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.
In recent months, Israel has been facing a security challenge unlike anything in its modern history. As the country absorbed direct missile strikes from Iran, I found myself thinking not only about the immediate threat, but about something larger: what it will actually take to ensure the strength of Israel’s long-term future.
I have spent more than 30 years as an engineering researcher, and I often tell students and colleagues something that sometimes surprises them: engineering is the modern Zionism. I don’t say this as a rhetorical flourish. Israel’s primary national resource—the engine behind its economic strength, its defense capabilities, its drive to build and its global reputation—is the technical knowledge and ingenuity of its people. For the past two decades, that has been increasingly true. Right now, it is more obvious than ever.
Ah, memories. This is from 2021, when AOC attended the Met Gala. The cost of a ticket was $35,000 and her dress costs about $19,000 with a rental value of about $3000. Pretty hifalutin stuff.
AOC is on a roll. She’s talked about as a candidate for the Senate and even the Presidency. That would be interesting if she had even half a brain but every time she opens her mouth to pontificate nothing sensible comes out. She graduated from Boston University in 2011 with degrees in international relations and economics but never held or even pursued a job in the field of her majors.
Not long ago she gave us all a geography lesson
Ah, memories. This is from 2021, when AOC attended the Met Gala. The cost of a ticket was $35,000 and her dress costs about $19,000 with a rental value of about $3000. Pretty hifalutin stuff.
Then recently came the stream- nay, the torrent of consciousness.
So a guy who comes to this country, starts a grocery store, works 80 hours a week providing people what they need grows his business through his efforts and becomes a billionaire didn’t earn it?
Did she “earn” her seat in Congress?
She dug out a thesaurus for this diatribe. What she should have dug out is a history book.
There were no billionaires at the time, but the richest man in the colonies, Robert Morris, helped fund the revolutionary war– for the Americans.
And you know who was another very wealthy man at the time?
George Washington.
The Revolutionary war was about taxation without representation, not aristocracy.
But this is the one that set me off
The Supreme didn’t overturn a map. It overturned an election.”
This right here is why AOC has no business in government. Majority rules- is it that simple?
Let’s play her game.
WHAT IF:
A majority of America voted to strip away women’s right to vote?
A majority of America voted to strip the right to vote from blacks or whites or Hispanics or Jews?
A majority of America voted for all white voting districts?
A majority of America voted to deport AOC?
An overwhelming majority on America believes photo ID should be required for voting. Where’s that at?
We are NOT a democracy. We are a Republic and AOC is a big reason for that. We are a Republic to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. True democracies inevitably commit suicide.
John Adams on democracy:
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”
Let’s play her game.
WHAT IF:
A majority of America voted to strip away women’s right to vote?
A majority of America voted to strip the right to vote from blacks or whites or Hispanics or Jews?
A majority of America voted for all white voting districts?
A majority of America voted to deport AOC?
An overwhelming majority on America believes photo ID should be required for voting. Where’s that at?
We are NOT a democracy. We are a Republic and AOC is a big reason for that. We are a Republic to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. True democracies inevitably commit suicide.
John Adams on democracy:
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”
What Tom Sowell said about democracy applies perfectly to AOC:
In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with y degrees.
What are her ambitions? To change the country.
AOC sounds sincere. She also sounds like an ignorant, hypocritical twit and has no business being a representative in the US Congress.
But vapid or not, don’t underestimate how far she could go on looks alone.
In recent years, most of us who follow politics have become pretty jaded. Outrageous things happen, outrageous acts are perpetrated, usually by the left, and nothing ever seems to be done about it. That’s changing some now, with the Trump Department of Justice looking to bring some people to account for some of the more egregious acts.
Now, on Friday, the Chief of Protocol for the U.S. government, Monica Crowley, has claimed that the administration will soon produce proof that President Trump actually won the 2020 election. That would have to be pretty solid evidence for anything to come from it, but we may be learning more in the near future, if Monica Crowley is correct.
Ambassador Monica Crowley, the U.S. government’s chief of protocol, said the administration will “soon” produce evidence that proves President Trump won the 2020 election.
Ms. Crowley, speaking Wednesday at an event hosted by Breitbart News, didn’t reveal more about the evidence but expressed confidence in what it would show.
“He did win in a landslide, and we will soon be able to give evidence about that,” she said.
That matches comments by other high officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, who have talked about evidence of a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 vote, which made President Joseph R. Biden the victor over Mr. Trump’s vehement objections.
The claims that were raised during and immediately after the election were all rejected by courts and Congress, which confirmed Mr. Biden’s victory.
That, of course, was the genesis of no small amount of controversy, including the J6 hooliganism in the Capitol that the left insists to this day in calling an “insurrection.” Still, the times, they are a’ changing, and there are investigations underway.
But a federal grand jury in Florida is newly pursuing the matter, and the Justice Department has hired and deployed Joe diGenova, a Trump ally, to help the U.S. attorney’s office in southern Florida with the case.
Ms. Crowley suggested that Mr. Trump should have served in the previous term from 2021 to 2025, but added that it’s fitting he’s in office now to oversee this year’s World Cup soccer extravaganza and the 2028 Olympics, both in America.
So, assuming this evidence is real, compelling, convincing, and shows proof of an illegally rigged election, what then?
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 