How Will US End the Iran War?

As we approach the end of 60 days of the war in Iran, we continue to hear from the Left that President Donald Trump has failed because the United States is losing the war. According to Victor Davis Hanson, this is “completely nonempirical” and “antithetical to the evidence.” 

Iran has big problems. It “is losing about $500 million in input per day” and “running out of storage space in a week or two for its daily output of oil.” At that “point they either have to stop pumping or they’re going to have – if they don’t stop pumping – their wells will collapse.” They will be forced to either “stop pumping” or “build, as fast as they can, storage facilities, which will be known to us and we can take out.”

Hanson believes that Iran is “at the brink economically” with “no military ability.” In fact, the “course of the war, how it ends, is entirely in the hands of the United States” depending on whether we “want an unconditional surrender and you want to pay an extra price – maybe another month or two – with economic strangulation” or we “want to use air power to take out bridges.” America can choose how to do it.

What I’m getting at is it’s not a military problem like Afghanistan and Helmand Province, or the Marines having to go into Fallujah in Iraq. It’s entirely a political problem. It’s not a military problem. The military problem has been solved. It’s just a question of how much political price does President Donald Trump – or risk, I should say – want to take to get an unconditional surrender and the removal of the regime.

He doesn’t need to do that. That was not one of his prewar agendas. The prewar agenda was to neutralize the nuclear proliferation of Iran, the missile and drone force, to attrite its military so it was not capable of conducting war, to stop the subsidies to its terrorist proxies, and to make sure it no longer attacked Americans and our allies as it has for 47 years. These have mostly been met – not quite, but mostly.

After explaining that the United States is winning the war in Iran and that Iran has nearly reached the end of its options, Hanson then proceeded to share the strategic ripple effects of the war.

·       United Arab Emirates announced that it would leave OPEC, formed in 1973 with the purpose of driving “up the price of oil” – “by not pumping what they could pump.” Oman and possibly Saudi Arabia may join UAE in leaving OPEC.

In OPEC, “each individual country has a quota” – maybe “70% to 80% of what they could pump if they were not in the cartel.” This is a disadvantage to them because “the United States is pumping right now – maximum.” Both Russia and Venezuela could “be pumping at maximum very soon.”

UAE could be pumping “2 million barrels” with Saudi Arabia pumping “another 20%.” Hanson says that the “long-range strategic value of the Straits of Hormuz are going to decline because all the Middle East countries will take “advantage of these high prices” and “swarm to get out.”

“But once they get out and pump more oil – and they’re immediately capable of pumping more oil – the price will drop, and the Straits of Hormuz will not be so important” – not good for Iran, whether or not they still have “oil wells in two or three weeks.”

·       “The other thing to remember is China” – which “hasn’t come out well.” All during the Biden administration, China “threatened to go into Taiwan.”

The military actions in Venezuela and Iran have shown that “the United States can pretty much do what it wants militarily, and China will be somewhat deterred.”

China’s control of Venezuela and Iran are no longer what they were. Therefore, the discounted oil is no longer available to them, and they are no longer selling arms to Iran to give to their proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) nor spreading “their influence in Latin America” (think Panama Canal). With a broke Iran, the starving people will not stand for sending millions of dollars – “$50-$60 million a month” – of money and equipment for wars against Israel and the United States.

With the price of oil plunging, “Russia will be a big loser in this.”

The demonstration of air power by the United States was evident to Russia, China, and Iran – as well as the rest of the world. Russia is “running out of people and money” and may “try to get out of the war,” taking “as much territory as they can along the existing battlefield today – maybe call it a DMZ.”

Hanson also claimed that “Europe was a big, big, big loser.” The European nations were paying more of their share of NATO and even call Trump “Daddy.” “Trump assumed they were normal allies.” Even so, he did not want to share his plans for Iran with “the U.S. Left and the Congress, or the Europeans” because he thought they would end any surprise element.

But more importantly, he felt that the Spanish, the Italians, the British, the French – all of them – would just say, “No comment,” or “This is a United States effort. We support our NATO ally,” and then call him up and say “Donald, we’re not going to talk about it but use our airspace, use our NATO bases you pay for most of them. And this is what we’re gonna do but we’re gonna do it under the radar.”

No. Instead, they pandered to their Islamic constituencies, their left-wing constituencies. In Spain, even in Italy with Meloni, they said: No bombers in Sicily. No planes in Spain. Can’t fly over France. Can’t use Diego Garcia unless it’s for defensive purposes…. Europe came off really badly – really badly.

And then they made it worse when they said they were going to patrol the strait and then they realized the Strait might be kinetic, and they would have to use some force if we were to turn it over to them and they don’t have that force. So, it’s all talk, talk, talk, and it’s based on envy and anger at the United States.

And it’s a very dangerous game they’re playing because at some point the United States says: We love you. Europe’s a great place. You’ve got problems – just settle them yourself….

So, go ahead, do what you want, but count us out.

Hanson’s final point was the “American Left kept saying the war was lost – the war was lost – the war was lost. Donald Trump blew it.”

Don’t count him out. We have six months before the midterms. The price of oil could crash. A lot of the things Donald Trump put into practice – with the big, beautiful bill, deregulation, tax cuts, enormous amount of foreign investment – all of that has plenty of time to kick in in August or July and have a stronger economy than we do now, with cheap oil.

More importantly, he can say that in his regime, his realm, his tenure, he neutralized the threat from Venezuela. It’s not spreading communism throughout South America – Latin America, and he neutralized the Middle East in a way that all seven prior presidents had dreamed and had never done.

 

 

What Should America Do About Political Violence?

Everyone has their own opinion about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump. Some individuals/sites claim that the assassination attempt was “staged.” Mehek Cooke, Senior National Security and Legal Analyst at The Daily Signal, said that the attempted assassination “should be treated as a clear, intentional act of political violence and a warning sign of a broader national security crisis.” 

In an appearance Monday on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” Cooke addressed the legal consequences facing the suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, who is now charged with multiple offenses, including attempting to assassinate the president – a crime that carries a potential life sentence. She said prosecutors will focus heavily on intent, which she argued is already evident in the case.

“This is almost like a mosaic,” Cooke said, explaining that investigators will examine travel records, weapons purchases, and the fact that the suspect discharged his weapon multiple times while attempting to enter the ballroom at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where Trump and administration officials were presiding. “This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t a fluke. And then he left a manifesto. All of this ties into intent.”

Cooke said the case should be a “slam dunk” for prosecutors and argued that anyone who had advance knowledge of the attack should also face legal consequences. She expressed confidence in U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, saying the American people expect full accountability and transparency.

Beyond the courtroom, Cooke warned that the attack cannot be dismissed as an isolated incident. She said increasingly aggressive political rhetoric – now echoed not just by fringe figures but by prominent Democrat leaders – has created a dangerous environment.

“It doesn’t surprise me that you have podcasters and influencers doing the same,” Cooke said of the rhetoric, pointing to what she described as a strategy to exploit societal weakness.

Cooke specifically criticized Democrat leaders for doubling down on rhetoric portraying Trump as an existential threat, while simultaneously continuing normal political and media engagement around him.

“If he’s a Nazi, if he’s a fascist, if he’s all these terrible things, then why are these reporters showing up?” Cooke asked. “It just goes to show they are lying to the American people.”

She also emphasized that Trump faces heightened threats not only domestically but from foreign adversaries, including Iran, and said federal agencies must reassess security failures and follow through on promised reforms.

“We were promised that they would not happen again,” Cooke said. “The American people deserve to know that those changes are.”

Cooke concluded by urging Americans and conservative leaders to continue speaking clearly and forcefully. “We have a moral obligation, Katie, to continue to speak the truth,” she said.

 

 

What Is Causing Leftist Violence in America?

With the third assassination attempt of President Donald Trump, many Americans wonder why there is so much leftist political violence. In addition to Trump, other members of the Trump administration have also faced violent threats, and Charlie Kirk, a prominent Trump supporter, was assassinated last year. Even though the Right has its problems, the violence traces back to the ideological foundation of the Left, according to Tyler O’Neil at The Daily Signal.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explained it well when he contrasted the vision of Progressivism with the principles of the Declaration of Independence earlier this month.

“Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement –with the possible  exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War – to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration,” Thomas said. “Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident.”

Under Progressivism, “liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government.”

Thomas noted that President Woodrow “Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it form Otto von ‘Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired.

Progressives like Wilson argued that America need to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power.”

This arguable opened Pandora’s box. Totalitarian governments in Germany, Russia, Cambodia, and China utilized state power to remake society, causing the deaths of millions. In the U.S., Wilson re-segregated the federal workforce and launched sterilization programs.

Immanentizing the Eschaton

Of course, the Left has rejected Wilson’s racist vision but preserved the overall worldview. The Marxist theory that capitalism constitutes a form of oppression expanded in the 1960s to a social vision, in which the “oppressed” classes – racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, women, and others – must rise up and overthrow the current system.

The Left has weaponized a culture of grievance to paint its opponents as oppressors. The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] – which just made news last week because the Justice Department accused it of lying to donors by secretly funding members of the KKK – maintains a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits alongside Klan chapters. This map demonizes conservatives as agents of “the infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” Such a claim only makes sense if you follow critical race theory, which starts with the assumption that America is systemically racist and urges people to deconstruct our colorblind laws to find a hidden “white supremacy.”

This demonization is bad enough, but the Left also maintains that it is the government’s job to achieve near-perfect, effectively bringing the kingdom of God to earth. That’s why they misquote Martin Luther King Jr. on the ‘arc of the moral universe.”

King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He grounded this statement in his faith in God, citing Isaiah 40.

Today, however, leftists say they need to “bend the arc.” President Joe Biden said his party had “a giant opportunity to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

President Barack Obama praised civil rights marchers as people who did “their part” to “bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently said that Americans have a “responsibility to “bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

That’s not what King meant, however. King meant that, because God is the ultimate author of morality and the universe, his justice will ultimately prevail.

It is vain hubris to believe that we ourselves can alter the moral structure of the universe. That’s the grandiose language of a tyrant who considers himself “king of the universe,” unbound by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

If you legitimately believe that the morality of the universe is up to you, and you legitimately believe that your political opponents are hateful on the level of the KKK, is it any wonder you might take the law into your own hands?

 

 

Who Are the Secret Service Agents Protecting Trump?

My VIPs for this week are Secret Service agents in general and those protecting President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and others at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday evening. Live footage shows the agents doing their jobs. 

In an article published at Blaze.com, Rebeka Zeljko shared the following information in a developing story about chaos at the dinner. 

Chaos erupted at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after President Donald Trump was rushed offstage by the Secret Service Saturday following possible gunfire.

Live footage showed Secret Service swiftly evacuating Trump, the first lady, and Vice President JD Vance after a loud noise rang out during the dinner. According to multiple reports, Secret Service spotted a suspected gunman attempting to get through security who has since been taken offsite.

“Law Enforcement has requested that we leave the premises, consistent with protocol, which we will do, immediately,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I will be giving a press conference in 30 minutes from the White House Press Briefing Room. The First Lady, plus the Vice President, and all Cabinet members, are in perfect condition. We will be speaking to you in a half an hour. I have spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days.”

For those who are counting, this is the third time that a crazed person has attempted to kill President Trump. This time the guy was so crazy that he was going to kill as many people as possible. Since he shot a Secret Service agent – an agent who was wearing a bullet-proof vest and is healthy, the man who shall remain nameless on this blog will face federal charges.

The shooter is lucky to be alive but, if convicted, will most likely be in federal prison for the rest of his life. The shooter who shot Trump in Pennsylvania is dead, and the would-be shooter in Florida received a sentence of life in prison. 

What Did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Say?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is how to celebrate America’s 250^th birthday anniversary. Star Parker believes that learning about the Declaration of Independence is a good way to start the celebration. In her article published in The Daily Signal, she shared some material from a speech delivered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. 

The force of Thomas’ words does not just result from his deep understanding of what the United States is about, and how the Declaration of Independence defines it.

The force flows from Thomas’ personal reality. He has lived what the declaration is about. His words are not just the product of thought and study, but of Thomas’ entire life experience.

Thomas grew up poor in America’s Jim Crow South.

But he says, “Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that wreaked a bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that in God’s eyes and under our Constitution, we were equal.”

“When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that your rights or your dignity did not come from those governments, but rather from God,” he continued….

Thomas’ life, career, and education were trial by fire.

By the time he became chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the country had already been captured by progressivism, particularly on matters of race.

His principled adherence to the eternal God-given truths of the declaration, and refusal to fold to the progressive agenda – which he calls the “then-prevailing orthodoxy on race” – was a lonely battle, which left him under constant attack.

It was then he realized that carrying out the agenda was more than knowing the principles, but having the courage to fight, and even, if necessary, die for them.

Thomas notes that the principles stated in the opening of the declaration – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights” – could have gotten nowhere without the last paragraph of the declaration.

There the signers conclude “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

“What changed the world,” per Thomas, “was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives” for what Lincoln called at Gettysburg “the last full measure of devotion.”

Thomas asks, “Do any of us have what it took for our young soldiers to storm Normandy Beach, to fight at Guadalcanal, to later fight at Chosin Reservoir?”

He discusses the emergence of progressivism, which challenged the core principles of the Declaration. As Thomas notes, its pedigree is not American but was born in 19^th century Germany of Otto von Bismark.

It’s a worldview that rejects the notion that God-given truths govern our lives, but rather politics and government so-called experts.

It’s deeply ironic and unfortunate that the civil rights movement – a movement about human freedom, a movement about moving black people out from the distortions of political control, and to our regime of freedom defined by our declaration’s principles – itself saw progressivism as the answer to problems of race.

We are in a great struggle today for the future of our country.

The movement toward progressivism has delivered to us a new time with massive government, deficits, debts, and bankrupt entitlement programs. The assault of progressivism on the God-given principles of the [D]eclaration of Independence has also taken a great toll on our culture, with the traditional family and our birth of children in dangerous decline.

To restore the vitality of our nation, we for sure today need a “new birth of freedom.”

A good start for all is to listen to Thomas’ message. 

 

Did the Children of Israel Keep Their Covenant with God?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to Exodus 19-20; 24; 31-34 in a lesson titled “All That the Lord Hath Spoken We Will Do.” The following information introduced the lesson. 

Although the children of Israel had murmured and wavered in the past, when Moses read the law at the foot of Mount Sinai, they made this covenant: “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). God then called Moses onto the mountain, telling him to build a tabernacle so “that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8).

But while Moses was at the top of the mountain learning how the Israelites could have God’s presence among them, the Israelites were at the bottom of the mountain making a golden idol to worship instead. Soon after promising to “have no other gods,” they “turned aside quickly” from their promise (Exodus 20:3; 32:8; see also Exodus 24:3). It was a surprising turn, but we know from experience that faith and commitment can sometimes be overcome by impatience, fear, or doubt. As we seek the Lord’s presence in our lives, it is encouraging to know the Lord did not give up on ancient Israel and He will not give up on us and the people we love—for He is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6).

Some of the principles taught in this scripture block are: (1) The Lord’s covenant people are a treasure to Him (Exodus 19:3-6); (2) Sacred experiences require preparation (Exodus 19:10-11, 17); (3) Obedience to God’s commandments brings blessings (Exodus 20:1-17); (4) Making covenants shows my willingness to obey God’s law (Exodus 24:1-11); (5) Sin is turning away from God; repentance is turning toward Him and away from evil (Exodus 32-34); (6) The Sabbath is a sign (Exodus 31:13-16), and (7) What was the difference between the two sets of stone tables Moses made? (Exodus 34:1-4). All the principles deserve some discussion, but this essay will discuss only principle #3 about obedience to commandments brings blessings.

While the Israelites were gathered at the base of Mount Sinai, they heard the voice of God give the Ten Commandments (see Deuteronomy 4:12-13). We know that these are not God’s only commandments because there are many other commandments in the scriptures. However, this discussion will concentrate only upon the Ten Commandments, which are as follows.

1 And God spake all these words, saying,

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 ¶ Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Emphasis added.)

The first observation is about a division among the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments have to do with our relationship with God. The last six commandments have to do with our relationships with other people. The Ten Commandments are an enlargement on the two great commandments taught in Matthew 22:36-40.

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Emphasis added.)

If you choose to learn more about the Ten Commandments and how they can bless your life, I suggest that you study them. You might make a simple table as you ponder the significance of the Ten Commandments in your life.

Commandment	In other words, what does God want me to do	Blessings that come from living this commandment

 You could consider the following questions as you study:

·       How does keeping these ten commandments help you keep the two great commandments that Jesus gave in Matthew 22:34-40?

·       What are things that you may be tempted to put before God? What blessings have you seen from putting God first?

·       How would you respond to someone who says the Ten Commandments were given a long time ago and do not apply today? What examples from your life would you share as part of your response?

·       How has the Lord fulfilled the promise in Exodus 20:6 in your life?

Why Should Economics Be Required to Graduate from High School?

Families who understand economics will be stronger. Therefore, it is good for high schools to require their students to acquire “a basic knowledge of economics.” With such knowledge students can strengthen their parental family as well as their chosen family and then strengthen their community, their state, and their nation.

Jamie Wagner, PhD, is a Professor and Teaching Fellow with the Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE), a nonprofit educational organization that promotes experiential learning and the economic way of thinking. He believes that April – National Financial Literacy Month -- is a suitable time to consider the study of economics to the curriculum. 

Across the country, states are starting to mandate that students take a personal finance course to graduate high school, often in place of economics courses. In 2022, only 23 states required students to take a financial literacy class in order to graduate; by 2026, that number had rocketed to 39 states.

Meanwhile, only 22 states now mandate the same for economics classes, a number that seems to decline each year.

Some argue that financial literacy is a more practical subject than economics. With limited classroom time available, who doesn’t support teaching the life skills of budgeting, borrowing, and investing?

While the goal is admirable, the method is not. Positioning financial literacy as something separate from – or even more important than – economics misunderstands what financial literacy actually is and sets up students for failure.

Financial literacy is not a standalone subject; it is actually applied economics.

While economics has a bade reputation for being complicated and irrelevant, at its heart, economics is simply the study of choices. This means that economics is the basis for all decisions we make in our lives: financial, civic, and even personal.

Every decision we face – whether to rent or buy a home, when to pay down debt or invest, whether to accept a job offer – requires the analytical tools that economics provides, such as opportunity cost, marginal thinking, time value of money, incentive structures, risk, and return. Teaching financial literacy stripped of economics leaves students with little more than a collection of rules, lacking the reasoning to apply them.

Research on financial education has consistently found that only teaching students “rules” produces modest, short-lived behavioral change. Students learn the rule and pass the assessment, but within months, the knowledge has faded. This is because it was never anchored to a conceptual framework, like economics.

Practically, you can’t teach about the stock market and how stock prices change without using the idea of markets and prices. Or, why home, auto, and other loan rates change without understanding the role the Federal Reserve plays in maintaining stable prices and employment. Students won’t be able to make spending and saving decisions absent an understanding of the costs and benefits of these choices….

The most effective programs integrate economic reasoning as the connective tissue that makes financial concepts coherent and transferable. Teaching how interest rates work is financial literacy. Teaching why central banks adjust them, how those decisions flow through to mortgage markets, and how a household should respond is economics and financial literacy working together.

Sound financial decision-making necessitates a capacity for reasoned judgment under uncertainty, built on a foundation of economic principles. Students deserve that foundation, and we can’t provide it by treating financial literacy as a standalone subject. If students are ever to make sense of the rapidly changing world around them, they need the economic way of thinking as a grounding.

Wagner believes that keeping “basic economics in the classroom,” it will strengthen both the students’ and the nation’s economic future.

 

What Should Be Done with Trump?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is that sometimes war is necessary to bring about peace and prosperity. Hitler and his armies killed millions of Jews before World War II stopped them, and he is just one example of one person seeking more power by taking it from other people.

If Iran were close to having nuclear power and missiles powerful enough to reach the United States, no one doubts that they would use that power and those missiles to render “Death to America,” as they so often shout.

Up until the present conflict, American presidents have just shrugged their shoulders and tried to appease the power-hungry Iranians – and thus kicked the can down the road. Iran probably thought that Donald Trump would continue the same way. Even some Americans thought that he would. Keith Koffler at The Daily Signal says that no one should be surprised with what Trump says and does.

One of the most stunning and yet tediously repetitive features of America’s Donald Trump Experience is the expectation that President Donald Trump is going to become someone else. People across the political spectrum seem permanently immune to the realization that the country has elected a man who says and does extraordinarily shocking things. With metronomic consistency, they exclaim, “Can you believe what he said? He’s just completely nuts! Where’s my 25^th Amendment?”

And then, everyone recovers, reverts to their prevailing view of Trump, and buckles up for the next outrage, which lands with no less unjustifiable surprise.

But it seems Trump may have gone just a bit too far, even for conservatives, with his most recent aggravations of the natural order. Their odiousness, along with the alleged rancid smell of the Iran war, is causing a slow slinking away from a president they perceive as gone stinky.

[Koffler named several “odious” words and actions: (1) the AI image of himself as Jesus healing the sick, (2) Trump saying Pope Leo XIV is “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy” before telling him to “get his act together, and (3) Trump saying “a whole civilization might die tonight” rather than “threatening to bomb Iran.”]

None of this is great. People have a right to be offended. But they should consider a few things before withdrawing support for Trump.

Conservatives during the presidential primaries in 2016 ceded some of the moral high ground they felt they always held by choosing Trump, a great but imperfect man.

They had a choice closer to moral perfection in Jeb Bush, but they concluded, correctly, that these harrowing times demanded something else. America’s self-destruction seemed too near for a conventional candidate. It was time to get a little rude and go on offense.

We got what we asked for. Over the course of two terms, Trump has altered the course of U.S history, diverting and even reversing leftist agendas that seemed hopelessly unstoppable.

·       He revamped the Supreme Court, resulting in myriad decisions favorable to conservatives, most prominently the demolition of Roe v. Wade, something long thought a lost cause.

·       He completely plugged up the massive hole in the border – which presupposes that there still was a border – ending the ceaseless waves of illegal immigration into the U.S. that threatened to swamp our culture with something else.

·       He changed the entire conversation on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” polite terms for dropping our Judeo-Christian culture into the Memory Hole and replacing it with a Marxian, totalitarian dictatorship commanding obedience to dissolute collectivism and relativism. In high schools, college, and the workplace, woke equity is now on the defensive.

·       He defeated the Islamic State caliphate, and he dawned a new age of Arab-Israeli cooperation with the unprecedented Abraham Accords.

·       He withdrew from the Paris climate accords and refocused the country back toward fossil fuels, ensuring Americans’ pockets wouldn’t be picked by European internationalists while China cheerfully burned through its coal.

These are pivotal realignments that eclipse ephemeral measures such as a point added or subtracted to gross domestic products or an increase or decrease in the crime rate, as important as those things are.

I would personally add ending—or at least vastly delaying – Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the list, but that’s exactly what some conservatives don’t agree with. And that’s the point. It’s a disagreement. An argument. Not grounds for divorce….

To repeat, we got what we asked for: Trump.

Let’s also remember that much of the outrage Trump mobilizes is pure Madison Avenue, designed preponderantly for effect, manufactured in the vast PR-generating region of his frontal lobe. He’s selling – propaganda for friends, deception for enemies.

Unlike many other presidents, he’s arm to actual human beings whom he has no political use for. He says hello to the janitor. His exaggerations and insults can be unpleasant and outrageous, but there’s a humanity and even an honesty within them.

He does things I don’t like. But he’s prevented many worse things I don’t like.

Trump is a towering figure who will be written about for centuries. Sometimes that indecorous tower – excessively embroidered with Trump gold – reflects sunlight. Sometimes it casts very dark shadows. It sways a bit with the wind, but in the end, it has stood for conservative values more resolutely than any of the smaller edifices, easier on the eye and ear.

We conservatives made our bargain with Trump long ago. Let’s own it.

 

 

 

How Did Iran Get to This Strange Place?

The war with Iran is in its seventh week of military operations. There was a promise of peace, but peace has not happened yet. President Donald Trump set a firm deadline for Iran, and that time is here. Historian Victor Davis Hanson said that Iran is in “a very strange situation” and then discussed how it got there. 

The strange situation is there because Iran lost its command and control to decapitation. Their air force and navy have been destroyed, and their army is useless in an air war. “Its nuclear, military, industrial complex has been bombed to smithereens. Its population is restless even as it “lost half a trillion dollars in a half-century long investment in military hardware and military industries” while neglecting its population.

Hanson questioned how Iran got into this situation and decided that it “had an expansive view of itself – an inflated view. Why?”

During the Obama administration, the Obama State Department and President Barack Obama himself sent messages to Iran that maybe a Shiite crescent – Tehran, Damascus, Beirut, Gaza, people in Yemen – might balance the Sunni Arabs of the Gulf with their money and the military power of the Jewish state of Israel. And Obama might step in from time to time to adjudicate this – I guess they called it creative tension.

In other words, we said there was no moral difference between the Iranian bloc and its opponents, when there was, of course.

Well, that gave the impression to Iran that we were afraid of them, or that we would always be willing to make concessions. When Joe Biden came in, the first thing he did was beg them to get back into the Iran deal. That inflated their egos even further. Then he lifted sanctions and gave them $100 billion of new revenue.

Meanwhile, the Iranians were looking at Russia going into Ukraine, and the United States had done nothing other than say our reaction would hinge on whether it was a minor or major invasion. Then came Oct. 7. The Iranians had subsidized Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and their proxies and clients in Syria and Iraq, with the idea that they had created a ring of fire around the Jewish state.

After the Oct. 7 massacres – which they denied having knowledge of, but which they obviously strategically planned with their clients – they thought the United States wouldn’t do anything. And they were pretty much right about that during the Biden administration, if not worse.

We kind of distanced ourselves from Israel, and Iran knew that. They felt that after Oct. 7 it would be such a traumatic experience for the Israeli government that it wouldn’t do much. A lot of this was hinged on the pseudo-reputation they had of being militarily invincible, but there was never any proof that was true.

They ran the Iraq War of 1980, and they didn’t do very well. Khomeini had to sue for peace, even though they had almost one and a half times the population of Iraq. But they were the terror of the Middle East. People said, “Whatever you do – go into Afghanistan, go into Iraq, bomb – don’t get near Iran.”

They’re crazy people. They have 93 million people. They’re the second-largest country in the Middle East by population. They’re the second-largest by area. They’re dangerous people.

They’re fanatic Shiites, and they’re willing to die for their cause. But if you actually looked at what they had done, they had achieved that reputation through surrogate use of terrorism – blowing up embassies, blowing up Marine barracks, assassinating individuals, sending weaponry to kill Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq –but they’d never really shown any impressive performance on the battlefield, either at sea, on the ground, or in the air.

And so, they thought they could get away with Oct. 7. That gave them an even greater inflated sense of self, because they kept telling us that between all of their proxies and their own arsenals they might have 300,000 short- and long-range missiles, rockets, and drones, and they would collapse Israel under a sea of explosives.

They thought that even after Oct. 7, Israel wouldn’t dare do anything to them because they had sophisticated Chinese and Russian air defenses. That they didn’t count on were two things.

Oct. 7 changed the entire mentality of Israel. It was the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Israelis said you cannot live like this. You cannot sustain a country like this. You can’t have a sword of Damocles descending on you periodically.

So we’re going to have to go to the head of the snake. Hezbollah … Hamas … the Houthis … the people in Syria we’ll deal with. But in one way or another, they get money and weapons from Tehran.

And we don’t believe they’re indomitable – not now, not after Oct. 7. In that 12-day war last year, they [Israel] destroyed the entire air-defense system of Iran, and then they began taking out its military capability and its nuclear industry and infrastructure.

They called us in and asked us, and we were more than ready to comply because it was in our national interest. In about 25 to 30 hours, we blew up their nuclear facilities. We thought that might be the end. We thought they got the message – but, of course, they didn’t.

Their proxies began to shoot missiles again. They began, according to our intelligence, to resume work on their nuclear facilities and nuclear proliferation trajectory. And so, the United States entered negotiations with them again. Like all negotiations with the Iranians, they were drawn out. They were meant to delay while they rearm, enrich more uranium, or sic their terrorist proxies on Israel or individuals in the West through terrorist attacks.

But again, they didn’t count on two things: Donald Trump doesn’t care, and Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t care. So, they resumed the war. Now, as we go into the seventh week, all of Iran’s assets are destroyed. It’s losing more than $400 million a day in lost revenue because of the U.S. blockade. It has no cards to play.

All it can hope is that someone will call off the United States…. Because it will not be able to save itself if the United States decides to take out its bridges, take out its electrical generation capability, and force it back to the negotiating table – not to negotiate, but to submit to terms.

Why Are Voter Rolls Not Clean Now?

 There have been many complaints about federal elections in recent years. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon has been working for about a year on cleaning up voting rolls. As written in an article published in The Daily Signal, Harold Hutchison reported on an interview that Dhillon had on “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo. 

The Trump administration has sued multiple states for failing to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Justice, which is seeking to ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and other federal laws aimed at protecting the right to vote. Dhillon told Bartiromo that, even in states trying to comply with the laws, issues concerning voting eligibility were still being identified.

“States are not in compliance, even those ones who want to. So, for the ones that we’ve run so far – 60 million records that we’ve run – we found at least 350,000 dead people currently on the voter rolls in those jurisdictions, and we’ve referred approximately 25,000 people with no citizenship records to [the Department of] Homeland Security to look at, you know, dig into that further and see the extent to which people voted,” Dhillon told Bartiromo. “I’m in touch with voting rights activists who are showing me information about people who have voted who are not American citizens. So the Left told us this never happens and it’s a myth, it definitely happened.”

“Just recently, someone was indicted in Minnesota, of all places, for voting without being a citizen, and so I’ve sent a document request to them on that,” Dhillon continued. “Minnesota has a weird vouching law that allows citizens to vouch for each other’s citizenship. That’s crazy and inconsistent with the Help America Vote Act and we’re not going to rest until we complete this project.”

Dhillon also noted that, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1960 giving the attorney general access to voting rolls to ensure compliance with the law, multiple states have refused to hand them over. “I’m suing 29 states and the District of Columbia for their refusal to give us the voter rolls to which the attorney general or the acting attorney general is entitled under the Civil Rights Act of 1960,” Dhillon told Bartiromo, later adding that, in several cases, federal judges ruled against the Trump administration.

“We’re expediting the appeals in these cases,” Dhillon said. “There’ll be an appeal in the Ninth Circuit [Court of Appeals] and the Sixth Circuit soon.”

President Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 requiring the federal government’s Election Assistance Commission to update its voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.

Who Are These Young Men?

My VIPs for this week are young men (18-29) who say that religion is “very important” to them. Also, older men who say the same thing. In an article published by The Daily Signal, Dan Hart of The Washington Stand reported the following: 

Newly released polling data has confirmed what many pastors and churchgoers have long suspected: Young men are bucking the cultural trend of declining religiosity and returning to the church in droves.

A Gallup survey released Thursday revealed a remarkable surge in young men saying that religion is “very important” to them, with data from 2024-2025 showing 42%, a 14-point increase from 2022-2023.

The poll found that the phenomenon happening among young men aged 18-29 is not happening among their female peers, only 29% of whom said that religion is “very important” to them (a figure that has stayed roughly the same since 2020).

The upward trend in religiosity is also largely not occurring among other age groups, with the exception of men aged 30-49 (who saw a five-point increase over the same timespan) and men aged 50-64 (who saw a three-point increase).

Notably, the numbers mark a clear reversal from the beginning of the millennium, when young women led young men in saying that religion was “very important” to them (52% vs. 43%) ….

David Closson, who serves as director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, sees the new Gallup data as highly significant.

“The new Gallup data is striking, particularly because it reverses a long-standing trend,” he told The Washington Stand. “For decades, young women have been more religious than young men, but that gap has now flipped. One factor appears to be political realignment. The report itself notes that much of the increase is concentrated among young Republican men, suggesting that broader ideological shifts are influencing religious engagement.”

“At the same time,” Closson continued, “we should not ignore deeper cultural dynamics. For years, young men have been told that traditional expressions of masculinity are problematic or even harmful. In that context, it is not surprising that some are gravitating toward faith communities that offer a clearer sense of identity, purpose, and moral framework. For many young men, church provides structure, accountability, and a vision of ordered freedom, all of which can be especially compelling in a culture that often feels unmoored.”

Clossen further noted that cultural factors are likely key to understanding the differences between the religious movement of young men and their female counterparts.

“The divergence between young men and young women also raises important questions. While young men are showing renewed interest in the importance of religion, young women’s numbers have remained flat and, in some respects, are at historic lows,” he explained. “That suggests we are not simply seeing a general religious revival, but a more targeted shift that may reflect differences in how young men and women are responding to cultural differences in how young men and women are responding to cultural pressures and expectations.” …

“Young men also might be drawn to religion as a form of rebellion,” Backholm elaborated. “The Left has been waging a war on men for a while now, so it’s possible that young men are being draw to religion as a way of rebelling against everything on the Left. If that’s true, that might be part of the reason young men are more religious than young women. Secularists like women better than men. As a result, women like secularism more.”

Still, “It’s also true that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world and Jesus is drawing us to Himself,” he reflected. “We live in a war between truth and lies, but Jesus promised us that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. While we see evidence of the war all around us, we shouldn’t be surprised when we see the truth advancing in measurable ways. Over time, that’s the only possible outcome.”

Why Is Progressivism So Wrong for America?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns enemies of the U.S. Constitution. This year America celebrates 250 years since the time that patriots first declared independence from Great Britain. It may be time for us to declare independence once again.

In his article published in The Daily Signal, Tyler O’Neil reported on a speech given by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The talk was part of celebrating America’s 250^th anniversary, and it exposed “the greatest threat to the Declaration of Independence today – the ideology of Progressivism.” 

“Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement – with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War – to openly oppose the principles of the declaration,” the justice said in a speech at the University of Texas at Austin Wednesday. “Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident.”

With his characteristic brilliance, Thomas cut through the Orwellian masquerade of Progressivism to reveal what it truly is – a fundamentally backward movement. By rejecting the solid footing of the declaration, Progressivism opened America to central planning and administrative rule.

While the declaration bases governmental authority on the consent of the governed and God creating human beings with inalienable rights, under Progressivism, “liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government.”

Explaining Progressivism

Thomas noted that President Woodrow “Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired.

Progressives like Wilson argued that America need[s] to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power.”

Yet Thomas also quoted President Calvin Coolidge, who delivered a powerful address on the 150th anniversary of the declaration.

“If all men are created equal, that is final,” Coolidge said. “If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress, can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which they can proceed historically is not forward but backward.”

The Rotten Fruit of Progressivism

Thomas laid out exactly how backward Progressivism would take America.

“Progressives believed that Darwinian science, the idea of ever-advancing progress written into biology itself, had proven the inherent superiority and inferiority of the races,” he noted.

“It was only a small step for Wilson to re-segregate the federal workforce. It was only another step for the government to launch sterilization programs on those deemed by the experts of the day to be unfit to reproduce, upheld by my court in Buck v. Bell.”

The declaration’s central claims trace back to thinkers like John Locke, and Thomas noted that “European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world with its weak, decentralized government and strong individual rights.”

“But we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bonds for the supposedly enlightened world of [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, [Karl] Marx, and their followers,” Thomas said.

“Fascism – which, after all, was national socialism – triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions,” he noted. “The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill more tens of millions of their own people. This is what happens when natural rights give way to the higher good notions of history, progress, or as Thomas Sowell has written, the visions of the anointed.”

(Sowell’s 1995 book “The Vision of the Anointed” exposes the hubris of America’s intellectual and political elite and the mentality behind their destructive policies on education, crime, and family life.)

“None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the declaration,” Thomas added, wryly.

Why the Speech Matters

Thomas’s speech comes as President Donald Trump has attempted to root out much of the Progressivist “woke” ideology out of the federal government and other parts of American society.

Progressivism’s preference for technocratic government today travels alongside other ideas, such as critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist and requires a fundamental overhaul), transgender ideology (the idea that a man can become a woman and vice versa), and climate alarmism (the idea that the world is ending due to human use of fossil fuels).

These issues converge into a worldview I describe as “woke,” and that worldview forms the basis of the Left’s infrastructure – which heavily influenced federal policy under President Joe Biden.

Trump has put woke ideology on the back foot, but the Left is not rejecting these ideas. America is strangely fortunate at the 250^th anniversary to have a president who takes pride in its founding, rather than one who rejects the founding as racist, backward, or “transphobic” – but that does not mean the threat is over.

Americans must heed Clarence Thomas’ warning. The battle between the Declaration of Independence and Progressivism isn’t a matter of disagreeing on means to achieving the same ends – such as asking whether raising or lowering taxes will better handle the deficit.

Unfortunately, the battle often boils down to whether America remains faithful to its founding ideals or rejects them in favor of the Left’s latest justification to grasp unlimited power.

Thomas rightly explained that woke Progressivism is actually extremely backward – and America must reject it, not just on the 250^th anniversary of the declaration, but yesterday, today, and forever.