The Air Force’s preparations for war were fascinating. Because the number of aircraft and pilots is fixed and known, and because it was clear a race would develop between Iran’s launch capability and the Air Force’s ability to destroy launchers and missiles, the solution devised by the Air Force was to increase the number of waves. How? Fly to Iran and back three times a day. Every pilot. And how is that done? With stimulant pills. That was the trick they planned. And it worked.

When every pilot does this three times a day instead of once or twice, the number of strikes soars, literally and figuratively, the number of strikes surges, and the ability to reduce Iran’s launch capability is dramatically strengthened. “We understood that we had to bring as many bombs as possible to the target in as little time as possible,” an IDF official said this week, “to jam them up, destroy them, and bring them down as quickly as possible, without giving them time to lift their heads.”

The Iranians are no fools. We were not the only ones preparing for the event. They were too. The previous operation taught them a few things, and they stationed large numbers of bulldozers and tractors at launch sites so they could quickly reopen bombed tunnels after each wave. They were counting on attacks frequency, but the high pace left them no chance.

A learning competition developed here between our side and the Iranians. A competition that was decided, but not without effort. And we have not yet spoken about the American aircraft that joined in. Bottom line: by Wednesday afternoon, the Air Force had dropped its 5,000th munition on targets in Iran in four days. Throughout all 12 days of the previous operation, 3,700 munitions were dropped.

The heart of the race was during the first 48 intense hours. With medical supervision, the Air Firce found the most suitable stimulant pills and trained with them to ensure there were no side effects, no damage to the pilot’s sharpness or motor skills, while also identifying the optimal nutrition for such a situation. They also learned from the Americans’ experience, since the Americans are used to long-duration flights of this kind. B-2 bombers, for example, can fly continuously for very long hours.

What happened was that the pilots and ground crews were pushed beyond anything they had ever experienced during the first three days. The only ones who pushed harder were the Iranians. They took the full blow, and the sharp decline in the pace of launches recorded in recent days is the result of that effort. As of Thursday, the assessment was that the Air Force was on the verge of breaking Iran’s launch capability. No, not reducing it to zero, but bringing it down to “manageable” dimensions that would leave the interception systems with a reasonable workload.

In wartime, the Air Force’s motto is: “Either you’re flying, or you’re sleeping, or you’re eating.” In the current war, that was shortened to: “Either you’re flying, or you’re eating.” They simply did not sleep. Throughout all this, everyone had to be kept on a tight leash, to make sure there was no hubris, no excess self-confidence, no creeping contempt. The historic downing of an Iranian aircraft by an F-35 improved morale, but did not reduce the intensity. Here and there Iranian MiGs also took off against our pilots, but quickly broke contact.

And despite the clear results, the Air Force is not getting confused. It is not underestimating the Iranians. They are fighting, someone said, they are putting up a fight, they came to wage war, they learned, they prepared, they are not giving up on anything, they still take off here and there, they continue launching even though they know that after every launch they will be hit. They are more determined in this round than they were in the previous campaign.

What kept the pilots and ground crews going at this murderous pace? Simple: in addition to the uncompromising professionalism of the force, there was also the knowledge that every sortie, every takeoff, every flight of hours out and hours back, was intended to ensure that the family of that pilot, that female pilot, that extraordinary ground crew member, would have to run to shelters fewer times.

The force multiplier

The Air Force is not only pilots. The ground crews are another unresolved wonder. During every visit by American or foreign officers to Air Force bases, the visitors try to understand how it can be that the servicing, preparation, and arming time of an Israeli fighter jet between strike waves is significantly shorter than in the United States, Britain, or anywhere else, and with less manpower, or women-power. Try explaining that to them. They won’t understand.

Speaking of women, it is an advantage. Everyone I speak to about the issue praises the extra ingenuity and intelligence of the young Israeli women who race with endless energy between the hardened shelters, bombs, and missiles, making sure as few minutes as possible pass between one takeoff and the next. Books will still be written about the cooperation with the American gorilla. It was an unprecedented event in which the naval, air, and intelligence arms of the two countries were integrated as equals and became a single arm.

Israelis suddenly understood American power. The fact that more than 100 modern refueling aircraft flooded the skies of the Middle East meant that every Israeli pilot could change course or stop for refueling almost anywhere. The dialogues between the refueling pilot and the pilot being refueled will one day be published and warm many hearts. Then there is the intensity with which the United States can strike anywhere, at any time, at any hour, with any munition, from any possible bomber. The unchallenged air superiority of the F-22s, and of course the B-2 bombers, the strategic game-changers.

But the Americans, too, got a chance to witness some extraordinary things: the professionalism, precision, and capabilities that exist only in the Israeli Air Force; intelligence so precise it is jaw-dropping, down to a hair’s breadth; and endless creativity that we will only 

Ben Caspit, Jerusalem Post

The story just keeps getting uglier and uglier.

The new interim staff report on Minnesota’s fraud describes criminal activity that was enabled by a horrifying pattern of spineless government incompetence and systemic failure.  Some say Minnesota is just the tip of the iceberg.  Best guess?  Government, both state and federal, is rife with it.

According to the March 4, 2026 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” there was a massive failure in “governance and oversight” that allowed “known fraud and criminal schemes to flourish,” even as resources were diverted away from “the vulnerable populations these programs were intended to serve.”

Since 2018, it is estimated that “half or more of the $18 billion in total expenditures was fraud.”  After the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding for Department of Human Services (DHS) programs “because of widespread fraud,” Minnesota “froze all provider enrollment for the high-risk programs in January 2026.”

The Investigation

The committee built the record with transcribed interviews with “nine current and former state officials spanning the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Department of Human Services (DHS), including former and temporary DHS commissioners and Walz’s former chief of staff.”  Document production was limited: Walz’s office “produced 48 documents and email communications (totaling 177 pages), and Ellison’s office produced 11 documents (including one duplicate) totaling 97 pages.”

The report references 98 charged individuals tied to widespread fraud in Minnesota.  It says 85 are Somali, and “more than 60 have been found guilty in court.”  These criminal actors hijacked 14 Medicaid programs designated “‘high risk’ for fraud by DHS.”

The committee focused on four high-risk programs with the most indictments and confirmed fraud: Housing Stabilization Services (HSS), Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI), Integrated Community Supports (ICS), and Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT).

HSS

HSS is a DHS-run, Medicaid-funded program created in 2019 via a §1915(i) State Plan Amendment to cover certain housing-related services without capping enrollment.  Projected at $2.6 million a year, it ballooned to roughly $108 million by 2024, growing from 278 providers and 8,126 recipients ($27.7 million) in 2021 to 883 providers and 21,679 recipients (over $105 million) in 2025.  The report says fraudsters targeted vulnerable people leaving rehab and billed Medicaid for services never delivered (drawing even out-of-state actors).  DHS moved to terminate HSS on August 1, 2025, citing credible allegations involving 77 providers and a lack of “necessary tools” to stop bad actors.

EIDBI

The EIDBI benefit provides services for Medicaid-eligible children and young adults (21 and under) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related conditions, requiring a comprehensive multidisciplinary evaluation to establish medical need.  Between 2019 and 2024, the program expanded rapidly: Providers allegedly grew from 41 to 328 (about a 700% increase), while enrollment rose from 791 recipients costing $20.4 million in 2019 to 5,705 recipients, costing more than $342 million.  The report notes DOJ allegations that fraudsters targeted parents in Minnesota’s Somali community to recruit children into treatment centers, helped obtain fraudulent autism diagnoses, and paid parents monthly kickbacks (roughly $300–$1,500) tied to approved service levels.  It also states that Minnesota allowed EIDBI providers to operate without a license until early 2026.

ICS

ICS is a Minnesota Medicaid program for adults with disabilities that exploded in size, from 28 providers serving 164 recipients ($4.6 million) in 2021 to 458 providers serving 2,444 recipients (over $170 million) by 2024.  The report cites DOJ-confirmed fraud and alleges serious beneficiary harm, including a recipient’s death from neglect (Rick Clemmer, March 2025) and a disabled woman’s eviction after caregivers allegedly sublet her apartment and stopped paying rent (June 2025).

NEMT

NEMT is a high-risk Medicaid program with a documented fraud history.  A federal HHS inspector general report found that DHS improperly claimed over $1.8 million in Medicaid reimbursement and failed to properly document services.  Separately, Nick Shirley’s reporting highlighted suspicious NEMT providers operating from unlikely locations and shared addresses, often with little visible evidence of active vehicle use.

Core allegations

The committee found a pattern of reckless and irresponsible behavior by government employees and senior state-level officials.  The report alleges that Walz and Ellison knew about fraud in MDE nutrition programs as early as April 2020 and knew about fraud in DHS programs, including the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and non-emergency medical transportation, as early as spring 2019.  Walz and Ellison were also aware of fraud across additional “high-risk” Medicaid programs but failed to act there as well, despite their public statements suggesting they knew little or nothing about fraud in those programs.

The report states that agencies had the authority to stop or suspend payments without court orders, law enforcement input, or federal direction but continued to make payments “voluntarily.”  In 2021, MDE had suspended payments to the Feeding Our Future (FOF) program based on “serious deficiencies,” but FOF sought to “resume payments and pay sanctions.”  A Sept. 23, 2022 press release from Ramsey County judge John Guthman stated that he never ordered payments to resume and that Walz’s statement to the contrary was “false.”

Walz doubled down in a March 4 House Oversight hearing, stating that the agency “believed the court had ordered it to restart the payments.”  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) replied by reading the judge’s rebuke from the same 2022 press release, stating he never ordered that the payments be resumed.  Walz also claimed publicly that the FBI directed state officials to continue payments to FOF or other suspected fraudulent providers, but the report disputes that claim as well.

When asked why MDE continued payments to providers alleged to be fraudulent, whistleblowers associated with the agency cited “fear of litigation” and being perceived as racist.  The report concludes that MDE lacked adequate oversight mechanisms and, instead of owning the stop-the-fraud mission, blamed USDA regulations and FOF’s network for perpetuating the fraud.

DHS also “lacked oversight mechanisms, sufficient internal controls and failed to take responsibility for stopping fraud.”  In certain programs, DHS ignored responsibility for integrity “because of pressure to get money out the door.”  The committee also found that DHS had the authority to unilaterally impose stop-payments on providers facing credible fraud allegations, yet it allegedly failed to do so for years after those warnings surfaced.

During that period, Governor Walz’s hand-picked DHS commissioner (2019–2025) reportedly did not believe she was qualified to tackle fraud, even as the affected programs were increasingly exploited on her watch.  DHS officials, according to the report, consistently passed the buck to the Office of Inspector General or the Division of Internal Audit, despite both being direct reports to the DHS commissioner.

Whistleblowers who expose government waste, fraud, and abuse too often pay a price for telling the truth.  In Minnesota, DHS whistleblowers reportedly said they “experienced retaliation for reporting,” and they feared that raising concerns would “automatically” route to the commissioner or Human Resources.  According to the report, DHS whistleblowers also alleged retaliation by Governor Walz.  The report adds that whistleblowers alleged that Walz “spent millions surveilling staff” and “hired private investigators or law firms to silence staff.”

The report notes that “then-temporary DHS Commissioner Shireen Gandhi confirmed that DHS used outside entities to investigate DHS staff in her transcribed interview.”  It also notes that “dozens of whistleblowers” were told not to report fraud because “they would be called “racist” or “Islamophobic,” and it would hurt the state.  Notably, the report notes that some of the “best whistleblowers” were also “in the Somali community.

Wendi Strauch Mahoney, American Thinker

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump wrote: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

Unequivocally correct. If a military action is worth taking, you go all the way. The last time the United States demanded unequivocal surrender of its enemies was Hitler’s Germany and the Japanese empire, in 1945. The result was a decisive victory for liberty. In the wars since, we did no such thing, and the results were always a letdown, to say the least.

We cannot impose freedom on the Iranian people. But we can refuse to tolerate any more dictators who engage in a perpetual war with our country. It’s as simple as that. This is a lot less difficult than winning World War II.

Now if we can just demand unconditional surrender of America’s totalitarian Democratic Party, and arrest or deport all who seek to destroy freedom from within our borders, we will be on our way. If President Trump can do to the Democrats at war with our Bill of Rights what he has already done to the dictators of Venezuela and Iran, America might truly become great again.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Americans who belong to Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) are far more likely to say they were lonely growing up. A majority (56 percent) of Gen Zers report they felt lonely at least once or twice a month during their childhood. In contrast, only about one in four (24 percent) Baby Boomers say they felt lonely this often as children.

… Americans who had a lonely childhood are much more likely to report feeling lonely or isolated as adults. Two-thirds (66 percent) of Americans who felt lonely every day during childhood say that today they feel lonely or isolated all or most of the time. In contrast, only 7 percent of those who were never lonely during their childhood report they often feel lonely or isolated today. ..

Compared to previous generations, Gen Zers are far more likely to have been raised in single-parent households. A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that nearly one-quarter of US children live in single-parent homes, a rate higher than any other country….

Finally, shrinking family size may play a part..A recent report shows that only children are also more likely to have been lonely growing up than those with siblings were.

Daniel A. Cox, American Survey Center

Today marks the 190th anniversary of the martyrdom of the heroes of the Alamo, who died to delay the dictator Santa Anna’s army long enough so that Texian troops could rally and defend their homes. Singular among those heroes was Colonel and Congressman David S. Crockett, “King of the Wild Frontier.”

Born in 1786 in that part of North Carolina which was then the renegade “State of Franklin” but not yet the State of Tennessee, “Davy” Crockett was a legend even in his own time, and long before the Texas Revolution.

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The son of John Crockett, one of the Overmountain Men unleashed by Joseph Martin to turn the tide of the Revolutionary War at Kings Mountain, the future legend in his teenage years repeatedly traveled on foot from eastern Tennessee to Virginia across the Appalachian mountains, developing skills and achieving feats for which he’d become so well known later.  He served under General Andrew Jackson in the Creek War and in Jackson’s campaign, late in the War of 1812, to drive the British out of Florida. By the age of 32 he’d been appointed a justice of the peace, elected lieutenant colonel of the Tennessee Militia, and started several successful business enterprises.

In the Tennessee legislature and in the U.S. House during Jackson’s Presidency, he fought untiringly against Congress’s overspending and unconstitutional expansion of its powers. He also vociferously opposed Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, the only member of the Tennessee delegation to do so. For this, the voters of Tennessee sent Crockett home. Undaunted, he ran again two years later and returned to the House, resuming his previous crusades and also collaborating with Kentucky Congressman Thomas Chilton to produce his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, Written by Himself.

Crockett embarked upon an extensive book tour which, combined with larger-than-life stage productions such as Lion of the West and mythologized biographies like Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee, cemented in the national mind his legend as a pioneer and frontiersman. Everywhere he went, from New York to Little Rock, adoring fans swarmed him.  More and more, he took the opportunity they afforded him to speak against the military threat and growing tyranny of Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and the need to support an American-style revolution in Texas.

By the time the voters dumped him again in August 1835, Crockett’s heart was consumed with the Texian cause.  No longer seeing Washington or the pettiness of politics as worthwhile, he famously told his erstwhile constituents, “You all can go to Hell, I’m going to Texas.”  And he went.

He arrived in Nacogdoches with a company of volunteers just five months later in January 1836, swearing an oath to the Provisional Government of Texas.  Barely a month later he and his group were in San Antonio de Bexar, with fellow Texian heroes Jim Bowie, Antonio Menchaca and Don Erasmo Seguin, a Founding Father of the Mexican republic who helped feed and finance the Texas Revolution (Don Erasmo was also the father of Juan Seguin, a defender of the Alamo who survived to become a hero of San Jacinto and a Senator of the Republic of Texas).

Less than a month later, Crockett died defending the Alamo.

Moderns appreciate little of the importance of this.  Some (outside Texas at least) see the Alamo as a minor incident at most. Many today view the Texas Revolution as an Anglo brutalization of a victimized Mexico. They ignore, willfully or otherwise, the multilingual, multi-ethnic nature of the affair, the many prominent Mexican statesmen who, loyal to the principles of their lost republic, took up arms in favor of the Revolution: men such as Erasmo Seguin and his friend Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of Texas, who was born in Yucatan and had previously served as Mexico’s Minister of Finance.

The revisionists also ignore the widespread opposition throughout Mexico to Santa Anna’s dictatorship and scrapping of the 1824 Constitution. In addition to Texas, both Yucatan and the Mexican states immediately across the Rio Grande from Texas formed republics and seceded from Mexico, albeit unsuccessfully.

But beyond the unquestionable rightness of the Texian cause, the successful Revolution served to answer the burning geopolitical question of that era, namely, would America or Mexico — and would liberty or tyranny — dominate the New World?

Santa Anna had proclaimed himself “the Napoleon of the West”:  his ambitions were vastly greater than just holding a few farms on the Brazos.  Had he imposed his tyranny on the Texians, he would have been liberated to threaten — and possibly conquer — New Orleans, the continent’s single most strategic point.

Had Santa Anna taken New Orleans, he would have reversed Jefferson’s achievement in securing the Louisiana Purchase and accomplished what the British in 1815 could not: the reduction of the United States to a servile position. And with all commerce in the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi river basins bottled up at Santa Anna’s mercy, not only might America never have generated the capital, industrial strength and military might needed to become a great power, but an authoritarian Mexico might well have supplanted it, expanding throughout the West and the Caribbean Basin as well.

But for Houston’s victory at San Jacinto — but for Davy Crockett’s martyr’s death at the Alamo, enabling Houston’s triumph — the American experiment might well have come to nothing.  America might well have been recolonized in that era of global European expansion which saw India and China subjugated (as indeed Mexico was by France for a time, during the 1860s). And with the coming of the 20th Century, freedom might well have perished from the Earth.

History has long honored the greatness of David S. Crockett, and rightly so. He quite literally paid for our lives with his own

Rod Martin

When Donald Trump vowed to tackle excessive federal spending, few expected Elon Musk, the world’s most prominent entrepreneur, to lead the charge. Yet, in a move that reflected Trump’s unconventional style, Musk was appointed head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with dismantling the bloated federal bureaucracy.

DOGE launched ambitiously, aiming to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, eliminate inefficiencies, and overhaul vast parts of the public sector. However, just months into the experiment, the initiative has faltered. DOGE now finds itself politically isolated, legally tangled, and far from fulfilling its promises.

Musk has since become a sharp critic, calling Trump’s budget—the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—a “disgusting abomination” that deepens the deficit. The collapse of DOGE and the backlash to the bill highlight a deeper truth: America’s budget crisis can’t be addressed without tackling deeper structural issues.

DOGE Downfall: Why the Hype Didn’t Match the Reality

DOGE’s biggest failure was its inability to deliver its promised sweeping transformation. From the start, its $2 trillion savings target was unrealistic. Cutting nearly 30% from a $7 trillion budget was never feasible, especially with politically untouchable programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense off the table.

Musk’s claim that eliminating waste alone could close the gap didn’t hold up. While most budget experts support cutting inefficiencies, they agree that waste isn’t the main driver of the fiscal crisis. Even slashing all discretionary spending would save only $1.7 trillion. The real pressure comes from mandatory programs, which account for nearly two-thirds of the budget, leaving only a quarter of spending truly up for debate.

As reality set in, Musk’s savings claims shrank from $2 trillion to just $150 billion. While DOGE cites $170 billion saved, independent estimates suggest closer to $63 billion, less than 1% of federal spending, with many claims either inflated or unverifiable. Some savings were credited to long-canceled contracts. Though headline-grabbing layoffs and cuts were made, they were often botched, forcing agencies to rehire staff or reverse course. Meanwhile, federal spending rose by $166 billion, erasing any gains. Trump’s fiscal agenda worsens the outlook with the first-ever $1 trillion defense budget, sweeping tax cuts, and protected entitlements—all while annual deficits approach $2 trillion.

Yet DOGE’s failures ran deeper than mere fiscal naiveté. What began as Musk’s role as a “special government employee” quickly expanded into an unchecked exercise of executive power, raising constitutional alarms. His team reportedly accessed classified data, redirected funds, and sidelined entire agencies—actions taken without Senate confirmation, potentially in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Legal pushback swiftly followed, with fourteen states suing Trump and Musk over the constitutionality of Musk’s White House-granted authority.

Meanwhile, glaring conflicts of interest became impossible to ignore. Musk’s companies—X, SpaceX, and Tesla—hold $38 billion in federal contracts, loans, tax breaks, and subsidies while facing over 30 federal investigations. His push to dismantle regulatory agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—while X launches the “X Money Account,” a mobile payment service subject to CFPB oversight—only deepened concerns. Musk was legally obligated to separate his business dealings from government decisions. One major result has been the impact on Musk’s reputation. Once hailed as a visionary for his promotion of electric cars, he is now viewed unfavorably by many former fans.

Why Real Fiscal Reform Must Go Through Congress

America’s budget crisis isn’t just about waste—it’s about scale. While headlines fixate on symbolic cuts and political theater, the real drivers of the deficit lie deeper, buried in the structural commitments of federal spending. Musk’s DOGE initiative promised big savings but ran into a hard truth: real spending lies in mandatory programs, not discretionary ones. Cuts to USAID and DEI made headlines but barely moved the needle.

Some now doubt that DOGE was ever a serious reform effort. To many, it now looks less like governance and more like a chaotic, headline-driven power grab, by a youthful team of Musk staffers who were out of their depth. While its goals were admirable, real and lasting fiscal reform can only be achieved through lawful, institutional channels, not executive overreach.

DOGE did strike a chord with a public weary of government overspending and more inclined toward spending restraint than tax increases to address the deficit, but meaningful reform demands that Congress confront the politically difficult structural drivers of the deficit. It will take more than headlines—it needs bipartisan will and a serious commitment to fiscal reality.

Congress must reassert its constitutional role in the budget process and restore a measure of fiscal discipline. That means using tools like rescissions and budget reconciliation as originally intended—to reduce deficits, not widen them. Anything less amounts to complicity in a deepening fiscal crisis, one that threatens growth, fuels inflation, and drives up the national debt.

• Mohamed MoutiiMohamed Moutii is a Research Associate at the Arab Center for Research, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues (IREF Europe), and a member of the Ibn Khaldun Initiative for Free Thought. He has translated numerous books from English to Arabic, helping to spread free-market literature in the Arabic-speaking world. His work includes articles, analyses, and policy briefs published by various Western and Arab think tanks.

A terrorist in a suit is still a terrorist.” And just because you’re mayor doesn’t mean you’re not a terrorist.

Mamdani is in office to destroy New York City. He’s a Muslim and a terrorist who openly and proudly, in his campaign, posed with terrorists. He of course opposes President Trump’s actions against Iran’s terrorist regime because he, Mamdani, supports that regime. He imposes policies of “democratic socialism” — nothing more than Communism — because doing so lures ignorant young New Yorkers to support him, since they think government seizure of private property, profits and the means of production will make life easier (more “affordable”) for them.

Mamdani understands that if he can manipulate citizens of New York City into destroying this important corner of Western civilization (the legendary Big Apple), he will complete the job started by more obvious terrorists on or even before 9/11. “Death to America” may have been blown apart in Tehran. But in New York City, the murder-suicide of a once spectacular metropolis is well underway.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Most students of history have likely pondered the question: Is it the times that make the man, or is it the man that makes the times? The question, though superficially intriguing, seems to have an easy enough answer: Sometimes it is the times that makes the man, and sometimes it is the man that makes the times. Rarest of all is the man who is both summoned and elevated by the times, on the one hand, and who has the courage and conviction to shape the times in return, on the other hand. It is this lattermost group of men who we might refer to as the truly great men of history.

Donald Trump is, on this metric, a great man of history.

In 2016, Trump was first swept into office, just a few months after the Brexit referendum in the U.K., amidst a broader wave of nationalist backlash to the regnant neoliberal global order. Trump, a lifelong free trade skeptic with New York City outer-borough sensibilities, was the right man to lead at the right moment. He became the first president since Richard Nixon’s fateful trip to visit Chairman Mao in Beijing to begin decoupling the U.S. from its economic bear hug with the Chinese Communist Party. More recently, Trump has overseen a historic securing of America’s porous southern border and an equally historic withdrawal from dozens of transnational institutions.

Trump has met the moment and risen to the occasion in numerous foreign theaters besides China and the broader Indo-Pacific as well. He saw decades of American malaise, managed decline, and overextended empire, and he has promptly reversed course.

Trump and his administration have repeatedly proven willing and unafraid to criticize America’s European allies, nudging our core NATO partners to be better versions of themselves in such areas as military spending and defense self-sufficiency. He has responded to decades of buildup of murderous transnational nonstate cartels and Chinese and Russian entrenchment in our own hemisphere by reasserting the Latin America-centric Monroe Doctrine, as most spectacularly evidenced by January’s Operation Absolute Resolve extraction of fugitive Nicolas Maduro in Caracas.

And now there is the unfolding Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

For 47 years, Iran’s revolutionary Shiite theocracy has been attempting to kill, and indeed has been killing, Americans. From the U.S. Marines Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 to the Bush-era roadside IEDs in Iraq to the attempted (and indicted) assassination of Trump himself, the mullah regime in Tehran has a long and bloody track record when it comes to American loss of life—more than 1,000 Americans killed in total, according to U.S. Central Command. For decades, presidents kicked the can down the road, appeasing and negotiating with the mullahs as if they were atheistic Soviets and not 72 virgins-aspiring apocalyptic Islamists. The mullahs dissembled and stalled, while racing toward nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles on which to mount them.

And then Trump came along.

Trump campaigned on ending so-called forever wars in the Middle East. His critics, both on the Left and in certain pockets of the impotent Right, have accused Trump of violating that promise with the current campaign. But those critics are wrong. Iran has been at war with us, whether or not we think about it and acknowledge it, since the founding of the revolutionary regime in 1979. The revolutionaries’ very first action was to storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran and commence a 444-day hostage crisis. Tehran’s “death to America” chants since then have been daily, and its anti-American atrocities have been legion.

With Epic Fury, Trump isn’t starting a new forever war—he is ending one.

Time and again, Trump has shown that he is willing to take actions that U.S. presidents of both parties long paid lip service to support, but never actually effectuated. The notion that the world’s most zealous Islamist regime cannot acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons had been spoken so many times by so many different politicians over the decades that it had become old hat. No one actually acted on it until Trump tore up Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal in 2018 and bombed key Iranian nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025. Now, with Operation Epic Fury, Trump is attempting to finish the job and permanently ensure that Iran no longer threatens American interests.

God bless him for it.

The polling on Operation Epic Fury is mixed—predictably, it’s split largely along partisan lines. But I strongly suspect Trump does not care in the slightest about the polling. Great men of history do not put a finger in the wind before deciding to take a seismic, world-altering action. They don’t read the polls; they read the times and allow the rising tides of zeitgeist to elevate them to their better, most dynamic selves. And they have the corresponding vision and determination to shape the times for the better, in return. The American national interest will be improved by seeing the current mission in Iran through. So too will the broader condition of the Middle East—and, for that matter, the whole world.

The skeptics may shriek loudly. Let them do so. Because for Donald Trump, a drastically improved national—and regional and global—outlook is more than justification enough. Just as it is for all great men of history.

Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large, host of “The Josh Hammer Show,” senior counsel for the Article III Project, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and author of Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West (Radius Book Group). X: @josh_hammer.

With Hezbollah’s Iranian patron on the ropes, Jerusalem gets another shot at completing the job it was forced to pause two years ago.

It took barely 48 hours after the United States and Israel began their joint operation against the Iranian regime for Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israel. As it became clear that regime decapitation was part of the operation’s objectives, the group’s involvement was all but inevitable. Israel retaliated immediately with a wave of targeted strikes and has now begun limited ground operations in south Lebanon, even as its air force maintains an unprecedented tempo of sorties over Iran.

For Israel, Hezbollah is unfinished business. And while the Iranian proxy’s fate ultimately will be affected by that of its patrons in Tehran, the current moment offers Israel an opening to rectify the mistake of two years ago and secure a strategic win independent of the ultimate outcome of the campaign in Iran.

By the end of 2024, Hezbollah was at a low point it had not experienced since its establishment four decades earlier. The blows Israel inflicted on the organization during the war that began in October 2023—culminating in the elimination of nearly its entire top echelon and in the loss of an essential logistical and financial lifeline with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024—left Hezbollah weakened, exposed, and strategically vulnerable. It appeared that relatively little additional pressure would have sufficed to dismantle it as a powerful militia and prominent political actor in Lebanon.

Yet in November 2024, under American pressure and amid a desire to prioritize other arenas, Israel was forced to accept a cease-fire. In doing so, it granted Hezbollah a lifeline—one the organization has used to regroup and rebuild. It looked as though Israel had been denied a rare strategic opportunity. After all, for decades Israel viewed Hezbollah as its most dangerous enemy. The organization’s missile arsenal had cast a constant shadow over life in northern Israel and had contributed to Israeli strategic hesitation regarding action against Iran’s nuclear program.

For a while, it seemed as though an old-new concept, one that was supposed to have collapsed on Oct. 7, had once again begun to take hold in regard to Lebanon: namely, the conceit that Hezbollah had been severely weakened and was now deterred; that time and internal Lebanese pressure would gradually compel it to disarm. This logic, which was encouraged by American envoys and U.S. policy in Lebanon, echoed past strategic assumptions that had proved fatally wrong.

When Hassan Nasrallah decided to join Hamas’ war against Israel, he was convinced it was a win-win situation, based on his experience over three decades as Hezbollah’s secretary general. When Israel’s northern villages cleared out under Hezbollah fire, and when it appeared that Washington had placed limits on Israeli escalation in Lebanon, it looked as though his calculation was sound. However, Nasrallah had made a deadly mistake, as he failed to grasp and internalize the profound shift that had taken place within Israel following Oct. 7. He also underestimated the extent of the intelligence and operational superiority that Israel had gained over the years against his organization.

By the summer of 2024, Jerusalem had made the decision to launch a comprehensive attack against Hezbollah. Within a couple of months, the IDF had succeeded in eliminating the group’s top military command as well as its political leadership, including Nasrallah and his successor, Hashem Safieddine, and had neutralized most of its military capabilities. Facing mounting losses, Hezbollah was relieved by the American push for a cease-fire that took effect on Nov. 27, 2024. Within a month of the cease-fire, the Assad regime collapsed, further compounding Hezbollah’s difficulties.

Eyal Zisser, Tablet Magazine

In 2008, Californians voted on what they were told would be a modern transportation system — a sleek, high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours, financed in part by private investment, delivered at a defined cost, and built within a reasonable timeframe.  Eighteen years later, all that has been delivered is one of the largest eminent domain land grabs in modern history.

No serious person disputes that infrastructure requires land.  But the power of eminent domain is not merely an administrative tool.  It is among the most formidable powers government possesses: the authority to compel the transfer of private property for “public use.”  The Founders allowed it reluctantly, instituting constitutional protections and the requirement of just compensation.  The theory was simple: The public benefit had to be clear, direct, and necessary.

What Californians are witnessing today is a perverse transmogrification of the concept.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has acquired more than two thousand parcels of land — along its proposed routes, particularly through the Central Valley.  Much of this land was obtained through negotiated purchase, but a substantial portion required formal eminent domain proceedings.  Farms have been bisected.  Family homes have been condemned.  Small businesses have faced displacement.  In many cases, the takings were not entire properties, but strips and easements — yet those “partial” takings often cripple the economic viability of what remains.

The most striking fact is not merely the number of parcels, but the context in which they were taken.

The project that voters approved bore specific representations: a defined route, defined endpoints, cost estimates, and a timeline.  Yet over the years, those routes have shifted, and timelines continue to stretch toward infinity.  The grand statewide vision is little more than a pipe dream.  Meanwhile, land has already been taken — permanently.

Property rights are not abstract philosophical ornaments.  They are the institutional backbone of a free society.  When government exercises eminent domain, it is asserting that the public need outweighs the individual’s right to keep what is his.  That assertion demands that the project be real, viable, and necessary.

When land has been taken for a project that later changes, the property owner does not get his land back.  When construction phases are delayed for years, the displaced family does not rewind time.  When farmland sits idle because funding gaps stall progress, the farmer does not recoup lost continuity of operation.

The defenders of the project often argue that large infrastructure efforts inevitably evolve.  That is  sometimes true.  But evolution in engineering design is not the same as evolution in political promises.  The moral justification for eminent domain depends on the integrity of those promises.

If a private developer misrepresents a project to induce land sales, the law calls that fraud.  When the government makes optimistic projections, downplays risks, and then substantially alters the project after land has been secured, the label may be different, but the practical effect on property owners is the same.

Consider the incentives.  Politicians gain prestige from announcing ambitious projects.  Bureaucracies gain budget and authority as projects expand.  Contractors gain long-term revenue streams.  But the individual property owner stands alone.  His home or farm is not a line item in a budget; it is his capital, his security, and often his legacy.

Compensation, while constitutionally required, does not erase the asymmetry.  “Fair market value” is a theoretical construct.  It rarely captures relocation costs, disruption of community ties, lost business goodwill, or the emotional attachment to land held for generations.  Moreover, the state’s valuation and the owner’s valuation frequently diverge, leading to protracted legal battles in which the government’s resources far exceed the individual’s.

This dynamic is particularly acute in agricultural regions.  In the Central Valley, the rail corridor cuts through productive farmland.  Even when only a strip is taken, irrigation systems must be reconfigured, equipment routes altered, and economies of scale disrupted.  A narrow slice of land can impose broad consequences.

And then there is the uncomfortable question: What if portions of the system are never completed, or not delivered as originally envisioned?

If the high-speed rail network remains a partial system — if funding constraints or political shifts prevent full build-out — then land will have been taken under the banner of a comprehensive project that never materializes.  The constitutional standard is “public use,” but public use implies public functionality.  A right-of-way that sits unused or underused for decades is an egregious violation of individual rights.

We now know that the state’s original ridership projections, cost estimates, and private investment assumptions were totally speculative and overly optimistic.  To proceed with land acquisition on the basis of projections that repeatedly change is to shift risk onto property owners who never volunteered to bear it.

Democratic consent is meaningful only if voters understand what they are authorizing.  When Californians approved billions in bonds, they were not presented with a detailed map of every parcel to be condemned, nor with a candid assessment of how frequently alignments might shift.  They voted for a transportation vision.  They did not vote to empower an open-ended land acquisition program whose scale would become clear only years later.

Eminent domain, by its nature, is coercive.  It substitutes state judgment for individual choice.  That substitution can be justified — but only under stringent conditions.  When those conditions are diluted by shifting plans, cost escalations, and uncertain completion, the moral and constitutional foundation weakens.  The citizens pay a heavy price for having trusted the government.

This is not an argument against infrastructure per se.  Roads, bridges, and railways have long required land assembly.  It is an argument for discipline — fiscal, political, and moral — before invoking the state’s most intrusive powers.

A government that can take land on the basis of ambitious or unrealistic projections must also be willing to reassess when those projections deteriorate.  Each additional parcel condemned is an immoral act with permanent consequences.

Californians were promised speed, efficiency, and transformation.  What many property owners have experienced instead is uncertainty, displacement, and the heavy hand of eminent domain exercised for a project with no resemblance to its original design.

In the end, the controversy over high-speed rail is not merely about trains or budgets.  It is about the hierarchy of values in a free society.  Property rights are a cornerstone of individual liberty.  When they can be, in effect, stolen by bait-and-switch politics, citizens are reduced to pawns and dupes.

Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com.  Read more of his essays there.