A report from the Congressional Budget Office said that space-based interceptors, which do not currently exist, would probably consume 60 percent of the total cost.
A national missile defense system like President Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” could cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a government report issued on Tuesday.
To protect the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii would require four separate layers of defensive assets, the analysis said, including several thousand satellites as well as a half-dozen radar and missile sites to engage intercontinental ballistic missiles and 35 new regional sites to defend against hypersonic missiles and cruise missiles.
Even if the system is built, the report concluded, an adversary like Russia or China that has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons could overwhelm it and some missiles would hit their targets.
The budget office report found that the “space-based interceptors” the president envisions — satellites armed with missiles orbiting the planet — would consume about 60 percent of the cost.
The C.B.O. assumed that countering as many as 10 enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles in space simultaneously could require a constellation of roughly 7,800 armed satellites.
To be effective, such space-based interceptors, the C.B.O. said, would need to be placed in low orbit where they would be subject to drag from the planet’s atmosphere — which over a five-year span could cause them to lose enough altitude that they would burn up and need to be replaced.
Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the C.B.O. report makes several assumptions about the project, including the number and types of space-based interceptors that would be required
“They don’t know what Golden Dome will cost, and to their credit, they say so,” he said.
No air defense system can protect the entire country all the time, Mr. Karako said, adding that the government would rank critical assets that would require the highest level of protection.
The advent of precision-guided conventional — or nonnuclear — weapons capable of hitting strategic targets inside the United States is a major part of what the Golden Dome plan is meant to address, according to Mr. Karako.
In the past, the only weapons capable of intercontinental ranges contained nuclear warheads, he said, and their use would invite a counterattack. But an attack on the United States with conventional guided weapons could achieve a similar strategic effect without necessarily triggering nuclear retaliation, a scenario the Golden Dome is designed — in part — to defeat, Mr. Karako said.
The C.B.O. report did not estimate the cost of protecting U.S. territories specifically but said the territory of Guam, a small island in the western Pacific that hosts Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy bases, was slated to receive “an extensive system of integrated defenses” outside of the Golden Dome project.
American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean could potentially be protected by separate regional missile defense sites, the report says.
In December, the Congressional Research Service said in a report that some lawmakers had expressed concern that, if built, the Golden Dome could invite Russia and China to increase their nuclear arsenals in response.
The report noted that the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States and the Soviet Union signed in 1972, and that Russia later honored, precluded the development of antimissile systems like the Golden Dome project. But President George W. Bush’s decision to exit the treaty in 2001 paved the way for such a network of defensive missiles
Suppose that you are a large U.S. state with a dynamic modern economy. Here’s an idea for a strategy for powering your electrical grid: Intentionally disinvest in your functioning fossil fuel generation plants; fail to maintain them adequately, and let them age into obsolescence. Meanwhile, encourage and even subsidize the development of solar panels as a replacement. After all, solar power is cheaper!
Those who follow the policy of New York State with respect to our electrical grid will recognize this description as covering the essential elements of our strategy. In our case, the strategy was mainly enacted into law in 2019 via the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).
In heading down this path, have we checked around to see what other states or countries have adopted this strategy, and how it has worked out? Just asking.
Let’s start with a quick review of New York’s currently-existing strategy for its grid.
Today, the State gets something over half of its electricity from fossil fuels, almost entirely natural gas, with most of the remainder from hydro (mostly Niagara Falls) and nuclear. The CLCPA contains mandates that that shall change, and rapidly. Section 4 of the CLCPA (codified as Public Service Law § 66-p(2)) mandates that the State get “seventy percent of the state wide electric generation” from “renewable energy systems” by 2030, and that by 2040 “the statewide electrical demand system will be zero emissions.”
These mandates are then administered by state agencies, particularly the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). If you want to build a new power plant in New York, or do a major capital project on an existing plant (such as re-powering a natural gas plant with the latest combined cycle technology), you need to get a permit from DEC. Section 7 of the CLCPA gives the following direction to DEC (and other agencies) with respect to issuing permits:
[A]ll state agencies shall consider whether such decisions are inconsistent with, or will interfere with, the attainment of the statewide greenhouse gas emissions limits. . . .
Back in 2021, two aging natural gas plants — the Astoria plant in Queens and the Danskammer plant along the Hudson River in Orange County — sought permits from DEC to re-power to the latest natural gas technology. DEC denied the permits, citing the CLCPA. From Politico, October 27, 2021:
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration has made a landmark move to deny permits for two natural gas plants seeking to repower, citing the state’s climate law. The Department of Environmental Conservation denied permits for NRG’s Astoria plant and the Danskammer plant in Orange County. Both plants were seeking to repower with more efficient natural gas units than their previous operations. The decisions were embraced by environmentalists who have been pushing for years to block the fossil fuel projects. . . . “Both [plants] would be inconsistent with New York’s nation-leading climate law, and are not justified or needed for grid reliability. We must shift to a renewable future,” wrote DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos on Twitter.
Since then, as far as I can determine, nobody has wasted the effort to try to get DEC to go along with a project to build or upgrade a fossil fuel power plant. As a result, the existing fleet has just gotten older. In its “Power Trends” Report issued in late 2025, the New York ISO described the state of New York’s aging fleet of fossil fuel power plants:
A growing number of fossil-fuel generators in New York are reaching an age at which similar units across the country have been deactivated. New York’s fleet of fossil-fuel-based generation includes more than 10,000 MW, roughly 25% of the state’s total generating capacity, that has been in operation for more than 50 years. As these fossil-fuel generators age, they are experiencing more frequent and longer outages. Greater difficulties in maintaining older equipment, combined with the impact of policies to restrict or eliminate emissions may drive aging generators to deactivate, which would exacerbate declining reliability margins.
“Declining reliability margins” is a polite way of saying “increasing frequency and duration of blackouts.”
With hydro already built out, and new nuclear taking decades to come online, that leaves wind and solar as the main plan for the future of New York’s electricity. In the case of wind, New York’s grand scheme was a vast collection of some 9 GW capacity of giant turbines off the coast of Long Island. However, that has been almost entirely scuttled by the Trump administration. And thus we are down to our last option, solar. The brain-dead cheerleading agency known as NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research & Development Agency) has this to say about solar for New York as of early 2026:
More than six gigawatts (GW) of solar energy has been installed in New York State – enough to power one million homes and businesses. This robust solar energy infrastructure enables a resilient electric grid that supports local jobs, healthier communities, and access to renewable energy for more New Yorkers. . . . By 2030, New York is expected to be home to more than 10 GW of distributed solar energy.
So by 2030, if we’re lucky, we’ll have the same fleet of natural gas plants, yet four years older than today and, as NYISO says, “experiencing more frequent and longer outages”; plus about 10 GW of solar capacity, to supply about 20 GW of average demand, and about 35 GW of peak demand that typically occurs in the evening after the sun has set.
Has any other state or country tried following the same strategy? Some big countries like Germany and the UK have started down this road. But if the key elements are forcing the thermal plants to age into obsolescence while having mostly solar as the alternative, the closest analogy I can find is Cuba.
Cuba has about 4000 MW of thermal (fossil fuel) electricity generating capacity, in their case almost all using oil rather than natural gas. The plants were almost all built from the 1960s to 1980s — the Soviet era — so they range in age from just under 40 years to over 60. Peak demand is around 3250 MW, so you would think that with the 4000 MW of capacity they have enough. But the plants are old and unreliable, and frequently down for extended maintenance and repairs.
Here’s a report from a source called Ciber Cuba on how Cuba’s electricity system is doing this very day. The headline is “The energy crisis in Cuba worsens: nearly 2,000 MW deficit during peak hours.” Excerpt:
Cuba faces one of the most critical days of its already devastated electrical crisis this Tuesday, with a projected deficit of 1,960 MW during peak nighttime hours, according to the official report from the Electric Union (UNE). The report reveals that at 06:00 hours today, the availability of the National Electric System (SEN) was only 1,250 MW against a demand of 2,884 MW, with 1,649 MW already affected since the early morning. The situation is expected to worsen as night falls. The UNE estimates a supply of 1,290 MW against a peak demand of 3,250 MW, resulting in a deficit of 1,960 MW and a projected impact of 1,990 MW during peak hours, equivalent to leaving almost two-thirds of the country without electricity.
So basically, two-thirds of the country is in forced blackout at any given time. Recent fuel shortages resulting from the U.S. embargo that began in January undoubtedly are a contributing factor to the crisis. However, Ciber Cuba points out that just as big a problem is that many of the aging power plants are out of service:
[A]ccumulated breakdowns partly explain the collapse. Units two and three of the Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Thermoelectric Power Plant (CTE), unit two of the Lidio Ramón Pérez CTE, and unit five of the Antonio Maceo CTE are out of service, while four other units are undergoing maintenance at the Mariel, Renté, and Nuevitas plants.
More availability of oil would not have helped with those outages. And the electricity situation in Cuba was nearly as bad last year, before the fuel supply from Venezuela got cut off. Here is a report from Al-Jazeera from September 2025:
Another total electricity blackout has struck Cuba, the latest in a string of grid collapses that have rocked the island of 10 million over the past year. The island-wide outage, which hit just after 9am local time on Wednesday, is believed to be linked to a malfunction at one of Cuba’s largest thermoelectric plants, the Ministry of Energy and Mines said.
But doesn’t Cuba have a big collection of solar farms? I thought that, in the words of NYSERDA, “robust solar energy infrastructure enables a resilient electric grid that supports local jobs, healthier communities, and access to renewable energy.” Why not just crank those up to fill the gaps when the fossil fuel plants break down? From the Ciber Cuba piece:
The 54 installed photovoltaic solar parks generated 3,822 MWh on Monday, with a maximum capacity of 490 MW during daylight hours; however, this source does not cover the nighttime deficit, which is when demand peaks.
You mean that all the solar generation that Cuba has built doesn’t provide any light in the nighttime? Who knew? Here from Ciber Cuba is a picture of a Havana street after sunset:
If we keep up our current energy policies for long enough, we can also get to the point where our thermal (fossil fuel) power plants are too old to be maintained reliably. And then, if we are lucky, we can hope to achieve the energy utopia that has arrived in Cuba.
Desperate and facing financial collapse, Hezbollah has developed a detailed plan to seize control of Beirut and silence internal critics of the war with Israel.
Intelligence reports emerging from the Lebanese capital suggest that Hezbollah is preparing for a domestic military takeover to shore up its crumbling authority. The terror organization has reportedly finalized a plan to occupy key sectors of Beirut in an effort to marginalize moderate political figures who have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the group’s actions. This move comes as the Lebanese public grows weary of a war that has brought the country to the brink of total ruin.
The pressure on Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, has reached unprecedented levels. Qassem is currently being forced to split his dwindling military resources between three fronts: the active combat zones in South Lebanon, the logistical hubs in the Bekaa Valley, and the streets of Beirut. This fragmentation of his forces is a direct result of the relentless IDF campaign that has decimated the group’s infrastructure and killed a significant portion of its mid-level leadership.
A primary driver of this internal desperation is the total collapse of Hezbollah’s financial network. Israeli strikes have successfully targeted the group’s economic assets, including banks, currency exchanges, and even gas stations used to fund its operations. Compounding this crisis is the report that Iran has dramatically reduced its direct cash transfers to Lebanon, leaving the terror group unable to support the hundreds of thousands of displaced Shia civilians who traditionally form its base of support.
In the south, the situation for the terror group is even more dire. Major General Rafi Milo of the Northern Command recently presented evidence to Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir showing significant progress in dismantling Hezbollah’s “terror villages.” The IDF’s rapid destruction of tunnels and weapon depots has convinced the Hezbollah leadership that Israel is planning a permanent division of Lebanese territory, a fear that is driving Qassem to make increasingly erratic tactical decisions.
The planned “Conquest of Beirut” is seen as a way for Hezbollah to reassert its dominance and prevent a pro-Western shift in the Lebanese government. Leaders like the Lebanese President and Prime Minister have begun to distance themselves from the group, sensing its weakness. By taking the capital, Hezbollah hopes to intimidate these “pragmatic” forces and ensure that the country remains a frontline in the Iranian war against the West, regardless of the cost to the Lebanese people.
As the economic and military walls close in, the risk of a bloody internal conflict in Lebanon grows. Hezbollah’s transition from a “resistance” force to an occupying militia in its own capital marks a new, more dangerous phase of the regional war. With the Iranian cash flow drying up and the IDF advancing in the south, the terror group is fighting for its very survival, making it more unpredictable and dangerous than ever before.
For the first time in the history of the modern Middle East, Saudi Arabia has crossed a major red line by launching direct military strikes against Iranian targets on Iranian soil. According to reports from Reuters and various Western intelligence sources, the Saudi Air Force conducted a series of secret aerial operations in late March 2026. These strikes were designed as a direct response to persistent Iranian attacks that had successfully bypassed the American military defense umbrella to hit targets inside the Saudi Kingdom.
The operations, while unconfirmed by official government channels in Riyadh, represent a massive escalation in the regional war. For decades, the two powers have fought through proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq, but the current war has pushed the Saudi leadership to adopt a policy of direct kinetic retaliation. Sources indicate that the decision to strike was born out of a realization that traditional American defense systems were no longer sufficient to deter Tehran’s aggressive drone and missile program.
Before the jets crossed into Iranian airspace, Riyadh took the calculated step of informing Tehran that the strikes were imminent. This was not an attempt to coordinate, but rather a stern warning that the Kingdom would no longer tolerate violations of its sovereignty without a reciprocal price. The message was clear: Iran must halt its direct aggression or face an escalating campaign that would target the regime’s own infrastructure.
The strategic gamble appears to have yielded immediate results on the ground. Data from the region shows that weekly Iranian strikes on Saudi territory plummeted from over 105 incidents to approximately 25 following the Saudi air raids. Faced with the reality of a direct war with a well-equipped neighbor, Iran shifted its remaining attacks to Iraqi proxies to maintain a layer of plausible deniability and avoid further direct attribution and retaliation from Riyadh.
This secret military pressure paved the way for a quiet diplomatic understanding between the two regional giants. Sources report that a deal was reached in the week preceding the broader U.S.-Iran ceasefire on April 7th, 2026. This local arrangement was focused on de-escalation and ensuring that the “rules of engagement” did not lead to a full-scale regional conflagration that would devastate global energy markets.
While the Saudi government maintains a public stance of silence regarding the raids, the message to the international community is unmistakable. The Middle East is moving toward a new era where regional powers are willing to take their security into their own hands rather than relying solely on Western guarantees. As the dust settles from the March strikes, the focus now shifts to whether this fragile peace can hold as international negotiations continue.
There’s an old joke about people who do CrossFit, and it goes something like this: “How do you know when someone does CrossFit? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you!” If you’ve ever encountered an enthusiastic CrossFitter, you know why this joke is so humorous. It seems that all they can talk about is CrossFit and how it has changed their lives. And to a certain extent it has. It has allowed them to train their bodies to maximum effectiveness. The interesting part is that CrossFit’s success is less about some revolutionary training regimen and more about the positive vision it casts and the enthusiasm it generates. The enthusiasm is not simply for the payoff but also the process—as difficult and painful as that process is. As Christians, our attitude toward obedience can become like that of someone dragged to the gym by a well-meaning friend or family member—weary disdain. Instead, we need the same sort of positive vision and enthusiasm for Christlikeness as our CrossFitting friends have for a pullup. Let me therefore give you some positive principles for the pursuit of Christian obedience. Warning
However, we need a quick caveat before we begin. Christian history is littered with those who would try to generate energy for Christian obedience only to find themselves exhausted and enslaved to a relentless master. We do not endeavor after obedience to the Lord that we may be justified before Him. Paul makes this incredibly clear in Ephesians 2:8–9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Well-meaning Christians, afraid that the radically free offer of the gospel will demotivate Christian obedience, have instead placed themselves on a hopeless treadmill of works-righteousness. This path robs them not merely of their joy in obedience but ultimately of their assurance in Christ. Rejoice, Christian, your obedience does not factor into your acceptance into the kingdom. What a freeing truth that is; yet it does not free us from obedience but rather puts us in a right relationship with obedience. For Paul finishes his thought in his letter to the Ephesians with this: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10, emphasis added). Obedience Increases Our Spiritual Fitness
Many Christians have come to believe in their heart of hearts that to obey God’s commands, to kill sin and live unto righteousness, will cause them to resent the Lord and love Him less. This is one of the oldest tricks of Satan to whisper in our ears that we cannot be happy without our pet sin, that we would be miserable if we did not allow ourselves room for this or that transgression of His law. The truth of the matter is quite different. Does killing sin sting? Yes! In the moment, it quite literally feels like death because we are killing something in us. But much like those that tear down their muscles in the gym only for them to come back stronger, more able, more fit for this physical life, tearing down sin in our lives makes us happier, more peaceful, stronger, and more fit for life this side of glory. More importantly, choosing to endeavor after spiritual health now helps to build up our ability to endure under more intense trial and temptation later. Like a soldier in the midst of combat relying on his training and fitness to help him survive, when we are in the habit of obeying God’s Word, we can rely on it when we find ourselves under spiritual attack. When we obediently meditate on God’s Word day and night (Ps. 1:2) we will, like Christ in the wilderness, run to it in the moments of our spiritual affliction (Matt. 4:1–11). When we pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), we will cry out to the Lord in our darkest hours (Ps. 88). When we don’t neglect the coming together (Heb. 10:24–25), we will have our burdens borne along by one another when we are struggling (Gal. 6:2).
Obedience Increases Our Love
As image bearers, we have three facets by which we are shaped: our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. At times our feelings lead our thoughts and actions. When they do and they are focused on righteousness, it is often the most efficient way of molding Christlike lives. For example, my heart is swept up by a convicting sermon and thus I endeavor to kill the sin in my life with vigor and enthusiasm. However, the most consistent way to shape our lives is not through affection or feelings but by action. When we act in accordance with Christ’s commands, we are making an internal declaration about our commitment and love of Christ. In one sense Christ’s exhortation in John 14:15 is “Since you love me, you will keep my commands.” And further in John 15:17, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” Choosing to act in a way that expresses love helps to fan embers of affection to roaring flames. Further, while our feelings are by their nature dynamic things (changing in their intensity and focus), behavior can be very static—helping to ground our affections and giving them stability. When I choose to read my Bible, pray, and act with the sort of Christian integrity God calls me to, it helps keep my affections grounded in the love God has for me and the love I have for Him. While it is easiest to obey when I feel loving toward God, the truth is I often feel loving toward God because I choose to obey. Let us not grow weary of well doing but with renewed vigor and positive vision run the good race till one day we receive our crown of glory.
Obedience Makes Us Better Witnesses
The world around us is full of folly, selfish ambition, conceit, malice, lust, gluttony, rivalry, and any other sin one can quickly call to mind. Obedience comes across as odious so often because it prevents us from giving into our sinful hearts and looking like the world. Conversely though, when we obey God’s Word (James 1:25), when we bless those who curse us (Rom. 12:14), when we pray even for our enemies (Matt. 5:44), when we go the extra mile (Matt. 5:41), treat all as neighbors (Luke 10:29–37), guard our hearts from sexual immorality (1 Cor. 6:18), put away all slander (Eph. 4:31), etc., our Christian witness shines brightly in this darkened world (Luke 8:16). Having grown up in “the Bible belt,” I found that the thing that made Christianity seem so implausible to me as a kid was not its truth claims but the fact that the people who wore the crosses, went to youth groups, and made the public professions acted no different from the world. Conversely, as an adult I’ve had the opportunity to become close friends with a number of saints who strive day by day after new obedience to the Lord and His Word, and I’ve seen how transformative that is for me, the church, and a watching world. You never know who is watching and when. For some, your obedience may be an offense, pushing them away because they want to live in darkness and not the light (John 3:19). For others your obedience will be a comfort, drawing them in like a moth to the flame (1 Peter 2:9). Either way, when we obey God’s Word, it signals to the world that “there is something different there” that opens the door for genuine gospel-centered conversations and gives the credibility to speak truth into their life. Obedience Is Always Rewarded
We may not see the results of our obedience immediately. In fact, we may not see the results of our obedience fully this side of heaven; yet obedience is always rewarded. Whereas the decisions we make about our earthly riches—whether to invest here or there; whether to take this job or that, etc.—are never guaranteed, our obedience to God and His Word is always rewarded. God promises as much in His Word, for He writes:
The rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. (Ps. 19:9–11)
Christ reminds us that when we are persecuted because of His Word (in other words, when we are persecuted because we obey His Word), great will be our reward in heaven (Matt. 5:11–12). And He further enjoins us to seek that reward and store it up where nothing may destroy it or take it away (Matt. 6:19–20). In a sermon on Romans 2:10, Jonathan Edwards states: “The glory of the saints above will be in some proportion to their eminency in holiness and good works here. Christ will reward all according to their works.” He goes on to describe variation in rewards like the variation in the size of vessels in the sea—a sea of happiness—where some are the size of thimbles and others the size of tubs or more. Our obedience here prepares us to be the ocean liners in the sea of satisfaction available to us one day, and then forever, in glory. Conclusion
Obedience is hard. Make no mistake about it. Yet it need not be drudgery. We are no longer slaves but are free to live as we were created to live and when we do, we find ourselves more spiritually fit, more in love with our God, more able to witness, and more prepared for heaven than we could ever possibly imagine. Let us not grow weary of well doing (Gal. 6:9) but with renewed vigor and positive vision run the good race till one day we receive our crown of glory (1 Peter 5:4).
It’s one of the fiercest debates in politics these days: Who is the worst American politician of the 21st century? Some say Hillary Clinton, for obvious reasons. Others insist Kamala Harris is worse, also for obvious reasons.
Correction: It was one of the fiercest debates in politics. For now, the matter has been settled. Kamala is definitely worse. Sorry, Hillary. Or congratulations.
Our analysis is based on a recent NBC News report about Harris’s ongoing flirtation with another presidential run in 2028, among other news items from the past several weeks. The NBC article contains one of the most baffling paragraphs ever written about an American politician who almost became president—not that she could ever win a national election, but because she served four years as vice president under Joe Biden, who was barely alive.
NBC notes that Harris is struggling to articulate what she actually thinks about Israel. She often struggles to express coherent thoughts, but this is different. Democrats have grown increasingly hostile to the Jewish state—for reasons that include toxic empathy, geopolitical ignorance, and antisemitism—and many fault the Biden-Harris administration for being insufficiently supportive of Palestinian terrorism.
Accordingly, a “person close to Harris” tells NBC that a “potential pivot” could be on the horizon. Harris “is signaling privately that she has more to say about the Middle East now that she is freed from the Biden White House policy, this person said, adding that she is likely to do so after the midterm elections,” the outlet reported. “That could be done from the perspective of a party elder or from the perspective of a candidate seeking votes, this person said.”
In summary: A professional politician has authorized an anonymous source to reveal that she plans to weigh in on an issue of heightened political importance roughly six months from now—pending the results of the midterm elections (and assuming those results can confirm that her thoughts on the matter are actually her thoughts).
Why does America have elected officials? If a visiting alien were introduced to the Democratic Party and asked that question, he’d surely say the purpose is to accumulate, consolidate, and hold power. This is the state of that party in 2026.
Of course, this is not a new development. The Democratic Party has been moving from a traditional political group (with a long history of proposing poor ideas) to a mob that wants to rule over the country rather than represent voters, defend the Constitution, and uphold the rule of law.
There’s no better example of this than the tantrum the party is pitching over the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling that broke their effort to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to eliminate all but one Republican district in a state where more than 46% of the voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump in 2024.
Four of the seven justices found that the Democrats’ “legislative process employed to advance” the voter referendum that approved the new map not only violated the state constitution, but it was “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”
The headline over George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley’s New York Post op-ed says the ruling suggests the legal slapdown has left the Democrats “dangerous.” Somewhat like a cornered feral beast, we’d said.
Because they didn’t get their way, Democratic Party grandees are reportedly considering retiring the justices on the Virginia Supreme Court and replacing them with justices who will rehear the case and rubber-stamp the new congressional map.
This is outright defiance of a legitimate court ruling. But then we’ve seen how street Democrats, who serve as useful idiots for party apparatchiks, behave when elections and lawmaking don’t go their way: They resort to violence. Laws, traditions, and propriety are flouted rather than followed by the party of the left that moves harder in that direction every day.
Decent people would accept the ruling and try to win seats the honest way, with better policies and candidates that Main Street America would be comfortable with. (It seems Democrat Don Scott, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, might be one such person — he’s said: “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia.”)
Instead, voters are tormented by the likes of:
– James Carville, the infamous Clinton strategist who said “if the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress” after the 2028 elections, “I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13.” He advised Democrats to hide their intentions from voters.
– Tennessee State Rep. Antonio Parkinson, who wants Memphis to secede from Tennessee because the new congressional map eliminates the state’s only “black” district (which has been represented by a white male Democrat since 2007). “You don’t have to redraw maps when you let us out,” Parkinson said.
– A series of wannabe presidential assassins, who have acted on the rhetoric that the Democrats and their media confederates have spewed for more than a decade.
What policies do Democrats offer that make it so important for them to have complete political power that they will cheat, steal, and lie to gain full, tyrannical, nothing-outside-the-state control?
None.
The policies that the Democrats line up behind are nothing more than a way to increase the scope of, and their unyielding grip on, the government that they want to run. They yammer on about “no kings,” but that’s what they actually want: A monarchy that has the fig leaf of elections that only they can win and is entirely under their control.
Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.
After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.
Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.
It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.
True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.
So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?
There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.
Demography
First, in demographic terms, the US Muslim population is expanding exponentially, due almost entirely to recent immigration and higher birth rates than the American norm (e.g., 2.5–8 versus 1.6–1.7).
There are now nearly five million Muslim Americans. These numbers are anticipated by 2030 to surpass the Jewish American population.
Moreover, increasing numbers of Jews are not just secular or intermarried but no longer identify so strongly as Jewish, much less as supporters of Israel. More importantly, billions of dollars in the last few years from the Gulf states—primarily Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait—have flowed into American universities.
These enormous sums bankroll weaponized Middle East studies programs and enrich left-wing NGOs, nonprofits, and sympathetic politicians. The new antisemites talk nefariously of the money of “International Jewry,” and “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” but in truth, Gulf money dwarfs Israel’s lobbying budget.
An entire generation of young American elites has been groomed in universities to despise Israel and, by extension, to express hostility toward Jews. After October 7, the scab was torn away, revealing what had festered underneath for years.
Any visitor to a contemporary American campus who talks at length to protesting students quickly arrives at two general conclusions:
First, many have been taught to despise Israel and simply parrot the indoctrinated talking points of their professors—“apartheid,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” “settler colonialism,” and so on.
The result is that it is now “cool” on campus to trash Israel, utter the platitude that “hating Israel is not hating Jews,” and then either make life uncomfortable for Jewish students or remain silent when witnessing such harassment firsthand.
Second, today’s students know little to nothing of the modern Middle East. Most have no idea what the eliminationist slogan “From the River to the Sea” actually portends. Few anti-Israeli demonstrators could identify either the Jordan River or the Mediterranean Sea, much less distinguish between them. Yet all understand that chanting the hip and approved slogans earns social acceptance in and outside the classroom.
DEI
The DEI binary fuels both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus. In this Marxist moral schema, the world abroad—and within the United States—is divided into “white oppressors” and “nonwhite victims,” despite the fact that people commonly classified as white comprise only a small minority of the global population. The dichotomy is reductive and often absurd, collapsing immense differences in class, wealth, power, culture, and historical circumstance into a crude racial narrative. Instead, in this paradigm, superficial appearance—including something as trivial as adding accents to names or adopting some sort of virtue-signaling head dress or garb—can brand one as a nonwhite victim. Once so identified, the supposedly oppressed are granted collective grievances against their victimizers and, increasingly, exemptions from censure.
Thus, DEI offers a pass from charges of antisemitism on the theory that the oppressed cannot themselves become oppressors. Muslim students on American campuses were often graphic in their chants and placards wishing deaths upon Israelis, unapologetic in roughing up Jewish students, and confident—often correctly—that their purported victimhood exempted them from consequences.
The idea that minorities cannot be antisemites is, of course, not new. For example, graphic antagonism toward Jews—long at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement has long been expressed by prominent black leaders with little downside (e.g., Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “dem Jews”; Jesse Jackson: “Hymietown”; Al Sharpton: “diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights”; Malcolm X: “bloodsuckers”; Louis Farrakhan: “termites” and “gutter religion”).
Thus, Jews in America found themselves classified among the whitest and most privileged of the oppressor class, perhaps by virtue of their material success, while Israel abroad was deemed a white colonialist settler state because it repeatedly defeated neighboring enemies.
Key to the DEI demonization of the Jews has been the diminution of the horrors of the Holocaust to ensure Jews are excluded from the victim side of the ledger. The murder of six million had once been a principal reason of many to support the idea of an independent sanctuary in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Downplaying the Holocaust—or treating it as irrelevant or understandable—therefore calls postwar Zionism into question.
When Tucker Carlson declared that the unpublished podcaster Daryl Cooper was the preeminent historian of World War II, his praise rested neither on Cooper’s comprehensive scholarly work (there was none), nor bestselling popular accounts of the war (there were none), nor distinguished public lectures, seminar classes, or journal articles on the war (there were none).
Instead, the reason for such hagiography was that Cooper in his podcast shad downplayed the Holocaust in narratives of the war, whitewashed Germany, and cited a nefarious shadowy group of you-know-who for pushing supposedly naïve or sinister leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt into an aggressive and unwarranted war against a supposedly victimized Hitler and Nazi Germany.
From Underdog to Overdog
Third, Israel is no longer the Israel of 1947, 1956, 1967, or 1973, nor the Israel mired in the various Lebanon and Intifada quagmires that followed.
In the early 21st century, Benjamin Netanyahu helped open the Israeli economy and foster a meritocratic, free-market boom. Only oil-rich Qatar and the UAE surpass Israel in regional per capita income.
Its military, honed over generations of warfare, has become more capable than those of France, Germany, or the UK in key areas, especially combat aviation, the number of combat aircraft, and pilot quality. In short, tiny underdog Israel—surrounded by hundreds of millions of aggressive Muslims—has somehow been recast as the settler “overdog” bully. With a mere 18 percent of collective Arab GDP and outnumbered 50,000 to one, Israel is depicted as poised to carve out a “Greater Israel” from the impotent but simultaneously more virtuous and richer Arab Middle East.
October 7 and its aftermath, counterintuitively, accelerated the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hatred. If Israel had not responded to the massacre, the new anti-Israel cohort would have claimed their inaction was a passive admission of prior guilt for which the attack was merely partial payment.
Yet once Israel moved to destroy Hamas, it was branded genocidal. Early Israeli calls for Gazans to turn over the planners and perpetrators of the massacre were dismissed by the Palestinians as absurd or unserious—mere jest. Few in the West called on the Palestinians to surrender their mass murderers.
Yet few of Israel’s critics could ever explain exactly what the Jewish state was supposed to do after suffering mass murder in peacetime from an enemy that had abducted more than 240 hostages—to the cheers of most Gazans.
How was the IDF—or any army—supposed to descend into a billion-dollar, booby-trapped labyrinth of tunnels, its exits and entries hidden beneath schools, private homes, mosques, and hospitals, to free hostages and kill terrorists while the media effectively shilled for Hamas?
The New Jacobin Agenda
Hating Israel—and, by association, Jews—was voiced not merely by DEI or the radical new wing of the Democratic Party. Anti-Israelism instead merged into a broader leftist potpourri of open borders, illegal immigration, anti-ICE violence, Green New Deal-style wokism, and Trump Derangement Syndrome.
These causes came to be viewed as an inseparable package whose elements were interconnected and tolerated no apostasy from any of them.
Thus, Jacobinism became an all-or-nothing litmus test. As a result, even though Totenkopf tattoos might have been the last thing seen by Jews as they were herded by the tens of thousands into the gas chambers, such Satanic iconography scrawled into the flesh was apparently no longer disqualifying for a Democratic Senate nominee in Maine.
For figures like Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or Chuck Schumer to forcefully challenge hatred of Israel—and, by extension, of the Jews—would now be treated as political heresy, a career-ending death wish. Defending Israel and calling out antisemitism became as unfashionable in progressive circles as praising secure borders, deportations, or fossil fuels and pipelines. And so the old party largely kept mum and sanctioned the new loathing.
As for conservative podcasters and internet influencers who now seem unrecognizable from what they had professed only months or years earlier, many had grown tired of being ostracized from popular culture and the establishment hallmarks of media and entertainment.
How else to explain their sudden hatred of Trump for the current Iran war, or his support for Israel, when the remaining 90 percent of his agenda has matched their own life-long conservative views, and were antithetical to the Left they now sometimes court?
But once figures like Candace Owens or a newly radicalized Tucker Carlson became fixated on the Jews, the Left found them useful as both shields and validators. Their rhetoric suggested that virulent anti-Israelism was not merely a left-wing fixation but something shared across the political spectrum.
The more such figures received establishment tolerance—or even praise and social acceptance—like addicts, the madder and louder they became until they were very nearly indistinguishable from the leftists they had so long warned about. Thus Carlson, a once eloquent conservative, came full circle and effectively rationalized the idea of allowing Iran to have a nuclear bomb. That notion after all, was the subtext of Obama’s Iran Deal and his morally neutral idea of a powerful Tehran-Damascus-Beirut-Gaza axis to balance moderate Arab regimes and Israel.
The Left praised these new right-wing opponents of Israel, as if they were Liz Cheneys—who were not so bad after all. Such praise from the corridors of cultural influence and power apparently was seen as welcome shelter from the prior left-wing hailstorms that had pelted them for years.
The final irony?
The only meaningful resistance to the anti-Israel crowd is not the DEI coalition, not the new Democratic Party, not the coastal and credentialed and supposedly enlightened left-wing white elite, not the supposedly “character is destiny” Never Trumpers, and certainly not the allegedly brave mavericks who have bolted from the MAGA base.
Instead, what is left in the pathway of demonizing Israel and blaming Jews, here and abroad, is the supposed bigot Donald Trump and his “irredeemable,” “deplorable” MAGA movement—for now, the last dam holding back the rising flood.
About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.
Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), now under the leadership of newly confirmed Director Robert Cekada, rolled out a lengthy list of final and proposed rule changes to a wide range of federal firearms regulations. They contain some noteworthy developments for Second Amendment advocates.
The Trump administration’s rule changes are a welcome announcement – particularly since there has been a bit of a gap in Second Amendment action since the President’s February 2025 executive order on “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.” As of this week, several of both the final and proposed rules have now been officially published in the Federal Register.
For those who may not be up to speed on these recent actions, the spectrum of issues addressed via this regulatory rollout is wide and diverse. The package includes everything from reducing the paperwork burdens for Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders, to simplifying the background check paperwork (namely the 4473 form) for gun purchasers, to clarifying gun and component definitions, to modernizing how records are kept, to reversing unnecessary bans on certain firearms components – just to name a few significant changes.
Of note, in its initial announcement of the package last week, DOJ indicated that this slate of proposed and final rule changes is “only the first batch of incoming changes that the Administration has planned.” So, we may be in store for more reforms down the line.
Importantly, ATF has provided the public with the rationale, statistics, metrics, and arguments for why it is making these changes. In a stark reversal from the Biden administration’s assault on the Second Amendment, the Trump administration’s reasoning is rooted in the reality of lawful gun ownership, a greater respect for individual liberty, and the facilitation of lawful commerce.
For Americans concerned about preserving and protecting their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, not only is it worth the time to become familiar with what the administration has put forth in this package, it is also worthwhile to help shape the final form of these regulations via open comment. After all, several of these regulations will have a direct impact on gun owners – such as the rules focused on streamlining, easing, and clarifying processes to purchase or sell firearms. Any American can freely offer their support or thoughts on how to improve the proposed rules.
At the same time, other issues that the Trump administration has addressed drill down to more profound concerns about liberty and government overreach. For example, one of the proposed rules seeks to reduce the time that FFLs must retain 4473 paperwork, which contains personal information on firearms purchasers.
Prior to the disastrous Biden years, FFLs only had to keep the 4473 forms on hand for 20 years. Records older than that could be destroyed, which meant that paperwork linking buyer to gun type wouldn’t run the risk of being eventually collected by the government (all FFLs that go out of business have to turn in all of their transaction records to the ATF). In 2022, the Biden administration took a hard left from past practice and forced FFLs to keep their records indefinitely, almost guaranteeing that all firearms transaction records would eventually get into the hands of the federal government without a rule change.
Now, under the new proposed Trump rule, the period will either be set at the old 20-year mark (which worked fine for decades) or 30 years.
Incidentally, the rules package also proposes placing a sunset on how long the background check records are to be kept by the ATF for firearms tracing purposes. The ATF admits in its proposed rule justification that most issues related to gun crime that require law enforcement tracing requests involve guns purchased within that 20-year timeframe – so there is little reasonable or logical reason to keep records beyond 20 years. For a lot of reasons – not the least of which being concern about our government keeping tabs on what firearms we own – reducing this requirement makes sense.
It is important to note that with official publication, the clock now ticks on the sequence of actions to finalize the proposed rules. This process starts with a time-limited open comment period where the citizenry can review the information and submit formal comments. For these proposed rules, the comment period is 90 days. Once this period closes, the agency will complete its review of everything on hand and make final determinations.
In a statement last week, the ATF indicated that “the agency is committed to reviewing input in a timely manner and ensuring consideration of significant feedback into the final rules.” With luck, once the comments are closed, the agency will move swiftly to finish and promulgate these final regulations.
For the first time since Trump left office in 2021, Second Amendment advocates and law-abiding gun owners have tangible reasons for optimism again. While more work needs to be done, after four years of relentless assault under the Biden administration, the Trump administration is finally correcting those errors.
President Donald Trump has been compared to many historical figures, by opponents (who claim he’s another Adolf Hitler) and by boosters (who cite Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt).
With his blockade of Iran, though, maybe we should start comparing him to Gen. Winfield Scott.
In the mid-19th century, Scott was America’s preeminent military mind, the architect of victory in the Mexican War and the “Grand Old Man of the Army.”
As the Civil War loomed, he developed a plan to defeat the Confederacy with the smallest number of casualties possible.
He called it the Anaconda Plan — and like its namesake it was about applying a squeeze, and squeezing hard, until its object was squeezed to death.
Rather than winning a single decisive battle or a series of major confrontations, Scott wanted to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing control of the Mississippi River, while choking off the South’s foreign trade — upon which it was enormously dependent for both money and materiel — with a naval blockade of its Atlantic and Gulf ports.
Scott’s plan had few takers at the beginning, when enthusiasts on both sides thought the war would be finished in months, with daring cavalry charges and the like.
But when that didn’t happen, the plan became the basis for the Union war strategy — and it worked.
The South was beaten on the battlefield, but its loss came in no small part because it was being economically squeezed on all sides.
Today, Trump is following a similar strategy both at home and abroad.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 