Two California boys were in critical condition after they were shot by a maniac at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, California, on Friday.

The maniac, Glenn Litton, took a tour of the school with school administrators pretending to be a grandparent for a child who was interested in attending the school.

After the tour, the shooter headed to the parking lot but then turned around and started firing on the playground, hitting the two little boys.

One of the little boys was shot three times, and the other was hit one time. They are in critical condition.

The shooter turned the gun on himself and died on the school grounds.

The boys are in critical but stable condition.

12/5/24 UPDATE- The five and six-year-old victims from yesterday’s shooting are in critical but stable condition as they continue to receive treatment at an area hospital.

We have positively identified the suspect and are diligently working to establish the motive. pic.twitter.com/43hT12EgwP

— Butte County Sheriff (@ButteSheriff) December 5, 2024

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

Cyber-Espionage Through IoT Standardization in Agriculture

China’s infiltration into agricultural IoT (Internet of Things) networks represents a critical yet underexplored dimension of its global technological strategy. Through key players such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, Beijing has embedded IoT technologies into agricultural systems in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These initiatives, often framed as development partnerships aimed at improving food production and supply chain resilience, concurrently enable the collection of extensive agricultural and environmental data with profound strategic and geopolitical implications.

Agricultural IoT systems are revolutionizing farming practices by collecting real-time, high-resolution data on variables such as soil moisture, nutrient levels, weather conditions, pest infestations, irrigation patterns, crop growth rates, and logistical movements. Chinese companies like Huawei and Alibaba are at the forefront of this technological advancement, designing platforms that support precision agriculture through the integration of advanced sensors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to optimize farm management.

In Kenya, Huawei has actively collaborated with local partners and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization to implement smart farming solutions aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. By deploying IoT sensors that monitor critical agricultural parameters and transmitting this data to cloud platforms where AI algorithms provide actionable insights, farmers have reportedly increased crop yields. These initiatives not only boost local agricultural productivity but also strengthen China’s presence in the region’s agricultural sector.

Similarly, in 2020, the Malaysian government entered into a strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud to advance its Smart Agriculture Agenda, reflecting a commitment to leveraging digital technologies for agricultural transformation. For instance, in 2019, Malaysian agritech company Regaltech partnered with Alibaba Cloud to develop a smart farming platform for durian plantations. Utilizing Alibaba’s ET Agricultural Brain, an AI-powered platform that analyzes vast amounts of agricultural data, IoT devices and drones monitor crop health, optimize resource usage, and automate farming processes. These systems have shown promising results in improving yield quality and consistency while reducing labor costs due to automation.

The strategic implications of this data aggregation are profound. In Argentina—a key supplier of soybeans to China—IOT systems provide granular insights into the production of vital commodities such as soybeans and maize. In 2022, Argentina exported 4.8 million metric tons of soybeans to China, largely for use as animal feed in its burgeoning livestock industry. By analyzing longitudinal data on crop yields, climatic conditions, and supply chain dynamics, Chinese entities can gain the ability to forecast agricultural outputs, identify vulnerabilities to droughts or pest outbreaks, and strategize imports with precision. These insights not only inform economic decisions but also equip Beijing with leverage in trade negotiations with critical partners.

The geopolitical utility of such data is striking. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, IoT systems monitoring declining yields of staple crops due to drought could enable China to secure imports before market disruptions occur. In 2022, China’s agricultural machinery market was valued at over $24 billion, with significant exports to African nations incorporating IoT-enabled “smart farming” solutions underpinned by Chinese cloud infrastructure. These systems, while marketed as tools for development, create dependencies that enhance China’s influence. Data access, often governed by opaque agreements, allows Beijing to maintain strategic leverage over countries that adopt these technologies, especially in scenarios involving climate shocks or food crises.

Moreover, agricultural IoT data could be weaponized to manipulate trade dynamics. A pertinent case is Kazakhstan, where Chinese investments in agricultural infrastructure have integrated IoT systems for monitoring key crops such as wheat and soybeans. With precise yield data, Beijing can forecast shortages or surpluses, negotiate trade terms to its advantage, and adjust import strategies accordingly. Historical parallels, such as China’s imposition of tariffs on Australian barley and wine in 2020 following diplomatic tensions, underscore its willingness to leverage trade relationships for geopolitical objectives. While these actions did not involve IoT, they highlight a pattern of exploiting economic dependencies as instruments of influence.

The situation in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) provides another revealing example. China has introduced advanced irrigation systems and IoT-based crop management technologies to modernize Pakistani agriculture. Although data-sharing agreements remain unclear, the integration of IoT systems grants China a window into wheat and cotton production trends, enabling preemptive adjustments to imports or policy recommendations that align with its broader geopolitical goals. Similarly, in Laos and Cambodia, Chinese IoT technologies embedded in agricultural systems raise concerns about data sovereignty. These systems potentially allow Beijing to identify food security vulnerabilities, influencing domestic policies and reinforcing economic reliance on Chinese infrastructure.

China’s push for global IoT standardization through initiatives like China Standards 2035 is central to its ambitions in technology and data governance. By embedding proprietary IoT protocols into international frameworks, Beijing ensures that its technologies remain indispensable to global IoT networks. Huawei and ZTE are at the forefront of exporting IoT solutions, particularly to Latin America, where Huawei’s smart agriculture platforms have gained traction. The integration of Chinese-developed encryption technologies ensures compatibility with domestic platforms, consolidating China’s control over these ecosystems and enhancing its capacity to collect and process strategic data.

This influence extends to the control of information flows. Under China’s Data Security Law, companies must share data with state authorities under specific conditions, raising the potential for Beijing to access sensitive information from regions dependent on Chinese technologies. Cross-referencing IoT agricultural data with trade and infrastructure insights could yield comprehensive, multi-layered intelligence on partner nations. Although no concrete evidence has emerged to confirm systematic exploitation of IoT data, such capabilities align with China’s data-driven strategy to extend its influence globally.

The cybersecurity risks associated with agricultural IoT also warrant attention. The 2021 cyberattack on Brazil’s JBS Foods, which disrupted global supply chains for weeks, illustrates the vulnerabilities inherent in digitized agricultural systems. If IoT networks established by Chinese companies were similarly targeted, recovery efforts could be hindered by Beijing’s potential control over critical data, complicating mitigation and policy responses. Such scenarios highlight the dual-use nature of IoT technologies as tools for both development and strategic leverage.

Despite the growing significance of agricultural IoT in China’s digital strategy, it remains an underexplored topic. Analysts and policymakers often focus on areas like telecommunications and AI, neglecting intersections with food security, climate vulnerability, and geopolitical stability. For instance, the USDA’s 2021 report on agricultural innovation failed to address strategic risks posed by foreign-controlled IoT systems. Meanwhile, Huawei continues to expand its presence in Latin America, embedding IoT technologies in a region that plays a pivotal role in global agricultural exports.

Advanced Biometric Surveillance and Behavioral Data Exploitation

Complementing its cyber-espionage activities in agriculture, China has significantly advanced its capabilities in biometric surveillance and behavioral data exploitation. This represents a critical axis of its global digital strategy, intertwining technological innovation with its broader geopolitical ambitions. State-backed enterprises such as Hikvision and Dahua, alongside AI pioneers like SenseTime and Megvii, have spearheaded the development of technologies that extend far beyond traditional facial recognition. Innovations such as gait recognition, voiceprint identification, and emotion detection systems enable unprecedented behavioral monitoring, offering granular insights that elevate surveillance capabilities to new levels.

By 2023, Chinese firms had exported biometric surveillance systems to more than 80 countries across Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. For instance, the Safe City initiative in Kenya, involving approximately 1,800 Hikvision cameras integrated into centralized police monitoring networks in Nairobi, underscores the depth of Chinese involvement. Similarly, in Lahore, Pakistan, Huawei’s surveillance infrastructure merges biometric data with urban management systems under the aegis of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Beyond hardware installations, Chinese firms embed proprietary software ecosystems and advanced machine learning algorithms into these projects, consolidating control over data pipelines and fostering dependencies on Chinese-managed platforms.

The implications of these systems extend well beyond surface-level monitoring. In Zimbabwe, Chinese surveillance cameras equipped with AI analytics have reportedly been deployed to profile political dissidents. In Serbia, a Chinese-developed Safe City system sparked controversy when facial recognition technology was used to track anti-government protesters. These deployments often come with opaque licensing agreements, debt-financed installations, and extensive service contracts, creating long-term technological and financial dependencies.

Chinese biometric surveillance technologies have achieved levels of precision previously considered theoretical. For example, Watrix, a global leader in gait recognition, claims its systems can identify individuals with 96% accuracy from distances exceeding 50 meters, even in crowded environments or when faces are obscured. Such technologies have been deployed in sensitive regions like Xinjiang, where authorities use them to monitor Uighur populations and flag “abnormal behavior.” Meanwhile, in Shanghai, hospitals employ gait recognition systems to restrict unauthorized access, highlighting the technology’s versatility across both security and civilian applications.

Emotion recognition, another frontier in Chinese AI, adds further depth to the surveillance arsenal. By analyzing micro-expressions, vocal intonations, and physiological cues, these systems can infer emotional states with applications ranging from education to law enforcement. For example, in Hangzhou’s Smart Schools initiative, cameras reportedly monitor students’ emotions to optimize classroom management—a practice raising ethical concerns about privacy and mental health. In Xinjiang, similar systems are allegedly employed to evaluate detainees’ stress levels during interrogations. These tools serve China’s broader strategy of “stability maintenance,” embedding surveillance into everyday life to ensure societal control.

Domestically, biometric surveillance underpins China’s Social Credit System, which fuses big data analytics with behavior monitoring to regulate individual and corporate conduct. In cities like Shenzhen, facial recognition cameras identify jaywalkers, publicly displaying their images to shame violators. Some systems go further, sending offenders text messages and linking penalties to their social accounts. While the system’s broader claims—such as restricting access to education or healthcare—remain contentious, its documented impacts include travel restrictions. By 2018, millions of citizens with low social credit scores were barred from purchasing airline and high-speed rail tickets, illustrating how the system enforces compliance through access limitations.

Internationally, the export of Chinese surveillance technology poses profound risks, especially in nations with weak regulatory frameworks. These countries effectively import not just the hardware but also a governance model that facilitates authoritarian practices. In Uganda, Huawei’s $126 million CCTV system, ostensibly designed for crime prevention in Kampala, has been criticized for its use in monitoring opposition figures. In Ethiopia, allegations of misuse have been compounded by reports of data breaches linked to Chinese-built infrastructure, such as the African Union headquarters. These examples illustrate the dual vulnerabilities of technological dependency and political exploitation.

The integration of Chinese standards into emerging markets’ governance infrastructures represents a strategic entrenchment of Beijing’s influence. These systems often come with opaque agreements, proprietary protocols, and maintenance requirements that bind adopters to Chinese firms, embedding surveillance into the operational fabric of public administration. Beyond operational functionality, such exports normalize invasive practices, undermining democratic norms and fostering climates of fear. For nations lacking stringent safeguards, this erosion of civil liberties not only suppresses opposition but also undermines sovereignty, creating a governance model that aligns more closely with authoritarian principles than with democratic ideals.

Integration of Strategies and Global Implications

China’s strategic integration of cyber-espionage in agricultural IoT networks and the global export of advanced biometric surveillance systems is more than a pursuit of technological advancement—it is a deliberate effort to reshape geopolitical influence through digital means. By embedding its technology into the critical infrastructures of emerging economies, Beijing gains unparalleled access to vast datasets that serve both economic and political objectives.

One emerging scenario is the potential intersection of these datasets in influencing food aid decisions during political unrest. Agricultural IoT systems could identify regions at risk of famine, while biometric data profiles assess local populations to gauge levels of dissent or compliance. By aligning aid distribution with behavioral trends, China could selectively stabilize or destabilize regions to further its strategic goals, deepening reliance on its technological and economic infrastructure.

Through proprietary standards and AI-driven insights, China embeds global dependencies that not only reduce partner nations’ autonomy but also enhance Beijing’s ability to shape international norms. This data-driven approach cements China’s influence in a new era of geopolitical power defined by digital dependencies.

Carlo J.V. Caro has a master’s degree from Columbia University and is a political and military analyst. 

When people think about the incoming Trump-Vance administration’s plans to unleash domestic energy production, they likely start with oil and gas drilling, and policies governing fracking and clean coal. Yet nuclear energy has a critical role to play in expanding our domestic energy resources, while also protecting the environment. We shouldn’t let antiquated misperceptions about nuclear production stand in the way.

Support for nuclear energy is at an all-time high in the United States—with 56% of Americans supporting it. Yet this support is lopsided with 70% of men having a favorable opinion of nuclear energy compared to just 44% of women. Women are likely skeptical of nuclear energy due to memories of Soviet-era nuclear mishaps and the notorious Three Mile Island incident, as well as modern fearmongering from the media and radical environmentalists. But nuclear energy has come a long way since then and is now among the most promising technologies in terms of efficacy, safety, and environmental impact.

The incoming Trump administration can appeal to women’s eco sensibilities by highlighting facts about nuclear power as a reliable and environmentally friendly option. Women care deeply about clean air and water conditions, and want natural resources to be stewarded responsibly.

Nuclear energy is the most efficient power source available today. 94 nuclear reactors already supply 18.6% of current U.S. electricity generation. Nuclear, like natural gas, will be essential to meet rising global electricity demand. Unlike intermittent energy sources, like wind and solar, nuclear operates nearly 24/7. It produces near zero emissions while boasting a small environmental footprint compared to utility-scale solar and wind facilities, requiring just a mere square mile of land to accommodate a 1,000 megawatt (MW) power station operating 93% of the year. By contrast, solar and wind function at a fraction of the capacity that nuclear does and require 75 and 360 times more land, respectively, to generate the equivalent amount of electricity. In other words, nuclear power is more dependable, more efficient, requires far less land, and releases negligible carbons—far outpacing renewables on all these measures.

Understandably, women are concerned about the safety protocols and safe storage of nuclear waste (or used nuclear fuel). In the last 60 years, there have only been three significant accidents at nuclear plants worldwide. American nuclear power plants are among the safest in the world and are built to minimize accidental radiation release and meltdowns. Additionally, reactor operators undergo rigorous training and must be federally licensed to supervise these plants. Our Energy Department reports that U.S. facilities pose the least harm to people and the environment due to “safety procedures, robust training programs and stringent federal regulation.”

And while fear about nuclear waste storage is understandable, today there are new and better solutions than ever before. Today, most used nuclear fuel is stored safely at on-site dry casks, and the Trump Energy Department can continue to improve here by prioritizing permanent disposal of nuclear fuel.

When Americans envision nuclear facilities, most start with giant steaming towers like those operated by Homer Simpson. Reality is quite different. In fact, among the most promising developments is the development of small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors aren’t simply functional; they are aesthetically pleasing and modern.

During his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, President-elect Trump said he liked nuclear power, but claimed conventional facilities are “…too big and too complex and too expensive.” That’s where SMRs can fill the void.

There are 80 SMR prototypes currently in development. SMRs are capable of producing upwards of 300 megawatts (MW) per module. Used nuclear fuel from bigger reactors is even repurposed to power them.

Two companies are expertly combining functionality with aesthetics—a surefire way to appeal to nuclear-skeptical women. Here in the U.S., the Oklo Aurora powerhouse prototype at the Idaho National Laboratory—slated to go online in 2027—has been lauded for its sky chalet design. Incoming Energy Secretary Chris Wright is a board member for Oklo, a publicly traded nuclear SMR start-up, and can lean on his expertise to get his future boss on board. And across the pond in the United Kingdom, luxury car company Rolls-Royce—unlike competitor Jaguar—is smartly diversifying its portfolio with SMRs. Their prototypes occupy about two soccer fields and are capable of powering about one million homes.

President-elect Donald J. Trump pledged to “unleash energy production from all sources”—including nuclear energy—in a second term. The first Trump administration had 11 major accomplishments pertaining to this reliable power source, including the elevation of the first (and highly qualified) woman, Dr. Rita Baranwal, to oversee the Office of Nuclear Energy.

Women will be essential to making American nuclear energy great again. Let’s hope the incoming Trump-Vance administration taps into this constituency.

Gabriella Hoffman is director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum and host of the District of Conservation podcast. Follow her on X at @Gabby_Hoffman

U.S. energy policy is in dire need of a course correction. Our nation grapples with growing energy demands and challenges, and a second Trump administration faces the daunting task of undoing an array of harmful regulations and ill-conceived decisions enacted by its predecessor. Since some of these policies won’t be quickly unraveled, the work to undo them must begin without delay.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration finalized a power plant rule requiring current coal-fired plants and new gas-fired plants to control 90% of their carbon emissions through a process called carbon capture sequestration (CCS). This technology has not been “adequately demonstrated,” a potential violation of section 111 of the Clean Air Act. In fact, CCS has failed to sufficiently perform.

These impossible standards will force numerous plants to close and make it difficult for new ones to open, leaving millions in the dark, literally. A so-called transition to intermittent wind and solar (the ultimate objective) has led to shortages and skyrocketing electricity rates for areas with ambitious renewable energy goals. This rule needs to go.

Additionally, the electric vehicle (EV) mandate—EPA and NHTSA edicts—will result in EVs comprising roughly two-thirds of all new car sales by 2032. Sales have yet to hit 10%. Only popular among certain demographics, the EV is failing to garner excitement from most motorists due to high price tags, limited range, lack of charging infrastructure, and reliability issues. Consumer surveys report that only 18% of U.S. adults are “likely” to purchase one as their next car; 63% are “unlikely or very unlikely.” Nearly half of EV owners will probably switch back to internal combustion.

EVs are piling up on car lots and manufacturers are sustaining substantial losses; Ford reported losing $132,000 per vehicle during this year’s first quarter. Over 4,000 dealers signed letters begging the administration to tap the brakes.

Consumer choice is paramount and should not be denied or influenced by government officials. The EV rule needs to be eliminated.

Another destructive EPA rule involves the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Traditionally reviewed every five years, the newly ushered in EPA unprecedently initiated an additional NAAQS review merely 33 days after the December 2020 one was completed and the numbers deemed perfectly adequate. The new PM2.5 standard was lowered by more than 25%.

The estimated potential loss of $270 billion in GDP and roughly 2.9 million jobs or job equivalents per year poses a serious threat to the manufacturing industry and U.S. economy. With the strictest standards in the world, companies may move overseas to less stringent environments; new investments will be deterred. This EPA action should never have taken place and must be rescinded.

In January the Biden administration stunned the energy industry by placing a pause on pending and future liquified natural gas (LNG) export projects. The politically motivated decision has only served to hurt our European allies who were forced to turn to adversarial actors like Russia for natural gas. Contrary to claims that LNG harms the environment, studies demonstrate it can reduce emissions by 40-50% by replacing dirtier forms of energy, like coal.

After becoming the No.1 LNG exporter last year, we are positioned to supply cleaner fuel all over the world and weaken Russia’s control. This mandate must be undone.

Biden leased 95% fewer acres for oil and gas in fiscal year 2023 than Trump’s highest figure in 2019, representing the lowest ever in U.S. history. Despite the drop, companies managed to produce more oil and natural gas. Estimates, however, indicate this decision will result in $33.5 billion loss in GDP by the end of Biden’s term; we could have produced so much more.

Fossil fuels have and will continue to serve 82% of our energy needs. That has not changed in the past several decades nor will it change in the coming ones. It is imperative we unleash the possibilities to meet surging demands by recommitting to oil and gas leases on public lands. Becoming a net exporter of oil was a monumental achievement in 2019; we need to keep that standing. Energy security is national security.

The use of wind and solar should be relegated to a minor portion of the overall energy portfolio. Having the lowest capacity factors of all energy forms and causing grid instability where widely adopted as a replacement for fossil fuels or nuclear, they are not meant to be a primary energy source. Nor should they be receiving massive handouts, which will require gutting the subsidy-rich Inflation Reduction Act. Our European friends have learned the hard way the folly of such a strategy. Their prioritization must end.

An unwillingness to mine and process critical minerals, used for countless technologies and energy projects, on our soil needs reexamination. China currently dominates the supply chains, keeping every other nation at their mercy. Tapping into our own vast supplies would not only enhance national security but would benefit the environment due to superior standards here. We should open our lands to more exploration.

Energy is the lifeblood of the economy and consumers deserve to have it be abundant, reliable, and affordable. With energy demand on the rise, this can only be accomplished through pragmatic and sensible solutions that maximize energy output and focus on a true all-of-the-above strategy. The disastrous Biden policies that have shackled our supplies and crippled economic prosperity must be eradicated. A course correction come January will be most welcome.

Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal

Topline: The third time’s the charm — unless the first two times were already perfect.

Atlanta residents already had two options for traveling between Centennial Olympic Park and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. They could walk or take the subway.

Yet in 2010, the government spent $72 million to add streetcar service to the exact same 2.6-mile path. The money would be worth $104 million today.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.

Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including Atlanta’s unneeded transport system.

Key facts: The project was paid for with $47.6 million of federal stimulus funds and $24.4 million from the City of Atlanta.

It’s unclear what encouraged federal officials to pick Atlanta’s grant application out of hundreds of others. City planners reviewed 40 proposed mass transit projects and ranked the streetcars dead last in half of the categories that measure impact. Not to mention that a trolley line and bus service in the same area had already been closed due to low demand.

The $72 million would have been nearly enough to clear the backlog of needed sidewalk repairs for the entire city of Atlanta, according to budget documents from the time. It also could have fixed the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s $69 million budget deficit, which forced it to increase train wait times by five minutes.

The city claimed the streetcars would pay for themselves by raising property values in the area. Opponents interviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the project a “government trainwreck” and an “expensive downtown pipe dream.”

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: Today, Atlanta’s tourism website notes that most destinations near the streetcar are walkable, but it’s still fun to “hop on and off when something strikes your fancy.” That’s not enough to justify millions of dollars in spending.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – As the autumn sun warms the historic campus outside, a professor specializing in ancient and modern political philosophy guides undergraduate students through the seemingly ruthless nuances of Machiavelli’s 16^th-century philosophy of morals.

In another class, a professor specializing in political theory offers students a guided tour of the early American republic, as seen through the enlightened eyes of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.

And a professor of rhetoric, who moonlights as a conservative political consultant in national races, diagrams the components of a bulletproof argument on a blackboard as he preps students for an upcoming class debate on the pros and cons of universal basic income.

These vignettes may seem unexceptional, but they are at the center of an ambitious movement to reform what many see as the left-wing capture of America’s leading universities. The classes taught this fall in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s newly launched academic experiment, the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), revive approaches and values that were once accepted as essential to shaping informed and virtuous citizens in a liberal democracy, but are now regarded with deep suspicion by many academics: the classical liberal arts, the great books, Western Civilization, Socratic dialogue, civil discourse.

More than 100 civics programs have arisen in the past quarter-century in academia – emphasizing everything from the Great Books and the Western canon to free markets and entrepreneurship. But UNC’s program is part of a new wave that’s on a wholly different scale in scholarly ambition and political heft. In less than a decade, conservative reformers have created 13 relatively large civics centers at eight public universities – including five in Ohio alone – designed to operate autonomously, similar to law schools or business schools, with their own deans, their own majors, sometimes their own Ph.D. programs, and in a few cases, their own designated buildings.

Much of the mainstream media coverage of this movement has focused on criticism from the educational establishment – which commonly derides them as “freedom schools” and conservative “safe spaces” – because of the circumstances of their creation. Most have been launched by Republican legislatures, fast-tracked by conservative regents, and bankrolled by conservative donors. The civic schools often enjoy a great degree of independence as they are typically granted full control over faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure.

The education establishment, accustomed to having sole control over academic programming, casts these developments as a threat to academic freedom. Civics advocates say they must bypass the conventional procedural protocols because the left’s ideological capture of most campuses would make it difficult, if not impossible, to approve these programs.

The classical learning and civics revival has long been associated with Christian private schools at the K-12 level and independent colleges like Hillsdale College, the Michigan private institution that staunchly refuses any federal funding, and the recently launched University of Austin. But the new wave of civics centers, while enthusiastically backed by conservatives, is rejecting the appeal of a cloistered virtue, and instead adapting traditional educational philosophies to operate within existing university cultures.

After a series of faltering attempts to establish a viable liberal arts tradition over a century, the new civics centers are being built with longevity in mind. In some sense, they are the intellectual mirror of the successful effort by leftwing scholars and activists that began in the 1960s to seed departments – in African-American studies, ethnic studies, and women’s studies – that would exert a powerful influence on America’s universities and the broader culture. The 13 civics centers, which are expected to employ several hundred scholars, have been designed to supply the infrastructure – including financial support, academic posts, and professional conferences – to foster the next generation of civics intellectuals and further expand the movement.

Civics pioneer Paul Carrese, founding director of the civics department at Arizona State University who also served as a consultant for UNC’s civics initiative, said he’s in “serious discussions” with faculty and administrators about creating civics centers at public institutions in four more states. Carrese also said there has been renewed interest in civics at elite private universities ever since Stanford University three years ago restored its common core, called Civic, Liberal, and Global Education, including a course in which students read and discuss a mix of canonical texts and contemporary scholars.

Donald Trump’s election could aid the movement, as the president-elect and his supporters are vowing to reclaim universities from “Marxist maniacs,” in part by withholding accreditation, freezing federal funding, and taxing endowments, or by mothballing the U.S. Department of Education.

As an intellectual movement, civics represents more than a surgical strike against the dominant progressive mindset and hyper-partisanship that define elite campuses. The professors and leaders involved describe civics as nonpartisan, apolitical, and pluralist. They see themselves as leading a revival of the classical liberal tradition that not only rejects social justice advocacy as a university’s prime directive but also challenges academia’s hyper-focus on careerism and vocationalism and pushes back against the academic fetish for arcane sub-specialization within some disciplines.

“It is based on an ancient and powerful set of ideas,” said SCiLL dean Jed Atkins, a classics scholar in Greek and Roman political thought and moral philosophy. “I’m not making any of this up whole cloth. This comes from an established tradition.” Among the movement’s immediate challenges: attracting undergraduates to sign up for civics courses and to major in the discipline. In addition to stock courses on federalism, diplomacy, military history, constitutional rights, and the like, civics schools offer classes that are hip, cool, fun, and philosophical at the same time: explorations of happiness, friendship, immortality, faith, war, espionage, and other perennial themes that could easily be the subject of a Ted Talk.

Some civics professors wade into present-day moral minefields where tenured faculty fear to tread, exposing students to readings and discussions of the most sensitive subjects, like reparations, misgendering, trans athletes, abortion, and polyamory.

Carrese said civics education is maligned as affirmative action for conservatives but should be understood as the restoration of the original charter of the public and private university:  to prepare educated, responsible, engaged citizens.

“Part of the challenge for this movement going forward is to show that although in every single case these programs have been initiated by Red States, they’re not ipso facto a Republican partisan ideological enterprise,” said Carrese, who now consults on strategy for the Jack Miller Center, a suburban Philadelphia nonprofit that provides training and support for civics professors and K-12 teachers.

The Jack Miller Center has provided workshops and programs for more than 1,200 professors, including Carrese and most of the leadership cadre of the 13 civic centers, serving as a kind of networking hub for the movement.

“You can look at who’s been hired, what the courses are, what the enrollment is, what the public speakers programs are,” said Carrese, who is also a professor of moral and political thought in the Arizona civics program.

For Nadège Sirot, a first-year UNC student who plans to major in classics and minor in civics, SCiLL has been a revelation. Her high school experience was marked by “tons of trigger warnings,” the occasional land acknowledgment, and open invitations for students to walk out of class if they felt uncomfortable or offended by the subject.

In civics, core knowledge, as understood in the American context, is not presented as just another perspective in a subjective buffet of equally valid options but as the intellectual foundation for all other learning. In the Carolina civics course, Sirot said, the approach is not “Do you agree with Machiavelli?” but rather, “Do you understand what Machiavelli is trying to say? What can this thinker teach us today?”

“It’s a teaching method that has worked for centuries,” Sirot said. “And SCiLL is now trying to return to it.”

The new civics centers are generously funded, unmistakably ambitious, and already reshaping campus culture. The University of Florida’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, which aims to build the nation’s top program in the study of Western Civilization, has 35 tenured faculty, runs about two dozen classes a semester with more than 500 students, and is slated to expand to 60 full-time professors.

The Hamilton Center has recruited professors with pedigrees from the Ivy League, Oxford University, and other marquee institutions to teach such courses as “The Crisis of Liberalism,” “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” “God and Science,” “Utopias and Dystopias,” “Political Violence and Power,” and “Why Spy?”

UNC’s SCiLL department is set to expand from three courses this semester to 14 courses next year. Planned offerings include “The Politics of the Bible,” “Science and Society,” and “Lab Coats and Legislatures: Science and Policy.” The school is in the process of developing a residential program on the Chapel Hill campus, modeled on the civil discourse dorm offered at nearby Duke University. In the long term, SCiLL leaders hope to create a semester study program in Washington, D.C.

Notably, the UNC school has already been green-lighted to lead a mandatory free speech session during orientation week next fall for all 4,700 first-year undergraduates – a requirement noteworthy for a university that has recently disbanded diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

Sirot’s professor, Dustin Sebell, whose Foundations of Civic Life course covers modern political thinkers and moral philosophers – including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche – said that recognizing the immense contributions of the great thinkers stands in stark contrast to the prevailing trend in academe, where it’s often assumed that classic books and ideas are past their expiration date.

“The presumption is that the present is the peak – we can look down on the past with contempt and pity,” Sebell said. “It’s a kind of chauvinism, almost a kind of xenophobia.”

Civics advocates have hashed out a variety of strategic approaches in a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, Law & Liberty, and other publications.

Some warn against the natural temptation to hire faculty based on political beliefs and wage warfare against the woke machine, and thereby risk becoming rightwing echo chambers and alienating professors and students. “The solution to politicization from the left is not politicization from the right,” wrote Harvard historian James Hankins last year.

Others say that to disrupt the status quo, civics should borrow from the playbook of politicized programs like women’s studies, ethnic studies, African-American studies, and gender studies. These sectarian, advocacy-oriented departments were once upstarts that muscled their way onto campus with boycotts, protests, and sit-ins, and were often treated with indifference or scorn by the Greatest Generation professoriate, but over time, the activist-scholars ended up producing a critical mass of scholarship – on implicit bias, microaggressions, systemic racism, structural oppression, power and privilege – that has proven highly influential in law, medicine, education, government, and corporate management.

“This is a legitimate tactic. It’s how universities work,” wrote two American Enterprise Institute scholars in the WSJ this year in a piece titled “Follow the Left’s Example to Reform Higher Ed.” “They develop ways of thinking that cohere as a discipline, in which students can be trained. They create associations; journals spring up; grants get funded; students get degrees. One generation of faculty acts as mentors to the next.”

The objections to civics range from rightwing political meddling to duplication of subjects already taught. Some skeptics go further and say that civics is a nostalgic throwback to a triumphalist, Cold War era scholarship limited by Eurocentrism and cultural myopia that now seem quaint and misguided.

UNC historian Jay Smith, who is president of the North Carolina conference of the American Association of University Professors, said SCiLL is an “invasion” and an “intrusion” on the campus. He acknowledged that the professor bios and course descriptions look solid – in fact, some SCiLL faculty are full-time professors in other UNC departments – but he said he would advise students to pass over SCiLL and instead take a class in the history department or political science department, where they can be sure the curriculum was not created under political pressure.

“To me civics is a code word the Right uses,” Smith said. “This is all intended to get students to get focused more on American greatness. Everything that’s special about America. And capitalism, too, in its way. They don’t have ‘capitalism studies’ in their title … but making the world safe for the capitalists is one of the unspoken objectives.”

The critics typically downplay or deny the amply documented grievance that a progressive overrepresentation on campus is stifling viewpoint diversity on campus and creating a climate of censorship and conformity.

Danaya Wright, a law professor at the University of Florida, is deeply suspicious of the legislature dictating a civics program by “a top-down, heavy-handed approach” but acknowledged that the Hamilton Center has hired “outstanding scholars” and is offering legitimate courses in a subject that is worth studying. Her concern is that the civics posture of intellectual humility toward the Western tradition betrays a tendency for sanitizing and mythologizing the past.

She said there are compelling reasons for exposing the moral blindness of the past from the contemporary perspective of social justice advocacy, and even acknowledging today’s perspective as morally superior.

“Don’t we think that people who are woke are actually more evolved?” she posed. “If there is a one-way direction of knowledge in engineering, isn’t becoming more moral and more empathetic – and more aware of the world around you – isn’t that a one-way ratchet, too ?”

And one other sore point bears mentioning.

“There’s a little bit of bad feeling because they’re getting a lot of funding,” Wright said, “and these other colleges and departments are not – they’re being starved.”

However, some civics courses do expose students to contemporary critiques of the West and of the American project – specifically, theories of power, privilege, and oppression as applied to intersectional identities of race, sex, and gender.

The Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville is teaching eight sections of classes this semester, with about 200 students enrolled, said Josh Dunn, the executive director. Dunn said that two of the courses include readings from The New York Times’ 1619 Project, a book-length collection of revisionist essays that characterize the United States as a “slavocracy” and center racism and discrimination as the nation’s core values. The 1619 Project is always paired with readings from critics who assess the project’s omissions and misrepresentations.

“To give a true version of American history, you have to expose students to these different perspectives of the debate over these conflicts and over our purpose as a nation,” Dunn said. “You’re doing a disservice to students if you don’t expose them to all these different sides.”

Civics also exposes students to both sides of current, ongoing controversies, a perspective students say they don’t get today. The topics are so radioactive that many professors won’t touch them for fear of offending students or administrators. The issues covered are the alpha-omega of contemporary tripwires and taboos: nonbinary pronouns and misgendering; transgenderism and female athletics; puberty blockers and teenage transitions; biological sex as a social construct; legalizing polyamory; white privilege, reparations, abortion, Israel/Palestine, among others.

These controversies are currently taught in Duke University’s civil discourse program by John Rose, a specialist in Christian ethics who has joined SCiLL and will be teaching the same subjects at UNC this spring. At Duke, Rose’s classes have included visits from prominent scholars directly involved in the controversies – including Harvard economist Roland Fryer (whose research shows that police don’t disproportionately kill black people), Duke economist Peter Arcidiacono (the expert witness for Asian plaintiffs opposing affirmative action in the recent Supreme Court case involving Harvard and UNC), and detransitioner Chloe Cole (who opposes medicalized “gender-affirming care” for minors).

SCiLL’s planned class on Israel and Palestine will take students on a university-funded trip over spring break to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories.

That approach is catching on. In May and June, Rose led seminars for university faculty on teaching these polarizing topics in college. To date, 84 professors from 70 colleges have attended these workshops, and some are teaching a version of this class, Rose said.

Addie Geitner, a Duke senior double majoring in economics and public policy, took Rose’s polarization class last spring. She described the class as “a total overhaul of what I was used to – there’s a 50-50 balance of perspectives.”

She said a typical policy class is very one-sided, exposing students to a narrow range of perspectives one might experience listening to NPR: “We focus on issues generally related to equity, and how it’s achieved. And we almost solely focus on what the federal government needs to provide to address those problems, as opposed to exploring any other route.”

Civics is only one example of recent efforts to course-correct academia.

Around the country, faculty have formed faculty free speech alliances, led by the example of Harvard’s Council on Academic Freedom, which opposes enforcing ideological compliance through mandatory “diversity statements” in faculty hiring, counsels faculty on free speech threats, and sponsors public events. The Harvard organization was launched in 2023 by Flynn Cratty, a historian who served as the Council’s founding executive director and has been described by The New York Times as a “prominent Harvard academic”; Cratty has since joined UNC’s School of Civil Life and Leadership.

A chief rationale for civics is the ideological monoculture on U.S. campuses. The conservative National Association of Scholars said in a 2017 report that civics has been replaced by the progressive ideal that “a good citizen is a radical activist.”

That claim may be hyperbolic, but studies consistently find that faculty political affiliations skew leftward, usually leaning liberal or leftist 10 to 1, and in some colleges leaning left more than 100 to 1. In a climate of cancel culture, shutdowns, and callouts, the majority of students are hesitant to discuss or ask questions about controversial subjects.

Dunn, who directs Tennessee’s civics initiative, is co-author of “Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University” (2016), a well-received book that describes conservative professors as a “stigmatized minority” on campus who sometimes resort to the coping strategies used by LGBTQ people. According to the Atlantic magazine review: “Many conservative professors are – as they put it – closeted. Some of the people they interviewed explicitly said they identify with the experience of gays and lesbians in having to hide who they are. One tenure-track sociology professor even asked to meet Shields and Dunn in a park a mile away from his university.”

Murmurs about civics deficiencies in education aren’t new, as universities continually face pressures to produce marketable graduates, publish cutting-edge research, and compete for federal research funding. According to a recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 100% of the top colleges allow students to graduate without taking a single course in American history, and three-fourths of the colleges don’t require students to take any history course at all.

The School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas in Austin is led by Justin Dyer, who once described himself as “a conservative, straight out of central casting, a pro-life evangelical who is an unapologetic admirer of the American Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution.”

Dyer said the center is nonpartisan but does approach the American founding “from a posture of gratitude” and an appreciation of the Western inheritance that produced the U.S. Constitution and the American experiment.

“It’s not simply an uncritical exercise,” Dyer said. “We’re not value-neutral or value-free.”

The school has eight faculty with tenure or on tenure track and another 13 lecturers and adjuncts, and is legislatively mandated to have at least 20 tenured faculty. It has a budget of $6 million this year from state sources, and private donations and pledges have soared, exceeding $20 million. Top donors include Republican political funder Robert Rowling, a hotel magnate who is ranked 126 on Forbes 400 richest Americans, and Republican contributor Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate whose generous gifts to his friend, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, have been subjects of media coverage.

Rowling’s expectation is that the School of Civic Leadership will become a highly selective and competitive program, attracting world-class faculty and top-performing students.

But right now, the school is regarded with wariness by the university faculty.

“Look, I’m not foolish,” Rowling said. “If you voted among the faculty up or down on the School of Civic Life, they would absolutely say No.”

The director of the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, William Inboden, said the Hamilton Center is animated by an “appreciation for the American founding” and the “uniqueness of the Western tradition. “We see history as more than a simplistic morality tale of the oppressor versus the oppressed,” he said.

“You will find more conservative viewpoints on our faculty,” Inboden acknowledged. “That’s not because of a political litmus test, but because we have removed the political litmus test.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran a lengthy, detailed account of how the University of Florida humanities faculty discriminated against students who became involved with the Hamilton Center. One student met with a Hamilton Center official at an off-campus coffee shop, where they wouldn’t be seen. Within the university, some professors regarded university officials who were involved in the Hamilton Center’s creation as “agents of the state.”

The university subsequently retaliated by subjecting six professors to an investigation. Ultimately, the probe was dropped after Ken McGurn, a former UF Foundation board chair, got involved. McGurn, a Kamala Harris supporter who has donated or pledged more than $10 million to the university, met several times with Inboden this spring to try to get to the bottom of the Hamilton Center’s purpose and agenda.

In an interview with RealClearInvestigations, McGurn said he has been impressed with the credentials of the Hamilton Center faculty and has received assurances that it’s not a political boondoggle, but he is concerned about an academic unit for which Republicans are “writing the checks.”

“This group that started the Hamilton Center,” McGurn said of state GOP lawmakers, “they went out there banning books. They went out there taking away civil liberties. It’s very suspect, very suspect.”

UNC’s School of Civic Life and Leadership has been subject to similar scrutiny. A nonprofit news site, The Assembly, recently ran an exposé about SCiLL, intimating that Jed Atkins’ “vision for the program is becoming clearer.”

The suspicion borders on the irrational when insinuating that Atkins’ scholarly interest in Cicero betrays a fascination with Roman statesmen that is a proclivity of the political right. The article further notes in conspiratorial tones that “Atkins is a Christian whose kids were homeschooled.”

Inger Brodey, SCiLL’s associate dean of faculty development and curriculum, is a UNC professor of English and Comparative Literature.

Brodey shared a draft syllabus for a civics course she plans to teach this spring entitled “Seeking the Good Life.” Reading selections for the class include the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Aristotle, Nietzsche, the Quran, Confucius, Simone de Beauvoir, C.S. Lewis, and James Baldwin, among others.

Asked if SCiLL is a source of controversy among the professoriate, Brodey replied: “I have people hugging me and thanking me for taking this on, and people who won’t speak to me in the elevator.”

The United States needs a national security strategy reset. WWII ended 79 years ago, and the U.S. has engaged in some form of conflict for roughly 61 of those 79 years. The post-WWII era has been one of almost continual conflict and to what end? Republican and Democrat Administrations alike have made a practice of rushing into conflict absent decisive strategy and without achieving decisive outcomes.

The post-WWII rules-based order (RBO), centered around the United Nations and other international institutions, is often credited with having provided greater stability and peace in the world since WWII. But this is not true. It is an illusion. The world avoided large scale violent global conflict, but small-scale conflicts in the form of civil wars, border conflicts, regional wars, and terrorism have raged since 1945.

False hopes regarding the rules-based order and its effectiveness have warped the West’s view of war and its understanding of why the Allies were able to achieve a durable victory in WWII.

The Allies won WWII because they broke the will of the Axis powers through the sheer magnitude of death and destruction dealt to their civilian populations, not just to their armies. But ever since then, the United States has so feared conflicts escalating into vicious interstate wars that—perversely—it has tried over and over to fight limited wars for limited objectives, believing that such wars can either achieve our objectives or bring diplomacy into focus.

Counterintuitively, however, limited wars fail to result in long-lasting diplomatic solutions because they are limited. The U.S. fails to make war costly enough to collapse the will of our enemies and, because the U.S. is unwilling to wage war that is sufficiently violent and destructive, war doesn’t deliver decisive outcomes.

It is time for the United States to try a different tack and, by doing so, to also put itself in the position of having to use military power less frequently. With an actual framework to help guide the application of force, the U.S. would also be able to bring greater coherence to how and when it wages war and supports allies and partners.

Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane Lauchengco published a book in 2011 called, The Sovereignty Solution, which offers a framework worthy of consideration.

The Sovereignty Solution advocates for a national security strategy based on making more, not less of sovereignty. What does this mean? It means that the U.S. responds to violations of its sovereignty forcefully and overwhelmingly in order to stop the violator from engaging in more violence. What the U.S. will not do is deploy forces to reshape or rebuild whole countries and their societies. The U.S. military exists to defend U.S. sovereignty and provide security for its people, its territories, and its national interests and treaty partners. Period. This stands in stark contrast to how the U.S. has employed its military capabilities since 9/11 or how it is addressing Iran’s near constant attacks on U.S. personnel and interests now.

The goal in taking sovereignty seriously is to foster a system of mutual respect among nations. The U.S. will refrain from interfering in, or with, other countries, but where and when U.S. sovereignty is violated, the U.S. will respond forcefully against the perpetrators—and their sponsors. We expect our allies and partners to do the same and will support them when they are true partners (as described in the book).

This approach diverges from traditional strategies by focusing on reducing U.S. combat missions overseas and by insisting instead on strong accountability by states for the actions of their citizens and not just their militaries; to include supporting or providing safe havens for terrorists. The Sovereignty Solution also promotes strengthening countries’ domestic social fabric, addressing vulnerabilities like political polarization, which adversaries can exploit.

There is no better example of how fecklessly the United States currently manages conflict than the Biden Administration’s response to Israel’s current war. The Biden Administration has been bi-polar in its approach to Israel’s conflict and unforgivably submissive towards Iran.

For instance, the Administration supports Israel’s right to defend itself but does so while demanding restraint. How does this make sense when Hamas’s attack on October 7^th of 2023 was the manifestation of Iran’s stated aim of annihilating Israel? The Biden Administration has worked overtime to reign in Israel while leaving Iran and its proxies unchallenged, which in effect protects Iran.

Clearly, President Biden, members of his administration, and many leading Democrats believe that Israel has gone too far in Gaza and is now over-reaching against Hezbollah in Lebanon. They seem to believe that Israel has more than gotten even and should now prioritize finding a diplomatic solution to end the fighting. The Administration believes that only a ceasefire and well-defined road map for achieving a two-state solution will lead to long-term stability, and that this will undermine Iran’s long-term goal of destroying Israel.

But Israel’s defense of itself is not about getting even. And it is not about the Palestinians. It is about re-securing Israel’s sovereignty.

According to a sovereignty rules framework, what happened on October 7^th is that Hamas, the de facto sovereign government of Gaza, violated Israel’s sovereignty through an act of war. Israel therefore not only had the right to reciprocate with overwhelming force, but a duty to reduce Hamas’s military capability so that it can no longer present a viable threat to Israel’s security. Israel has a similar duty vis-à-vis Hezbollah. Likewise, Israel has an obligation to its citizens to strike Iran with as much force as is needed to stop Iran’s support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and to halt Iran’s own direct attacks on Israel.

Israel has given peace a chance. Israel has given the two-state solution a chance. Israel has long tried trusting the rules-based order to help it protect itself. Indeed, Israel has tried everything militarily possible through overt and covert means to prevent Iran from reaching its stated goal of annihilating Israel—which is the ultimate violation of sovereignty! Yet, none of these things have been sufficient to dissuade Iran or its proxies from seeking Israel’s destruction.

Disappointingly, not only has the liberal version of the rules-based order failed to work, but the United Nations—the flagship organization for that order—has itself provided diplomatic cover for Hamas via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which ignored and may have abetted Hamas in militarizing its society and indoctrinating Palestinians to liquidate the Jews.  How perverse that in his remarks at the 79^th United Nations General Assembly, President Biden said that Gazans did not ask for the war that Hamas started. Clearly, my eyes must have been lying to me when I watched footage of Gazans cheering and celebrating on October 7^th.

In a further dereliction of its duty, the UN chose to not enforce Security Council Resolution 1701, which was meant to firewall southern Lebanon from Israel and Hezbollah, and thereby prevent another war after the Second Lebanon War of 2006. Instead, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon did nothing as Hezbollah infiltrated southern Lebanon and militarized it much the same way Hamas did Gaza. 1701 was made exceedingly hollower when Iran equipped Hezbollah with sophisticated indirect fires systems and drones that could range across Israel from inside Lebanon.

Another RBO shortcoming relates to how exit strategies are conceived of these days. The idea that countries that respond to violations of their sovereignty are responsible for putting everything back together again in the violator’s territory goes hand-in-hand with the West’s fantasy that it can remake whole societies through regime change. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are proof that none of this works. Not only is it impossible to rebuild other people’s nations for them, but it is also a terrible waste of resources and time.

Equally wasteful is not destroying an entity that has attacked you, that has expressed its intent to destroy you, and that retains the capacity to destroy you.

Israel has no alternative but to give war a chance—to use sufficient force to break the back of Iran’s capability, which includes breaking the backs of Hamas and Hezbollah. Destroying them remains a work in progress given the scale of the problem. The human cost in Gaza and Lebanon is real; however, this war must be waged if peace is ever to have a chance.

People want to believe that modern countries can achieve their military goals without civilian casualties. People think that modern militaries with exquisite targeting capabilities, like those demonstrated by the Israeli Defense Forces, can defeat their enemies through selective targeting, but frequently this isn’t true. When an adversary’s entire society has been indoctrinated and mobilized, selective targeting is insufficient—by definition. Also, selective targeting can’t spare civilians when an enemy has burrowed into the civilian infrastructure as Hamas and Hezbollah have—with civilian complicity.

The West has yet to come to grips with the fact that few of its adversaries share the West’s sensibilities. Nor does the West seem to recognize that adversaries will mold their methods to take advantage of Western sensibilities. Case in point, Hamas and Hezbollah are both more than willing to use civilians as human shields and, even more barbarously, they set up civilians to be killed in order to make Israel look bad.

During WWII, the Allies couldn’t bomb accurately enough to avoid civilian casualties. This inadvertently worked to the allies’ advantage because it necessitated total war that exhausted Germany and Japan to the point that both countries acceded to unconditional surrender. How ironic that in an era when we can target with precision and when we have come to revile total war as an option, we not only fail to exhaust our enemies, but our enemies resort to tactics and strategies that deliberately put their own populations at risk. They do so because they know that they can offset our targeting capabilities by using our sensibilities against us.

Hamas and Hezbollah have backed Israel into an unwinnable IO war by developing strategies that make it impossible for Israel to decisively crush them and extirpate them without also killing thousands of civilians. The slaughter of civilians is the doing of Hamas and Hezbollah. The only way out of this for Israel requires that Western leaders adjust their sensibilities to this fact.

Unfortunately, another reason Israel’s campaign against Hamas has been so fraught is because crushing Hamas is impossible to square with freeing the hostages. The only way Israel can get its hostages back is by letting Hamas cut a deal for a ceasefire. But Israel cutting a deal with Hamas is antithetical to Israel’s destruction of Hamas’s ability to function as a movement that will continue to pose a long-term threat to Israel’s security.

Many have speculated that Prime Minister Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza out of political self-interest. Maybe. Or perhaps Bibi Netanyahu is smart enough to recognize that Hamas is toying with the Israeli population’s emotions over the hostages to preserve its ability to live to fight another day. Many critics argue that Israel should give in and agree to a ceasefire because nothing Israel does will alter Palestinians’ animosity or lead to Hamas’s dismantlement. True, the Israelis aren’t going to be able to kill the idea behind Hamas. But they can attrit the organization and degrade its capabilities until it can no longer function as a movement.

We must remember that given the fact that Israel’s enemies are committed to Israel’s eradication, there is no accommodation to be had. Israel is fighting to restore its security now and for the future. The fact that Hamas jumped the gun before Iran was ready to join in Israel’s destruction inadvertently provides Israel a unique opportunity to confront Iran now rather than wait until Iran is better armed and better prepared in the future. We can only hope that Trump will view this moment for the opportunity that it presents.

Israel’s current fight on behalf of its sovereignty has not only exposed the Biden Administration’s strategic incoherence, but also deeper flaws in how the U.S. thinks about our national security and the security of our allies.

The U.S. says Israel has the right to defend itself, but then proceeds to try to compel Israel to do things that aren’t good for Israel. What is even crazier is that the U.S. keeps trying to urge Israel to implement methods and tactics that didn’t work for us in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Americans keep scolding the Israelis regarding their use of force, chastising them for their failure to employ a counterinsurgency strategy, and berating them for not identifying a political solution to the Palestinian problem. The Administration began calling for de-escalation and a ceasefire long before Israel had achieved any military victories against Hamas, and the Administration wanted Israel to leave Rafah untouched despite its centrality to Hamas’s smuggling infrastructure, or the fact that it was where Yahya Sinwar was hiding.

The Administration has wanted to keep the conflict from escalating regionally but has striven to do this by holding Israel to account―and not Iran. Yet, Iran is who made this a regional war by attacking Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and from Iran itself.

The U.S. fails to appreciate that Hamas’s attack de-synched Iran’s strategic plans, thereby providing Israel with both the opportunity and the moral justification to thwart Iran’s long-term goal of annihilating it. The U.S. keeps pressuring Israel instead to stop short, which will only leave Iran and its hateful proxies confident that eventually they will destroy Israel because they will still possess the means to do so. This really makes no sense. But nor does it make sense given our own history with Iran.

Iran has murdered approximately 900 Americans and seized dozens of American hostages since 1979. Iranian proxies have attacked American troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan several hundred times, killed three U.S. service members, and injured scores more since October 7^th, 2023. Iranian backed Houthis repeatedly attack commercial shipping and U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea with negligible consequences. The U.S. employs what can best be called a passive defense and only occasionally responds to attacks in Syria and Iraq, all of which adds up to a weak, never-ending game of tit-for-tat.

Adopting a Sovereignty Solution approach would handle these violations of U.S. sovereignty differently. It would also lead the U.S. to stop making Israel’s war more complicated than it needs to be. The U.S. should support the legitimacy of Israel’s response, respect its decisions, and let it fight. The U.S. should also warn Iran that the next time it attacks U.S. forces directly or by proxy, the U.S. will respond with devastating force. For instance, should the Houthis fire on a U.S.-flagged vessel again, the U.S. will regard this as the act of war that it is and respond with overwhelming might.

Critics of such an approach might contend that it is overly bellicose and risks overlooking complex global interdependencies. Or they might claim that non-state actors often operate beyond state controls. However, sovereignty and security are deeply intertwined. Each reinforces the other to sustain a country’s autonomy and stability. Non-state actors wouldn’t and couldn’t exist if governments were held to account, which they would be in a sovereignty rules world as outlined in The Sovereignty Solution.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration’s submissiveness has only invited contempt from our adversaries and enemies―and many allies too. Worse, submissiveness invites further aggression. Somehow, we have erroneously come to believe that the answer to transgressions of sovereignty resides in forever war, sanctions, and capitulation masquerading as diplomacy. But, if we don’t like war, we need to remember that the real antidote to long drawn-out conflict is to accept the need for short, sharp, definitive military action when sovereignty is violated.

Ideally, President-elect Trump won’t just see the use of force this way but will prove to be the right leader at the right time to break with increasingly outdated dysfunctional post WWII conventions about the use of force. Ideally, he will implement a national security framework that approaches conflicts and security threats around the world with greater common sense, to include Iran’s threat to Israel.

J.B. Books is an experienced expert in the region and on military matters.

Check out the Book titled “The Sovereignty Solution.”

Disability rights advocates in Ireland and the United Kingdom are explaining why they oppose legalized assisted suicide, even for individuals who are deemed ‘terminal.’

Dr. Margaret Kennedy penned an op-ed for the Irish Independent in which she stated her belief that persons with disabilities in Ireland are in danger of “euthanasia by stealth.” And in the UK, Merry Cross wrote for OpenDemocracy that she “is scared” of the nation’s assisted suicide bill.

Ireland

In October, the Irish Parliament’s lower house voted to “take note” of a report from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying, which recommended allowing assisted suicide for Irish adult citizens who are suffering “intolerably” with a terminal illness and have six months or less to live, or 12 months (or less) for those with neurodegenerative conditions. By November 8, the bill, entitled an “Act to establish a legal framework for assisted dying in Ireland,” had failed — at least for now, as the assisted suicide debate continues.

Alongside that debate, the Cost of Disability in Ireland report found that the additional costs associated with being a disabled person in Ireland added up to between €8,700 and €10,000 per year in 2021. With inflation, the Disability Federation of Ireland estimates that the additional cost of living has since risen to about €10,397 and €15,177 per year. Ireland’s Budget for 2025 was reported to include “one-off” payments to help people with disabilities with the additional costs they face. But according to Kennedy, those ‘payments’ are inadequate.

“The cost of living for disabled people, sick or older persons in Ireland is three times more compared to the general population. Disabled people have been calling for a recurring ‘cost of living disability payment’ for decades and they are still not being heard. This year it was again denied,” said Kennedy.

She continued, “Many of us who are sick, old and disabled feel that we are now living in a dangerous country. … They used to say children should be seen and not heard. For me, the Budget last month felt like that: cold, distant, like we had no voice.” She told the prime minister that she does not “feel seen.”

Kennedy argued that Ireland is “among the worst countries in the EU for the rates of poverty experienced by disabled people” and that it is a “national shame and scandal” that Ireland continues to fail to address the issue of disability poverty and lack of services. She said that any proposed assisted dying legislation will only serve to further “erode services, reduce palliative care investment, and create a major damaging, psychological impact on vulnerable groups.”

She continued, “Many doctors in Ireland, and groups representing disabled people and older people, are not in favour of assisted dying legislation. They have deep concerns about what happened in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada which have seen expansion upon expansion of the grounds for assisted suicide and euthanasia. Diminishing services prolong and increase older, disabled and sick people’s suffering to the extent that many now feel they can no longer live a valuable and productive life.”

She referred to it as “euthanasia by stealth.”

“When you’re disabled, the psychological harm of living in a country when it’s increasingly hard to lead an active, meaningful life is enormous. Many not able to hang on will make a choice to die rather than fight,” she said.

Rachel Clarke, a specialist in hospital palliative care, noted, “My concern is that if we change the law [to allow physician-assisted death] without adequate resourcing of palliative care, then there will be people who chose to end their lives because they weren’t being provided with the care they needed.”

And in fact, this is happening in Canada already.

The UK

According to The Guardian, the same concern about legalized assisted suicide and lack of palliative care exists in England and Wales. Just last week, British lawmakers voted in the House of Commons to pass a bill allowing assisted suicide for people who are given just six months to live, marking what the Catholic Herald called “one of the greatest betrayals of the vulnerable in society in recent history.”

That bill must now survive Parliament before it can become law.

Merry Cross wrote at OpenDemocracy:

Some might assume that disabled people would be breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of MPs backing the ‘assisted dying bill’ on 29 November, or conversely that it has nothing to do with us. Neither is true.

I was born with a significant impairment which means, among other things, that I have known pain and injuries all my life. I, like most disabled people, have enormous compassion for those whose lives end in serious pain.

It needn’t be like this. Like many other disabled people, I believe money and effort should be put into assisting us to live with dignity before it is spent on our deaths.

She said she has seen “cut after cut to our benefits,” including the availability of caregivers. These cuts have resulted in “hundreds of deaths.”

In addition, she and other disabled individuals “haven’t forgotten how during the pandemic, disability rights charities reported doctors issuing an ‘unprecedented’ number of ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders to people with learning difficulties, without any consultation with the patient or family.”

Cross noted, “The impact of all this is that both disabled people and our families become more likely to see ourselves as burdens. Some of us may feel that we might want out, via assisted suicide/dying.”

As Cross writes, doctors don’t often “accurately predict[] the length of time a patient will live.” In fact, it is “something they fail to do in half of cases, according to data analysis by Paddy Stone, emeritus professor of palliative and end of life care at University College London…”

Like Kennedy, Cross called it “a very dangerous time for” people with disabilities.

“When the standard of living drops as low as it has for so many people, with costs rising constantly, disabled people are rapidly cast as financial burdens on society and as being of less value than others,” Cross wrote. “This is why Disabled People Against Cuts is urging the government to not help us die, but #AssistUsToLive.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

The author of “Laptop from Hell,” the book documenting alleged crimes by Biden family members, is now predicting the next pardons coming from Joe now that the president has excused his son Hunter, and says the listing of names likely to receive “preemptive pardons” demonstrates their guilt.

“All the people that are listed as going to get pardons, there’s sort of diplomatic immunity or Democratic immunity for crimes not even charged by Joe Biden,” author and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” on the Fox News Channel, “they’re obviously guilty of something because otherwise why would they be wanting pardons.”

Among those whose names have been floated for preemptive pardons are Sen.-elect Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; former NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.; and Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for “making secret phone calls to China during President-elect Trump’s first term in office, unbeknownst to the commander in chief,” Bartiromo noted.

Devine added: “I think this shows with Liz Cheney there is a lot of allegations around about her untoward behavior during the J6 committee that she was vice chair of.

“And there’s a lawyer Stefan Passantino who has made a bar complaint in the D.C. Bar against her for communicating with his client Cassidy Hutchinson without him when she was on the J6 committee and asking her to testify.”

“Wow, this is just incredible,” Bartiromo reacted.

‘Just incredible’: ‘Laptop from Hell’ author says preemptive #pardon names are ‘obviously guilty of something’

‘All the people that are listed as going to get pardons, there’s sort of diplomatic immunity or Democratic immunity for crimes not even charged’ #Biden @mariabartiromo pic.twitter.com/rrP8bwtvo1

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) December 8, 2024

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

When asked specifically to predict who would receive a pardon next, Devine said it would likely be the president’s brother Jim.

“I think probably Jim Biden is the priority for Joe Biden because, remember, Jim was involved in a lot of the China grift with Hunter Biden and participated in the money. Also signed those checks, or his wife did, to Joe Biden, the $200,000 checks that came pretty much 10% of the Chinese money that came in a couple of times,” Devine explained.

“And that money was very strangely moved around between bank accounts, taken out in cash, put back into another account and then a check was signed by, basically, Joe Biden’s sister-in-law.

“But written on the check was loan repayment. And the White House maintained that line that it was a loan repayment and, therefore, the Republicans in the House that uncovered those checks accepted that that was, you know, we couldn’t go any further than that, they said.

“They couldn’t find any evidence to refute the idea that Joe Biden had very generously lent his brother, his ailing brother some money, and then his brother paid it back when he came into money.

“But it was interesting that it was 10% for the Big Guy exactly of the money that Jim Biden had received. And Jim Biden’s been under investigation anyway.”

Watch Miranda Devine’s full interview with Maria Bartiromo:

Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

Congress will meet soon to approve the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). There are certainly differences between the Senate and House versions. There always is, and those differences are to be expected. Differences in the procurement numbers of ships, aircraft, missile systems and myriad other platforms will have to be resolved in conference.

However, there is one area that should have both the Senate and House versions of the NDAA in total harmony—personnel and quality of life issues. These are the issues, policies and programs that will acknowledge the many sacrifices military personnel, and their families make day in and day out. Any failure by the Senate and House to be ‘on the same page’ with personnel and quality of life issues will fail to sustain the All-Volunteer Force and cause its foundations to erode.

Case in point: There is a provision in the House version of the NDAA that seeks to address the unique employment challenges military spouses face, specifically within the federal workforce. The provision is referred to as the READNESS Act. It’s unknown if language for the READINESS Act is in the final version of the FY 2025 NDAA.

As the nation’s largest employer, the federal government should be setting the gold standard for supporting military spouse employment. For many spouses stationed overseas, the federal government is often the only viable employer. Yet military spouses continue to face barriers to retaining their jobs when they are forced to relocate. The provision in the NDAA creates a path to much-needed flexibility and stability.

Key provisions are:

• Remote Work Flexibility. Federal agencies will assess positions for remote work potential, allowing military spouses to remain employed during PCS moves.
• Reassignment and Alternative Worksites. Agencies can offer military spouses reassignment to equivalent positions in new duty station locations or provide options to work from alternative worksites.
• Leave Without Pay (LWOP). For spouses unable to work remotely or be reassigned, LWOP ensures they remain federal employees and retain essential non-financial benefits such as security clearances. This would ease re-entry into the federal workforce when positions become available.

Military spouses face a staggering unemployment rate—more than three times the national average. Military spouse unemployment not only impacts the financial well-being of military families, but it is also a retention issue. Nearly one in five servicemembers cite concerns with spouse employment as part of their decision to leave service.

In many cases, a dual income is vital for military families to achieve financial stability—particularly given the rising cost of living. Yet these families are asked to sacrifice that stability with every permanent change of duty station.

Sadly, while private companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Boeing have proactively committed to supporting military spouses through initiatives modeled on the READINESS Act, the federal government has been slow to follow.

The House NDAA provision addresses these challenges head-on by providing military spouses who are federal employees with the career flexibility they need to continue working, even as their families are required to relocate.

The military services are facing some very serious recruiting challenges. Although there are several issues causing the problems, currently serving military families can play a very important role in helping the situation. Unfortunately, the likelihood of currently serving military members and their families recommending military service is declining. In its most recent survey of military families, Blue Star Families found respondents who were likely to recommend military service have dropped by nearly half from 2016 when it was 55 percent to just 32 percent in 2023.

Blue Star Families also found that spouse employment was the top issue for active duty respondents. This marked the fourth year in a row for the spouse employment issue to be the most concerning. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Blue Star Families found employed military spouses were more likely to recommend military service than their unemployed peers.

Blue Star Families is a non-profit organization that supports our military men and women and their families.

In a recent letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) called for the senate’s support of the spouse employment provision. Writing on behalf of several other military support organizations, the MOAA letter said the provision provides for a commonsense, cost-neutral solution that benefits both military families and the Department of Defense by ensuring military spouses can continue contributing to their family’s financial security and military readiness.

If the All-Volunteer Force is to not merely survive but thrive, the Congress and the Defense Department must show leadership and commitment to the well-being of those who serve our country. Including the spouse employment provision—the READINESS Act—in the NDAA is not just a benefit for families but a strategic imperative for the nation’s defenses.

RADM Jurkowsky (U.S. Navy, ret.) served on active duty for 31, beginning his career as an enlisted sailor. He has served on the board of the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), an advocacy organization that supports both officer and enlisted personnel who serve and have served, along with their families.

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson claimed Friday on his podcast that Hunter Biden was “blackmailing” President Joe Biden with his past crimes and using it as leverage for a potential pardon.

Despite Biden and his staff repeatedly insisting that Hunter would not be pardoned for his tax fraud and felony gun charges, the president announced Sunday his decision to clear Hunter’s record. On “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” the senior fellow suggested that Hunter, angry at being seen as the “bad seed” of his family, allegedly blackmailed Biden by threatening to testify against the family.

“There is a sickness in Hunter Biden vis-a-vis his father. I mentioned that if one reads carefully the laptop communications, there’s an anger. He is not Beau Biden. He’s the bad seed, the prodigal son,” Hanson said. “He feels that he cooked up the entire shakedown operation. He is the dirty bag man. He is Hunter. Remember he says to his cousin, ‘They always have me do stuff. Nobody ever, I’m the one making this family. If I was like dad, I’d charge everybody.’ So he had to do the dirty work.”

“When he was up with the IRS and they were squeezing him because of this phony sweetheart deal they cooked up and the judge was mad. His lawyer said, ‘We might have to call in Joe Biden, now president.’ Think of that,” Hanson added. “They’re going to call the president of the United States to testify on behalf of Hunter Biden. He would say something that would probably be preposterously false.”

Hanson went on to support his claim of Hunter’s alleged leverage by highlighting how, in 2020, Hunter began selling his ink-blown art, claiming the technique was a reference to his past cocaine addiction.

“So he was basically blackmailing his own father and saying, ‘If you don’t pardon me at some point, I am going to have you come and testify.’ If you don’t believe this, [and] you think Victor’s crazy, right during the height of this controversy and this exposure, Hunter Biden started to paint and he put a paintbrush in his nose and mouth?” Hanson recalled. “I mean, that was almost a deliberate reference to his Coke.”

WATCH:

“Think about that, everybody. So you’re the presidential son. You’re under enormous scrutiny. You’ve embarrassed your dad and you just, and you are known and you have videos of you snorting Coke and you come up with the idea that you’re going to put straws in your nose and blow on a canvas, blow — blows a keyword — paint all over the canvas,” Hanson said.

During his new artist phase, Hunter was praised by art critics for his work. Some, like Mark Tribe, chairman of the MFA Fine Arts Department at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, described the president’s son’s work to The New York Post as an “organic abstraction that I find easy on the eyes and provokes your curiosity.” However, reports in 2021 found that Hunter’s work wasn’t sold until after Biden won the presidency, raising questions about the connection between Democratic donors and those who had purchased a substantial amount of Hunter’s art.

“Then they go to the Biden administration and say, ‘Hey, I gave Hunter three or 400,000 for those paintings. I want an ambassadorship. I want a law change. I want a regulation modified.’ Why did he do that?” Hanson asked. “Well, I can tell you it’s the same thing as the references in the laptop. It is the same thing of threatening to bring his father in to court and embarrass him. He’s sending a cannonball shot across the administration,” Hanson said.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

A journalist in the nation of Georgia has shared details about the journey to find her birth parents, including the surprise that she had already been Facebook friends with her birth father for three years.

Tamuna Museridze first realized she was adopted in 2016 when she found a birth certificate with her name, but a different date of birth. The woman who had been raising her had recently died, and Museridze began the search for her biological family. She set up a Facebook page dedicated to the search, and that was where she received a message from a woman who ended up being her first cousin.

The woman shared that her aunt had given birth in 1984 but had concealed the pregnancy and the birth. A DNA test confirmed that this woman was indeed Museridze’s first cousin, and therefore, the aunt was Museridze’s birth mother. However, the birth mother wasn’t interested in a mother/daughter reunion, as Museridze learned when she called her.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by BBC News (@bbcnews)

“She was screaming, shouting – she said she hadn’t given birth to a child. She didn’t want anything to do with me. I was ready for anything, but her reaction was beyond anything I could imagine,” Museridze told the BBC.

About a week later, her birth mother gave her the name of her birth father: Gurgen Khorava.

“I couldn’t believe these things were happening to me. I couldn’t believe I had found them,” Museridze said.

She turned to Facebook to begin her search for her father, and quickly realized he had been following her story via the Facebook page she had set up to find her biological parents.

“[He had] been in my friend list for three years,” she explained. “He didn’t even know my birth mother had been pregnant. It was a huge surprise for him.”

Father and daughter arranged a meeting, and soon Museridze was meeting her half-siblings and cousins. “Out of all his children, I look the most like my father,” she said.

In addition to finding her birth family, Museridze also exposed a widespread baby trafficking scandal in Georgia. Over decades, parents were told their newborns had died, but they had actually been sold. It made Museridze wonder if she had been stolen as well. Eventually, her birth mother told her that she had been ashamed to be pregnant and unmarried, so she had traveled to give birth, and hid her daughter’s existence from everyone.

Incredibly, through her Facebook group, Muzeridze helped other children find their families, reuniting them with the parents from whom they had been stolen at birth.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

Introduction

For decades, the Iranian regime has been one of the principal sources of instability in the Middle East. Whether through its support for militias in Syria and Iraq, its arming of the Houthis in Yemen, its financing of Hamas, or its full support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran’s foreign policy is built on expanding its regional influence through coercive and violent means.

At the same time, within its own borders, the regime continues to systematically violate human rights, repress democracy, and impose extreme repressive measures on its population.

In the face of this situation, the Iranian Resistance movement presents itself as a democratic alternative and a beacon of hope for a better future, not only for Iran but also for the entire region. This movement does not merely fight for freedom and equality in Iran; it also offers a model to end dictatorship, religious extremism and violence across the Middle East. Today, the international community has both the opportunity and the responsibility to better understand and actively support this movement.

The destabilizing role of the Iranian regime in the Middle East

Despite ceasefire agreements and diplomatic initiatives in the region, the Iranian regime’s proxy forces continue to act aggressively. For instance, militias backed by Iran regularly attack Israel and American targets, even following the truce agreement in Lebanon.

Iran also persists in its meddling in Syria. Recently, Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s foreign minister, stated that Tehran would be willing to send reinforcements to Syria if requested by Damascus.

If we assume that, however improbable – considering the various forces inalterably opposed to such a solution – the path to lasting peace in the Middle East lies in the creation of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, coexisting peacefully, then the Iranian regime has been one of the most prominent opponents of this vision. Since the early days of the Oslo Accords, Iran has supported acts of terrorism that undermine this goal. For instance, the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Iran’s involvement in Lebanon through Hezbollah have significantly contributed to the country’s destabilization.

Historically, the Iranian regime’s strategy resembles 19th century imperialist expansionism, aiming to maintain its grip on power by exporting violence beyond its borders. Based on archaic religious dogmas, this regime is entirely at odds with the values of the 21st century. To sustain itself, it relies on a dual strategy: brutal repression within its borders and the creation of crises abroad.

Since its establishment, the regime has carried out acts such as the 1979 hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy and continues today to use terrorism and hostage-taking as tools of political pressure. Domestically, extreme practices such as amputation, forced blinding and the systematic execution of prisoners are shocking examples of its reliance on medieval methods.

As long as this regime remains in power, peace and coexistence in the Middle East will remain an illusion. Similarly, the concepts of democracy and freedom in Iran have no chance of emerging under its rule.

A practical roadmap to peace

Faced with such an oppressive regime, the natural response of the Iranian people has been to organize a widespread resistance. As the regime’s first victims, members of the Iranian Resistance embody a credible alternative rooted in the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy.

The Iranian Resistance is not limited to fighting for freedom in Iran; it also provides a model to end decades of dictatorship, war and violence in a region marked by authoritarianism and appeasement policies.

Here are the key elements of the roadmap proposed by the Iranian Resistance:

1. Expansion of resistance units

Resistance units, consisting of small groups of three or more members, were established in 2015 to coordinate actions against the regime. Today, thousands of these units operate across Iran, deeply rooted in their local communities. This social connection allows them to operate securely while increasing their capacity for expansion.

Their primary mission is to counter the regime’s repression by maintaining a climate of defiance and preventing society from succumbing to fear. These units currently carry out an average of 20 anti-repression actions per day, demonstrating their effectiveness.

These groups also play a crucial role in transforming social protests into genuine nationwide uprisings. For example, during the 2019 uprising, these units formed the backbone of the demonstrations, forcing the regime to resort to a bloody crackdown that left over 1,500 people dead.

Contrary to the regime’s propaganda, which claims that its fall would lead to civil war or the fragmentation of Iran, the presence and organization of these resistance units ensure the country’s territorial integrity while neutralizing repressive forces like the Revolutionary Guards.

2. The central role of women in the Resistance

Maryam Akbari Monfared, imprisoned for more than 15 years, is a symbol of Iranian women’s resilience in the face of religious fundamentalism. Women occupy a central role in the Iranian Resistance, particularly by leading many resistance units. Their struggle not only exemplifies their quest for gender equality but also highlights their pivotal role in mobilizing and transforming Iranian society. The 2022 national uprising, marked by strong participation and leadership from women, showcased their power and determination to build a just and equitable society.

3. The historical and organizational experience of the People’s Mojahedines Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), with nearly 60 years of resistance against successive dictatorships of the Shah and the mullahs, forms the backbone of the Iranian Resistance.

Many of its members, who have often survived years of torture and imprisonment, are now based at Ashraf 3 camp in Albania. Their organizational expertise and unique experience make them essential to leading this movement.

4. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI): A democratic alternative

The National Council of Resistance, serving as the political core of the Iranian Resistance, is a unique coalition that brings together diverse factions under a clear guiding principle: neither the Shah nor the mullahs.

With 457 members, over 50% of whom are women, the NCRI demonstrates a commitment to equality and diversity. Its policy of positive discrimination ensures significant representation of women in the political leadership of Iran’s future.

The NCRI’s 10-point program includes the separation of religion and state, equality among ethnicities and religions, the abolition of the death penalty and a non-nuclear Iran. These universal democratic values form the core of its political vision.

Conclusion

The Iranian Resistance represents a viable and humane alternative to the mullahs’ dictatorship. With increased support from the international community, it can not only liberate Iran but also establish peace and stability in a region plagued by decades of violence. Now is the time to stand alongside this movement of hope.

“The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur detailed on a podcast Friday why he believes the Democratic Party’s focus on “identity politics” has damaged its brand with voters.

For years, Democrats and progressives have advocated for companies and industries to adopt policies like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and Critical Race Theory, which has led to a growing focus on race and ethnicity within the party. On the “PDB Podcast,” co-host Patrick Bet-David pointed to the results of the 2024 election, showing how traditionally Democratic states are now leaning more red, despite conservatives leaving the area.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not. Which states got redder, which states got bluer,” Bet-David said. “When you saw this, 50 states, 100% of all states in America went more red. What are we talking about? And by the way, look who went the reddest. California and New York.”

“So by the way, here’s the thing. You know what? When sometimes we think about and we say, ‘Don’t make my Florida, California. Don’t make my Texas, [California],’” Bet-David added. “The fear was, well, what are you going to do when all the conservatives and Republicans and the red leaves New York and California? New York and California are going to get bluer. That’s not what happened … So even after people left and people stayed, the people that stayed even got redder to say, ‘Dude, these policies are ridiculous. I’m out.’”

Uygur then responded by using an example of Latino men, highlighting how the once-strong Democratic key voting bloc showed significant support for President-elect Donald Trump, prompting Democrats to question how they were losing key voters.

“Latino men were heavily on the Democratic side and, and Democrats view politics — Look, I think the right wing plays identity politics too,” Uygur said. “Again, we can get into that, but unfortunately for the Democratic establishment, they view everything through identity and they’re like, ‘OK, blacks are ours, Latinos are ours, women are ours, [the] educated are ours, et cetera.’”

WATCH:

“Educated is at least about something you did as opposed to who you are. But they took Latino men for granted. Then after the election, when Latino men flipped over the Republicans into Trump, they started saying, ‘Oh, they’re sexist. That’s why they got that macho culture, et cetera,’” Uygur added.

Uygur went on to state the Democrats’ current blame of voters is not helpful to the party, pointing out how it can be disproven.

“First of all, blaming the voters is an incredibly dumb strategy and also incorrect. If you ignore that map that you just showed, that’s a disaster for the Democratic Party. If you keep ignoring reality and ignoring the truth, that’s how you lead to more losses,” Uygur said. “So if Latino men are so sexist, then why is the president of Mexico a woman, right? If Latino men are so sexist, why did they vote for Hillary Clinton by a 31 point margin? This doesn’t have anything to do with sexism. What it has to do with is that you didn’t deliver for Latinos.”

Following the results of the November election, Trump set historic records, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote against Vice President Kamala Harris. While early polls months prior to Election Day showed Trump gaining ground with key Democratic voting blocs, particularly black and Hispanic men, exit polls revealed significant margins for the Republican Party.

Although Trump did not lead among Latino or black voters overall, he gained 14 points with Hispanics nationwide and one point with black voters, according to Reuters. More specifically, Trump received 21% support from black men — a 2-point increase from the 2020 election — and 55% support from Hispanic men, a 19-point jump from 2020, the outlet reported.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/YouTube/”PBD Podcast”)

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

There’s no question that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with their extremist ideology on the issue of abortion, the wanton destruction of unborn children, ran an administration that actually put a bull’s-eye on the backs of those who pursue pro-life goals.

They used the FBI and the Department of Justice to do that work, with charges against and prosecutions of groups and individuals who opposed the abortion industry mandates that they wanted to impose.

Now those bureaucracies have been warned by a member of Congress to keep all their records of those legal campaigns against pro-lifers.

The Daily Wire reports it is Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has dispatched a letter to the FBI and DOJ instructing officials to preserve all records of their prosecutions of peaceful pro-lifers.

He told the FBI’s Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland there are “serious questions” lawmakers must evaluate regarding how the Biden-Harris administration turned to the “weaponization” of the FACE Act.

That law makes it a crime to block the entrance to a health business, including abortion operations.

Roy heads the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government and said, “Congress has a sacred duty to preserve the rights of the American people, including the First Amendment, against any overreach by the Executive Branch. As we examine how to best protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms, the Subcommittees must first understand how the DOJ and FBI enforce the FACE Act.”

That law is supposed to also be used to protect both churches and crisis pregnancy centers, but the Biden-Harris team used it almost exclusively to jail grandmothers and others who were defending the unborn.

Roy wrote, “Since January 2021, the Civil Rights Division has brought a total of 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants, with only two of these cases – consisting of five defendants – concerning attacks on pregnancy resource centers.

“You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry.”

PALM BEACH, Florida – In the wake of Joe Biden’s presidential pardon of his son Hunter, President-elect Donald Trump was asked if he will pardon himself in connection with any legal cases remaining against him.

Trump answered the question from NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said.

“I was given the option, and the lawyers told me, very specific. I don’t have to go into who, but very high up in in the administration said, ‘Sir, if you pardon yourself, you’re going to look guilty and you did nothing wrong.’ Oh, I had that option.”

“I could have saved myself a lot of legal fees. But it turned out that I was right. Look at what’s gone on. Everything’s being dropped. I still have a Fani Willis, Fani, a total hoax. That’s a total hoax. It’s all being dropped.”

WATCH: Will Donald #Trump pardon himself? President-elect goes public

Also thrashes everybody on Jan. 6 Committee: ‘Honestly, they should go to jail’ #J6 #MeetthePress pic.twitter.com/g6vTzWiE0F

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) December 8, 2024

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Welker also asked the president-elect about reporting that Biden is considering “preemptive pardons for some of the people who have clashed with Mr. Trump, including senator-elect Adam Schiff, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and former congressman, Liz Cheney.”

Welker said: “As part of his response, Mr. Trump lashed out at the Jan. 6th Committee, accusing it of unfairly targeting him and even of destroying its records, which the committee denies.”

“And she [Cheney] was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” Trump explained. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”

Welker asked: “So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail?”

“For what they did … I think that everybody, anybody that voted in favor,” Trump responded.

“Are you going to direct your FBI director and your attorney general to send them to jail?” Welker asked.

Trump replied: “No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to, I’m gonna focus on drill, baby, drill.”

Trump was also asked if he would end birthright citizenship on Day One in office.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he said.

Welker mentioned the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution saying all persons born in the United States are citizens.

“Can you get around the 14th Amendment with an executive action?” she asked.

“We’ll have to get a change. Maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it. We’re the only country that has it,” Trump said.

“Someone sets a foot, one foot, on our land, congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America! Yes, we’re going to end that, because it’s ridiculous.”

“Through executive action?” Welker asked.

“Well, if we can, through executive action, Trump said, then pointing to his first term in office.

“I was going to do it through executive action, but we had to fix COVID first, to be honest with you. We have to end it.”

Trump was also asked if he would he concede his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

“No. No. Why would I do that?” he responded.

The full broadcast of “Meet the Press” can be viewed here.

Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

‘Just incredible’: Biden reportedly considering ‘preemptive pardons’ for Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci

For years, and especially in more recent history, various lies from Palestinians and other leftists about their “victories” in disputes with Israel have been accepted by people in the Middle East.

And often, the statements are acted on.

But that’s now at an end, according to Bassam Tawil, a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East who writes for the Gatestone Institute.

Now, he said, people no longer are accepting the claims from the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Those are Iran-sponsored proxies for violence against Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.

Tawil explained in his column that, “many Arabs are no longer fooled by the lies and propaganda of Iran’s terror proxies in the Middle East. Over the past 14 months, Hamas and Hezbollah have dragged the Palestinians and Lebanese into wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of people — all to serve their patrons in Iran. Instead of admitting their defeat, both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the terrorists, at the behest of Iran’s mullahs, are continuing to sell imaginary victories to the Arabs to encourage them to join the Jihad (holy war) against Israel. The good news is that many Arabs are evidently aware of the lies and deceptions of Hamas and Hezbollah.”

He explained, “After the recent ceasefire deal with Israel, supporters of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah claimed ‘victory.’ Some celebrated the alleged victory by firing guns into the air and flashing V signs. Many Arabs, however, saying that Hezbollah had lost hundreds of its members, including top leaders, and caused significant damage to Lebanese homes and the country’s economy, have been mocking the terrorist group.”

He said the claims were like those from Hamas. “After earlier rounds of fighting with Israel that severely damaged the Gaza Strip’s civilian and military infrastructure, Hamas commanders would typically emerge from the debris and proclaim ‘victory.'”

But Tawil noted the responses of late, from Egyptian political analyst Abdul Latif Al-Manawi, who wrote, “I was not surprised when [Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal] announced Hamas’s victory in the Gaza war. He said: ‘Our losses are tactical, our enemy’s losses are strategic, and victory is coming.’ Is this how Mashaal sums up a whole year of devastation inflicted on the Palestinian people? If Mashaal means what he says, we have to ask him: Do the tactical losses he refers to include the war victims who have reached more than 42,000 Palestinians? Do they include more than 80,000 [Palestinians] who were injured? Do they include more than 90% of the Gaza Strip’s population who have been displaced from their homes and neighborhoods that were razed to the ground? Victory, Khaled Mashaal, is not like this.”

The column noted Hezbollah already has agreed “to disconnect itself from the war in the Gaza Strip and to withdraw its men from the border with Israel.”

“This reversal is precisely why many Arabs cannot understand Hezbollah’s claim of ‘victory,’ especially in light of the elimination of most of the group’s top political and military leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, killed by an Israeli airstrike on his bunker in Beirut last September,” he explained.

The column also noted prominent Lebanese journalist Nabil Bou Monsef scoffed at Hezbollah’s false victory.

“He accused Hezbollah of engaging in self-delusion, linking Lebanon to regional arenas (the Gaza Strip) and ‘throwing Lebanon into a catastrophic massacre.'” His demand? “Where is the victory?”

Other responses included:

Tunisian philosopher Khaled Mansour: “Hezbollah’s claim of victory over Israel is a farce and a mockery of the minds of the Lebanese and a ‘political shamelessness’ that is both laughable and disgusting!”

Lebanese lawyer Omar El-Yafi: “This is the text of Hezbollah’s surrender that the Lebanese state agreed to, which stipulated that there would be no weapons on Lebanese territory except in the hands of the Lebanese army, in addition to other conditions, including the withdrawal of Hezbollah elements to the north of the Litani River. Where is the divine victory that these victors celebrate?”

Lebanese social media activist Fouad Tarabay: “Despite the killing of [Hassan] Nasrallah and most of the leaders of Hezbollah, 3,500 dead, 20 billion in material losses, 1.5 million displaced, and 46,000 housing units destroyed, they (Hezbollah) still say ‘we won.’ They fire their guns in celebration and raise the victory sign after the humiliating ceasefire agreement. What a complete farce and deception.”

Social media user Abu Al-Ahrar: “What kind of victory are you talking about? This is considered a defeat. Hezbollah rose up to support Gaza and said it will not stop until the siege on Gaza is lifted. How is this victory when Israel has eliminated all the leadership of Hezbollah? This is not called victory, but defeat.”

Yemeni politician Ali Albukhaiti: “Hezbollah has surrendered, yet there are those who call it a victory!”