GREGG JARRETT: Democrat war powers vote was an unconstitutional way to halt Iran strikes

The Senate on March 4 wisely rejected a new war powers resolution aimed at halting or restricting President Donald Trump’s ability to carry out further military strikes against Iran. A House version also failed. 

Introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the resolution in the upper chamber called for ending hostilities “unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force” issued by Congress.

The resolution, supported by nearly all Democrats, was defective for several reasons.

First, the president can engage in military action with or without a declaration of war. He does not need permission from Congress. Second, there already exists a valid authorization for use of military force that applies directly to the current conflict. Third, such a resolution unconstitutionally violates the separation of powers.

The fallacy of the Democrats’ argument is easily demonstrated by revisiting their own words. It was not that long ago that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that President Barack Obama did not need authorization from Congress to bomb Libya in 2011. Democrats in unison mimicked her point of view.

They maintained their immutable stance as Obama conducted air strikes in six more countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. President Joe Biden followed suit with similar strikes, and nary a complaint from Democrats. 

But when Trump does it, the partisan wolves are scratching at the White House door accusing him of acting lawlessly. Hypocrisy is always in vogue on Capitol Hill.

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Trump critics are wrong when they assert that the president is usurping the power of Congress to pursue military action. Quite the opposite. He is executing those powers granted directly to him by the people through the Constitution.

Democrats are the ones who are guilty of attempting to arrogate presidential power.

Constitutional powers

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Our Founding Framers deliberately chose to separate responsibility between the president and Congress in all matters of military action. This separation of powers is embedded in the Constitution that the Founders composed in the summer of 1787.

In Article II, Section 1, “executive power” was granted to the president. An essential element was discretionary authority over foreign affairs and military action to counter threats. This was affirmed by the Supreme Court in the famous Marbury v. Madison decision by Chief Justice John Marshall, who explained that the legislature has “no power to control that discretion.”

Congress was not left out but given a limited function. In the original draft, it was empowered “to make War.” However, James Madison and others successfully argued that such language would give the legislature an outsize role in the conduct of war, which was purely an executive duty.

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Article I, Section 8 was therefore amended to give Congress only the power “to declare war.” What does that mean? It is a formal proclamation to initiate a state of war, typically at the request of the president. It is narrowly construed and is by no means the exclusive power to commence military action. That rests with the president, although Congress can always refuse appropriations to pay for it.

The U.S. has issued declarations of war 11 times in five conflicts. Yet, more than 200 times presidents have invoked their own constitutional authority to deploy and conduct aggressive military action against foreign foes to protect the national interest and secure the safety of Americans.

Article I does not grant Congress the power to prevent a president from doing so.

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War Powers Resolution of 1973

During the undeclared “war” in Vietnam, Congress passed a resolution that sought to constrain President Richard Nixon’s power to conduct military operations. It essentially rewrote the Constitution, giving lawmakers the power they do not have while diluting the authority of the commander in chief.  

It is well established that the legislature cannot, by a simple vote, take away an executive power vested in the president by Article II of the Constitution and simultaneously recast Article I authority. That would require altering the Constitution by amendment.

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For years, many prominent Democrats vigorously denounced the very resolution that their party passed in 1973 with majority control in both Houses. In 1988, Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, soon to become majority leader, criticized it as flagrantly unconstitutional.

“[T]he War Powers Resolution does not work because it oversteps the constitutional bounds on Congress’ power to control the Armed Forces in situations short of war and because it potentially undermines our ability to effectively defend our national interests,” Mitchell said. 

Mitchell, who was once a federal judge and knew a thing or two about the Constitution, was correct. However, since the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the resolution, it remains an active but misbegotten law. No president since 1973 has accepted it as a valid constitutional constraint on their power.

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Some, including Obama, simply ignored it. All presidents in the last 53 years have reserved the right to act unilaterally while still following some of its dubious requirements. That is, notification to Congress within 48 hours and troop withdrawal within 60 to 90 days unless specifically authorized by Congress. 

Thus far, President Donald Trump has fully complied.

If Congress chooses to demand cessation, Trump can disregard it knowing confidently that both precedence and the Constitution would fully justify it. In crafting that esteemed document, the Framers excluded the legislature from any definitive power to end hostilities or war.

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Authorization for use of military force

Immediately after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a joint resolution known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). It granted the president exclusive and extraordinary powers to target those groups and nations that “aided the terrorist attacks … or harbored” the perpetrators of 9/11. The stated goal was to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”

One only needs to read the report of the 9/11 Commission to be reminded of Iran’s complicity. For years, the government in Tehran actively aided and abetted deadly attacks on America by offering al Qaeda terrorists extensive training, intelligence, transit, logistics, weaponry and funding. Some of the terrorists that Iran supported were the very same “future 9/11 hijackers,” the report explained.

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When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, several top al Qaeda leaders fled to neighboring Iran, where they were given safe haven.

As the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, Iran has waged a blood-soaked war against the United States for 47 years. On its own and through its menacing proxies and militias, it has attacked our bases, targeted our citizens, kidnapped our diplomats and claimed the lives of more Americans than any terrorist regime on Earth.

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The maniacal leadership has spent decades building a deadly arsenal of ballistic missiles and attempting to obtain nuclear weapons with the singular purpose of using them against the United States and our stalwart ally, Israel. The evidence of this is overwhelming.

For all these reasons, President Trump has ample constitutional authority — indeed, an affirmative duty — to take preemptive action to end the sinister threat once and for all. 

Here come the big bombs as US escalates strikes on Iran’s huge military arsenal

“Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at U.S. Central Command headquarters on Thursday.

From a tactical perspective, the scale of the airstrikes unleashed in Operation Epic Fury indicates that the U.S. almost waited too long. Starting the campaign to take out Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones required strikes on almost 2,000 aimpoints in just the first few days. That’s one munition per aimpoint, and there could be thousands more to go.

It was now or never. Iran planned to stockpile missiles and drones and build a handful of nuclear weapons that no military force could reach. “Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday. 

The terrifying scale of Iran’s target set went unnoticed by most of the world until last Saturday.

Imagine how difficult this job would have been in a few years — especially with Russia and China helping Iran restock.

“This operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage,” Rubio said on Capitol Hill on Monday. “Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran … imagine a year from now,” he added.

With Iran’s command and control degraded and air defenses flattened, the southern air ingress approaches to the country are wide open. “And now, with complete control of the skies, we will be using 500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound GPS–and laser-guided precision gravity bombs, of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Here come the big bombs to take on hundreds of targets. Those targets include factories, weapons storage sites and every IRGC facility U.S. forces can find. And it’s all happening while a 2,000-mile arc of aerial defense continues.

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The U.S. is not running out of bombs for Operation Epic Fury. Here are seven systems seeing heavy action:

Joint Direct Attack Munition: JDAMs use GPS satellite guidance to hit precise coordinates. The combat-proven JDAM family of munitions is actually a kit. You take a Mk 82 500-pound free-fall gravity bomb, a Mk 83 1,000-pound bomb body or a Mk 84 2,000-pound bomb body, then attach a precision seeker and a tail kit with steering fins just before missions. Military munitions specialists — sometimes called AMMO troops — build the bombs before loading them onto the aircraft. In the Navy, for example, you can spot ordnance loaders on an aircraft carrier deck by their red jerseys. In 2003, U.S. fighter and bomber crews dropped 5,086 of the 2,000-pound GBU-31 JDAMs in Operation Iraqi Freedom. So yes, planners knew to stock up. A new wing kit doubled the range for the JDAM Extended Range variant. JDAMs can attack “off-axis,” meaning behind or to the side of the fighter or bomber.

GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb: Combining precision with powerful explosives, the Small Diameter Bomb weighs 250 pounds and has a remarkable 40-nautical-mile range when launched, along with the ability to strike moving vehicles. The bomb body is advanced, with a more powerful but compact explosive that limits collateral damage. Aircrews can change coordinates in flight for this GPS-guided munition. F-22 Raptors can drop SDBs while flying supersonic.

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Patriot and THAAD: U.S. forces are leading the defense against missile and drone threats. Patriot remains the gold standard for terminal-phase intercepts, and Hegseth noted inventories were in good shape. THAAD — Terminal High Altitude Area Defense — is also widely used.

Air-to-air missiles: For drones, there are many options, starting with fighter aircraft armed with AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles) and AIM-9 Sidewinders. Drones can be tricky to detect on radar, but recent experience in Ukraine means the U.S. has fresh identifying characteristics to work with. Once in range, the slow, hot, whirring pusher engine of Iran’s Shahed drones is not difficult to target. However, Hegseth noted counter-UAS systems have been pushed forward. You knew American technology was the foundation of Ukraine’s superb air defenses, right?  

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VAMPIRE and Coyote: The VAMPIRE counter-drone system’s name says it all: Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment. That means it can go on almost any truck and fire different missiles. The Navy rushed it to Ukraine in 2023, and since then, “VAMPIRE users have successfully shot down hundreds of enemy drones,” according to manufacturer L3Harris. Other examples include Coyote, a small drone that can launch from a sonobuoy to destroy hostile drones or loiter to disable them with electronic jamming in its “non-kinetic” variant. Both have been tested against drone swarms.

To be sure, some Standard Missile-3 Block 1A and Block 2B variants have been heavily taxed. U.S. Navy Aegis destroyers launch SM-3s for exo-atmospheric, midcourse hit-to-kill shots against Iranian ballistic missiles. 

On Feb. 4, the Pentagon anticipated the need and announced Tomahawk production would be boosted to 1,000 per year, AMRAAMs to at least 1,900, and SM-6 missiles to more than 500 annually, with SM-3 production accelerating to two to four times its classified annual rate. For obvious reasons, full munitions inventories are not public information.

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“Your joint force is steady, frosty, calm and focused,” Caine said.

And they have the weapons to carry out their missions.

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MARGARET SPELLINGS: AI is here — and America’s schools aren’t preparing our kids to survive it

Hardly a day passes without a new headline about the potential for artificial intelligence to dramatically change the workforce and the economy. AI can write code and generate photorealistic images. Algorithms can help diagnose disease with remarkable precision. The pace of change is staggering, and the truth is, no one can say with certainty where this technology will lead or which jobs it will ultimately transform.

But here’s what we do know: change is accelerating rapidly. And America’s education and workforce systems aren’t ready.

This isn’t a new problem. Long before AI entered the conversation, our education and workforce systems were failing too many Americans.

Walk into any manufacturing plant, hospital or tech startup today, and you’ll hear the same thing: Talent is in short supply. In our schools, student achievement is shockingly low. The result is millions of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed and at risk of being left behind. For the first time in history, parents do not believe their children will be better off than they are.

What the United States has is a mismatch between workforce preparation and the jobs of today and tomorrow. What we’re missing is a national strategy to connect people to opportunity.

I’ve spent more than two decades leading education and workforce initiatives, and one lesson stands out: While our economy has evolved dramatically, our institutions have remained largely the same.

The numbers tell a compelling story: Seven in 10 employers report they cannot fill current openings. Thirty-seven million Americans have some college education but no credentials, which contributes to 50% of college graduates being underemployed one year after graduation. One in three employers say their average employee lacks the literacy skills needed to perform the job. And gaps in childcare could cost the economy as much as $329 billion over the next 10 years in lost productivity, workforce shortages, and decreased income and revenue.

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These failures predate the AI era, but AI has clarified the urgency. If we can’t reliably prepare workers for the jobs that exist today, how will we prepare them for a workforce transformed by technology we can’t yet fully imagine?

I’ve spent more than two decades leading education and workforce initiatives, and one lesson stands out: While our economy has evolved dramatically, our institutions have remained largely the same.

The answer isn’t to wait and see what happens. It’s to build a workforce and talent system that is flexible, adaptable and resilient enough to support our people and meet what comes next.

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That’s why last February, the Bipartisan Policy Center, which I lead, launched the Commission on the American Workforce. We brought together Democrats and Republicans, governors, business leaders, education leaders and others. After a year of rigorous study, we produced a blueprint. Our recommendations are built on three imperatives that address the core of America’s workforce challenge.

First, we need a coherent federal workforce policy. 

Today, federal dollars are scattered across dozens of programs, each measuring success differently. States, which are closest to employers and education providers, need a federal partner that offers coherence and clear direction. 

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We recommend establishing a Talent Advisory Council to integrate fragmented federal programs and create a shared national strategy. We have a national security strategy and an economic strategy. We also need a talent strategy — a plan for our people.

Second, we need to set students up for success. 

Students deserve clear pathways from high school through training to jobs. This means modernizing how we measure and report progress, so families have real-time data on which programs lead to jobs and good earnings.

It means high schools are redesigned to offer career tracks alongside college prep, not just college prep. It means portable credentials that employers recognize, such as manufacturing or nursing credentials. And it means navigational tools, so families understand their options: What is the cost? What is the return on investment? How long does training take? What jobs are available?

Third, we need to remove the barriers that stop people from working and learning. 

When childcare costs more than a mortgage and paid leave is nonexistent, families suffer and lose opportunity. We need affordable childcare, so parents can work and families can thrive. 

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We need paid family leave, so workers don’t have to choose between a newborn and a paycheck. We need skills savings accounts — portable, tax-advantaged tools that help workers save for training and upskilling. Similarly, new “Trump Accounts” can help families invest in and pay for educational opportunities.

Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming work faster than ever, and skill requirements are shifting in real time. Countries that move first and build integrated talent systems will attract companies and investment. We’re in a global competition. Others are making strategic investments and speeding up. The United States risks falling behind.

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Our K-12 system isn’t preparing students for adaptability and critical thinking. Our postsecondary system isn’t nimble enough to respond to changing demands. Our workforce system is fragmented. Our data is fragmented. Our support for working families is fragmented.

We must ask ourselves: Do we want to keep putting a Band-Aid on a 20th-century workforce system that isn’t built for the 21st century? Or are we finally going to do the hard work of preparing for the future?

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The Commission’s recommendations are practical, bipartisan, and doable. They require coordination and investment, but far less than the cost of inaction.

The question isn’t whether AI will change the workforce. It has, and it will continue to do so. The question is whether we will be ready. Right now, we’re not. But we can be — if we’re willing to act.

DAVID MARCUS: SCOTUS gets case on transing kids right, despite three clueless justices

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week in a 6-3 decision that California teachers cannot hide from parents the fact that their child is identifying as trans in school while the broader case works its way through the courts, but the real question is, what on Earth were the three dissenting liberals thinking?

In fairness, our justices of the left, Elena Kagan, Sonya Sotomayor and Katanji Brown-Jackson, did not render a final judgment in the case. But the idea that parents should be kept in the dark while it plays out is simply repulsive.

The majority, in as obvious a statement as one can make, decided that parents have the “primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children,'” including “the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health.”

As every parent knows, their permission is needed at school for everything from field trips to special holiday meals, but apparently the dissenting trio believes there is an argument to be made for not telling parents their child has changed their gender. Abject madness.

Worse, when you think it through, is that instead of talking about this legitimate mental health challenge with their folks, children are supposed to trust other adults more to make decisions about their gender and sexuality, an incredibly dangerous idea.

Most parents, if they discovered another adult was secretly encouraging their son to wear dresses, would immediately call the police, as they should.

What led the misguided liberals on the court here is the most fundamental misunderstanding, or flat-out lie, if you prefer, underlying the case, that people can be born in the wrong body or change genders.

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Once the justices crack open this pandora’s box, it opens the door to arguments that parents are somehow violating their own children’s rights by refusing to accept their claim to be trans. All across the country, parents have lost access to their children for refusing to feed the trans delusion.

Take the case of Jeanette Cooper of Chicago, who lost custody of her 12-year-old daughter after she went to her father’s house and claimed she was a boy. Even after affirming her child’s pronouns, Cooper still lost custody under the same laws that protect kids from abuse.

“A difference in belief is not abuse,” Cooper told Fox News in 2023. “I think that children who are actually being abused in very material ways should be insulted by this.”

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Apparently, the Supreme Court’s liberals and progressives in general believe that parents who do not just simply and blindly accept that their child has changed genders should have that kept from them, and perhaps even lose them if they refuse to give in.

Is it possible that there are a handful of parents out there who might actually abuse their kids for being trans? It is, but first of all, abuse is already illegal, and more importantly, we cannot disregard the basic rights of all parents because of a few alleged bad apples.

All of this is rooted in the creepy progressive idea that your kids belong to society, not to you, that it is the state, not the parents who bear ultimate responsibility for the child’s development and well-being.

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If there is abuse or neglect, the state can and must step in, but this must be the extreme exception, never the rule, and it should not apply at all in terms of gender identity.

Along with the recent decision by Langone Medical Center and other major hospitals to cease the medical transition of children, this 6-3 decision by the court, and the likely final decision along those lines, are powerful steps back towards sanity.

The conservatives on the court are to be commended for this common-sense decision, but until all of our institutions reject the idea that gender is fluid or nonbinary, we will continue to have children confused about their gender.

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It is not enough to compel teachers to disclose to parents if a child thinks they are trans, they must also be compelled not to preach this fairy tale of gender identity in our schools at all. 

With this Supreme Court decision, that goal is firmly within reach.

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Parents, not bureaucrats, raise America’s children and the Supreme Court agrees

The United States Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that should strike fear into woke school boards across America. In Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court held that a California law preventing schools from disclosing to parents their child’s claimed “gender identity” at school violated parents’ free exercise rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment and their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court determined that California’s policy of socially transitioning children to a different gender at school without parental consent likely violates the free exercise rights of those who have “sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs.” The court went on to note that this “unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition is greater than the indoctrination of LGBTQ story books” that the court addressed last summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor The court similarly found in Mahmoudthat Montgomery County Public Schools violated the rights of objecting parents. That school district paid out $1.5 million to settle the case.

The court also made clear that California’s policy requiring schools to keep a student’s “gender identity” secret from parents likely violated their well-established “rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children” and that the denial of these rights “constitutes irreparable harm.” 

The importance of this decision for parents cannot be overstated. Schools across America must now request parental consent before facilitating a child’s social transition to a different sex. In other words, if a student wants to be addressed at school by pronouns of the opposite sex or use the bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex, the school must get parental consent. Schools can no longer hide or abet the facilitation of a student’s gender transition from parents and pretend it is lawful.

Anyone who has been paying attention to what has been going on in America’s public schools over the last five years knows that California is not the only place where K-12 school districts have been actively hiding a student’s social transition from parents. For example, in Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools’ Regulation 8040 states that “[a] student’s gender identity or transgender status should not be shared without the student’s consent.” The district’s teacher training documents state that “privacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who have family that do not support or affirm their gender identity,” and that when students “do not want their parents to know about their gender identity [] schools should address this on a case-by-case basis.” 

Applying the Supreme Court’s holding in Mirabelli to those policies leads to only one conclusion — they are blatantly unconstitutional. School boards that continue to maintain these policies will do so at their own peril, which arguably could include school board members and other officials being sued in their individual capacity and for punitive damages. And to be clear, the risk of litigation is not limited to parents whose children have been socially transitioned at school. Rather, as the court made clear, “parents who object to the challenged policies or seek religious exemptions” have standing to sue “because they are objects of the challenged policy.” That means that any parent whose school district has a policy like Loudoun’s can sue, either individually or as part of a class action, for deprivation of their free exercise and substantive due process rights.

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The Mirabelli decision provides robust rights for parents to demand that schools seek parental consent before their own child is referred to by opposite-sex pronouns, a different name, or uses a bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex. And, it doesn’t require a huge leap to argue that parents’ free exercise and substantive due process rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children can also be violated when someone else’s child begins using locker rooms or common restrooms of the opposite sex.

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Consider a boy who is allowed to use a girls’ locker room as part of his social transition at school. Parents of the girls using that locker room may very well have religious, philosophical or safety objections to their daughters changing with members of the opposite sex. Unless the school informs parents that their daughters will be exposed to a male student in their locker room before it happens, the girls’ parents are denied the ability to take action they deem necessary to direct the upbringing and education of their children. That is exactly what happens in Loudoun County.

Unfortunately, even with the United States Supreme Court’s clear ruling, some of America’s woke school boards and administrators will likely continue violating the Constitution. They need to be hauled into court and forced to stop and then pay serious money for their intransigence. The Supreme Court’s ruling re-affirms what the Constitution states and legal precedent has affirmed: parents have a Constitutional right to parent their children. Parents have the legal authority and power to do exactly this — and they should use it.

KEN CUCCINELLI: Biden opened our border to Iranian terrorism threats

In the tense days following the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3, 2020, Iran responded with missile barrages on American bases in Iraq, injuring scores of people but deliberately avoiding fatalities. Tehran promised “harsh retaliation,” but no attacks struck U.S. soil. The reason wasn’t deterrence alone or diplomatic restraint but something simpler: Iran lacked operational assets inside the United States.

At the time, the regime had only scattered sympathizers, not embedded networks capable of executing homeland strikes. U.S. intelligence assessments after the strike highlighted threats abroad but noted no credible, specific domestic dangers because Iran’s reach stopped short of American borders.

Secure frontiers and rigorous vetting under the Trump administration ensured that potential operatives couldn’t infiltrate U.S. defenses easily. Encounters with Iranians at the U.S. southern border averaged less than 20 annually from 2000 to 2019. The homeland remained insulated from the threat of terrorism from Iran.

Now, in March 2026, as U.S. and Israeli forces destroy Iran’s nuclear sites and tyrannical leadership in Operation Epic Fury — killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and sparking regional responses — the calculus has shifted perilously. Iran has fired missiles on U.S. outposts in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and beyond.

But the gravest risk simmers within the United States: potential activation of sleeper cells or lone actors on American soil. This vulnerability stems directly from four years of open-border policies under President Joe Biden, who flung doors wide open to unchecked immigration, swelling Iran’s pool of sympathizers in the United States and possibly embedding assets at the regime’s behest.

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After the Soleimani strike, Iran’s plots against the U.S. homeland were aspirational at best. The regime planned assassinations of U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump and former national security advisor John Bolton, as revenge for the general’s death. Yet these fizzled under vigilant counterterrorism efforts and gained no operational foothold in the United States.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bulletins warned of Iran’s intentions to use proxies such as Hezbollah, but emphasized its lack of immediate capability to carry out domestic attacks. Borders acted as a bulwark; Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions and law-based immigration enforcement choked infiltration routes. Iranian-backed networks lurked in South America’s tri-border area, but U.S. enforcement cut off their northward paths.

Biden’s reversal of these policies invited chaos. Starting on Inauguration Day, he dismantled the border wall, axed the very successful “Remain in Mexico” policy, and allowed catch-and-release numbers to balloon. Over 10 million encounters with illegal immigrants followed, including surges from terrorism-prone nations. Apprehensions of Iranians skyrocketed: Border Patrol arrested 1,504 Iranian nationals from fiscal year 2021 to 2024 — a twenty-fivefold leap from the two prior decades.

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Alarmingly, 729 of them were released into the United States, often after scant vetting amid overwhelmed systems. This wasn’t mere oversight; policies such as expanded asylum loopholes and deportation reluctance effectively welcomed risks. In June 2025, ICE rounded up 11 Iranians illegally present in the country, including a former army sniper, a Revolutionary Guard member, and a Hezbollah affiliate — all of whom had slipped in during Biden’s tenure. Intelligence flagged 35 more Iranians plotting cartel-aided crossings that same month.

These entrants expanded Iran’s base of sympathizers and potentially provided support for assets of the Iranian regime. Border czar Tom Homan decried the fueling of “sleeper cells,” a sentiment echoed in DHS alerts about Iran’s use of proxies amid escalating conflicts. Biden’s approach to immigration didn’t just strain resources; it extended an invitation to adversaries. As one national security expert put it, U.S. borders became a “sieve” through which global threats could pass. Hezbollah’s long-standing Latin American hubs funneled operatives north, exploiting the lax border enforcement.

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Today, with Khamenei dead and Iran’s regime cornered, desperation mounts. Trump warns of Tehran’s nuclear brinkmanship. Experts foresee retaliation against the U.S. homeland through infiltrated cells — cells likely planted during the Biden administration. Texas Governor Greg Abbott urges vigilance against “sleeper cells or lone wolves,” and former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe calls for elevated alerts over infiltration. A recent shooting in Austin, Texas, tied to an Iran-linked suspect heightens fears of terrorist attacks at home.

The explosion of risk is profound. In 2020, Iran’s dearth of assets spared the homeland. Now, Biden’s immigration policies have stocked a tinderbox of sympathizers and unknowns, ready for conflagration. Averting – or at least minimizing – disaster requires sealing the borders, reviving stringent vetting and expelling threats. These are all steps the Trump administration has pursued aggressively, but we must commit to maintain such a course for years to come and never let our country inflict such risks upon itself ever again.

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STEVE FORBES: The AI Cold War has begun and America cannot afford to lose

History teaches a simple lesson: the nation that sets the standards sets the future. In the 20th century, America wrote the rulebook for aviation, computing and finance. In the 21st, the decisive battleground is artificial intelligence. And make no mistake — Beijing intends to write the rules.

As everyone is now grasping, artificial intelligence will not be a niche technology. It will fundamentally reshape medicine, manufacturing, logistics, national defense and financial markets. It will create whole new industries. Analysts project trillions of dollars in economic value by decade’s end. For now, the United States remains the innovation leader. But leadership is not guaranteed — especially when the Chinese Communist Party is deploying cheap, coal-fired energy, massive state subsidies and underhanded tactics to close the gap.

Beijing’s strategy centers on so-called “open-weight” AI models — systems whose parameters are downloadable and customizable. These models are exportable by design. They allow foreign governments to run the software on their own infrastructure, keeping servers, chips and data within their borders. In other words, China is offering countries a turnkey path to sovereign AI clouds — powered by Chinese architecture.

By contrast, America’s most advanced labs — companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic — largely operate closed systems. These proprietary models are technological marvels, and U.S. enterprises and federal agencies are adopting them at scale. But they are controlled environments. The rules, safety frameworks and innovation pathways are set inside corporate boardrooms. They are not built to be downloaded, modified and deployed globally as infrastructure.

China has recognized an uncomfortable truth: most nations will not build their own AI from scratch. They will adopt existing systems. For developing or resource-constrained countries, the choice may become stark — expensive, proprietary American services hosted abroad, or high-performing Chinese systems that can be run domestically at low cost. If that binary hardens, Beijing’s model will win market share — and influence.

This is not a purely commercial contest. AI systems reflect the societies that build them. A system shaped by the authoritarian priorities of the Chinese Communist Party will inevitably encode censorship, surveillance bias and state control. Evidence already raises alarms. Chinese models such as those developed by DeepSeek have been shown to amplify Beijing’s propaganda narratives and exhibit troubling vulnerabilities, including susceptibility to “jailbreaks” that bypass safety controls. Combined with China’s documented history of embedding hidden access points in advanced technologies, these weaknesses present obvious national-security concerns.

Allowing Chinese open models to become the global template would export more than code. It would export governance assumptions — about speech, privacy and political power. That is unacceptable for a free society.

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The answer is not to retreat from openness but to compete in it. The United States must lead in open-weight AI grounded in American values and market incentives. As President Trump’s America’s AI Action Plan correctly observed, open-source and open-weight models can become global standards in business and academia. That gives them geostrategic weight. If we fail to provide credible, competitive alternatives, others will fill the vacuum.

Leadership requires policy clarity. First, Washington must embrace a light-touch regulatory framework that sets sensible guardrails without suffocating innovation. Excessive federal micromanagement would drive research offshore and hand Beijing a gift. Second, states should resist the temptation to erect a patchwork of conflicting AI regulations. Fifty different rulebooks will not strengthen American leadership; they will fracture it.

Third, policymakers must understand the enabling foundation of AI: abundant, affordable energy and cutting-edge semiconductor capacity. Affected companies should heed President Trump’s call to build their own power plants. Artificial intelligence runs on electricity and advanced chips. If we throttle domestic energy production or undermine our semiconductor ecosystem, we undercut our own ambitions.

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Finally, we must integrate AI into our national-security architecture. Advanced systems will be indispensable in identifying emerging military threats, hardening critical infrastructure and safeguarding communications. The free world should build atop American-designed platforms, not those engineered to serve an authoritarian state.

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The United States has always thrived thanks to innovation made possible by free markets. That’s why we have the world’s reserve currency, the dominant operating systems and the most dynamic capital markets. We did it not by copying others, but by setting the pace. Artificial intelligence is the next great arena.

If we allow Beijing to write the AI rulebook, we will inherit a world shaped by censorship and coercion. If we lead — boldly, intelligently and with faith in free enterprise — we will shape a future that reflects liberty, transparency and opportunity.

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REP BRIAN MAST: Democrats don’t want war powers, they want to wave a white flag

Right now, American forces are engaged against the Iranian regime’s military infrastructure. Our aircraft are striking targets. Our servicemembers are defending American lives. This is not theoretical. It’s not academic. It’s real.

And in the middle of it, some members of Congress want to pass a war powers resolution to force President Donald Trump to pull U.S. forces out of the region while the threat is still active, still imminent.

That’s not an oversight. That’s surrender dressed up as procedure.

Iran didn’t just wake up yesterday as a bad actor. For 47 years, its regime has chanted “death to America,” taken our diplomats hostage, bombed our embassies, armed Hezbollah and Hamas, backed militias that have killed American troops and launched missiles at U.S. bases. These are not just one-off attacks, these are imminent threats against the United States, carried out again and again.

Every president has tried something different — sanctions, negotiations, diplomatic resets, containment. Iran’s answer has always been the same: stall, deceive, continue to fund terrorism and keep building.

Time and again, weak leaders would rather avoid decisive action and instead hand it over to multinational coalitions and the United Nations — an institution that has become so useless and corrupt it actually named Iran as vice-chair of a U.N. body promoting democracy and women’s rights.

Think about that. Iran — the country that fines, imprisons, flogs and kills women for not wearing their hijab. A regime that limits women’s movement, travel, work and access to basic services. And the U.N. puts representatives of that same regime in charge of women’s rights? The idea that the U.N. would take meaningful action against this threat is downright laughable.

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But it is not just multinational coalitions that have failed to hold Iran accountable. Our own weak leaders in the U.S. have pursued policies that further emboldened the Ayatollahs. President Barrack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) delivered pallets of cash to Iran and lifted crippling sanctions. The JCPOA did nothing to dismantle Iran’s ballistic missile program or stop Iran’s regional aggression. It was a failed policy that funneled cash right into the pockets of Iran’s proxies and emboldened the regime as it chanted “death to America.”

Or we can talk about how under President Joe Biden, Iran gained access to over $16 billion in unfrozen and accessible assets, allowing it to fund terrorism across the globe, and grow the imminent threat Iran has posed against America for decades.

But let’s talk about what is an “imminent threat.”

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The killing of American soldiers at Tower 22 in Jordan, that is an imminent threat. The embassy bombings in Beirut in 1983 and 1984 that took hundreds of lives, that is an imminent threat. And over the past two decades, repeated missile and drone attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria that have put American lives directly in the crosshairs have all been imminent threats. And those attacks happened before Iran had nuclear weapons.

Republicans believe an imminent threat existed, and it certainly exists now when an enemy regime is actively enriching uranium, designing weapons and stockpiling the materials needed to kill Americans.

Democrats act like it’s only imminent when the nuclear warhead is being bolted onto the missile and rolled out onto the launch pad aimed at the United States.

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The danger is real the moment they begin building the gun; why would we wait until the gun is pointed directly at our heads to act?

By then, it’s too late.

A nuclear-armed Iran would be catastrophic. It would embolden every terrorist proxy it funds and would destabilize the Middle East overnight. And it would put American cities in range of a regime that openly calls for our destruction.

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That’s why action now isn’t reckless. It’s prevention and protection for thousands, if not millions, of Americans.

But now we have Democrats in Congress pursuing one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation imaginable.

Forcing U.S. forces to withdraw mid-conflict wouldn’t “de-escalate” anything. It would rip away the protective shield that keeps Americans and our allies safe. Thousands of American civilians live and work in the region. Our diplomats, contractors and businesses depend on U.S. air defenses and rapid response capabilities. Pull that out overnight, and you create a vacuum Iran will gladly fill.

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Every president has tried something different — sanctions, negotiations, diplomatic resets, containment. Iran’s answer has always been the same: stall, deceive, continue to fund terrorism and keep building.

Our allies — Israel and Gulf partners — rely on our missile defense systems, our naval patrols and our joint operations. Pull out now, and you send one message: if you pressure America long enough, we’ll fold and leave our allies out to dry with American lives at risk.

That’s not deterrence. That’s an invitation.

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Congress absolutely has a constitutional role. But that role doesn’t include sabotaging troops while they’re in harm’s way. The war powers debate should be about protecting American lives — not scoring political points.

If my colleagues truly care about American servicemembers, they should stand behind the mission. President Trump has made his objective clear to Congress and the American people — destroy every single piece of machinery or artillery hardware that is able to reach out and touch Americans because Iran has proved they will use everything in its arsenal to harm Americans every chance they get.

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He has complete and total authority under Article II and the War Powers Resolution to remove the imminent threat of Iran against the United States, he’s just the first president with the backbone to finally do it.

I thank him for his decisive actions to keep our country safe, I thank each and every one of my brothers and sisters-in-arms for their service, and may God bless America.

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Pentagon’s AI battle will help decide who controls our most powerful military tech

I spent decades inside the Pentagon watching technology reshape warfare. I saw precision munitions change the battlefield. I watched satellites compress decision cycles. But nothing compares to what is happening now.

Artificial intelligence has moved the lab to the kill chain.

And the showdown between Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and AI firm Anthropic is not a contract dispute. It is the opening battle over who controls the most powerful military technology of the 21st century.

AI is already transforming war

Look at Ukraine.

Western officials report that drones now account for roughly 70-80% of battlefield casualties in that war. But the real revolution occurs when AI is added. Reports indicate AI-guided navigation can increase drone strike accuracy from 10–20% to as high as 70–80%.

That is not incremental change. That is a transformation in battlefield lethality.

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The same dynamic is emerging in U.S. operations involving Iran and other theaters. AI tools are being used for intelligence analysis, targeting refinement, pattern recognition, and operational simulations. These systems compress time, reduce uncertainty and accelerate decisions.

AI is not theoretical. It is operational.

Which brings us to Washington.

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What the Hegseth–Anthropic standoff is really about

On Feb. 27, Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security.” President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to cease using its Claude AI model after Anthropic refused to remove two guardrails:

A prohibition on fully autonomous weapons.

A prohibition on mass domestic surveillance.

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Artificial intelligence has moved the lab to the kill chain.

The Pentagon argues that military commanders must be able to use AI tools for all lawful defense purposes without seeking permission from a private company in real time.

Anthropic argues that removing safeguards could enable autonomous killing systems or unconstitutional domestic spying.

Both concerns are legitimate.

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But here is the deeper problem: America has outsourced strategic control of its most sensitive military algorithms to private contractors.

That is unsustainable.

Draw the right line

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Let me be clear about what must not happen.

We must not expand domestic surveillance of American citizens under the banner of AI efficiency. The Fourth Amendment does not disappear in the age of algorithms.

Second, we must keep a human being in the kill chain. I served under lawful command authority. Life-and-death decisions carry moral accountability. They cannot be delegated entirely to autonomous systems.

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Those are firm boundaries.

But here is the other boundary: no private corporation should hold an effective veto over how America defends itself.

Washington’s contractor addiction

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For decades, the federal government has grown dependent on contractors for critical defense functions — logistics, cyber infrastructure, analytics and intelligence support. AI is simply the next frontier in that pattern.

But frontier AI models are not spare parts or uniforms. They are strategic infrastructure. They influence targeting, operational tempo and potentially deterrence modeling.

That level of sensitivity cannot remain under corporate ownership.

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During World War II, the United States built the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project under centralized national authority. It was not governed by venture-backed boards setting independent usage policies. It was directed by the U.S. government with a clear strategic mandate.

We need a similar mindset for our most sensitive AI systems.

Government must own core military algorithms. Not lease them. Not subscribe to them. Own them.

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AI tools are being used for intelligence analysis, targeting refinement, pattern recognition, and operational simulations. These systems compress time, reduce uncertainty and accelerate decisions.

If AI is the new strategic high ground, America cannot subcontract the high ground.

China isn’t hesitating

As I argue in “The New AI Cold War,” Beijing does not struggle with these dilemmas.

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China fuses AI development directly to the state. There are no Silicon Valley executives in Beijing refusing military access. AI is treated as national infrastructure.

Russia and other nations are moving in similar directions. They are not debating internal guardrails while field-testing AI-enabled systems.

Strategic competition does not pause while we litigate contract language.

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What must happen next

First, Congress must draw bright lines: no AI-enabled mass domestic surveillance of Americans without strict constitutional safeguards.

Second, codify meaningful human control over lethal force decisions.

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Third — and most critically — build sovereign AI capacity inside government.

That means:

• Government-controlled AI research for classified applications
• Government ownership of core defense algorithms
• Reduced reliance on private frontier labs for sensitive military systems
• Long-term pipelines of cleared AI engineers

Anthropic argues that removing safeguards could enable autonomous killing systems or unconstitutional domestic spying.

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Private industry will continue to innovate. But America’s most sensitive warfighting tools cannot remain dependent on companies whose corporate policies can override national defense requirements.

The real issue is sovereignty

The Pentagon–Anthropic feud is not about personalities. It is about sovereignty.

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Who controls the algorithms that guide American force?

Who owns the code?

Who decides how it is used?

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In the new AI Cold War, power will belong to those who control the models — not merely those who rent access to them.

America must protect liberty. We must reject AI-driven domestic surveillance. We must preserve human moral accountability in the use of force.

First, Congress must draw bright lines: no AI-enabled mass domestic surveillance of Americans without strict constitutional safeguards.

But we must also end the illusion that venture-backed firms can function as ultimate gatekeepers of national defense.

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The AI Cold War is not hypothetical. It is unfolding on battlefields abroad and in policy fights at home.

This moment is not about one company. It is about whether the United States will treat artificial intelligence as strategic national infrastructure — or as a contractor service.

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The answer will shape the next generation of warfare.

And history will not wait for us to decide.

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SEN RAND PAUL: America is at war—but Americans didn’t vote for it

Once war begins and American soldiers are under fire, a rational discussion of the pros and cons of war becomes nearly impossible. That is exactly why our Founders wrote a Constitution that demands a debate before the initiation of war.

But there was no debate in Congress, let alone a vote. On Feb. 28, Americans awoke to discover that their country was once again embroiled in a war in the Middle East.

Americans were not asked if they would bear the burdens of war. Instead, the American people were told, through a presidential eight-minute video posted around 2:30 in the morning, that the country was, once again, at war.

And because there was no national discussion about going to war, we do not know whether ground troops will be used. We have no idea how long the war will last. We have no idea who will lead Iran after the death of the supreme leader. And we have no idea how many casualties the American people are supposed to tolerate. We cannot know the answer to these questions because no one bothered to make the case that war with Iran was worth the sacrifice.

The Senate is only now debating whether hostilities should end after they’ve already begun. Before I discuss the merits of this war, I want to say that my prayers, and those of my family, are with the troops in the region, those in combat and anyone who may be called to serve.

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I do not take lightly that combat has begun, that many have been severely injured, and that lives have been lost.

A debate and a vote in Congress provide the nation with the only opportunity to discuss whether the country understands and accepts the inevitable sacrifices of war, especially the loss of life.

It is because of those realities of war that the Constitution grants the power to declare war to the United States Congress — not one individual sitting in the Oval Office. Giving Congress the power to declare war was meant to prevent one person from committing the nation to war. When the nation goes to war, it should be a collective decision, with a clear rationale for war articulated. More importantly, a debate and a vote in Congress provide the nation with the only opportunity to discuss whether the country understands and accepts the inevitable sacrifices of war, especially the loss of life.

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The people have been robbed of a public debate. Let me inform the public that this evasion is intentional.

The congressional leadership — resigned to their own irrelevance — will gladly hand the president the power to initiate war in exchange for plausible deniability. Congressional leaders want to make the case to voters that they are not to be held accountable at the ballot box because they played no role in the decision to go to war. That is not statesmanship. That is shameful.

This country is now at war, which has already cost the lives of six American service members, and many more are severely wounded. Those soldiers and their families deserved a public debate and a vote in Congress before the initiation of hostilities.

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But had Congress debated war with Iran, we would have been wise to recall the words of John Quincy Adams, who, as secretary of state, advocated a foreign policy of restraint: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled,” Adams argued, “there will America’s heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

There is wisdom in Adams’ words, but his was not an original argument. It was George Washington himself who warned in his Farewell Address that America should stay out of the world’s endless conflicts.

Congress has tragically forgotten this advice. The history of the 21st century has been one of endless wars in which America perpetually searches for the next monster to destroy. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria to Venezuela, advocates for war tell us a country is a threat and that toppling a foreign government is a noble quest to protect security at home while spreading freedom globally.

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While they have recycled their arguments — when they bother to make them — the results are always instability, chaos, suffering and resentment.

The Iraq War was launched under similar false pretenses, and the consequences of that fateful decision still reverberate throughout the Middle East to this day. The overthrow of Iraq’s secular government and the collapse of its civil society spurred some of the worst sectarian violence in modern history and directly led to the rise of ISIS.

More than a decade since the U.S. military intervention that toppled Muammar Qadhafi, and a year after the fall of Assad, these divided, unstable countries struggle to escape the cycle of violence and chaos.

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And although Nicolás Maduro may have been removed from power by American military forces, the socialist and oppressive Chavista regime has not been removed from the Venezuelan government.

Most tragically, after two decades of war, the Taliban flag flies over Kabul.

America’s adventures have not produced the promised utopias — or even Jeffersonian democracies.

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History is replete with examples of wars that quickly escalate beyond their initiators’ intent. While some may think we maintain escalation dominance, the spiral of violence can rapidly get out of control.

America is at war. But Americans don’t want this war. They didn’t vote for it. In fact, they voted for just the opposite.

Beyond the documents and words of our Founders, that is why their intention to grant the power only to Congress is so important today.

If the president came to Congress to ask for authorization for war, the people’s representatives could do what they were elected to do: represent them.

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Debate provides information and answers we do not now have.

The constitutional separation of war powers is not just some notion that belongs in our history books. It’s a vital part of a democratic republic. This Congress should be ashamed of how it has allowed this unilateral march to war.

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No others in our history have been this cavalier with our military men and women and tax dollars as they are at this moment.

I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing both this war and the unilateral actions taken without congressional authorization, as the Constitution commands.

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SEN ROGER MARSHALL: Trump medical transparency initiative could save $1 trillion

Every day, Americans walk into a hospital without any idea what they’ll owe when they walk out. In my home state of Kansas, a mammogram costs $70 at one hospital and $800 at another. One hundred million Americans are drowning in medical debt, and we’re spending $5 trillion a year on a system that still won’t tell patients what anything costs until the bill arrives.

At the State of the Union, legislators heard a call to action from our commander in chief. President Donald Trump put it plainly about his “great healthcare plan.” “[M]y plan requires maximum price transparency.” He’s right – it is simple. We have a plan to fix it, and now is the time to seize the moment.

That’s exactly what our “Patients Deserve Price Tags” bill is designed to do. It makes hospitals, surgery centers, imaging centers and labs post their actual prices – real dollars and cents – before a patient ever walks through the door. No more blank checks. No more guessing. It turns patients back into consumers, and that matters more than people realize.

Healthcare is the only industry in America where we’ve stripped out consumerism entirely – where we’ve decided that you don’t get to know the price before you buy. Every other market in America works the same way: when consumers can shop, and providers have to compete, prices come down. Every single time. There is no reason healthcare should be any different.

The numbers tell the story. Even though there’s been a federal price transparency rule for more than four years, only about 15% of hospitals are posting prices. At one hospital in Kansas, a cervical spinal fusion can run anywhere from $650 to more than $26,000.

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And most hospitals, about three out of four, hide their prices in complicated algorithms that only a contract expert could understand. But here’s what happens when you finally let people see the prices: they shop. Experts estimate that price transparency would save up to $1 trillion – $1,000 a month for the average American family.

And here’s what makes this moment truly special – this isn’t a partisan fight. The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act has 18 Senate co-sponsors, Republicans and Democrats alike. Patient advocacy groups, employer coalitions and families across the country are behind it. Nine in 10 Americans support price transparency regardless of party. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “If America truly wants to make life affordable again, healthcare transparency is where we start.”

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Washington doesn’t agree on much these days, but on this, we do. When the White House, Congress, and the American people are all pointing in the same direction, there’s no excuse not to move.

Trump made the call from the biggest stage in America. The legislation is written. The coalition is built. The only thing left to do is finish the job. Don’t let Washington lobbyists stop this any longer. Pass the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act and give Americans what they have always deserved – a price tag before the bill.

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Trump is realigning world energy markets and the Iran strikes are actually helping

Iran’s tyrannical and ruthless regime is disintegrating. After yet again massacring thousands of its own citizens for voicing their dreams for liberty and better governance, the Iranian regime, meanwhile, resumed pursuing nuclear capability and its aggressive ICBM program. The regime’s overconfidence in U.S. inaction cost it its leader, and its core military capabilities are going up in smoke. Against this backdrop, the conflict has spread to the Gulf, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum, and forcing the rest of the world to rethink how it prices energy risk and political alignment.

This is not another regional flare-up. This is a rupture of an old equilibrium in which sanctioned oil, shadow fleets and calibrated escalation kept markets stable enough to function. That equilibrium is now breaking. A rapid political-military shift in the Middle East is unfolding alongside a restructuring of the global energy order.

When I was in Afghanistan during the surge, Tehran’s active support for the insurgency fighting the United States and Afghan forces fomented instability and amplified violence for which civilians paid the biggest price, a dynamic that so many across several nations have tragically encountered for decades. But Iran was never a contained regional problem.

While its terrorism was widely perceived as a Middle East issue, its cyber and intelligence operations spanned continents, with assassination plots that included the American president. As to global effects, Iran’s energy has always made its regime globally significant.

At this stage of the conflict, the most economically significant and immediate geography is the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran is working to choke off. Roughly one-fifth of global petroleum and a substantial portion of liquefied natural gas move through that narrow corridor. As strikes intensified, vessels paused transit, insurers reassessed exposure and operators rerouted cargoes. Markets adjusted immediately. Energy security and geopolitical stability are now inseparable; maritime risk has become the pressure valve through which regional conflict spills into global consequence. 

This realignment did not begin in the Gulf this weekend. It started with U.S. actions in Venezuela. Caracas holds the world’s largest proven crude reserves — about 303 billion barrels — and even marginal normalization under a more U.S.-cooperative government alters the supply calculus for Washington and its allies.

The new U.S.–Venezuela arrangement has already generated roughly $2 billion in transactions in just weeks, pulling Venezuelan barrels back into wider circulation and altering the discount ecosystem Moscow had grown accustomed to. Stack that with a post-crisis Iran re-entering markets on different terms, and the shadow ecosystem of discounted, sanctioned crude — Russia, Iran, Venezuela — begins to fracture and reprice simultaneously.

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But the most consequential energy recalibration runs through Beijing. China is essentially Iran’s oil export market. In 2025, China bought more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil, averaging ~1.38 million barrels per day (bpd), about 13.4% of China’s seaborne crude imports — meaning Beijing is simultaneously Tehran’s economic lifeline and its strategic choke chain.

By turning a sanctioned producer into a quasi-captive supply relationship — sustained through gray-market routing, reflagging and intermediary hubs — Beijing secured discounted barrels in normal times and leverage in crisis. Any sustained disruption of Iranian flows forces China into replacement buying that tightens global markets and exposes China’s own energy security; Iran exports about 1.6 million bpd mainly to China and such disruptions pushes Beijing to pivot to alternatives.

The relationship is therefore best understood as a dependency loop: Iran needs China for revenue and sanctions relief-by-proxy; China uses Iran as a discount supplier and as a pressure valve in the sanctioned crude system — one that can be tightened or loosened depending on Beijing’s broader negotiation posture with Washington and its appetite for risk in the Gulf. That Iran-China dependency is no longer stable. With Iranian oil flows disrupted, China faces a choice between turning to alternative suppliers at higher cost or even tapping strategic reserves. Tightening global crude markets resulting from U.S. actions in Venezuela and now Iran give Washington leverage in energy pricing.

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Beyond the tanker decks, this shift underscores the larger theme of reconfiguration: resources once bundled to manage sanctions are now subject to heightened geopolitical risk, forcing China to rethink dependencies while the U.S. and its partners are positioning to shape the post-conflict energy order. Energy supply patterns will restructure global power relations. And where China is recalibrating exposure, Russia is recalculating opportunity.

The same forces reshaping China’s calculations are altering Moscow’s. As India trims Russian purchases, Moscow has been pushing more barrels into China, and Reuters reports China’s Russian crude imports hitting new records in February while Russian sellers widened discounts to keep demand — Urals trading roughly $9–$11 below Brent for China deliveries, and other Russian grades also cutting hard as sellers chase Chinese refiners.

The new U.S.–Venezuela arrangement has already generated roughly $2 billion in transactions in just weeks, pulling Venezuelan barrels back into wider circulation and altering the discount ecosystem Moscow had grown accustomed to. 

This matters because China is also the anchor buyer for sanctioned Iranian crude; the “discount market” is not infinite, so Russia and Iran are now competing for the same limited pool of Chinese buyers, driving deeper concessions and leaving cargoes idling — exactly the kind of sanctions-economy dynamic.

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Add the West’s tightening focus on Russia’s “shadow fleet” and the risk of seizures or insurance denial, and you get an energy chessboard where coercion moves from rhetoric to logistics: who can ship, insure and clear payments reliably becomes as strategic as who can produce.

In that context, Russia’s loud warnings about Hormuz disruption are not just diplomacy, they are a reminder that Moscow profits from volatility, but also needs a functioning gray-market channel to China, and Iran’s crisis threatens to scramble the very discount ecosystem Russia has used to finance its war in Ukraine. Structural realignment threatens the very gray-market architecture on which Moscow has relied.

Energy is only one layer of a global shift. Strategic minerals remain critical. The Trump administration has increased economic and maritime pressure on Cuba, tightening an effective oil blockade that choked off fuel imports. President Donald Trump has authorized tariffs targeting countries supplying oil to Havana.

This is not simply punitive policy. It reflects a broader strategic doctrine: deny adversarial regimes energy lifelines while repositioning the Western Hemisphere’s resource base toward U.S. leverage. Oil is only one domain. Rare earth elements are a strategic asset. Cuba’s nickel and cobalt output, combined with China’s tightening grip through rare-earth export controls indicates that leverage is not just oil fields but also supply chains. America achieving rare earth elements sovereignty will remain a strategic goal and such a global realignment on this front is much needed.

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By the close of the first weekend, Iran appeared intent on accelerating its own collapse by compounding strategic error with strategic error. Iran felt it wise to respond to U.S. and Israeli strikes by pushing a half dozen other nations against it. On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 28, Iran launched attacks on seven sovereign nations – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Israel. It added Oman shortly after.

These nations now have a legal and political basis to deepen security ties with the U.S. and Israel that they could never have justified domestically before today. Iran has arguably done more to consolidate the anti-Iran regional architecture in one afternoon than a decade of American diplomacy. Watch for accelerated Abraham Accords-adjacent normalization with Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.

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Any sustained disruption of Iranian flows forces China into replacement buying that tightens global markets and exposes China’s own energy security…

After massacring thousands of its own citizens for demanding better governance, the regime’s long-standing presumption of U.S. inaction cost the 1979 Revolution its dream of ruling over Iranians perpetually. After 47 years, its leader is gone, and its core military capabilities are being dismantled.

The lesson is not simply that the Iranian regime is falling. It is that when it falls amid energy choke points and great-power competition, supply chains, alliances and leverage structures shift simultaneously. Iran’s collapse is not the end of the story; it is the catalyst for a broader redistribution of power across energy, alliances, and great-power leverage. America should exploit these shifting dynamics fully. 

MORNING GLORY: Texas might be the key to saving Trump’s second term agenda

On May 26, 2026, the second half of President Donald Trump’s second term may be on the ballot.

Texas Senator John Cornyn held off Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to lead in the first round of the 2026 race for the Texas Senate seat, but since Congressman Wesley Hunt drew more than 13% of the primary vote, a run-off between Cornyn and Paxton will be held on May 26.

Senator Cornyn is a stalwart conservative, a former Texas State Supreme Court justice and a strong supporter of President Donald Trump. Attorney General Paxton is a fixture of the often black-and-blue brawling of the Lone Star State’s internal combinations.

How black-and-blue?

Paxton was impeached by the overwhelmingly GOP-dominated state legislature on 16 counts of alleged wrongdoing in 2023. Paxton survived his trial in the Texas State Senate and was acquitted, but should he somehow catch and pass Cornyn in the run-off, the safe GOP seat in deep-red Texas suddenly becomes very winnable for the Democrats who have nominated boy-band-look alike James Talarico. Cornyn will roll over the young man. Paxton is likely to get rolled by him.

President Trump could come in on Cornyn’s side before May 26 and put an end to the sideshow that threatens to put the GOP’s Senate majority at risk if Paxton wins.

The Senate GOP enjoys a 53-47 advantage right now. While it is hard to see a path for Democrats to get to 51, it’s not impossible. It becomes much more likely, in fact, if Paxton wins the run-off and loses the general. Much. More. Likely.

What would a Democratic Senate majority mean for President Trump? Start with long, repeating Senate trials on bogus articles of impeachment which will roll over from a House Democratic majority on a conveyor belt. Count on a Democratic Senate majority to go to any lengths to recapture the White House in 2028 while crippling the ability of 45-47 to get much done in his last two years.

The courts would also be at risk. President Trump’s nominees for the federal bench, especially the Supreme Court, should any occur, would not get a hearing as Democrats chant in unison the name of Merrick Garland.

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In fact, it would not be surprising to see zero nominees for any advice-and-consent position proceed to a floor vote. The Democrats are deranged — “These people are crazy!” was the best line of the president’s State of the Union — and a “TDS” infected Democratic Senate majority would be a nightmare for the president and the Republic.

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The good news is that Texas Republicans are a smart lot. They have rejected every attempt by national media over two decades to get them to desert the GOP to support the latest progressive poster child. Texas voters play politics like they play football — to win. Trading a veteran and accomplished legislator for (at best) the lowest ranked senator in an institution that runs on seniority would be foolish indeed. Switching Cronyn out for Paxton is inviting Talarico to “represent” Texas for six long years.

Texans shouldn’t bench a long-time winner for an injured and injury-prone JV player. President Trump can assure that they won’t. The president played it smart by letting Texas Republicans pick their leader in the clubhouse. Now is the time for President Trump to seal his party’s majority in the Senate in 2027 and 2028 with a ringing endorsement of Senator John Cornyn.

MARK HALPERIN: Is Democrat James Talarico the real deal — or Beto 2.0 headed for a Texas flop?

Hope can indeed be a dangerous thing.

State Rep. James Talarico said just that on Tuesday night — “A little bit of hope is a dangerous thing” — and he meant it as a call to action, a summons to the faithful. But the line lingers in the Texas air for a different reason. Democrats are about to invest a great deal of time, money and, yes, hope in the notion that a young state legislator from Round Rock is the man who will break a nearly four-decade winless drought for his party in the Lone Star State.

Hope can animate. It can also delude.

For Democrats, the drought is real. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. Ann Richards is a memory. The Bush era came and went. The Tea Party rose. Donald Trump remade the GOP. Beto O’Rourke flashed and faded. And still the red wall has held, impregnable.

Now comes Talarico — youthful, fluent, quick on his feet, comfortable quoting Scripture and cable news soundbites in the same breath. The media love him. He wowed Joe Rogan in a long-form podcast appearance that had Democrats texting one another links with exclamation points. He has raised serious money. He has shown a knack for turning controversy into currency, deftly parlaying a late-night fracas involving Stephen Colbert into fundraising fuel and free exposure.

His primary victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett stunned some Democratic insiders. Crockett had higher national name recognition, a strong base in Dallas and an endorsement from Vice President Kamala Harris that many assumed would prove decisive. It did not. The Harris imprimatur did not propel Crockett over the top. Talarico won — not narrowly, not ambiguously, but convincingly enough to signal that something real is happening inside his party.

And yet.

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Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Sen. John Cornyn finished just ahead of Attorney General Ken Paxton in their primary, forcing a runoff that will define the race as much as anything Democrats do. Most veteran Texas political handicappers in both parties believe Cornyn would beat Talarico in November. Cornyn is known, funded, battle-tested and capable of running a disciplined campaign with national help. The Senate Republican apparatus would line up behind him in an instant.

Views are more mixed about what would happen if Paxton were the nominee. Paxton carries baggage — legal troubles, ethics questions and a long trail of scandal headlines. Democrats salivate at the prospect. They see a path: suburban Republicans uneasy with Paxton, independents turned off by drama, Hispanic and Black voters, and a well-spoken Democrat talking about faith and fairness.

But even here, hope may be doing more work than math.

TEXAS SENATE PRIMARIES EXPLODE AS CORNYN WARNS PAXTON COULD COST GOP MAJORITY, DEMOCRATS CLASH OVER RACE

Because Democrats intoxicated by Talarico’s rise are overlooking an inconvenient truth: He is a liberal. Not a moderate in centrist clothing. Not a triangulator. On issue after issue — abortion, gun control, the border, climate, LGBTQ rights, taxes — he sits comfortably on the left flank of his party. In some respects, he appears to be more liberal than Crockett, whose sharper rhetorical style sometimes obscured a more conventional policy profile.

Hope, untethered from history and arithmetic, can become its own kind of mirage. Democrats once believed Beto O’Rourke would do it. Before that, it was Wendy Davis. Each time, the money poured in, the national media swooned and Texas Republicans quietly counted votes.

Talarico’s slick media performances and professions of faith — he is open about his Christianity and speaks often about moral purpose — have created an image of a post-partisan bridge figure. But opposition research is coming. It always does. Republicans are already compiling footage, floor speeches and votes. They are digging into his issue positions and his personal life. December’s story detailing his social media interactions with OnlyFans models and prostitutes will surely not be the last unflattering headline resurrected in a general election.

Texas is not Manhattan or Malibu. It is Houston’s energy corridors, the Rio Grande Valley’s shifting politics, the fast-growing suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth and the small towns where cultural conservatism still hums beneath the surface. Democrats have made gains in the suburbs, yes, and Tuesday’s results suggest a return of the Hispanic vote toward Democrats. But statewide victory requires threading a very narrow needle — expanding the urban base, holding suburban converts, winning Hispanics decisively and cutting into rural Republican margins without frightening culturally moderate voters.

TEXAS DEM WHO SAID GOD IS ‘NONBINARY’ NOW SAYS ATHEISTS ARE MORE ‘CHRIST-LIKE’ THAN CHRISTIAN COLLEAGUES

That is a high-wire act for any Democrat. It is especially so for one with a reliably liberal record and a personal blank slate about to be filled in by super PAC ads.

On the Republican side, the calculation is cold and clear. The smart money says Donald Trump will overcome his friendship with Paxton and ultimately side with Cornyn, heeding the advice and pleading of top political aides aligned with the incumbent, as well as Senate Republican allies like Majority Leader John Thune. 

The reasoning is simple: Endorse Cornyn, likely save the seat and avoid spending tens of millions of dollars in a brutal runoff and then in a divisive general election at a time when every seat — and every dollar — counts.

Trump understands power. So do Senate Republicans. A lost Texas seat would not just be a headline; it would be a body blow.

Which brings us back to hope.

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Talarico’s rise is real. His talent is undeniable. He has given Texas Democrats something they have not had in a long time: a candidate who feels fresh rather than recycled, fluent rather than flustered, devout without being dour. In a politics that often seems exhausted, he looks energized.

But hope, untethered from history and arithmetic, can become its own kind of mirage. Democrats once believed O’Rourke would do it. Before that, it was Wendy Davis. Each time, the money poured in, the national media swooned and Texas Republicans quietly counted votes.

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“A little bit of hope is a dangerous thing,” Talarico said.

He meant it as inspiration. In Texas politics, it may prove prophetic.

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MIKE DAVIS: The unsung, but crucial foot soldiers in Trump’s war on fraud

In proclaiming a “golden age of America” in his State of the Union address, President Trump correctly focused on his initiatives to fix the problems perpetrated by the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations that undermine the physical and economic security of the United States. One of those initiatives is Trump’s war on fraud, which, according to the president, is intended to root out and remedy the “corruption that shreds the fabric” of our nation.

Under the leadership of Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Colin McDonald, Trump’s nominee for the newly created federal post of assistant attorney general for the National Fraud Enforcement Division, Trump’s war will be waged aggressively. As the president put it, “We are not playing games.”

But to win the war against fraud, the Trump administration must force the uniparty institutionalists at the Justice Department to change course and protect a key ally in the war on fraud: whistleblowers. Despite being treated as pariahs for decades by the Justice Department’s elitist careerists, whistleblowers are instrumental in enabling the recovery of taxpayer dollars from entities that defraud the government. Whistleblowers play a critical role under the False Claims Act, which has been used to recover $85 billion in taxpayer dollars since 1986. Just last year, the government recovered more than $6.8 billion under the False Claims Act – the highest single-year recovery in its history.

Unfortunately, parts of the Justice Department have not gotten Trump’s memo. This is particularly true of the career attorneys in the DOJ’s Civil Division, which is given investigatory and litigation responsibilities under the False Claims Act.

The Civil Division maintains policies that undermine Trump’s war on fraud. How? Those policies undermine whistleblowers — the foot soldiers in the trenches — who uncover and litigate fraud claims on behalf of the Justice Department. The Civil Division maintains it has the unfettered discretion to dismiss any anti-fraud lawsuit brought by a whistleblower under the False Claims Act merely by deciding the lawsuit will not vindicate the government’s interest — whatever that means. The Civil Division maintains it can make this decision without evidentiary support and without regard to the underlying facts. That’s hard to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s 2023 8-1 decision in U.S. ex rel. Polansky v. Exec. Health Res., Inc., which held that the Justice Department does not enjoy such unfettered dismissal discretion.

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More problematically, the Civil Division’s continuation of the Bush, Obama and Biden anti-whistleblower policy undermines the Trump administration’s efforts to combat fraud. Indeed, despite years of hard work and a lot of money invested by whistleblowers, the Civil Division maintains it can pull out the rug from under whistleblowers at any time, for any reason, or no reason. This arbitrary Civil Division policy makes it much less likely whistleblowers will enlist in Trump’s war on fraud.

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Targets of fraud enforcement by the Trump administration properly include Somalian day care centers, university DEI programs and other examples of corruption actively promoted by Democrats. A whistleblower exposing such fraudulent and illegal activities does so at considerable personal risk. But what whistleblower would knowingly take this risk if her action under the False Claims Act were subject to Civil Division policy it could dismiss any lawsuit, at any time, for any reason or no reason?

Americans have learned the hard way that we have magnitudes more fraud than federal prosecutors and agents to root it out, so the Justice Department’s support of whistleblowers is more critical than ever. A successful war against fraud requires alignment across the government. Vance acknowledged as much, noting in a recent Fox News interview that his efforts will include a “full, whole government approach” to investigating fraud concerns. But this approach necessitates that the Civil Division change its policies to support, rather than undermine, a critical ally in Trump’s war on fraud: whistleblowers.

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Parents are fighting back against the systemic antisemitism poisoning classrooms

The Anti-Defamation League recently published an online toolkit on how to “decode and disrupt” problematic messages in the K-12 curriculum. It purports to teach parents how to identify and address biased curriculum in their kids’ schools. When I saw it, it felt like a gut punch.

The toolkit cites a familiar example: a 2017 Vox video titled “The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Brief, Simple History.” It’s the same biased video my friend’s daughter was required to watch in her seventh-grade class in 2018 — the one after which a classmate shouted, “F— Israel.” The video that local Jewish leadership, including the ADL, assured my friend had been handled by the district, only to reappear, two years later, in her daughter’s ninth grade social studies class. So much for it being “handled.”

Then October 7 happened, and a deluge of distorted narratives flooded K-12 classrooms. As a result, antisemitism, cloaked as political rhetoric, took over the halls of our children’s schools. Parents quickly became alarmed. It was obvious — misinformation had been festering in schools for years prior, yet had been addressed quietly, episodically, and in isolation (or sometimes not at all), never systemically. And it was this inaction that laid the groundwork for the systemic Jew-hatred embedded in our K-12 systems today.

Parents nationwide quickly realized no one was coming to address the systemic problem, and classrooms were becoming more hostile by the day. Many communal leaders didn’t have kids in the schools; the threat felt abstract. They didn’t understand hyper-local district dynamics, lacked relationships with school leadership and were constrained from engaging in political advocacy. Worse, they weren’t ready to admit an ideological takeover was fueling the problem.

But, we as parents saw it instantly. We felt it viscerally. And so we dove in headfirst, and began swimming upstream against the ideological tide that told educators, administrators, and school board members that our kids weren’t entitled to the same “inclusion” as other marginalized students.

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By the time this toolkit appeared last month, we had already identified the problematic curriculum, developed a plan and got to work. We organized locally, influenced school board elections, formed nonprofits and built parent networks from scratch.

But we’re underfunded, isolated and exhausted. Our supposed allies are sometimes pushing us aside or “pouring water back in the boats we’ve just baled water from.” The role of the established Jewish community is not to arrive late and tell parents what to do. Rather, it is to listen to the parents already doing the work with humility and use their resources to help scale what’s already working.

We don’t have exorbitant PR budgets, communications teams, paid social media strategists and in-house lawyers. We need money. We need infrastructure. We need connections. Connections to each other. Connections to the media to fight the fight in the court of public opinion. Connections to government officials at the federal, state and local levels. And connections to lawyers who can help us fight the fight in the court of law. And, when all is said and done, we need to know our leaders will have our backs when our enemies inevitably come after us.

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There are promising examples of parent empowerment, such as the Bay Area Center to Counter Antisemitism and the North American Values Institute (NAVI). At NAVI, we empower parents by listening to them and providing tools like our White Paper, When the Classroom Turns Hostile.

Parents did not choose to become advocates — we were forced into it when our children were targeted. This moment calls for humility, partnership and urgency. Parents are a crucial part of the solution that has been overlooked. What we need now is real and earnest partnership, real resources and real power.

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Khamenei is dead — and Iranians dare to hope for freedom again after decades of tyranny

“Khamenei is dead?” That was the first sentence at the top of every message I received as Operation Epic Fury unfolded. The question mark at the end baffled me; Israel had already announced that it had verified the body in the rubble of the missile attack to be that of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Even more confusing was that the question persisted even as mainstream news sites splashed the words “Khamenei is dead” across their screens.

Then it dawned on me that this was no longer a question. It was disbelief, compounded by a rare combination of mourning and celebration. It was a look into the surreal world in which Iranians had come to live, as if anything that happened in Iran was like sleepwalking into someone else’s nightmare.

And then there was a flood of messages filled with exclamation marks and fireworks emojis. The mood shifted from disbelief to jubilation. Iranians were dancing in the streets, honking their car horns and chanting “Freedom! FREEDOM!”

They had not envisioned this moment arriving so early, only a few hours into Operation Epic Fury, and so precisely targeted that all the buildings surrounding Khamenei’s compound remained standing.

The longest-running dictator of the modern era, who had managed a façade of invincibility for himself and disposability for his opponents, was dead. His era of denying Iranians a sense of normalcy — of life lived without one’s own choices — had come to an end.

FORMER TOPGUN PILOT DECLARES IRAN MILITARY ‘OVER WITH’ AMID US AIR SUPERIORITY, BUT WARNS OF ANOTHER DANGER

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 had abruptly upended normalcy, veiling women, banning bars and movie theaters, separating genders and gradually transforming public spaces into glorified cemeteries, with pictures of Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) “martyrs” looming large.

For those of us with fond childhood memories of parks with flowerbeds and fountains, and men selling toys and balloons from pushcarts, nothing looked like the Iran we knew. The Iran we loved changed slowly, and then quickly, from a modern, forward-looking country to a scene out of an Islamic “Mad Max.”

But as recent uprisings have shown, Iranians are resilient and creative. “They are like wheat in a field,” Rolof Benny, a celebrated photographer touring Iran to capture its beauty, told my parents. “They bend their heads with the coming storm and stand right back up.”

MORNING GLORY: WHY TRUMP MUST FINISH WHAT HE STARTED WITH IRAN’S REGIME

Life was not as seamless as Benny had observed. But he was right that Iran is unique. Longing for normalcy, Iranians began to quietly rebel, naming their baby boys Shahan — a Persian-origin name meaning kings — instead of the regime-sanctioned Mohammad. They created movies that won awards in international competitions.

Careful not to raise the ire of the regime’s morality council, they embedded their anger in plotlines depicting the regime’s tyranny through stories of divorce and the dissolution of families, the anguish of a rebellious child, or a father dying of Alzheimer’s who forgets the unbearable present and lives in the past.

Normalcy was also the call in the song “Baraye” (“For the Sake Of”) by Shervin Hajipour. Popularized during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Hajipour sang of towering trees lining Tehran’s famed Pahlavi Avenue, barking dogs and idle days spent drowning in one’s beloved’s eyes. Hajipour won a Grammy in 2023 in the Best Song for Social Change category.

DOUG SCHOEN: AS A DEMOCRAT, I BACK TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE — MY PARTY IS WRONG

It is almost too easy — and perhaps too early — to conclude that the mullahs were the authors of their own demise.

But for a government anchored in the teachings of the Quran, the regime was blatantly immoral and unspeakably ruthless, butchering Iranians in the streets or in the isolation of prison wards. Many who were detained were never seen again. Many who were released were ghosts of their former selves.

Perhaps the bigger offense to proud Iranians was the clerics’ claims to nationalism, as they often wove Iran’s beloved poetry into their hateful sermons. Nationalism is Iran’s most enduring ideology, and Iranians ridicule any pretense by the clerics with gusto.

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“They don’t represent me or my people,” I would often hear in interviews with Iranians. “There is nothing Persian about the Ayatollahs.” In the aftermath of the 12-day war, they insisted they would not rally around the flag “because this is not our flag.”

Just as the Islamic regime’s flag replaced the ancient Lion and Sun, the rule of the clerics was a construct from the start. In fact, it had no precedent in Islamic history. “We did not create a revolution to worry about the price of tomatoes,” Khomeini would angrily retort to those who came to kiss his robe and ask mundane questions about running the country. “Islam is the answer. It has everything.”

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Ironically, Iranians’ rejection of Khomeini’s Islam has brought two ancient peoples together. My sources in Iran speak of a growing bond between Iranian Jews and crowds of protesters. “Ma hameh ba ham hasteem” (“We are all in this together”) is now chanted while Israeli flags wave alongside the Lion and Sun flag across Europe and the U.S. In this, history has come full circle from Cyrus the Great to the present.

A return to normalcy may not be far behind.

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Big Apple vs. Oranges: Why NYC pays more and gets far less than Florida

When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani debuted his first budget last week, the $127 billion price tag sparked a range of inartful, and often inaccurate, comparisons on social media with spending by the state of Florida ($117 billion, with three times the population) and other governmental units as far away as Tokyo.

Florida Governor DeSantis doesn’t oversee trash pickup or legions of firefighters, just as Mayor Mamdani isn’t responsible for his state’s prison system or its sprawling wilderness preserves. Nor are Japanese prefectures comparable to New York City’s five boroughs.

None of this excuses Gotham’s excess. To the contrary, the quest for rage-clicks with apples-to-oranges comparisons risks numbing Americans to even more extreme parts of NYC’s spending — and the lessons the rest of the country should draw.

The biggest piece of the NYC budget, the public school system, is best viewed as a union jobs program for adults, shielded from scrutiny by what is often a greater focus on equity than on outcomes. It’s on track to make up roughly one-third of city spending next year.

The most recent federal data, for school year 2022-23, pegged NYC’s spending at $33,387 per pupil. None of the nation’s other 90 largest districts topped $24,000. The next largest, Los Angeles, spent $22,606, followed by Miami-Dade at $13,138, Chicago at $22,699, and Nevada’s Clark County schools at $11,569.

Fourth graders in Miami-Dade outperformed their New York City counterparts in the most recent federal standardized math and reading tests; eighth graders in the two districts posted comparable average scores, even as NYC spent two-and-a-half times as much per student.

NYC’s high spending stems in part from its recent decline in public school enrollment. The number of students was sliding in the lead-up to COVID and dove as families exited the system (and often the state altogether). The number of first-graders sank from 87,000 in 2015 to fewer than 70,000 last year — and a rising share of them are attending charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed.

MAMDANI’S CLASS WARFARE AGAINST NEW YORK BUSINESSES IS ‘ECONOMIC VANDALISM’

My colleague Danyela Egorov notes NYC has at least 100 city-run schools with fewer than 150 students. Most government agencies facing such dissatisfaction would by now have undertaken a radical transformation. The teachers union risked losing political clout if the workforce shrank, so it got Albany to force the city to hire thousands more teachers to backfill empty classrooms, under the guise of shrinking class sizes.

Labor’s stranglehold isn’t limited to the Department of Education. Outside the highest echelons of managers, virtually every city employee has his or her terms and conditions of employment set by a union contract — part of the enduring and costly legacy of Mayor Robert Wagner, who ordered city agencies to ink contracts with employee unions in the late 1950s.

The result is almost cartoonish inefficiency, since even the smallest changes to how agencies run and how services are delivered must be negotiated. Union deals until recently prevented residents of the city’s public housing from getting repairs after 4:30 p.m. (or on weekends); another union’s control of city lifeguard jobs has forced the city to leave some beaches closed.

MAMDANI’S RENT FREEZE, TAX HIKES A ‘ONE-TWO WEALTH DESTRUCTION PUNCH,’ ECONOMISTS WARN

NYC is also one of the few remaining public employers that provides premium-free health insurance to not only its employees but also its retirees. (Even New York state government requires its employees to pick up at least 12% of the cost).

When police officers and firefighters are eligible to retire at half-pay and keep their benefits after 20 years on the job, it means city taxpayers can be on the hook for the current equivalent of almost $1 million in healthcare benefits alone before that retiree hits Medicare age — and then for additional coverage after.

The city’s unions are meanwhile pressing state lawmakers to make even non-uniformed workers eligible for full pensions at age 55 and to slash how much they must contribute toward them.

MAMDANI’S ‘PAINFUL’ TAX HIKE THREAT MOCKED BY WASHINGTON POST FOR PROVING ‘SOCIALIST UTOPIA IS EXPENSIVE’

The problem isn’t that NYC splurges on one benefit or another. Its “union town” mindset reflects an institutional resistance to efficiency; taxpayers, and the quality of the services being provided, are an afterthought. A city whose unions are powerful enough to force it to absorb 100% of the increase in health insurance costs is also unlikely to allow, let alone embrace, new opportunities for automation or other cost-savings.

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New York’s unique collective bargaining law requires unionized employees to keep getting raises even after their contract has expired, leaving elected officials with little leverage to push for changes that would improve services or otherwise bring down costs.

It’s on top of this bloat that NYC also goes above and beyond offering services many other communities wouldn’t imagine. The price of the city’s newly expanded housing-voucher program is poised to keep ballooning, rising over the next two years by $2 billion more than originally budgeted. Meanwhile, NYC keeps blurring the line between public education and government childcare as it expands “pre-kindergarten” offerings down to 2-year-olds as it pursues “universal childcare.”

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Mamdani’s ambitious spending agenda has been temporarily derailed as he grapples with the fact that city officials for years spent more than they collected, a risky proposition outside of a recession or emergency. For the new mayor, it’s a painful lesson in fiscal reality.

For the rest of America, it’s a chance to learn from, and avoid, NYC’s bad choices.

After Epic Fury: How to defend America’s security and values in a dangerous world

Operation Epic Fury has the potential to be a game changer in America’s fight against terrorism. President Donald Trump has taken decisive steps to cripple a known state sponsor of terror, one that has targeted innocent civilians — including Americans — for almost 50 years.

Unfortunately, we can’t assume retaliation by Iran and its proxies will be limited to the region. Nor can we expect that other proponents of terrorism will stop targeting the United States. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have both announced they are now on high alert for homeland attacks.

The strikes against Iran come as America nears the 25th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. This anniversary is an opportunity to evaluate how the country has fared in its fight against terrorism and where we must focus our efforts going forward.

The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), on which I serve, takes this as its mission. The 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of PCLOB to help ensure that government actions taken to protect the nation from terrorism are balanced with the protection of privacy and civil liberties. A bipartisan congressional panel, chaired by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and co-chaired by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is now evaluating how the Intelligence Community has implemented the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations and whether our intelligence agencies are equipped to counter the threats the United States will face over the next 25 years.

Based on PCLOB’s work reviewing government counterterrorism programs for national security value and privacy and civil liberties protections, here are some things the panel should consider:

Don’t Forget About Terrorism

While attention turns toward “great power” competition with China and Russia, 25 years without another large-scale mass casualty terrorist attack is not the result of luck. Military operations like Operation Epic Fury have disrupted terror networks overseas. And constant vigilance by law enforcement and intelligence officers has consistently and quietly thwarted numerous attacks. A new generation must be trained and appropriately resourced to fight terrorism.

TRUMP PLEDGES TO ‘AVENGE’ FALLEN US SERVICE MEMBERS AS TENSIONS WITH IRAN INTENSIFY

Don’t Rebuild “The Wall” 

The 9/11 Commission identified a policy prohibiting information sharing between FBI personnel working on intelligence matters and those working on law enforcement investigations — known as “the wall” — as a major factor that prevented discovery of the 9/11 plot. The Commission even found records of a dispute between an agent trying to track down two of the terrorists and an intelligence analyst who refused to share useful information, a refusal the analyst believed was required by the wall. The agent presciently warned that if the information were withheld, “someone will die.” The Executive Branch and Congress must make sure that any efforts to regulate counterterrorism programs do not rebuild the wall or create new bureaucratic barriers to foiling future attacks.

Prepare for New Forms of Terrorism

 The 9/11 terrorists succeeded partly because they employed a tactic no one expected: using airplanes as missiles. Counterterrorism strategists had previously assumed that if terrorists hijacked an airplane, they would hold the passengers hostage or explode the aircraft. The failure to predict new methods of terrorism led to gaps in preparedness. It would be an error to fall back into complacency about terrorists’ capabilities and intentions. New forms of terrorism — such as drone attacks on the homeland, or AI-enabled cyberterrorism and bioterrorism — need to be anticipated.

Provide Transparency 

To be effective, national security operations generally must remain secret. But the United States is far ahead of most other countries, including our democratic allies, in providing public information about intelligence programs operated by the government. This is consistent with our values and helps ensure public support for the intelligence community. Transparency is a central function of PCLOB, which published five public reports in 2025 — our most productive year on record — on subjects ranging from the Terrorist Watchlist to the FBI’s use of open source information. The intelligence community should continue its transparency, and when possible improve reporting of both its successes and failures.

Utilize Technology in Privacy-Protective Ways

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 Adopting new technology does not have to mean endangering privacy and civil liberties, and building safeguards into systems at the outset is crucial. PCLOB staff concluded, for example, that TSA’s installation of facial recognition technology at airport security checkpoints is a well-designed program that in its current form significantly mitigates privacy and civil liberties risks. Expansion of artificial intelligence capabilities in the counterterrorism space has the potential to provide similar benefits if designed and deployed responsibly.

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, Congress is wisely looking back to see if our intelligence community has corrected the mistakes that led to the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, and if it has done so consistent with America’s founding principles. The challenges ahead require us to continue to preserve that balance.

Beyond the Iran Deal: Why Trump’s refusal to ‘kick the can’ just saved generations

The national security experts of the deep state called him “unqualified” when he sought the presidency in 2016. They said he was reckless. Some 50 former GOP national security officials said he “would put at risk our country’s national security.” And even one former secretary of Defense called him “cavalier about the use of nuclear weapons.” 

Turns out they really didn’t know much about Donald Trump. They didn’t understand that he viewed keeping the American people safe as his top responsibility as commander in chief. And they didn’t grasp his commitment to ensure that the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism, a radical Islamist regime that had vowed “death to America,” never acquired a nuclear weapon. 

The free world has long been concerned about Iran’s nuclear program.  And it’s their nuclear ambitions, when combined with the ever-increasing range of its ballistic missile capability, that poses the greatest threat. Over the years, steps have been undertaken to try and delay or slow down Iran’s nuclear efforts. The Stuxnet cyberattack in 2010 destroyed many spinning centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz facility. Experts believe this set Iran’s nuclear program back approximately two years.  Regardless of these efforts though, Iran would always reconstitute and expand its nuclear program, thumbing its nose at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) along the way.

In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or “Iran Deal,” was negotiated with U.S. government support, and the support of the vast majority of national security experts who opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016. During the 2016 presidential campaign, then candidate Trump called it a “horrible, one-sided deal” because it did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, and that it would allow Iran’s nuclear efforts to continue as restrictions are phased out. Fortunately, in 2018, President Trump, determined that Iran would never have a nuclear weapon, formally withdrew the U.S. from the Iran deal.

To me, another non-starter for the Iran deal was that Americans were not permitted on IAEA inspection teams. As President Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, said at the time, “No Americans will be part of the IAEA team.” This was ludicrous. The United States is the largest donor to the IAEA. American taxpayers provide over 25% of the IAEA’s budget. There should be an American on each IAEA inspection team.

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Iran has also exported its nuclear and ballistic missile know-how. It has been the chief enabler of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Using open-source intelligence (OSINT), I first revealed to Fox News in 2012 that Iranian experts were at a North Korea missile launch. I further revealed that Iran and North Korea were both using the same miniaturized nuclear warhead design that can be traced back to the infamous Pakistani scientist, Dr. A.Q. Khan. On September 1, 2012, in Tehran, North Korea signed an agreement with Iran focused on scientific and technological cooperation. During the visit of the North Korean delegation to Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei announced that both countries must reach goals despite pressure and sanctions from others. Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported that after the agreement was signed, Iran stationed staff in North Korea to strengthen cooperation in missile and nuclear development.

We shouldn’t be surprised. As the Federation of American Scientists pointed out in the late 1980s, Iran has been in bed with North Korea since the early 1980s and helped fund North Korea’s missile development. When we look at Iran’s Shahab missile, we see it looks an awful lot like the North Korean Taepodong missile.

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Last year, on June 22, 2025, President Trump made the right decision with Operation Midnight Hammer to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. And he made the right decision with Operation Epic Fury, to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, a day after the IAEA reported suspicious activity at Iran’s uranium enrichment sites that were bombed last June. As Senator Lindsey Graham aptly put it, “The mothership of terrorism is sinking. The captain is dead. The largest state sponsor of terrorism — Iran — is close to collapsing.” Earlier intelligence had also revealed that Iran was rebuilding its ballistic missile program last fall after receiving several shipments of sodium perchlorate from China. Sodium perchlorate is the main precursor of the propellant for Iran’s ballistic missiles. 

The elites who opposed President Trump from the start helped structure the Iran deal, which would have eventually allowed Iran to resume its nuclear ambitions. Prior administrations gave Iran a lifeline by transferring enormous sums of cash. President Trump, though, stuck with his gut that America, our children and our grandchildren, would not be safe with an Iran that possessed nuclear weapons, combined with long-range ballistic missile launch capability. He made the right decision for this, and future generations of Americans. And China and Russia are taking note that this president is different. The security of the American people is foremost with him, and he doesn’t kick the can down the road. The entire world is seeing what real American leadership looks like.

DAVID MARCUS: Legacy media anoints Talarico, downplays Crockett in Texas Democratic primary

Over the past two weeks, the liberal media has been boosting Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in ways rarely seen in a state primary, including what critics call misleading coverage and manipulation. 

But his opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, known for being outspoken, is not going away quietly.

It all started Feb. 16, when late-night political pundit Stephen Colbert falsely claimed the Trump administration and CBS had banned an interview with Talarico from airing. It never happened. Colbert later acknowledged the segment was satirical, but the controversy helped raise $2.5 million for the candidate and elevate his national stature.

At that time, Crockett had a firm, if not overwhelming, lead in the polls. Since then, without any major endorsements from elected Democrats, Talarico has been treated like a golden boy by liberal media outlets ranging from the far-left outlet The Nation to The New York Times.

But some voters I talked to in Dallas this weekend said they aren’t buying the hype.

I typically do not describe the skin color of people I talk to for my columns. It rarely has relevance. But in the case of Cedric, who is Black and works for the sanitation department cleaning parks, I made an exception because he brought it up.

“They don’t think the Black woman can win,” he told me, referring to what he sees as the media’s preference for the White Talarico. “But everyone I know is voting for her, and the unions are. Don’t count that woman out.”

DEMOCRATS HAVE ‘DONE JASMINE CROCKETT DIRTY,’ IN ATTEMPT TO WOUND CAMPAIGN, GOP STRATEGIST TELLS MS NOW

It brought to mind a recent viral video clip of a White woman in Texas who was literally crying because she loves Crockett but thought she had to vote for Talarico based on electability. The overwhelming emotion she felt was almost certainly shame at the idea of betraying a Black woman for the would-be greater good.

And I found evidence that these scare tactics from the Democratic media might be working.

One Democrat voter in his 70s told me Sunday he had still not made up his mind, but, “I like what I see in the Talarico ads, and it seems many people think he has the best shot. Guess I have some thinking to do.”

CROCKETT BLASTS ‘LEFT’ FOR ALLEGED SKIN DARKENING IN ADS AS TEXAS SENATE CLASH HEATS UP

Adding to the general sense of confusion over this Senate primary is the fact that the polling has been as schizophrenic as Dr. Jekyll. One day last week, two polls came out, one with Talarico up 12 points, the other with Crockett up 12 points. What is anyone supposed to do with that?

The only way this kind of polling gap can happen, short of intentional manipulation — of which there is no evidence — is if these pollsters have wildly different ideas about what the makeup of the electorate will be, which is the subjective side of that particular social science.

The polling averages have pushed Talarico into a slight lead, heralded at every turn by liberal commentators on TV celebrating the shift. But, on the ground, this supposed wind at Talarico’s back is harder to feel.

TEXAS SENATE PRIMARIES EXPLODE AS CORNYN WARNS PAXTON COULD COST GOP MAJORITY, DEMOCRATS CLASH OVER RACE

Cindy, in her 20s, who is a barista, told me, “I don’t trust the polls at all. I just vote for who I think is best.” In classic Texas tight-lipped style, she declined to tell me who that was.

The conventional wisdom here in Texas is that Talarico has done enough to get over the top. I even heard this from GOP operatives. But, importantly, the people crafting that conventional wisdom all seem to be on Team Talarico.

As the results come in on Tuesday night, there is an important side bet to watch as well, because Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed Crockett, a risk for a woman with a pretty wide lead in the 2028 primary polling.

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Believe me when I say that the very same left-leaning news anchors and producers who are criticizing Crockett’s campaign want Harris nowhere near the top of the ’28 ticket. But does Kamala know something they don’t?

This primary in Texas is now, among other things, a test of the power of the liberal mainstream media. They are all in on Talarico. A Crockett win would expose just how little influence the former giants of news now have.

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The good news for Democrats is that both Talarico and Crockett have pledged to support the other should they lose, which is nice but may not heal the divides.

At some point, Democratic voters, especially Black voters, will grow tired of being forced to always vote for the nice, plain White guy in tight races. It is, at bottom, an illogical effort to fight racism with racism, and its center may not hold.

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Stop trusting political parties to save urban America. It’s time for us to rise and rebuild

Urban America does not need a political party. For decades, we were told that if we only had the right political savior, our problems would be solved. But no one is coming.

What Urban America needs are principles: the timeless, universal values of faith, family, agency, ownership, discipline, safety and accountability.

We don’t need any more of this Republican vs. Democrat talk. We’ve done it to death, and we cannot afford to succumb to false promises any longer — not when our communities have only worsened. A man once told me that progress can only happen the moment we stop lying to ourselves. It is far easier to believe in false promises than to look at the cold reality of where most of urban America, including my South Side Chicago neighborhood, stands — at the bottom of the American totem pole.

In my Walk Across America, which is now taking me through the Cotton Belt in the Deep South, I have seen many urban communities. In far too many of these areas, I’ve met people whose dreams have been dimmed by a cycle of government dependency that saps dignity and stifles growth. These people have been cut off from the greatness of America.

We don’t need any more of this Republican vs. Democrat talk. What Urban America needs are principles: the timeless, universal values of faith, family, agency, ownership, discipline, safety and accountability.

That is why I’ve come to believe that what Urban America needs most are American principles. Those principles do not belong to any political party. They are universal and timeless. They are why people from all over the world want to come here.

The greatest sin is that we who live in Urban America have allowed ourselves to be separated from these principles. We have sold ourselves short by embracing inferior ideologies. How can anything grounded solely in race lift us up? But the principles of individualism — from accountability to responsibility — can do wonders for developing one’s talents and capabilities.

MISSISSIPPI’S SCHOOL MIRACLE SHAMES FAILING CHICAGO LEADERS ON EDUCATION

Many Urban American neighborhoods rank at the bottom in statistics when it comes to education, violence and two-parent families. We don’t even go to church that often, which is very telling in itself. The only way out is development grounded in American principles.

Our Johnny, at his core, is no different than suburban Johnny. Our Johnny may not have all the resources that suburban Johnny has, but so what? We’ve used that as an excuse for too long. We focus on the differences between the two Johnnys, but they are all external. What we don’t focus on are the commonalities. Both Johnnys share the miracle of the human body: two feet, two hands, two eyes, two ears and the wonder of the brain. That is why we must embrace the belief that Urban Johnny can embrace the same American principles that suburban Johnny uses and rise to the top. We have no other choice but to try.

What I’m talking about here, ultimately, is a mind reset. We’ve been told for decades that America is a horrible and racist country, where police lurk behind every corner waiting to shoot us dead. That’s a lie. People in Urban America kill each other at far greater rates than any outsider, and yet no one points to that fact. I wonder why.

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That is why this mind reset is so needed. I met an immigrant on my walk. He was selling fruit from a stand on the side of the street. I asked him where he was from. Ireland. I asked him what he thought of America. “The greatest country in the world,” he said without hesitation. He went on to tell me that at night he works as a waiter and makes $300 in tips. But what he said next stayed with me:

“No one tells me what to do. I get up in the morning. I have a family to support — three kids and a dog. I have to get up. If I don’t go to work, we get nothing. It’s all on us. So I work and work. Someday, I will have my own business.”

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He’s hoping to become a citizen, along with his family, soon.

There’s no magic here. The man gets up and works 16-hour days at two jobs. It’s all up to him. It’s that simple. But that’s the beauty of America and her principles. America gives us absolute freedom as long as we follow the law. That is the mindset that Urban America must embrace if she is to undergo a revival. And if she does, she will no longer be at the bottom. Guaranteed.

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REP RO KHANNA: Congress must reclaim war powers from an out-of-control Trump over Iran

As a principled opponent of military adventurism since America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, I was devastated this weekend when we learned that once again, American servicemembers will be coming home in body bags. Trump announced, “There will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is.”

No. That’s not the way it is. That must not be the way it is. As Trump now refuses to rule out sending ground troops to Iran, I believe we must do everything in our power to stop this horrific war of choice before more Americans are killed. That is why this week, I am forcing a vote in the House of Representatives on a bipartisan resolution with my Republican colleague, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, to end this illegal and unconstitutional conflict. These families are in my thoughts and prayers. But we also owe our fallen soldiers’ families and every military family with sons and daughters still in harm’s way a debate and vote in Congress.

The framers of our Constitution knew that any president would have incentives to start unnecessary, costly and destabilizing wars. As James Madison wrote, “War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” That’s why they entrusted the authority over war and peace “fully and exclusively” to the people’s representatives in Congress — not the president.

Trump once seemed to understand this. In his 2024 election night victory speech, Trump promised, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” In 2016, he channeled Republicans’ resentments with the Iraq War, saying that conflict “started ISIS, it started Libya, it started Syria,” and its architects “lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none.”

Ten years later, the administration is promoting a new set of lies, including the false claim that U.S.-Israeli airstrikes were actually preemptive, against imminent threats from Iran, even as a peaceful diplomatic solution appeared to be within reach.

We owe our fallen soldiers’ families and every military family with sons and daughters still in harm’s way a debate and vote in Congress.

Let’s be clear: Just 1 in 4 Americans support this war with Iran. This country does not want to see more dead Americans. Americans don’t want higher gas prices, which will spike at the pump because of this stupid conflict. They don’t want higher inflation. They don’t want us to waste tens of billions of dollars on this war, all while millions of Americans lose their healthcare. They don’t want to throw the Middle East into more chaos and unpredictable violence while well-connected Pentagon contractors enrich themselves. Americans want Washington to focus on jobs, childcare, infrastructure, schools and healthcare at home.

MIKE DAVIS: WHY TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE WAS NECESSARY AND LAWFUL

Yet the president who warned in 2023 of those who “want to squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they’re creating here at home” is plunging this country into a reckless war with barely an explanation for why.

This week’s vote could be one of the most consequential in our nation’s history. Congress can play a critical check on this unthinking march into deeper and more reckless war.

I believe no one individual should decide whether to put American sons’ and daughters’ lives on the line for a war of choice. Every member of Congress, collectively representing 340 million Americans, must participate in this solemn debate. And each of us must be held accountable for the consequences.

This isn’t a partisan issue. I am informed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who argued that “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” I am forcing this vote this week on behalf of millions of mothers and fathers. If enough like-minded Democrats and Republicans join together against the permanent-war party and the military industrial complex, the House can pass this resolution and send a powerful and unmistakable directive to the Executive Branch: remove U.S. forces from this ill-conceived and unconstitutional war.

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After all, the longer this war drags on, the more dangerous it becomes. Iran is a complex society of 90 million people — more than three times larger than Iraq in area and more than triple its population when we invaded Iraq in 2003. Top U.S. military advisers warned that with limited stocks of air defense systems, American and Israeli forces will be forced to absorb incoming fire from Iran’s missile arsenal in the coming days and weeks. Our 40,000 American troops in the region remain at risk from Iran’s retaliatory attacks.

Instead, we must assemble a global coalition that is ironclad in our shared commitment that Iran must never be allowed to have a nuclear bomb. A smart approach should have targeted sanctions and other tools to prevent the Iranian government from obtaining nuclear weapons. We can and must deal with the regime’s horrific crimes, violations of human rights and its slaughter of brave Iranian protesters. But bombs will not end Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump supposedly “obliterated” eight months ago. Nor will bombs bring regional stability or justice for the protesters. America, in John Quincy Adams’ words, should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” but should not go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.”

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This week’s vote could be one of the most consequential in our nation’s history. Congress can play a critical check on this unthinking march into deeper and more reckless war. I will be urging my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote yes on House Concurrent Resolution 38. And I respectfully ask Americans across the political spectrum to engage with their lawmakers to support this measure.

After decades of wars launched by presidents of both parties, it’s time for Congress to build a new bipartisan majority: Congress must reclaim these war authorities from an out-of-control Executive Branch and use this moment of crisis to unify our country around a shared priority: No war with Iran.

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LIZ PEEK: Democrats rage over Trump’s Iran strikes as exiles cheer ayatollah’s fall

Leftists in the U.S. are seriously confused. While Iranians around the world celebrate the death of the thuggish Ayatollah Khamanei, who ruled their country with an iron fist, liberals in the U.S. are condemning President Donald Trump’s war to liberate the Persian nation.  

Opposition to the U.S.-Israel joint attack on Iran was broad and swift, powered in part by Trump Derangement Syndrome — if he’s behind it, they’re reliably against it — and also tinged with antisemitism.  

The smoke had not yet cleared from the bombings in Iran before Democrats started shrieking their objections, with Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy, for instance, calling it “dangerously illegal and a mistake of staggering scale,” and denouncing the president as a “would-be dictator.” Murphy has also called Israel’s policy in Gaza and in the West Bank “immoral” and recently announced that he would not support additional military aid to Israel.

Anti-Israel Democrats in the House were especially strident, with “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib from Michigan posting, “It’s clear that the genocidal govt of Israel doesn’t care about children + human life including our own loved ones in the military.” She also posted, “The government of Israel is addicted to bombing hospitals, schools, refugee camps which are all war crimes.” 

Democrats have been pulling away from their traditional backing of Israel for some time, and especially since the far left took hold of their party. Axios reported in December that the DNC’s still-secret “autopsy” of why Vice President Kamala Harris was defeated by Trump in 2024 concluded that the former VP “lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza…” 

Iran has brought nothing but bloodshed and destruction to Israel, the United States and the Middle East for decades.

That is, in sifting the ashes of the 2024 election for clues as to why an inarticulate candidate who admitted she couldn’t think of a thing she’d do differently from the wildly unpopular Joe Biden went down in flames, Democrat officials determined…it was Israel’s fault! Democrats are quick learners — their support of the Jewish state is dwindling fast.

It isn’t just Democrats piling on. Criticism also came from far-right conspiracy theorists, too.

FROM MISSILES TO MINERALS: THE STRATEGIC MEANING BEHIND THE IRAN STRIKE

We also heard criticism from the utterly worthless and anti-Israel U.N., with Secretary-General António Guterres condemning the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran and demanding immediate negotiations “to pull the region, and our world, back from the brink.” 

Guterres has overseen a U.N. with “a glaring anti-Israel bias, advancing biased and one-sided efforts to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state,” reports the pro-Jewish group AIPAC. A bias AIPAC can document and which, astonishingly, has “escalated dramatically since Hamas’ October 7 attack.”

Spineless European leaders stood on the sidelines, initially distancing themselves from the U.S.-Israeli initiative. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at first declined to give the U.S. permission to use its air bases, thus forcing American jets to undertake a 20-plus hour flight to carry out their mission. He then relented, earning ridicule from all sides.   

US CLEARED TO USE BRITISH BASES FOR LIMITED STRIKES ON IRANIAN MISSILE CAPABILITIES

Of course, witless students also weighed in, with Columbia University’s most renowned anti-Israel group, responsible for last year’s “encampment” built to protest the Gaza conflict, posting “death to America” in Persian after the U.S. and Israel killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. That prompted Sen. Tex Cruz, R-Texas, to demand that foreign students sending out such anti-American messages be “deported immediately.” He’s right.

One student protester told an interviewer that the U.S. “should align with Iranian regime instead of Israel because Iran ‘is not fascist.'”

Zohran Mamdani, the newly installed Muslim mayor of New York, harshly condemned President Trump’s war with Iran, saying, “Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression.” He also said, “Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers and community leaders.” The mayor assured them, “You will be safe here.” 

Mamdani misread the room, assuming that Iranians living in the U.S. would react as he had to the attack on the mullahs. Instead, joyful Iranians gathered in Times Square to celebrate the end of one of the most hated and savage regimes in history.

IRANIAN-AMERICAN DEMOCRAT ‘INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED’ WITH PARTY’S RESPONSE TO US-ISRAEL STRIKES

They apparently felt perfectly safe, as indeed they were.

There are certainly valid reasons to fear a military confrontation with Iran. The country hosts a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles, it has a well-trained and now vengeful military, and it can disrupt the world’s oil supply by mining the Straits of Hormuz. Also, it is a large country of 90 million people; Iran’s citizens may hate the mullahs, but they have no weapons with which to bring down the theocracy.

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But Iran has brought nothing but bloodshed and destruction to Israel, the United States and the Middle East for decades. There could be no peace or progress in the region while Iran continues to fund its terror proxies and doggedly pursues long-range missiles and a nuclear bomb. 

Democrats who mourn the scrapping of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, protesting that the JCPOA was preventing the regime from acquiring a nuke, surely know better. The deal was seriously flawed, it was unverifiable and from day one the mullahs prevented U.N. inspectors from carrying out agreed-upon certification of the pact.

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President Trump has ended the mullahs’ reign of terror and united the region in a manner no one could have imagined.

This is a righteous endeavor. Let us hope that on the other side, a free Iran will become a trusted ally.

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MORNING GLORY: Why Trump must finish what he started with Iran’s regime

President Donald Trump has proven again and again to have mastered strategic and tactical surprise in conflict, and to depend upon the military professionals advising him. Now, however, he faces a decision on when to end the battle with the Islamic Republic of Iran or whatever regime follows its collapse. 

In making that decision, the events of 35 years ago should figure in his calculation. 

The American-led international coalition that assembled to drive Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops from Kuwait began that war with a massive aerial and naval bombardment of Saddam’s forces in Kuwait and some targets in Iraq on January 17, 1991. The first phase of the first Gulf War lasted five weeks. The second phase, a ground invasion of Kuwait, began on February 24, 1991, and famously (or infamously) concluded after 100 hours.

Serious military professionals have long debated the decision by then President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell to end military operations when they did. A huge tactical success had been achieved and the strategic benefit of such an overwhelming display of force, and almost certainly some Americans are alive today who would not have survived an extended campaign to depose Saddam Hussein 35 years ago.

But..

The “Marsh Arabs” of Iraq, the Shi’a Muslim population that inhabited the marshlands around the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the southern part of the country still controlled by Saddam after the 100-hours campaign, attempted to wrest their freedom from Saddam’s remaining forces.  A 1992 Human Rights Watch report concluded: “In their attempt to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians by firing indiscriminately into residential areas; executing young people on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack unarmed civilians as they fled the cities”

Add to that massacre another decade of atrocities by Saddam against his people that did not end until the second President Bush, this time with Dick Cheney as the vice president and Colin Powell as secretary of state, ordered the military to invade Iraq and topple the dictator. In the dozen years between the two wars came the expense and danger of the two “no-fly zones” which the United Nations authorized and the U.S. enforced.

EX-CIA CHIEF WARNS NOT TO UNDERESTIMATE IRAN’S RESPONSE AFTER OPERATION EPIC FURY EXPOSED REGIME ‘ARROGANCE’

A friendly fire incident — U.S. F-15s mistakenly shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters with the loss of 26 military and civilian lives. 

The extended deployment of American forces in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also believed to have led to the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers on June 25, 1996, a housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. 19 Airmen were killed and more than 400 U.S. and international military members and civilians were injured in the attack, which has been attributed to either or both al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The towers were home to troops and civilians supporting Operation Southern Watch, the no-fly zone operation in Southern Iraq.

Counter-factuals are not useful for debate. — American officials make the most difficult decisions with limited information, some of which we still don’t know — but the actual history that followed the 100 hours of war can inform the decisions ahead of President Trump.

MARK LEVIN: HANDS OFF POST-WAR IRAN? THAT COULD BE A GRAVE STRATEGIC MISTAKE FOR AMERICA AND THE WORLD

Had the first Gulf War not been halted at the arbitrary elapse of 100 hours, but instead extended into a ground campaign in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, a completely different history of the Middle East would have followed, one perhaps free of the Iranian nuclear and missile programs which have precipitated this battle. But the coalition assembled by the first President Bush might have frayed and fallen apart. The American casualties of that war would have exceeded the 300 killed and 450 wounded. Again, the debate about “What might have happened” is a ridiculous one to conduct. We cannot know.

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But President Trump and his advisors can, and no doubt are, reflecting that with the Islamic Republic on its back, without much in the way of defenses, but still with striking power, the United States may want to persevere in the ongoing battle until a new set of rulers free of the medieval theological motivations of the now dead Ayatollah Khamenei are in place.

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It is not for civilians to draw up war plans, but presidents ought to study the decisions of their predecessors. A premature end to this battle will almost certainly lead to another one, perhaps without the advantage that the tactical surprise of this weekend’s attack brought us. We can fairly guess that because this regime refused to stop its nuclear program, its missile program and its export of terrorism after President Trump ordered Qassem Soleimani killed in January 2020, and again after Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated the nuclear weapons program of the Islamic Republic. Instead, the fanatics atop this barbarous regime began to rebuild their killing capabilities and displayed their true nature with the stunning massacre of more than 35,000 of its own citizens in January. This regime is incapable of changing. The regime must be changed. 

Persevere President Trump. Americans have been dying at the hands of this wicked regime since it came to power in 1979. More have died this week. Do not let it survive to kill again. 

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