After failing to win Congress and the presidency in 2024, the Democrats conducted an internal postmortem of what went wrong. While they predictably did not divulge the full results, everyone knew what they had found.

Their obsessions with the low side of 30/70 issues had especially alienated Democrats from white middle- and working-class voters. Yet middle-class whites still comprise about 40–50 percent of the population and are perhaps overrepresented in voter turnout.

Democrats realize that their fixations on biological males competing in women’s sports, open borders and millions of illegal entries, radical green agendas, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and massive government entitlements rife with fraud have alienated the middle classes in general and white middle- and working-class voters in particular.

But since Democrat ideologues cannot shed their ideological straitjackets, they have instead tried to finesse the very problem that cost them the 2024 election.

They recall, in particular, the successful blueprint that won them the 2020 election. During that campaign, Joe Biden largely remained out of public view, hiding in his basement, while his handlers reconstructed him as a kind of waxen effigy of “good ol’ Joe from Scranton,” a throwback to the 1970s.

Once the cognitively diminished Biden was elected, his hard-left, Obama-era operatives behind that ossified, working-man veneer enacted the most radical four-year agenda in modern American history.

On the one hand, Democrats claim they will field candidates who can at least playact as good ol’ boy farmers and salt-of-the-earth welders.

The 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Humpty Dumpty lookalike Tim Walz, talked incessantly about driving a pickup truck. He assured us he could change its oil and tried to portray himself as a genuine hunter. Yet these claims often came across as inauthentic, strained, and condescending; the more Walz tried to present himself as a man of the people, the more he appeared buffoonish.

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, became a caricature of the sanctimonious, credentialed technocrat—self-righteously and arrogantly projecting expertise without much humility or even a shred of the common touch. As transportation secretary, Buttigieg used to pontificate about racist freeway clover leaves, rather than addressing the more immediate problems posed by the gridlocked and decrepit condition of the nation’s highways.

Now, as the 2028 election looms, Buttigieg has followed Democratic central casting and undergone a complete reboot, reemerging with a beard, a trucker cap, and a flannel shirt.

No matter, he still sounds as pedantic as ever in his riff on green energy and “diversity.

Wannabe president and lame-duck California governor Gavin Newsom is also suddenly reinventing himself. He is now surrealistically claiming that, as the son of an appellate court judge, and raised as an intimate of the billionaire Getty family, that he scarcely survived on Wonder Bread and macaroni, was disabled by dyslexia, and struggled in a broken home typical of the poor white working classes.

To win back the white working class this time around, Democratic insiders are apparently not content merely to recycle—or astroturf—familiar, anemic candidates into veritable Obama-era “clingers.”

Now they are seeking out brand new faces to present as supposedly more authentic white working men. They believe that they have at last found the real thing in traditionally red Texas state legislator and Presbyterian minister James Talarico.

He talks nonstop like a left-winger, but with the voice of an evangelical Bible thumper. Talarico just won the Texas Democratic Senate primary over radical, racialist bomb thrower Jasmine Crockett. Surely, his handlers believe, he will do the impossible and flip the good old boys of Texas to the new Democratic agenda?

He may yet, but the Harvard-educated Talarico’s Christianity seems more like Latin American left-wing “liberation theology” than Texas-style evangelicalism. Talarico certainly has a long history of radical elite social media commentary, and he urges Texans not to demonize trans people and illegal aliens but instead go after “billionaires and their puppet politicians.”

Perhaps such class warfare is seen as a good start for the Left’s new, supposedly working-man’s radical populist. But it turns out Pastor Talarico is actually to the left of radical left Democrats. In the past, he had pandered to the very wing of the party that had lost its elections, with offerings like “God is non-binary” or notions that Christians have divine guidance to let transgender males play in women’s sports.

But the damning pièce de résistance of this supposedly authentic, blue-collar, white evangelical preacher was a previous post from Talarico: “Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country.”

Democrat politicos and handlers also perhaps thought they had finally found the real thing in current Maine Senate primary candidate Graham Platner. Despite growing up in affluence and attending the tony Hotchkiss preparatory school, Platner’s makeover seemed far more genuine.

Indeed, The Washington Post gushed about him, saying he was “a rugged guy,” while Politico bragged that at last Democrats had found a MAGA everyman but—better yet—to the left of Bernie Sanders.

Platner joined the Marines, saw combat tours, and was variously a bartender and oysterman. But Platner may have gone a bit too far to serve as the Democrats’ new white working-class poster boy.

It was recently revealed that he had been tattooed with a skull that was the exact insignia of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (“Death’s Head Units”). These particular SS units were the worst of the worst of the psychopathic paramilitary organizations of Hitler’s Third Reich, often having been chosen to serve as guards in Nazi extermination camps.

Platner’s past social media postings didn’t help his often-lame excuses for the tattoo—although he knew as a leftist he would survive the brouhaha, given the antisemitic saturation of the new Democrat Party, and the exemptions provided to the “right people.” Indeed, he trumped Talarico’s disdain for the very demographic he was supposed to sew up, with the revelation that he had once described white rural Americans as “racists and stupid” while claiming that he was a communist and calling for armed resistance.

The reason why these white working-class veneers will likely not work is not just that they are strained facades, designed to make palatable an otherwise unpalatable agenda to Middle America.

They also ring untrue because the white working class has been so demonized by the Left that it will likely never return to the Democratic Party.

Consider just the pejoratives that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have employed to stereotype and ridicule Trump supporters and the social-economical-rural environment that supposedly produced them: clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, chumps, semi-fascists, and garbage.

In other words, the hatred of and the condescension toward the white working class is baked into the new bicoastal and elitist Left and Democratic Party. It cannot be finessed or masked—as the postings of even their supposedly new working-class heroes attest.

Just recently, liberal comedian Jimmy Kimmel went off on the new Homeland Security Secretary, former Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin, blasting him as a mere “plumber”: “We have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now. It worked for Super Mario. Why not Markwayne?”

Aside from the fact that plumbers are among the most skilled and important of all the critical tradesmen, plumbing was just one chapter in Mullin’s rich and varied career. He has an impressive record as a former ten-year congressman and a U.S. senator. He also helped turn his family business into one of the largest plumbing supply services in Oklahoma. But to Kimmel, all that was condensed to being a “plumber,” as if his left-wing audience would likewise see a plumber reaching the highest levels of government as a joke.

The View cohost Joy Behar just trashed Trump by claiming his supporters (half the country) were “poorly educated”—an odd thing to say when her liberal cohost, Whoopi Goldberg, is a high school dropout.

While it is true that leftist news and commentary outlets have greater percentages of college graduates in their audiences, that fact hardly translates into them being better-informed listeners.

Some polls, like the 2021 Heartland Institute’s survey, showed that the conservative talk radio followers, on average, were better at answering factual questions about politics than their leftist counterparts. That sounds reasonable given the current epidemic of campus grade inflation, nonmeritocratic admissions, therapeutic curricula, and the ubiquity of off-topic, left-wing faculty propagandists on campus.

In truth, the new radical left-wing Democratic Party is an elitist entity with a poorly disguised contempt for the white working class. That hatred is omnipresent and so emerges in the most unexpected fashion.

Remember the private text exchanges between disgraced FBI paramours Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, in which Trump voters were casually caricatured as Walmart shoppers defined by their supposed stench?

Or recall CNN reporter Marc Caputo’s snide jab at Trump rally attendees: “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”

The locus classicus target of this bias was the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, who, throughout the 2008 campaign, was smeared by leftists as “poor white trash.”

To New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Palin was nothing more than a “gun-toting hockey mom.” Talk show host David Letterman joked that Palin had bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant look.” The smug Letterman then added, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” Palin’s daughter Willow was 14 years old at the time.

The Left simply does not get it, or rather, has it backward. You do not need to look or act like the white working class to feel genuine affinity with it. Billionaire and former Manhattanite Donald Trump is proof enough of that.

The key is not whether you wear a suit or a trucker’s hat or grow a beard, but whether you show sincere concern for an often now-demonized demographic long written off by coastal elites as losers during globalization’s heyday.

So far, the smugness and lack of any such genuine empathy will doom the latest silly Democrat gambit. Sincerity cannot be finessed with tattoos, beards, or trucker caps—not by the media or Hollywood, and certainly not by the likes of Pete Buttigieg, Tim Walz, or James Talarico.

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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.

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Photo: US President Donald Trump tours Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, on January 13, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)

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A culture shaped by the Enlightenment cannot be overrun by a medieval culture that refuses to change, and it is up to Europe to save itself.

Janet Levy | April 7, 2026

Explaining the decline of the Roman Empire in The Story of Civilization, Will Durant wrote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” The same could become true of the European Union (EU) in the 21st century. Postmodern illusions of a benign and righteous multiculturalism are allowing Islamist ideology—which has no reservations about its supremacist ambitions—to spread its roots with unprecedented virulence.

Consider how a guilt-shame complex fostered by leftist academia in institutions, the media, and the public is eroding the Judeo-Christian ethos. Christmas is no longer Christmas but some silly secular celebration like ‘Winter Journey’ or ‘Destination Beautiful Winter,’ while ‘Merry Christmas’ is being replaced by ‘Happy Winter.’ In the U.S., France, Spain, Germany, and beyond, governments, schools, and media outlets have diminished, canceled, or sanitized Judeo-Christian festivals and done away with Christian symbols, lights, and even traditional songs.

At the same time, Islam is permitted a loud and visible presence. Ramadan celebrations are happening more often at iconic locations and major government buildings. Iftar prayers are increasingly being held in public spaces rather than in mosques. Belgium, for example, organized the longest iftar dinner—2 km long, crossing multiple communities, and serving over 8,000 guests. The adhan, which proclaims there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His messenger, echoes from loudspeakers, asserting Islamic dominance and rejecting all other religions, to which such accommodations are outright denied.

In the U.K., iftars were even held within cathedrals in Manchester, Bristol, Southwark, Bradford, St. Paul’s, and Coventry. Declaring Allah as the only true God in a place dedicated to practicing Christianity is a direct violation of canon law, but the influence of public opinion and mood has increasingly led churches to permit it- perhaps as a gesture of virtue signaling or out of fear of criticism. No one questions whether the practices of other religions would ever be allowed in a mosque.

Public prayer is not permitted for other religions—even Christianity—in a predominantly Christian continent. Only Islam receives that privilege: in many cities in the U.S. and Europe, traffic is delayed when Muslims perform namaz on the streets. However, Christians are often arrested for proselytizing, preaching, or even praying. Constitutional rights—such as the freedom of belief and opinion—are selectively disregarded: Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was charged twice for quietly standing and praying outside an abortion clinic.

The broad cultural shift across Europe has been toward a questionable and rigid rational-scientific-secular outlook when it comes to all religions other than Islam. The U.K. and other European countries have been going out of their way to accommodate Muslim beliefs. Laws and school guidelines warn against depictions of Mohammed and even of human figures—since Muslims might find them blasphemous. A 32-page booklet issued by the city of Leeds warns educators about Muslim “sensitivities” to art, dance, music, and physical education.

The UK’s new definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” includes a blasphemy law that closely resembles Islamic doctrine. Under this law, legitimate concerns and criticisms about Muslims and their practices could be easily suppressed. Even more concerning, it might also hinder police, public services, and NGOs from addressing issues like grooming gangs, female genital mutilation, and terrorism. Despite these broad protections, the Muslim Council of Britain described the changes as a “diminished version” that did not seek input from its leadership during discussions. This contrasts with the dhimmitude imposed on non-Muslims in Islamic countries.

Coordinated Islamization through peaceful and violent means continues rapidly in Europe because countries are welcoming a community that refuses to integrate. Large-scale migration is followed by the construction of more mosques and madrasas, a rise in sharia courts, and Muslims choosing to follow Islamic law over national laws. Landscapes are noticeably changing, and Muslim neighborhoods, where Islamic dress and dietary codes are enforced, are becoming more common in European cities.

Many Muslim neighborhoods have become no-go zones for law enforcement, despite being hotspots for crime, violence against women, Islamist indoctrination, and terrorism. A 2020 Swedish study found a strong connection between crime and immigration. From 2002 to 2017, immigrants (mostly Muslim) were suspects in 74% of murders, attempted murders, and manslaughter cases, and in 70% of robberies. Since 2018, Sweden, France, Germany, and the U.K. have experienced a rise in bombings, gang shootings, stabbings, beheadings, and assaults on police. Sweden, in particular, has become the rape capital of Europe, while the U.K. refuses to acknowledge the existence of grooming and rape gangs targeting underage girls.

These crimes are rarely prosecuted because Muslims have become a protected class in much of Europe, a status they have gained through large-scale immigration and deliberate pressure. As the Muslim population grows, so do accusations of racism and Islamophobia. Europe, in its obsession with multiculturalism and the idea of a secular state free from any cultural influence, goes above and beyond to accommodate Islamic beliefs and protect Muslims.

A Pew Research Center study estimated the Muslim population in Europe at 4.9%, projected to grow to between 7.4% and 14% by 2025, depending on migration trends and fertility rates, which are generally higher among Muslim immigrants than in native populations. Germany and Sweden could see Muslim populations reach 20–30%, while France, Italy, and Belgium could face similar pressure. Once large Muslim communities are established, they can advocate for laws that support Islamic dominance. Additionally, there is always an unspoken threat that any perceived wrong may lead to retaliatory terrorist attacks.

American Greatness

The U.S. middle class is shrinking, but not because more Americans are poorer. Instead, more households are climbing into the echelons of the upper middle class due to income gains in recent decades, according to research from the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute.

About 31% of U.S. households earn enough to be considered upper middle class, a roughly threefold increase since 1979, making it the nation’s largest economic group, the research found. Meanwhile, the share of Americans in the “core” and “low” middle class segments has declined over that time, primarily because more households in those income groups have jumped ahead economically, AEI found.

The findings underscore a broader shift in the U.S. economy: As more households move up the income ladder, consumer demand is tilting toward higher-end goods and services. The so-called “K-shaped” economy — in which higher-income consumers are spending more while lower-income households pull back — has become a hallmark of the post-COVID economy.

“The whole distribution of Americans, from poor to rich, has done better over time. And to the extent that fewer people are within a fixed income range that we might think of as middle class, that’s just because everybody’s gotten richer over time,” Scott Winship, a co-author of the report and a senior fellow at AEI, told CBS News.

The analysis, based on U.S. Census data, analyzed family incomes between 1979 and 2024, with the last year in the study representing the most recent available data.

The shift means that the upper middle class — which AEI defines as households earning between $153,864 and $461,592 for a family of four — now constitutes the largest income group in the U.S. The share of rich households now makes up 3.7% of the nation’s households, or about 12 times higher than in 1979, the think tank found. 

Higher women’s earnings

An increase in dual-earner families, combined with professional gains for women, has fueled the income gains of the past several decades, allowing more Americans to jump from the middle class into higher-earning income brackets, Winship said. 

In 1970, about 11% of women had college degrees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, about 40% of American women have bachelor’s degrees, which is linked to higher lifetime earnings. “The additional opportunities that women have are a big part of the story,” Winship said. “People have chosen to work more and afford more things, rather than, say, have more children or have a sort of traditional sole breadwinner, but then have less money to buy things.”

Higher women’s earnings

An increase in dual-earner families, combined with professional gains for women, has fueled the income gains of the past several decades, allowing more Americans to jump from the middle class into higher-earning income brackets, Winship said. 

In 1970, about 11% of women had college degrees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, about 40% of American women have bachelor’s degrees, which is linked to higher lifetime earnings. 

“The additional opportunities that women have are a big part of the story,” Winship said. “People have chosen to work more and afford more things, rather than, say, have more children or have a sort of traditional sole breadwinner, but then have less money to buy things.”

Feeling pinched

The research may seem puzzling given that many Americans say they’re stretched financially. In a recent CBS News poll, the majority of respondents said it’s harder today to buy a house, get a good job or raise a family than it was for previous generations. 

Winship’s explanation for that seeming discrepancy is that Americans tend to be more positive when you ask about their own financial circumstances, rather than the U.S. economy at large.

“When you ask people about their own families, their own personal financial situation, you get much, much larger shares of people who say that they’re doing fairly well,” he said. 

Still, the costs of some key essentials, such as housing, education and health care, have far outpaced inflation, leaving millions of households struggling to afford a home or fund a child’s college education. 

“There’s a tendency to focus on the sort of three or four big-ticket items that have gotten a lot more expensive without realizing that that’s only part of what people spend their money on, and a lot of things have gotten cheaper over time,” Winship said.

In other words, Americans may be earning more, but that doesn’t always mean they feel better off, especially if they believe some key traditional financial milestones are getting harder to achieve.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

Apr 07, 2026, 8:06 AM

With California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) nearing the end of his term, numerous candidates have stepped up to replace him in the upcoming gubernatorial primary race on June 2.

Sixty-one individuals appear on the official certified list of candidates competing for California’s top office. While there is currently no clear front-runner, several notable candidates have emerged. These include former Rep. Katie Porter (D), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D), climate advocate and businessman Tom Steyer (D), Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco (R), and Fox News host and small-business owner Steve Hilton (R).

President Donald Trump released a post on social media on Sunday attempting to tip the scales in favor of his preferred candidate in the crowded race.

“I have known and respected Steve Hilton, who is running for Governor of California, for many years,” Trump wrote. “He is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell.”

Trump gave the current governor the nickname “Newscum” and criticized him and other Democrats for doing “an absolutely horrendous job.”

“People are fleeing, crime is increasing, and Taxes are the highest of any State in the Country, maybe the World,” Trump continued. “Steve can turn it around, before it is too late, and, as President, I will help him to do so! With Federal help, and a Great Governor, like Steve Hilton, California can be better than ever before!”

Trump declared that Hilton has his “COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT” in the upcoming primary.

“He will be a GREAT Governor and, importantly, WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!!!” Trump added.

Hilton’s campaign thanked the president for his endorsement.

“With President Trump’s full backing and federal support, we are going to take California back and make it better than ever before!” the campaign wrote. “This is the moment California has been waiting for!”

Newsom has previously stated that he has “some concern” about how crowded the race has become. He told CBS News in early March that he was not yet ready to endorse any of the candidates.

“I don’t have an endorsement,” he stated. “There might be a moment [for that] in the next few months.”

Several recent polls show Hilton with a narrow lead, while other surveys favor Bianco, Swalwell, or Porter. The top two finishers in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, will appear on the ballot in November.

---

Candace Hathaway, The Blaze

TIP OF THE DAY:

If it doesn’t bring peace, profit, or purpose, don’t give it your time, energy or attention.

“How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it’s important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What’s good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?”

― Nathaniel Branden, psychologist & author

Majid Khademi, the IRGC intelligence chief killed in Tehran early Monday, was not a battlefield commander so much as a career security insider who rose through Iran’s secretive counterintelligence system and helped oversee repression, surveillance and anti-infiltration work.

His death matters because he sat at the junction of two of the system’s most sensitive functions: guarding the Guards from infiltration and directing the intelligence arm accused of crushing dissent.

In March, Washington’s Rewards for Justice program offered up to $10 million for information on Khademi and other senior IRGC figures, a sign that he was seen abroad not just as an internal operator but as a high-value intelligence target.

In symbolic terms, one of the men tasked with stopping penetration of the state was himself reached in the middle of Tehran.

A security man from the inner system

Khademi was one of the least public senior figures in Iran’s power structure. Iranian and regional reports have described him as being from the Fasa area in Fars province, while official and semi-official outlets have referred to him under different versions of his name, including Majid Khademi and Majid Hosseini, reflecting the opacity that surrounds senior intelligence officials.

Unlike many top IRGC commanders, he does not appear to have built his standing mainly through front-line war command. He rose instead through the quieter, more secretive world of protection, vetting and internal security.

From internal monitoring to the top intelligence job

Khademi was appointed head of the Defense Ministry’s intelligence protection organization in 2018. In 2022, after a major shake-up inside the IRGC following a series of security failures and reported Israeli penetrations, he was made head of the Guards’ Intelligence Protection Organization.

He was promoted again in June 2025, after the killing of his predecessor Mohammad Kazemi, to lead the IRGC Intelligence Organization itself.

That move put him in charge of a body the US Treasury later said had been “instrumental” in violently suppressing protests through mass violence, arbitrary detentions and intimidation.

That progression is part of what makes his killing significant. Khademi had spent years policing the system from within before ending up at the top of one of its most feared coercive institutions.

Why his role was so sensitive

The IRGC’s Intelligence Protection Organization and its Intelligence Organization do different jobs, but together they form a core part of the Islamic Republic’s security state.

The first looks inward – loyalty, secrecy, infiltration and internal discipline – while the second has been linked to domestic repression and political-security cases.

Khademi mattered because he had moved through both worlds. He was not simply another general; he was a custodian of the regime’s inner files, vulnerabilities and suspicions.

That means his loss is not only personal or symbolic, but potentially institutional, at least in the short term. This is an inference from his portfolio and the structure of the IRGC, rather than a point Iranian officials have conceded.

How Khademi framed tighter control

Khademi gave a rare interview in February to the website of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and it offered a blunt window into how he saw the country.

He framed the January uprising not as a domestic revolt against the state, but as a foreign-backed plot, and presented mass preemption as routine intelligence work.

In that interview, he said the Guard had summoned 2,735 people linked to what he called anti-security networks, “counseled” 13,000 others, seized 1,173 weapons and identified 46 people allegedly tied to foreign intelligence services. He also said authorities had received nearly 500,000 public tips and reports by the end of the month.

Those figures are important less as verified facts than as a statement of doctrine. In his telling, the answer to unrest was wider surveillance, earlier intervention and a larger dragnet.

He also recalled Khamenei telling him to “pay attention to intelligence work” because “this period is like the year 60” – a reference to the early 1980s, one of the Islamic Republic’s bloodiest and most repressive phases.

The line is revealing because it shows the regime was reading the moment through the lens of existential internal threat, not ordinary dissent.

Khademi said Khamenei had stressed “two types of infiltration”: one deliberate and one broader current of people advancing the enemy’s aims without necessarily knowing it. Read plainly, that is the language of a state that sees not only organized opponents but also ordinary social and political currents as security problems.

Another revealing part of the interview was his insistence on the “national information network,” the state-backed effort to tighten control over Iran’s internet and communications space. That linked Khademi directly to the Islamic Republic’s broader push for censorship, digital control and isolation of the domestic information sphere.

A telling figure of the post-crackdown state

Khademi’s rise after the 2022 reshuffle suggested that the Islamic Republic wanted a harder, more security-centered figure to restore trust after repeated failures. His career embodied a system trying to repair itself through tighter internal control.

His death therefore lands on two levels at once. It removes a senior official tied to repression, and it exposes the vulnerability of a security apparatus that has long defined itself through secrecy, discipline and counter-penetration.

Why the killing matters now

Khademi was not just another uniformed commander. He was a product of the Islamic Republic’s hidden architecture – the part built to monitor loyalty, protect secrets and suppress threats before they reached the street.

is killing is more than the loss of one official. It is a blow to a man who personified the Islamic Republic’s effort to defend itself from within – and a reminder that even those charged with hunting infiltration have not been beyond its reach.

Iran International

“If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” said President Trump, referring to the Iranian regime.

Go for it, President Trump.

Note to opponents of attacking Iran: Totalitarian, violent cult leaders trying to build nuclear bombs to blow up the world HAVE NO LEGAL RIGHTS and enjoy no moral standing.

Everyone said President Trump could never be a Commander-in-Chief because his background was business, not politics. I challenge you to find a better military strategist than Donald Trump. George W. Bush was not remotely in his league. Obama, a DEI president, was not in any league at all. Trump is up there with Truman and Churchill, if not better. And we are not done yet.

Retired 4-Star Navy Admiral and former Navy SEAL William McRaven on Donald Trump: “Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”

A glorified government bureaucrat at best, an outright traitor at worst. Either way, he sure loves savage, nuclear-armed, beheading Muslims. He probably thought that drag queens in charge of the battlefield was a good idea, too.

Just because he was in the military doesn’t make him a patriot, or a lover of freedom.

By the way: NATO is dead. It was always an illusion. European countries mooching off American ability since the 1940s is over.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason 

Europe is lost as a Christian continent, and its demise is self-inflicted.

It is no coincidence that European countries are refusing to aid the US in the present fight against Iran. From not sending ships to open up the Straits of Hormuz to refusal of use of NATO bases on their lands to not even allowing planes bringing weapons to Israel to compete with local birds for the airspace, the Europeans are making it clear that “this is not their war”. That, in spite of most of their oil coming from the region. Even King Charles is not giving an Easter speech this year. What happened to Europe? Let’s look at the five steps of its present demise.

Step One: Believe that Lefty Tripe that All People are the Same. I will say from the get-go that all people are equal before God and none is inherently better than another. God made them all and each one has his own private account with the Creator. What I mean here is that one of the fundamental leftist tenets is that all cultures are good and can be mixed like a salad. The reality is quite otherwise. When Angela Merkel and her colleagues in the European leadership class began bringing in millions of unvetted Muslim immigrants, it was assumed that anyone who puts on a shirt and pants in the morning can get along with everybody else. Because Europeans gave up on their religion, history, and culture, they assumed that the masses coming to their shores were also low-key about their religion and lifestyles. This failure to realize that not all cultures can live together successfully was the first fatal flaw in the decline of Europe. Egypt, Lebanon and many other countries were not Muslim majority in the past but they sure are today. Islam started in Arabia and today is dominant in dozens of countries.

Let’s imagine that I apply for a job and during the interview I am told that workers are expected to come in on Saturdays now and then to work. I explain that as an orthodox Jew I can’t do that. So there are a couple options at this point. I can abandon my religious obligations and take the job. The company can hire me and hope for the best, or finally the most likely outcome is that we shake hands and part company.

Step 2: Losing One’s Values. Let’s continue with my job search. I get the job and I don’t come in at all on Saturdays. Other workers become resentful: why does he get to enjoy his weekends but we don’t? I don’t stop there. I demand that the company cafeteria become kosher. The new kosher offerings are less tasty than their predecessors, but hey I’m happy and the management advertises that it is looking out for minorities.

Once Europe took in huge numbers of Muslim immigrants who were neither asked to become European nor wanted to do the same, the locals had to bend to the lives of the newcomers. The most famous case involves the sexual abuse and worse of tens of thousands of white British girls throughout the country. Nobody wanted to be called a racist for arresting primarily Pakistani Muslim men. The press euphemistically called them “Asian men”, to make one believe that Chinese and Japanese men were running around attacking British schoolgirls. The police knew and either looked the other way or participated in the program. Politicians knew as did social services. It was chalked up as being “part of their culture” and no big deal. Obviously, the girls and their families did not think so. Even today, the Labor government will not initiate a full investigation of the crimes because they were participants.

Once the Europeans decided that the foreigners’ feelings and customs outweighed the locals’ way of life, then the road to destruction was fully paved. One sees over and over again in various European countries locals who desperately try to keep large numbers of generally Muslim men from moving into some local hotel. They are terrified for their daughters as well as their way of life. And they are right.

Step 3: Muslims First. We are witnessing in real time this phase of the descent. Lilly-white European leaders will not participate in defanging the country most recognized as being the source of much of the world’s terror. Even though they depend on oil from the Straits of Hormuz, they will not move themselves to either participate or aid the US in its total destruction of Mullah Central. “Oh, those Americans are flying with those icky Israelis. We had better lay low.”

Macron and Starmer are petrified of full-blown riots should they openly support the fight against Iran. This state of affairs would not have existed ten years ago. They may have stayed out for other reasons, like being sissies. But now they can’t ignore the Muslim masses in their countries and must kowtow to their future masters.

Stage 4: Taking Over. London has been run for several years by Sadiq Khan. He has poo-pooed knife violence which wouldn’t you know it somehow is generally associated with Muslim perpetrators. As in Dearborn, Michigan, the growing Muslim majority will take the helm of local councils and later the Parliament. There will be no revolution, no violent uprising. Rather, it will be massive growth of the incoming Muslim population—paid for by the locals—compared to anemic growth of the citizens. They will take over towns and civic institutions.

At that point, it is only a matter of time before they will have their own majorities in critical political bodies like the Parliament. None of this would matter if the folks involved took upon themselves to be good citizens and subjects of the king. But many have made it clear that their ONLY allegiance is to Sharia Law and have no respect for the local laws, customs or people. I saw during the June war such people enjoying missile hits in Tel Aviv. Like Ilhan Omar, their allegiance is not to the country in which they live but to their religion and possibly to the country that they left.

Step 5: The End of Christian Europe. When England and other countries have Muslim prime ministers, their allegiance will not be to king and crown, but rather to Sharia. One can see it with New York’s new mayor, who does not hide his allegiance to the centrality of Islamic law. When England becomes a part of a larger new caliphate, will the US really want its Trident D5 missiles on British nuclear subs? Will there be any point in still being a part of NATO? For Israelis, Europe will join Iran and more recently Turkey as countries that must be avoided.

The Europeans don’t believe that such a set of events will occur or consider talking about the same as a form of racism. To paraphrase Arnold in Commando, “They’ll kill them [the leaders] last.”

And don’t think that the AfD or Marine LePen or Tommy Robinson will come to the rescue. I admire their love of country and their tireless efforts to save their peoples. But even if they can somehow get elected, the police, military, courts, and EU institutions will make any effort to stop boats and eject people impossible. Germany wants to throw out 80% of the Syrians who have come during the past few years. The visitors scoffed: we’re not going anywhere. We hate your country but soon it will be ours. Short of full-fledged revolution against the institutions and the invaders, Europe has no way to go back to the way we always knew it. Kiss England, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway and Holland goodbye. They were quaint. They were lovely. And then they were gone.