem he was anticipating defenseman Zach Weresnki flying into him in the offensive zone after Hughes pushed the puck up into Canada’s zone. 

MacKinnon could’ve charged harder on the puck, but Werenski came away with it instead and slung it over for Hughes, who buried it past Jordan Binnington for the golden goal. 

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So, while stats and other metrics may say Team Canada was the better team on the ice, it only matters in key moments. And, of course, the scoreboard at the final whistle. 

As Team USA celebrates their first Olympic gold medal since the 1980 miracle-on-ice in Lake Placid, Team Canada can only head back to their respective cities thinking about what went wrong in the end. 

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Thomas says Supreme Court misread IEEPA, wrongly blocking Trump’s tariff plan

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ripped the court’s decision blocking President Donald Trump’s use of an emergency law to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners, calling it a fundamental misread of both the governing statute and the Constitution’s separation of powers.

“As (Kavanaugh) explains, the Court’s decision … cannot be justified as a matter of statutory interpretation. Congress authorized the President to ‘regulate … importation,’” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “Throughout American history, the authority to ‘regulate importation’ has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.” 

The court invalidated Trump’s use of an emergency law to impose tariffs in a 6–3 decision Friday morning after weeks of Trump championing that the court should rule in his favor as part of his larger effort to boost the economy, jobs and bring down costs for Americans. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito joined Justice Brett Kavanaugh in dissenting from the ruling, with Thomas also offering his own separate dissent. 

The majority of the court ruled Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president, even after declaring a national emergency, to impose tariffs — and that Congress did not speak clearly enough to transfer its tariff-and-tax power to the executive branch.

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The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is a 1977 law that allows the president, after declaring a national emergency in response to foreign threats, to regulate or block certain economic transactions and property interests, such as by imposing sanctions. 

“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Supreme Court Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”

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In his dissent, Thomas argued that nondelegation doctrine is a narrow constraint, saying a line is crossed only when Congress delegates “core” power to make rules triggering deprivations of “life, liberty, or property” — not “from delegating other kinds of power,” such as tariffs. 

The nondelegation doctrine forbids Congress from delegating core legislative power to the president. 

“As I suggested over a decade ago, the nondelegation doctrine does not apply to ‘a delegation of power to make rules governing private conduct in the area of foreign trade,’ including rules imposing duties on imports,” Thomas wrote. “Therefore, to the extent that the Court relies on ‘separation of powers principles’ to rule against the President is mistaken.” 

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Thomas pointed to President Nixon’s 1971 import surcharge as a real-world test case that was later upheld in United States v. Yoshida Int’l under IEEPA’s predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Nixon announced a 10% across-the-board import surcharge on foreign nations in 1971, with the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals upholding the policy under the same “regulate … importation” language in 1975.

“The meaning of that phrase was beyond doubt by the time that Congress enacted this statute, shortly after President Nixon’s highly publicized duties on imports were upheld based on identical language,” Thomas wrote. 

“The statute that the President relied on therefore authorized him to impose the duties on imports at issue in these cases,” Thomas wrote, adding that Kavanaugh “makes clear that the Court errs in concluding otherwise.”

Trump unveiled his tariff policies in April 2025, which have come with repeatedly updated deals with foreign nations, as a tool to bring parity to U.S. trade policy and encourage businesses to open up shop on U.S. soil as part of an American manufacturing renaissance to boost the job market and the economy. 

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Trump, in recent months, has repeatedly promoted that the Supreme Court rule in his favor, warning just Thursday during a trip to a steel factory in Georgia that “without tariffs, this country would be in such trouble right now.”

The president held a press conference shortly after the decision on Friday, announcing a 10% global tariff, while underscoring that the “Supreme Court did not overrule tariffs,” but “merely overruled a particular use of IEEPA tariffs.” 

Former FBI agent offers new theory about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance

A former FBI agent believes that investigators should explore a new possible angle in the mysterious disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.

Jonny Grusing worked in the FBI’s Denver Division for 25 years, investigating violent crimes, missing persons, serial killers and more. He is also the author of “The Devil I Knew: Unmasking a Serial Killer,” about the true crime case of Scott Kimball. 

Grusing made it clear that he is only operating off of information that has been made public in the case, and that he’s positing a new theory in case it might jog the memory of a member of the public who could help solve the case.

“The first thing he does is with his glove, and with his glove, it doesn’t look like he’s trying to take [the camera] off,” said Grusing of the suspect’s behavior on Guthrie’s stoop. “It looks like he’s trying to cover it with his right hand.And then he looks down, he looks around, and he gets the branches, and he puts the branches up in front of it.”

“Is there a chance, since we don’t have audio, that he is either knocking on the door loudly or that he has pressed the ring doorbell, [that] he’s trying to get Nancy to answer the door, and he’s shielding himself from being seen as a masked person, so she will, in her confusion, open the door?” Grusing asked rhetorically.

FBI REVEALS NEW SUSPECT DETAILS, INCLUDING BACKPACK, IN NANCY GUTHRIE DISAPPEARANCE; DOUBLES REWARD TO $100K

Grusing said that if that’s the case, the suspect likely wasn’t there to rob the home. Since Guthrie lives in a sprawling residential area, Grusing also believes it unlikely that the suspect was a robber who accidentally showed up at the wrong address.

Rather, he said, the suspect might have been there because he had a personal grievance against Guthrie, and might have lured her out of the home onto her porch.

The possibility makes even more sense, Grusing said, when considering that blood was found spattered on Guthrie’s front porch and down the driveway, and authorities have not released any information about whether there was blood found inside the home.

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The suspect also wore a gun in what is believed to be a cheap Walmart holster, and wore it on the front of his body, which Grusing described as not “tactically sound.” Grusing also believes that the gunman would have had trouble firing that gun with the gloves he was wearing, and that the gun may have just been a prop to instill fear in Guthrie.

“So, if the gun’s a prop, if he’s shielding himself from being seen, if he’s actually ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door, getting her to come, he wants to confront her about something in my opinion,” said Grusing.

Grusing has always believed that in whatever interaction Guthrie had with the suspect, something went wrong, causing him to remove her from the house. Perhaps, he said, Guthrie identified him, causing a panic. He also says the kidnap-for-ransom theory doesn’t add up, given that alleged kidnappers never reached out to the Guthrie family directly.

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Grusing wouldn’t speculate on what kind of grievance someone might have had with Guthrie, or why they might have had it.

But he wants the public to consider the possibility, just in case they remember someone saying they were wronged by a person fitting Guthrie’s description.

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“It’s hard to be an expert in human behavior because it’s so unique to that person,” said Grusing, despite his quarter-century of experience.

“You know, I’m just trying to use the experiences of different cases and trying to apply any sort of logic to this in the hopes that someone from the public who has thought it might be someone they know whether it’s his family or whether now it’s a coworker or friend or associate or whatever, to put that one puzzle piece together that says, ‘Yes, and now I think it could be him.'”

Survivor describes secrecy surrounding female genital mutilation in Minnesota

More than half a million women and girls in the United States are living with the physical and psychological scars of female genital mutilation — including many in Minnesota, home to a large Somali community from a country where roughly 98% of women have undergone the procedure, according to United Nations data.

Yet despite a state law that makes performing the procedures a felony, Minnesota has never secured a single criminal prosecution under its law — raising questions about enforcement, and whether cases could be going on undetected.

Female genital mutilation, or FGM, involves the cutting or removal of parts of a female’s genital organs, typically for cultural rather than medical reasons. The practice is irreversible.

“It’s hidden — it’s a cultural practice, and who is doing the cutting could be a family member or a doctor who is also in that same culture,” Minnesota Republican state Rep. Mary Franson told Fox News Digital, noting it may be carried out within tight-knit communities. She said the secrecy surrounding the practice makes it exceptionally difficult to detect and confront.

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For some within Minnesota’s Somali community, the issue is less about public crime statistics and more about private silence — a practice survivors say is carried in secrecy, shame and fear.

The lack of prosecutions comes amid broader scrutiny of how Minnesota agencies handle oversight failures, including high-profile welfare and daycare fraud cases in which prosecutors allege billions of taxpayer dollars were siphoned off while warning signs went unaddressed. Investigators and watchdogs later concluded that officials were reluctant to probe deeply in culturally sensitive contexts — a reluctance, critics say, allowed large-scale violations to persist in plain sight.

The estimate of more than half a million survivors in the United States comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent national analysis, published in 2016.

Together, the scale of the issue and the difficulty of detection have raised questions about whether Minnesota’s ban on FGM is being effectively enforced when the crime is often carried out in secrecy.

Survivor warns of lasting harm

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born activist and author who survived FGM, described the lasting physical and psychological damage she endured and called for legal accountability.

“Female genital mutilation is violence against the most vulnerable — children,” Hirsi Ali told Fox News Digital. “It causes infection, incontinence, unbearable pain during childbirth and deep physical and emotional scars that never heal. Religious or cultural practices that deliberately and cruelly harm children must be confronted. No tradition can ever justify torture.”

Hirsi Ali, who founded the AHA Foundation as a means to end FGM, said that the pressure placed on parents in these groups to enforce the practice poses an overwhelming risk to girls.

“Only legal accountability can help reduce that risk,” Hirsi Ali said. “I survived female genital mutilation and I carry its scars with me. But I refuse to accept that another girl in America must endure what I did in Somalia.”

‘I remember being held down’

Zahra Abdalla, a Minnesota-based Somali survivor of female genital mutilation, told Fox News Digital that the practice survives in secrecy, shielded by family pressure and silence.

Abdalla, who spoke to Fox News Digital on camera but asked that her face be blurred, said she was between six and seven years old when she was forcibly restrained in a refugee camp in Kenya while adult women in her community carried out the procedure without anesthesia, using a razor blade.

“They tied my hands and my legs,” Abdalla said. “I remember being held down. I remember the pain — and knowing I could not escape.”

Abdalla said she was “lucky” because she fought back during the procedure, kicking one of the women who was pregnant at the time. The disruption, she said, caused the cutting to stop before it was fully completed. She said the wound was later washed with salt water. 

“That pain — I thought I was going to pass out,” she said.

The damage followed her into adulthood, she said, later requiring surgery and, in her view, contributing to multiple miscarriages. She also said intercourse was very difficult. 

She said the practice is often driven by marriage expectations, adding that in some communities men are reluctant to marry women who have not undergone the procedure.

“It’s tied to dowry. It’s tied to marriage,” she said, referring to the financial and social expectations placed on families when arranging marriages. “It’s tied to what men expect,” she said. “Families believe it protects a girl’s value.”

She said silence remains one of the biggest barriers to enforcement. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Somaliweyn Relief Agency (SRA), which seeks to raise awareness about the practice.

“You don’t talk about it,” she said. “You’re told to stay quiet.”

While she said she cannot confirm specific cases inside Minnesota, she said she believes some families take girls back to Somalia during school breaks to have the procedure performed.

No prosecutions despite felony law

Her warning mirrors how some of the only known U.S. cases have surfaced.

In a high-profile federal case in Michigan in 2017, prosecutors alleged that two young girls were taken from Minnesota to undergo female genital mutilation. The case later collapsed because the judge ruled that Congress did not clearly have the constitutional authority, at the time, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.

That ruling prompted Congress to strengthen the statute, a change signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2021 under the Stop FGM Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.

However, a Fox News Digital review of publicly available Minnesota court records, enforcement announcements and professional licensing disciplinary records found no documented prosecutions or sanctions tied to FGM. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said prosecutions for state crimes like female genital mutilation are handled by county attorneys and did not identify any FGM cases. County prosecutors contacted for this story also did not identify any prosecutions.

Those provisions, however, have not resulted in documented criminal prosecutions.

Minnesota criminalized female genital mutilation in 1994, classifying the practice as a felony.

The Minnesota Department of Health told Fox News Digital that it does not track specific data on female genital mutilation, underscoring how difficult the practice is to monitor or enforce.

Global context, local uncertainty

Around the world, FGM is most prevalent in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Somalia has among the highest prevalence rates in the world, with United Nations data estimating roughly 98% of women ages 15 to 49 there have undergone the procedure. The United Nations, World Health Organization and UNICEF classify FGM as a human rights violation rooted in efforts to control female sexuality and enforce gender inequality, and the UN observes an annual day of awareness in February to combat the practice globally.

Those figures describe conditions in Somalia and are not proof the procedure is occurring in Minnesota, but they help explain why risk is acknowledged even as the practice remains difficult to detect.

Medical experts say the procedure can cause chronic pain, severe bleeding, infections, urinary problems, sexual dysfunction, childbirth complications and, in some cases, death. Because it permanently alters genital tissue, the harm cannot be undone. Survivors often require repeated medical care and carry lasting psychological trauma.

Critics say the gap between the law and enforcement is fueled by silence. 

Survivors often do not report the practice out of fear, stigma, family pressure or concern about involving authorities — even when mandatory reporting laws exist. Medical professionals, particularly OB-GYNs, are often the first to encounter adult survivors, placing clinicians near the center of any enforcement effort that has yet to materialize.

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The CDC has not released a newer national estimate, and there is no data on the number of people in Minnesota who are victims. However, a CDC-supported Women’s Health Needs Study conducted from 2019 to 2021 included Minneapolis as one of four U.S. metro areas documenting a significant survivor population.

The study did not track where procedures occurred or whether anyone was charged, underscoring how little the public knows about enforcement.

Fox News Digital also contacted multiple Minnesota clinics that provide reproductive and women’s health services asking whether clinicians encounter patients with physical evidence of female genital mutilation. None responded.

Lawmakers push task force amid accountability questions

Some Minnesota state lawmakers have introduced legislation this session to establish a “task force on prevention of female genital mutilation” — a step that Rep. Mary Franson said reflects concerns raised by women in the community that the practice may be occurring or going undetected in Minnesota.

Franson said the legislation was prompted by concerns raised by women in the Somali community. The bill’s chief author is Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley, a Democrat of Kenyan heritage, and it is co-sponsored by Franson along with Democratic Reps. Kristin Bahner, Kristi Pursell and Anquam Mahamoud, who is Somali-American. None of them responded to multiple Fox News Digital requests for comment. 

Franson said she became a focal point of opposition once she became publicly associated with the bill.

“The bill was brought forward by women in the Somali community. I was the chief author, but then Democrats told one of the DFL women that if I carried the bill, they would not support it,” Franson said. “Of course, it’s because they believe I am a racist.”

Franson, who is white, first introduced FGM-related legislation in 2017 that would have classified the practice as child abuse and clarified parental accountability. That effort stalled and never became law.

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At the federal level, Congress criminalized female genital mutilation in 1996 and later expanded federal jurisdiction in 2018 under legislation signed by then-President Donald Trump, explicitly covering cases involving interstate or international travel.

Even so, prosecutions nationwide have remained rare, with the only widely cited state-level conviction occurring in Georgia in 2006, where a woman was convicted under Georgia state law for performing FGM on a minor.

In Minnesota, where the practice has been a felony since 1994, there is no public record of a single criminal prosecution — raising an unavoidable question: with laws on the books and a documented survivor population, who is responsible for enforcing the ban, and why have prosecutions not followed?

China dominates with 5,500 ships while US has under 100 — but Trump’s fighting back

China dominates the world’s sea lanes.

In addition to its powerful navy, China possesses the world’s largest commercial shipping fleet — 5,500 vessels strong, with hundreds more added per year. By contrast, America’s fleet currently numbers under 100 with, at most, five ships added per year.

Today, only a fraction of the tankers and cargo ships carrying goods to and from our country fly the American flag — by some estimates, less than 0.4%.

The diminished state of American commercial shipbuilding is a pending economic and national security disaster.

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Fortunately, President Donald Trump understands the urgency of this situation and has prioritized an American shipbuilding revival. On Feb. 13, his administration released a comprehensive Maritime Action Plan to help restore America’s maritime dominance.

According to the plan, “Less than one percent of new commercial ships are built in the United States. With only 66 total shipyards … the United States does not have the capacity necessary to scale up the domestic shipbuilding industry to the rate required to meet national priorities…. A self-sustaining domestic shipbuilding sector is critical for national and economic security.”

The plan offers specific recommendations to strengthen America’s maritime capacity, secure our supply chains, and build a resilient maritime workforce. In total, the White House’s Maritime Action plan is a much-needed, holistic approach to restore U.S. commercial shipping, and I commend Trump and his team for issuing it.

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As the plan recognizes, however, Congress must be part of the solution. The strategy proposes tax incentives, creative funding mechanisms and new programs that all require congressional authorization and resourcing. That’s why my colleagues and I are working to pass the “SHIPS for America Act.” This bipartisan legislation, which I helped introduce last year, substantially overlaps with the president’s vision and is explicitly called out in the plan. 

The legislation would make U.S.-flagged vessels commercially competitive in international commerce by cutting red tape, rebuilding the shipyard industrial base and expanding and strengthening mariner and shipyard worker recruitment. Our proposal would train a pipeline of new workers, encourage domestic and foreign investment in maritime infrastructure, and provide the permitting reform and deregulation that is essential for timely construction of new shipyards.

Underlying all of the bill’s initiatives is a trust fund to support an expansion of the U.S.-flagged fleet to 250 vessels by 2035. And the SHIPS Act would create multiple investment tax credits to build up the U.S. shipyard industry for both military and commercial oceangoing vessels.

Key to spurring private-sector investment in the industry is the designation of Maritime Prosperity Zones. These areas — modeled off the successful Opportunity Zones contained in President Trump’s 2017 tax cut — would supercharge investment in communities that will be most important to rebuilding our maritime industrial base.

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From the coastlands to the heartland, these places on our oceans, rivers and Great Lakes will be the hubs for building up our production facilities and supply chains that will power America’s maritime dominance over the next several decades.

The diminished state of American commercial shipbuilding is a pending economic and national security disaster.

The SHIPS Act is Congress’s answer to President Trump’s call to restore America’s maritime dominance. It provides the legal authorities and resources necessary to make President Trump’s Maritime Action Plan a reality. It has support from Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate.

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The release of the White House Maritime Action Plan should serve as a wake-up call for Congress to act quickly and pass our bill. Reviving American shipbuilding will take time, but as President Trump recognizes, doing so is critical to our economic and national security.

It’s time to make American ships again.

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WATCH: AOC defends Taiwan stumble in late-night rant as fiancé snores in background

An emotional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., attempted to blame critics – and even President Donald Trump’s own off-the-cuff agility – for the backlash she received for her response to a question at the recent Munich Security Conference on American defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

“If you think I don’t understand foreign policy, because of out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on earth, I’m afraid the issue is not my understanding, but perhaps the problem is you’ve gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks,” a raspy-voiced Ocasio-Cortez said on a late-night Instagram Live video circulating on social media.

The leftist congresswoman’s Munich stumbling on Friday, Feb. 13, started the critical firestorm and has conservatives questioning her fitness for a potential 2028 Democrat presidential primary campaign.

“Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States,” she said with pause when asked about America defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion to enforce its One China Policy over the island-nation.

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“And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic, research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”

Vice President JD Vance, a potential 2028 presidential campaign opponent in a prospective general election matchup, weighed in multiple times this week to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.

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“I think it’s a person who doesn’t know what she actually thinks, and I’ve seen this way too much in Washington with politicians: Where they’re given lines and, when you ask them to go outside the lines they were given, they completely fall apart,” Vance told Fox News’ “The Story With Martha MacCallum” in an in-studio interview earlier this week.

“That was embarrassing,” he continued. “If I had given that answer I would say, ‘You know what? Maybe you ought to go read a book about China and Taiwan before I go out on the world stage again.’ I hope that Congresswoman Cortez has the same humility. I’m skeptical.”

Olympic controversy grows as Chinese-American stars are pitted against each other

Just minutes after Alysa Liu won a historic Olympic figure skating gold for the U.S., her story as the child of a Chinese American immigrant who fled communism spread like wildfire across social media. 

Almost immediately, that discourse evolved, in many circles, into comparisons to another Chinese American superstar who has dominated headlines in Milan Cortina — American-born Team China skier Eileen Gu.

“Alysa Liu > Eileen Gu,” Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy wrote in a post on X. “The triumph of America over China!” 

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Other pundits were quick to point out the contrast between Liu’s story, a tale of American loyalty among an immigrant’s child, and Gu, who chose to compete for Team China when she was 15 years old despite living her life in California. 

“Eileen Gu is unlucky that Alysa Liu’s patriotism stands in stark contrast to Gu’s betrayal of her country,” American lawyer and political analyst Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital.

Just how different and how similar are the two Olympic superstars?

Liu and Gu were each born to single parents who left China. They both grew up in the Bay Area

Liu’s father, Arthur Liu, was there in Tiananmen Square in the spring and summer of 1989. 

The Tiananmen Square protests, also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, proved to be a life-changing moment for Arthur and a history-changing moment for everyone else. Hundreds of Chinese students and residents in the capital city of Beijing were killed by the country’s military for protesting the communist government. 

Arthur was later summoned to report to the Office of Chinese Communist Party Youth League to address his presence that day. 

“I refused to provide them any more names of students who had participated in the organization of the demonstrations. … I was going to take full responsibility for everything that had happened since at one time I was elected the president of the Guangzhou Autonomous Student Union of Universities,” Arthur Liu told USA Today. 

“Going to prison for me was a matter of time.” 

He had to sneak onto a boat to Hong Kong, risking up to three years in prison or a labor camp. The boat took an extended detour to avoid military detection. He later fled to California from there. 

“His persistence, and he’s brave too,” Alysa told Fox News Digital of her father during a roundtable interview at the USOPC media summit in October. “We all knew about it. He had some stories for us, but we also found out from our other relatives. They would tell us as well.”

In the 1980s, Gu’s mother, Yan Gu, was a student at Peking University studying chemistry and biochemistry, according to The New York Times. She came to the United States to earn a master’s degree, eventually earning it from Stanford. 

At age 40, Yan gave birth to Eileen, and raised her as a single parent, according to Olympics.com. Not much is known about Gu’s father. Eileen has not publicly commented on him and declined to answer questions about him with The New York Times.

And Liu doesn’t even know her own mother. She and Arthur’s four other children were conceived using an anonymous egg donor and a gestational surrogate. 

As a lawyer, Arthur Liu raised Alysa and her siblings in Oakland. Yan raised Eileen Gu across the bay in San Francisco.

Alysa began skating at age 5 when her father brought her to the Oakland Ice Center. She later trained under Laura Lipetsky, a former figure skater who had trained under figure skating Hall of Fame coach Frank Carroll.

Gu excelled as a student and as an athlete throughout her adolescence. She scored 1580 out of 1600 on her SAT exams. Every summer, she went back to China for a few weeks to get extra math practice, according to The Guardian. 

Gu competed in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup in January 2019. At that time, she was representing the U.S. 

But it was the last time Gu would represent the U.S. 

China embarked on a mission to recruit overseas athletes with Chinese lineage, especially in America

It was called the Chinese naturalization project. 

The project accelerated around 2018–2022, aimed at recruiting foreign-born athletes, primarily with Chinese heritage, to boost competitiveness, notably for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and soccer, according to The China Project. 

Gu and Liu were top recruiting targets.

Gu traded in her red, white and blue for red and gold. Just months after competing in her first Freestyle Ski World Cup for the U.S. in January 2019, she competed for China for the first time in June of that year after requesting a change of nation with the International Ski Federation.

In an announcement on Instagram, she said she made the decision “to help inspire millions of young people” in China and “to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

Seven years after the decision, Gu is the highest-paid Winter Olympic athlete in the world, making an estimated $23 million in 2025 alone due to partnerships with Chinese companies, including the Bank of China and western companies. 

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Gu and Zhu Yi, a fellow American-born figure skater who now competes for China, were paid a combined $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau in 2025 for “striving for excellent results in qualifying for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.” 

Overall, the two were reportedly paid nearly $14 million over the past three years.

The Lius remained loyal to Team USA. 

Arthur was reportedly “not open to persuasion” to having Alysa compete for China, according to The Economist.

Both athletes competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu representing China and Liu representing the U.S. 

Gu won two gold medals and one silver in freeskiing and went home to California as a new global household name for her success. 

Liu finished in sixth place in women’s singles figure skating, then went into a temporary early retirement. 

Gu has refused to answer questions about the Chinese government’s actions; Liu has been directly targeted by Chinese government actions

Gu has become a target for global criticism this Olympics for her decision to represent China while remaining silent on the country’s alleged human rights abuses. 

In an interview with Time Magazine, Gu was asked her thoughts on China’s alleged persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. 

“I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media,” Gu answered. 

“I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general. … So it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary source people who are in a location and have experienced life there. 

“Then I need to go see images. I need to listen to recordings. I need to think about how history affects it. Then I need to read books on how politics affects it. This is a lifelong search. It’s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.”

Liu and her family, on the other hand, found themselves in the crosshairs of China’s government ahead of the 2022 Beijing Games amid her father’s past and her own refusal to compete for China.

Before her appearance in the 2022 Beijing games, she and her father were the alleged targets of a spying operation by the Chinese government.

US OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST ALYSA LIU WAS ONCE TARGETED BY CHINESE SPIES

Liu called the experience “a little bit freaky and exciting.”

“You know what I mean? It’s so … unbelievable. You know what I mean like, that’s crazy,” Liu previously told Fox News Digital at a roundtable interview at the USOPC Media Summit in October.

“Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like In a weird way, I was like, ‘Am I like in some prank show?’ Like, is this world real. Like, I must be some movie character. But, I mean, it was like it made sense to me, you know, from like everything my dad did back in his activist days.”

One of the five men charged with spying on Chinese dissidents living in the U.S., Matthew Ziburis, allegedly contacted Arthur in November 2021, impersonating a USOPC official and asking for his and Liu’s passport numbers, The Associated Press reported at the time. 

Ziburis allegedly traveled to California’s Bay Area, where the Liu family lived, to surveil them and try to coax private information from the family that he could then supply to the Chinese government.

Her father told The Associated Press at the time, “They are probably just trying to intimidate us, to … in a way threaten us not to say anything, to cause trouble to them and say anything political or related to human rights violations in China. … I had concerns about her safety. The U.S. government did a good job protecting her.”

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI came to Liu’s aid. 

She first spoke with the FBI agent who would protect her family at length at a Japanese restaurant.

“I went, like, to eat dinner with her a couple times. I mostly talk, because, like, I’m also, like, really interested in what she does, like guys like, that’s so cool to me. Like, I don’t know, just like meeting with an FBI agent like that’s crazy work,” she said. 

“You know, and I mean, like, not many people can do that. So I, you know, I have so many questions and, like, I’ve met with. Like, a psychologist there, not for me like because, I was like, so curious about, like, what she does.”

Liu added the FBI made her feel “safe” throughout the situation.

The spy operation didn’t scare Liu off from competing in Beijing. But she had heightened security assurances from the U.S. State Department and USOPC, and at least two people escorted her at all times when she was there. 

She went into retirement shortly after the Beijing Games ended. 

“She became really unhappy,” Arthur Liu told USA Today about why she retired. “She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She’s traumatized. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from PTSD, and she wouldn’t go near the ice rink.”

But Liu made her return to the sport just two years later in 2024. By March 2025, she was already making history for Team USA, becoming the first American the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years. 

Her comeback included a storybook ending with Thursday’s gold medal performance. 

Liu hasn’t ruled out adapting her life and experience in an international spying incident into a movie.

Still, she has some preferences if her story makes it onto the big screen.

“They gotta make me look like a super cool hero or something. And just, I can’t just be the kid that got spied on and did nothing about it,” she said. “But, honestly, I would just have the main focus be like my dad’s story because, like, his story is so cool and, like, also just like everything that only happened because of what he did, so, like, I feel like we got to start with the roots.”

All eyes turn to Gu, who has faced a storm of global controversy in Italy as social media rages with politically charged comparisons to Liu

With Liu earning gold on Thursday, Gu is now the last athlete between the two chasing a gold medal. Liu’s win on Thursday has ensured Gu will ski with the backdrop of viral, and often unflattering, comparisons to Liu by American patriots on social media. 

Chang told Fox News Digital that Gu “should count her lucky stars she was born an American. A generous America allowed her to compete for China at the Beijing Olympics four years ago and then let her back into the country. If the reverse were true, and she had been born in China, the Chinese regime would not have been so indulgent.”

Gu will compete in the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe final on Sunday after only winning silver in her first two events. The event was postponed from after severe snow made the original scheduled time on Saturday unsafe. 

Gu had to overcome a near-disastrous crash during her first run of the qualifying round on Thursday to get to this final, and last chance to win Gold in Milan Cortina. 

It will be the climax of a games defined by immense global criticism for Gu. 

She brought backlash upon herself early in the games when she responded to a question about President Donald Trump criticizing U.S. Olympian Hunter Hess for being critical of the state of America.

“I’m sorry that the headline that is eclipsing the Olympics has to be something so unrelated to the spirit of the Games. It really runs contrary to everything the Olympics should be,” Gu told reporters Monday.

“The whole point of sport is to bring people together. … One of the very few common languages, that of the human body, that of the human spirit, the competitive spirit, the capacity to break not only records, but especially in our sport, literally the human limit. How wonderful is that?”

Gu also claimed she had been “caught in the crossfire” herself. 

“As someone who has got caught in the crossfire before, I feel sorry for the athletes,” Gu said. “I hope that they can ski to their very best.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the controversy surrounding Gu in an interview Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”

“I certainly think that someone who grew up in the United States of America who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that makes this country a great place, I would hope they want to compete with the United States of America,” Vance said.

When asked if she feels “like a bit of a punching bag for a certain strand of American politics at the moment,” she said she does. 

“I do,” she said. “So many athletes compete for a different country. … People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just hate China. So, it’s not really about what they think it’s about.

“And, also, because I win. Like, if I wasn’t doing well, I think that they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s OK for me. People are entitled to their opinions.”

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Gu has claimed she was “physically assaulted” for the decision.  

“The police were called. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had my dorm robbed,” Gu told The Athletic. 

“I’ve gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure, ever.”