Pam Bondi was President Donald Trump’s second choice for attorney general, and she never quite fit. Bondi often looked uncomfortable in the top prosecutor role, fumbling her way through and failing to meet the demands of a Department of Justice with a mandate to bring the criminals in the corrupt Biden administration to account. 

The frustration from the MAGA movement has been mounting for many months. The president’s patience had worn threadbare with an attorney general who — for many reasons — never did deliver on one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises: justice for the people caught in the crosshairs of the left’s political lawfare campaign.

So the president gave Bondi the “Great American” sendoff on his Truth Social platform Thursday and sent his second choice AG packing. 

“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote Thursday, saluting Bondi for the DOJ’s work in bringing the nation’s murder rate to the lowest level in 125 years. 

Maybe Bondi was stuck in an untenable position for what the job entailed, but her biggest problem, one government watchdog says, was her inability to run a tenacious prosecution operation that would send a clear message to the leftist lawfare crowd. Of course, she did herself no favors with the Epstein Files mess.

“I’m not saying Bondi didn’t want to do that, but it certainly didn’t happen,” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told The Federalist Thursday afternoon in an interview on the Vicki McKenna Show. The conservative organization investigates and litigates to expose and root out corruption in government.

“Look, she got subbed in after Matt Gaetz went down and I think there was an understanding that she really wasn’t that type of lawyer or operator but she would have a cast surrounding her [so she could] be a spokesperson for the agency,” Howell said. “But over time it just became clear that there weren’t enough people who were actually committed to doing the mission and that was borne out by the lack of results.” 

Gaetz, a former Republican congressman, withdrew from consideration amid a buzzsaw confirmation process. 

Bondi released a statement Thursday pledging to “work tirelessly” to transition control of the AG’s office to her Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump tapped as interim AG for the time being. She said she’s moving to “an important private sector role” where she will “continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration.”

“Leading President Trump’s historic and highly successful efforts to make America safer and more secure has been the honor of a lifetime, and easily the most consequential first year of the Department of Justice in American history,” Bondi wrote on X.

Her conservative critics disagree. Democrats said “good riddance,” with a straight face accusing Bondi of leading a corrupt department while they shrugged off the cesspool of corruption at Merrick Garland’s DOJ. 

Speculation on who will ultimately replace Bondi was running rampant Thursday. Blanche appears to be a leading candidate, although his conservative credentials have come under scrutiny. Fox News reported that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is in line for the post. 

Howell said the next AG must be run by a “vicious operator” if there is any hope for accountability.  

“You need somebody who is not going to care what the liberal press thinks of them, what the rank and file of these departments and angencies will think of them, and how they’ll be framed as an institutionalist,” he said. “No, you need someone who is there primarily to get the job done and roll up their sleeves.”

A guy like Gaetz, who approaches his job with a “burn the ships” mentality, Howell said.

Or perhaps an attorney like Jeff Clark, a former legal warrior in the Trump administrations who has been raked over the coals in the left’s ceaseless lawfare campaign against Trump’s allies. Clark recently joined the Oversight Project as vice president of the nonprofit’s litigation team. His mission: to “de-weaponize” government. 

“We like Jeff a lot and we’re happy he’s here, so I won’t be heartbroken if he stays here. But that is exactly the type of person we put in charge of our legal efforts and I would do the same if I were president of the United States,” Howell said. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

I’m reluctant to post a video as the average Freeper will respond with an angry, “I don’t watch videos!!!” Sometimes with an excess amount of exclamation points. More than three indicates you’re on the verge of smashing your head into the keyboard until it bleeds.

This video is the most in-depth explanation of the world economic system, dollar hegemony and why we can’t reduce the deficit and why that won’t hurt the value of the dollar. It discusses the impact of American debt on the hollowing of industrial capacity and the impact on wages and lifestyle. We really can’t discuss these things without a common understanding of how the system works and how dangerous it would be to tamper with it. Without understanding of the whole global system having an opinion on this or that aspect is like an ant describing an elephant’s toe.

Feckless blue states are spending like there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come, and they’ll be demanding red state money to pay their debts.

I begin by presenting three trends. One might even call them inevitabilities, and one might argue they’re not trends at all, but present realities that are intertwined and will tend to collapse in on each other, inevitably leading to the third inevitability.

The first trend is a Congress of feckless fools:

I’ll get to Lippencott’s final question momentarily, but our Congress does seem unable to accomplish anything of consequence, such as the SAVE Act, which will make election fraud not necessarily impossible, but more inconvenient for the Democrat party, which arguably cannot win an election without massive fraud. A paralyzed Congress can’t even pay the Department of Homeland Security at a time when the danger of a massive terrorist attack within our shaky borders is at an all-time high. Democrats don’t care. If thousands of Americans die, they’ll blame it on Trump, with the help of their media propaganda arm.

While Congress does little to benefit America or Americans, its members excel at giving their power to unelected bureaucrats who, through rulemaking and nonsensical interpretation of congressional language and intent, run the bureaucratic state, which rules by ever-increasing rules and regulations.

The ATF was recently caught prosecuting Americans for possessing braced pistols, even though the prior ATF decision criminalizing them was rescinded. Congress could, by doing what it supposedly exists to do—legislating—resolve that once and for all, but it can’t even pass the SAVE America Act, which has as much as 90% public approval. Circa April 2026, apparently, 100% approval is required to pass anything, and it’s doubtful Congress could be roused to act even then

Congress has become feckless to the point of immobility, unable, even unwilling, to act in the public interest. A Republican majority cannot govern unless it has a 60-vote majority in the Senate, and even then, there are always three or more “Republicans” ready to thwart pretty much every Republican policy and law.

Democrats previously argued that only the popular vote was legitimate. They said that until Trump won not only the Electoral College by a wide margin, but also the popular vote. Now, it turns out that they believe that they have a secular mandate to rule regardless of what the people say. Therefore, Democrats have the right and duty to thwart any attempt at Republican governance, or to outright rule, until they can rig the next election and seize power.

The second trend is multiple blue states rocketing toward bankruptcy, with the expectation that the American people will empty their wallets to bail them out. This comes from a combination of profligate deficit spending, massive fraud funneled through Democrat NGOs and other fraudsters, and unfunded pension obligations that could bankrupt some nations.

In New York, both New York City and the state are in deep financial trouble. The NYC retiree health care fund alone has only 5 cents of every dollar promised, amounting to at least $100 billion in unfunded retiree health care liabilities. Unfunded health care costs and pensions amount to around $260 billion.

What about the state’s debt? The best estimate for the entire state—local and state—is $798 billion. That’s the highest per capita in the nation.

How is Islamist/Socialist Mayor Zhoran Mamdani planning to address this looming fiscal train wreck? He plans to dramatically raise taxes and raid the city’s Rainy Day fund and retiree health care trust fund. That’s the 5 cents set aside to pay those obligations. This in a city where the cost of living, cost of doing business, regulations, and sky-high taxes are already chasing out a substantial portion of its tax base.

What’s that you’re saying? That’s insane? Of course it is, but Mamdani was elected on the promise of all manner of free stuff, financed by other people’s money. Free stuff like free day care for municipal workers. All 330,000 of them? Nope. Forty.

He’s remodeling a 4,000-square-foot site for $10 million. Sure, that could buy a great many new, very nice, 2,000-square-foot homes in most red states, but this is NYC, among the most expensive real estate anywhere. The estimated annual operating cost for just 40 kids is $2.3 million. It will surely be much higher, but that comes to about $57,500 per kid per year. Private day care in NYC costs half that.

Even better, the fiscal year begins July 1 with a projected $5.4 billion budget deficit. Mamdani, a guy who has never had a real job or made payroll, is the one New Yorkers elected, and he’s giving it to them good and hard.

That’s awful; California is worse—much worse.

In a recent Loyola Marymount University poll, nearly 48% want an unspecified socialist as Los Angeles mayor. That, given a choice between a “moderate, business-oriented Democrat” and a “conservative political outsider.”

Considering that California’s likely imposition of a “billionaire tax” has already chased many billionaires out of the state, with others on their heels, and added to the tens of thousands of productive, tax-paying Californians already fleeing, California’s tax base is rapidly depleting.

And Los Angelenos want Zohran Mamdani’s twin?

I won’t bother to get into the fine details of unfunded pension liabilities and the hundreds of billions lost to fraud and waste of all kinds. I’ll merely report that of all the wasteful, insane blue states in America, California is number one, with more than $1.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities. 

As of 2020, there were 82 separate public pension systems in California. More than 4.4 million people were members of those systems. Imagine what’s going to happen when that $1.5 trillion comes due, and 4.4 million Californians and their families are stiffed. Oh, it’s worse.

Not a single state, red or blue, has a fully funded pension plan. Wisconsin’s is best at 56% funded, while New Jersey’s—surprise!—is worst at less than 18%.

Are you beginning to see trends falling in on each other, leading to a crisis that’s becoming easier to imagine? What crisis? A second civil war.

When California and New York—let’s ignore the rest for the moment—come begging the Congress of the brokest country in history to bail them out, there will be hard choices. The residents of red states that aren’t bankrupt aren’t going to want to be taxed into universal poverty to bail out the arrogant, socialist snots that hate them and want them dead. Blue states, and not a few Republicans, will argue we’re all Americans, one big salad-bowl family, so fork over for Uncle Abdul the Islamist, Aunt Sally the drug addict, and little Jamal the five-time felon, and all our homeless, insane, deviant cousins, all the people used to others bankrolling them, and all the honest blue-state people dragged down by them.

Sane Americans—people who have always worked, paid their taxes, and supported their families and communities—are going to point out this was no surprise. Those blue-state politicians have seen it coming for decades, and they spent themselves into oblivion anyway. Their constituents serially voted for them and fed at the government free-stuff teat. They got what they wanted, good and hard, and they’re going to want to give it to sane, responsible Americans.

As Hemingway said, there are two ways to go bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. But it was no surprise; they had plenty of warning and chose fiscal disaster.

When blue-state America learns its citizens’ standard of living is going to crater to pay for the preventable stupidity of people who hate them—people who will keep spending other people’s money—red states are going to secede. Even rumors of secession will be enough to drive blue states—and Congress—to mobilize against red states. It won’t be for a noble cause like abolishing slavery. It will be to seize the money and property of fiscally responsible Americans. They, like all socialists, will want to make everybody poor and miserable.

Red-state Americans aren’t going to go for that, and our military, our police, federal agents—the works—will have to choose sides. It won’t work out the way Democrats think.

It’s probably—possibly?—not too late. But who will force blue states to live within their means? Is that legally, constitutionally possible? Our do-nothing Congress might admit there’s a problem. They’re great at talking, awful at useful action. Don’t get me started on forcing Congress to live within our means. That’s another article—a book, really.

I’m old enough that I likely won’t be around when the trends collapse. But people I care about will. We’re in the “gradually” phase. Now we get to see whether “suddenly” is inevitable

Get Ready For Blue States To Demand Big Bailouts

Mike McDaniel, American Thinker

I believe Trump means it when he says we’ll pull out of Iran within the coming weeks. Remember, the people who used to say this was impossible were the same ones who profited off the endless wars fueling the pockets of defense contractors, career politicians and the like. “It will take decades to defeat Iran. Now make billions of dollars in contracts with us.” Ridiculous.

Iran cannot be “nation shaped” into a “democracy” — which isn’t what we want, anyway. In a perfect world, every country would be a republic, where individual rights were sacred and the sole function of government is to uphold them. A democracy can elect a Hitler, or a Maduro, or a Castro, or an AOC … what the hell good is that for the cause of freedom?! We have to get America back to that point before we could credibly serve as a role model for any other country. Not that it’s our job to be a role model, but by taking care of ourselves we will be a great role model, just the same. Trump moves us in that direction, while the Democratic Party (and its enabling RINOs) are moving us toward all-out totalitarian rule, where the government is nothing but a bunch of sinister mobsters. Look at Hillary Clinton’s evil, sneering, hateful face — that tells you all you need to know about any of our career politicians.

Allow President Trump and our new and improved military (bereft of drag queens serving a political, not military, purpose) to do their job. The reports I choose to believe indicate that Iran is getting pulverized by the U.S. We could do much worse to them than we’ve already done, and everybody knows it. Long live American military might, provided that America restores its role in the world (and for its citizens) as a republic dedicated (both in principle and practice) to upholding the rights of man — the rights to life, individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s all. And that’s EVERYTHING.

A new report on the goings-on within President Donald Trump’s close circle of advisors revealed that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has allegedly urged the group to be “more forthright with the boss” about the realities of his war with Israel against Iran.

Wiles was concerned that the president’s aides were offering him a rose-colored outlook on how the war was being perceived among Americans, too often telling Trump what he wanted to hear, according to TIME Magazine, which cited several White House sources and a senior administration official.

According to the official, Trump has begun many recent days by viewing videos gathered by military officials that show only battlefield successes in the Middle East. Trump has told his advisors that eliminating the alleged nuclear threat posed by Iran, which he had previously claimed had been “totally obliterated,” could be a defining feature of his presidency, the official told TIME.

In the third week of the war, it was Wiles’ responsibility to share surveys by Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio that showed the war’s increasing unpopularity with the president at one such meeting, TIME reported. The surveys reportedly referenced the skyrocketing price of gas, stock market volatility and the millions of protesters who had taken to the streets in opposition to the conflict.

The longer the war lasted, the more difficult it would be for Trump and Republicans at large to fare well in November’s critical midterm elections, Wiles reportedly told the president. Prospects for the GOP were already looking grim before the onset of the war, with Democrats flipping more than two-dozen seats across the U.S. since Trump’s reelection while Republicans flipped none.

Iranian state television has escalated its messaging by warning citizens not to reveal the locations of officials hiding among civilians, while increasingly portraying dissent as hostile action and labeling protesters “enemy combatants.”

As the regional conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States escalates, Iran’s state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), has undergone a marked transformation in tone and language.

Once associated with rigid but largely diplomatic messaging, IRIB now frequently adopts rhetoric that is overtly confrontational, reflecting both wartime pressures and an effort by authorities to project defiance amid mounting military strain.

In a segment of a program on Iran’s state broadcaster, presenter Mohammad Jafar Khosravi acknowledged that officials are hiding in safe houses among ordinary citizens and urged the public not to reveal their locations, warning that otherwise they would be “finished” and targeted.

One of the clearest examples of the belligerent rhetoric emerged in the early days of the war, when Police Commander Ahmad Reza Radan addressed unrest linked to the war. Speaking on state television, he warned that anyone protesting “at the will of the enemy” would no longer be treated as a civilian but as an “enemy combatant,” signaling a sharp escalation in how the state frames internal dissent.

The escalation in tone extends beyond broadcast television. On social media platform X, IRIB presenters have engaged in increasingly personal exchanges with Israeli officials.

Alongside this shift, dehumanizing language toward foreign adversaries has become increasingly common. Following intensified strikes in late February, IRIB hosts and commentators repeatedly described Israeli officials as “rabid dogs,” portraying them as threats that must be eliminated.

Foreign-based Persian-language outlets were also targeted, with Iran International labeled a “satanic network” and its regional offices described as “legitimate military targets.”

The rhetoric has been accompanied by a growing dismissal of international legal norms. On multiple Press TV programs in March, officials and state-aligned analysts argued that institutions such as the United Nations and international humanitarian law serve Western interests.

Some suggested that commercial vessels, banks, and private companies linked to “belligerent nations” could be treated as military targets, rejecting long-standing principles of civilian protection.

Figures such as Ameneh Saadat Zabihpour and Ali Rezvani, both sanctioned by the United States in 2022 as “Interrogator Journalists”, have traded insults with Israeli spokespersons, with some interactions descending into personal attacks, religious provocation, and inflammatory rhetoric.

Iran International

Who is winning the war between the US, Israel and Iran? The coverage in many Western media outlets clearly indicates that Iran is the major winner. The reality is that sections of the Western media have framed the conflict with two separate definitions of victory. For the US to be victorious, it must successfully install a new regime with a stable political system. For the Iranian regime to be the winner, it simply has to remain in power, no matter how much it is weakened.

What the media does not know is what the ultimate objectives of the US’ Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion are. What are they really looking to achieve and what would be considered a successful outcome? Faced with this uncertainty, the Western media has too often stuck to the narrative that, as long as the Iranian regime remains in place and continues firing missiles, it is the winner.

There is no doubt that Tehran is a master of asymmetric warfare. It is the regime’s signature. This is what terrorism and armed proxies have delivered for it over recent decades — at the cost of destroying the lives of millions of Lebanese, Syrians and Iraqis. This is what it is still pursuing during this war. Due to its importance to global oil flows, the entire focus is now on the Strait of Hormuz blockade. Some Western media outlets have translated this into proof that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a master of asymmetric warfare and the clear current victor.

Another important point is that, because Europeans were neither warned about nor prepared for this war, there is widespread resentment and spite toward the US and Israel. This is evident in the series of analysts and experts appearing on news channels. The war is depicted as lacking clear objectives and coverage focuses mainly on Iranian offensive strikes. Yet, if we look at the totality of this coverage — including experts close to decision-making centers in European capitals — a real fear emerges: the fear of having no control, not only over this war but over the global scene as a whole. This coverage is therefore attempting to shift that fear into the narrative of a major US military failure.

President Donald Trump’s declarations have created even more confusion among these journalists. They do not understand or know what is coming. One might ask: Is that not a net positive for the military operations? Would the US and Israel really want the IRGC to know exactly what was happening and what they were planning? This is also unfamiliar territory for the media. During the last Iraq war, President George W. Bush issued a clear ultimatum with a clear goal: the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime. With boots on the ground, this objective was achieved swiftly. But the day-after scenario was a failure due to the Iranian regime’s infiltration.

There is also strong anti-Trump sentiment in most Western legacy media, in the US as well as in Europe. Since the war in Gaza, and with few exceptions in France, Benjamin Netanyahu is similarly criticized. The left strongly influences the portrayal of the Iranian regime as the oppressed and the US as the oppressor.

Everything the regime has done — or is doing, including terrorism and killings — is framed as defensive, justified by the threat of the US military. Some media coverage has therefore given both the military advantage and the moral high ground to the regime, absolving it of decades of violent, terrorist and murderous activity. Decades of exporting terror are reframed as resistance. Unsurprisingly, this echoes in Lebanon, with Hezbollah even being depicted as heroic.

Similarly, attacks on the Gulf countries are emphasized, yet when condemnation is required — as it was for the US and Israeli strikes — the media largely looks the other way. They fail to mention that these countries have not participated in the attacks and remain defensive. The reality is that some in the media are pleased by these strikes. Spite and resentment guide this way of thinking.

The Gulf countries, which have become the center of global geopolitical negotiations and a destination for some of Europe’s brightest minds, have been seen as deserving these blows for surpassing European capitals in terms of relevance. While some European militaries have been supportive on the ground, analysts and former diplomats on television stations and social media — such as Gerard Araud, the former French ambassador to the US, Israel and the UN — have been reposting and promoting anti-Gulf ideas, aligning even with representatives of the Iranian regime.

Moreover, in the West, leftist movements are politically aligned with the Greens, who despise anything fossil-fuel related. They understand that the regime targets energy supplies to pressure the West and the US to halt the war — and this is music to their ears.

Yet, despite this noise, what does the situation on the ground tell us? The US-Israeli military campaign has delivered overwhelming strikes that have dismantled key pillars of Iran’s military power. These joint operations have left the regime with an estimated 1,000 or fewer operational missiles, zero meaningful production ability, a functionally annihilated navy and severely limited defensive or retaliatory options. This renders the regime’s offensive arsenal and nuclear ambitions effectively neutralized.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, the number of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones launched by the Iranian regime has severely declined in the past month. US assessments report an 83 percent to 95 percent drop in drone volume. This indicates two things: first, the degradation of the regime’s capacity; and, second, a shift from heavy strikes to a lower frequency but consistent launches.

High interception rates and the use of less costly ways to intercept projectiles are also undermining the regime’s strategy. While severe damage can still occur, the Iranian regime’s objective has failed. To the ire of sections of the Western media, the Gulf countries remain strong and firm.

There is no doubt about the outcome of this war. Despite some media coverage and the Strait of Hormuz blockade, this regime has been defeated, along with its proxies. It was struck in the same way it has lived and, as the saying goes, he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Those in the media who once stood silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s violations of international law are now vocal about US actions, with their hatred for Trump amplified in this coverage.

While we do not yet know who will succeed any surviving Khamenei in Iran, the regime is likely to face the same fate as that of Saddam Hussein and other rogue states in the region. The day after will bring the prosperity that the region has long been robbed of. Just don’t rely on the Western media to cover it.

Arab News

One of the clearest examples came on March 10, when Police Commander Ahmad-Reza Radan addressed the possibility of protests during the conflict.

Speaking on state television, he warned that anyone who took to the streets “at the will of the enemy” would no longer be treated as a protester but as an “enemy combatant.”

The wording marked a significant escalation. By invoking the language of combat, the state effectively framed domestic dissent as participation in the war itself.

Such framing has appeared repeatedly in recent broadcasts. Commentators and officials frequently describe protests not as political grievances but as extensions of foreign military pressure.

The same rhetorical shift is evident in the way foreign adversaries are described. Television hosts increasingly employ dehumanizing metaphors to portray Western and Israeli leaders.

Israeli officials have been repeatedly referred to as “rabid dogs” on talk shows, imagery that casts them as biological threats rather than political opponents.

Foreign-based Persian-language media outlets are portrayed in similarly extreme terms. Iran International TV, for example, has been described on state television as a “satanic network,” while presenters have warned that its regional offices could be considered legitimate targets.

The tone is often even more unrestrained online, where state television presenters engage in public taunts and insults with Israeli officials and journalists on social media.

The language echoes wartime propaganda seen in many conflicts, where demonization of the enemy is used to mobilize domestic support. But the Iranian broadcasts go further by combining this rhetoric with arguments that dismiss international norms governing warfare.

On several television panel discussions in March, state-aligned analysts suggested that international humanitarian law and institutions such as the United Nations serve merely as tools of Western power.

Some commentators declared bluntly that “the age of diplomacy is dead” and that the West understands only “the language of missiles.”

In this atmosphere, messaging increasingly serves not only to condemn foreign adversaries but also to warn domestic audiences about the consequences of dissent.

When protests are described as actions carried out “at the will of the enemy,” the implication is that political opposition itself becomes a form of collaboration with hostile powers.

Wars have always reshaped political language. Governments under military pressure tend to simplify narratives, divide the world into allies and enemies, and suppress ambiguity. Iran’s state television now appears to be moving decisively in that direction.

When state television begins speaking about its own citizens in the language of the battlefield, it signals that the war is no longer being presented as something happening only beyond the country’s borders.

Iran’s state broadcaster has adopted a noticeably harsher tone toward dissent, increasingly framing domestic protests as part of a war waged by “enemies.”

One of the clearest examples came on March 10, when Police Commander Ahmad-Reza Radan addressed the possibility of protests during the conflict.

Speaking on state television, he warned that anyone who took to the streets “at the will of the enemy” would no longer be treated as a protester but as an “enemy combatant.”

The wording marked a significant escalation. By invoking the language of combat, the state effectively framed domestic dissent as participation in the war itself.

Such framing has appeared repeatedly in recent broadcasts. Commentators and officials frequently describe protests not as political grievances but as extensions of foreign military pressure.

The same rhetorical shift is evident in the way foreign adversaries are described. Television hosts increasingly employ dehumanizing metaphors to portray Western and Israeli leaders.

Israeli officials have been repeatedly referred to as “rabid dogs” on talk shows, imagery that casts them as biological threats rather than political opponents.

Foreign-based Persian-language media outlets are portrayed in similarly extreme terms. Iran International TV, for example, has been described on state television as a “satanic network,” while presenters have warned that its regional offices could be considered legitimate targets.

The tone is often even more unrestrained online, where state television presenters engage in public taunts and insults with Israeli officials and journalists on social media.

The language echoes wartime propaganda seen in many conflicts, where demonization of the enemy is used to mobilize domestic support. But the Iranian broadcasts go further by combining this rhetoric with arguments that dismiss international norms governing warfare.

On several television panel discussions in March, state-aligned analysts suggested that international humanitarian law and institutions such as the United Nations serve merely as tools of Western power.

Some commentators declared bluntly that “the age of diplomacy is dead” and that the West understands only “the language of missiles.”

In this atmosphere, messaging increasingly serves not only to condemn foreign adversaries but also to warn domestic audiences about the consequences of dissent.

When protests are described as actions carried out “at the will of the enemy,” the implication is that political opposition itself becomes a form of collaboration with hostile powers.

Wars have always reshaped political language. Governments under military pressure tend to simplify narratives, divide the world into allies and enemies, and suppress ambiguity. Iran’s state television now appears to be moving decisively in that direction.

When state television begins speaking about its own citizens in the language of the battlefield, it signals that the war is no longer being presented as something happening only beyond the country’s borders.

The movement looks organic. Concerned citizens, local advocacy groups, earnest letters to Congress, worried neighbors at zoning board meetings, all raising reasonable-sounding alarms about electricity consumption, water use, and the pace of technological change. If you accept that framing, the anti-AI, anti-data-center movement is a spontaneous democratic response to corporate excess. Accepting that framing, however, requires ignoring a substantial and growing body of evidence pointing toward a very different conclusion.

The evidence suggests something more deliberate, more coordinated, and more consequential than neighbors worried about noise ordinances. A December 8, 2025 letter convened by Food and Water Watch, signed by dozens of national and local organizations, called on Congress to enact a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The coalition includes groups like GAIA, Oil Change International, Indivisible, the Sierra Club, Americans for Financial Reform, and the Athena Coalition, organizations presenting themselves as voices of the public interest. Eight days after that letter was delivered, Senator Bernie Sanders called for an AI moratorium to give “democracy the chance to catch up.” On March 25, 2026, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Sanders in formally proposing the AI Data Center Moratorium Act. The policy pipeline from signed letter to congressional legislation took roughly 107 days.

That is efficient. Perhaps too efficient to have emerged purely from the ground up.

A report from the American Energy Institute describes more than $39M in foreign, left-leaning billionaire funding flowing to organizations now leading the charge against data centers and the energy systems that support them. Recipients identified include 350.org, Indivisible, GAIA, Oil Change International, and the Sierra Club. Even setting aside the full aggregate figure for a moment, the publicly verifiable fragments of this funding picture are striking on their own terms. The Wyss Foundation, controlled by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, lists 2024 grants that include $150,000 to the Sierra Club Foundation and $1,255,000 to Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, the latter of which appears as a national signatory on the moratorium letter. The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, associated with British hedge fund manager Christopher Hohn, discloses a climate-change grant portfolio of more than $808M and is listed by 350.org‘s own annual report as among the foundations supporting its work. And the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) intermediary that functions as a conduit for advocacy dollars, reported 2024 revenue of more than $282M with contributions exceeding $275M. The donors behind that fund are not publicly disclosed.

This is the architecture of what analysts call “astroturf,” campaigns designed to mimic the appearance of grassroots energy while running on institutional money and coordinated strategy. A genuine grassroots movement does not typically come equipped with organizer toolkits, national letter campaigns, and same-cycle congressional legislation. MediaJustice, another member of this ecosystem, published a document titled “The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers Toolkit,” designed explicitly to enable local groups to replicate the campaign playbook in their own jurisdictions. Local siting disputes are being converted, systematically, into portable instruments of a national strategy.

One might ask: so what? Advocacy organizations coordinate. Wealthy donors fund causes they believe in. Is that not just how civil society works? It is, up to a point. But two features of this particular effort elevate it from ordinary advocacy to something worth scrutinizing much more carefully. The first is the foreign origin of significant portions of the funding. The second is the nature of what is actually being targeted.

Data centers are not a niche industry with marginal strategic significance. They are, as the White House’s own AI Action Plan states, the physical foundation of American technological leadership. The Electric Power Research Institute projects that US data centers will consume between 9% and 17% of all US electricity by 2030, up from roughly 4% to 5% today, representing a near-tripling of energy demand from a sector that underpins AI development, cloud computing, advanced manufacturing logistics, and modern defense systems. The Department of Energy has framed accelerated grid buildout for data centers as essential to “winning the AI race,” with reliability and national security named explicitly as the stakes. A national moratorium on new data center construction is not a local environmental regulation. It is a supply-side shock to the compute infrastructure of the United States at the precise moment that compute capacity is the contested terrain of great-power competition.

Consider what that means in practice. China is not pausing. Beijing’s National Development and Reform Commission has described a coordinated strategy involving eight national computing hubs and plans for ten national data center clusters, explicitly designed to expand China’s compute power and distribute it strategically across the country. Reuters has reported billions in investment and massive server rack deployments under the “Eastern Data, Western Computing” initiative. The Chinese government does not appear to be waiting for democracy to “catch up.” It is building, methodically and at scale, the infrastructure that AI supremacy requires. A US moratorium, in that environment, would not freeze global progress. It would simply redirect it. American firms would lose ground, and the compute capacity that does not get built here would either be built elsewhere or not built at all, while China’s installations continue to multiply.

The European experience is instructive, though not as a model to imitate. The EU has opted for a “measure and regulate” posture, requiring monitoring and reporting on data center energy performance rather than halting construction. That approach has its own limitations, but it at least acknowledges that data centers serve important functions and that the goal is to manage their externalities, not to eliminate the infrastructure. The EU has also seen its share of global economic output shrink over decades as regulatory friction slowed adoption of successive waves of technology. That is not a coincidence, and it is not a trajectory the US should be eager to replicate.

Acknowledging genuine local costs is not the same as endorsing a nationwide construction halt. The appropriate policy response to concentrated infrastructure impacts is targeted regulation: mandatory water-use disclosures, reclaimed-water incentives for cooling systems, permitting standards requiring energy-performance transparency, cost-allocation rules preventing residential ratepayers from subsidizing large industrial loads without proportionate local benefit. These tools exist. They can be refined and strengthened. None of them require shutting down the entire pipeline of new data center approvals while a handful of foreign-funded NGOs and two progressive senators define what “adequate regulations” means.

The moratorium letter anticipates an objection. It says the pause would last only “until adequate regulations can be enacted.” That qualifier does no real work. It defines no timeline. It specifies no regulatory threshold. It identifies no neutral arbiter of adequacy. What it does do is hand an open-ended veto to an organized coalition with documented connections to foreign donor networks, a coalition that has already demonstrated its capacity to move from letter-writing to congressional legislation in under four months. The ambiguity is not a bug. It is the point.

There is a structural question lurking beneath all of this, and it is worth naming directly. Why would foreign billionaires, particularly those based in countries with no democratic accountability to American voters, invest tens of millions of dollars to slow down the construction of American AI infrastructure? Charitable interpretations exist. Some of these donors are climate-focused philanthropists who genuinely believe data centers threaten environmental stability. That motive can be sincere and still produce outcomes that damage American competitiveness. Good intentions do not neutralize strategic consequences.

Less charitable interpretations also exist. Countries and interests that stand to benefit from American AI stagnation have obvious incentives to fund the organizations advocating for it. The moratorium coalition’s arguments, if accepted and enacted, would produce exactly the outcome that strategic competitors most desire: a self-imposed pause on US compute capacity at the moment when compute capacity is being converted, globally, into military and economic power. Whether that convergence of interests is coincidental or coordinated is a question that warrants serious investigation, not dismissal.

The rhetorical framing of the anti-AI movement as a democratic check on corporate power is, at minimum, incomplete. What the evidence actually shows is a network of foreign-funded organizations deploying a nationally coordinated strategy to halt infrastructure that the US government has explicitly identified as a national strategic priority. The “grassroots” label does not survive contact with the funding flows, the toolkit documents, or the 107-day legislative turnaround from coalition letter to congressional bill. It is a label designed to immunize the movement from scrutiny rather than describe its actual composition.

None of this means data center expansion should proceed without accountability. It means that accountability should take the form of enforceable standards, transparent disclosures, and clear cost-allocation rules rather than an indefinite moratorium with no defined endpoint and no neutral process for lifting it. The difference is not merely procedural. One path leads to smarter infrastructure development. The other leads to strategic retreat dressed up as civic virtue.

Leadership in transformative technology, once surrendered, is rarely recovered. The US has been through this pattern before with manufacturing, with semiconductor production, with solar panel supply chains. Each time, the initial decision to step back seemed locally rational and the full consequences became apparent only in retrospect. The anti-AI moratorium movement is asking the US to repeat that mistake at a scale and speed that would make previous surrenders look modest by comparison.

The money trail is not the whole story. But it is a necessary part of it. When foreign billionaires fund a coordinated national campaign to halt American infrastructure development, and that campaign produces congressional legislation within months, the right response is not to change the subject to water usage tables. The right response is to ask who benefits, follow the funding to its origins, and evaluate the policy being proposed against the interests of the people it claims to protect.

Americans deserve an honest answer to that question. So far, the movement demanding a moratorium has shown little interest in providing one.

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What’s more treacherous and treasonous than wishing your own country gets defeated in war, especially by a bunch of goat-molesting seventh-century pagan savages whose primitive mindset is matched only by their grotesque perversions? Well, the disgusting perversions part is merely a collateral reason why members of America’s donkey party seem to have such an affinity for Iran’s rulers – the mullahs, with their bizarre bestiality and grotesque handmaiden dogma, and the San Francisco Democrats, with their furry-friendly gender-spazz grossness, collectively share the worst figurative collective browser in the history of ever. Yet, it’s more than their joint commitment to degeneracy that binds them together in a desire for America to lose this campaign. The Democrats hate America, and they think it will help them politically if America can be humiliated. But more than that, seeing America lose also satisfies the evil lurking inside them.

It’s not just about Donald Trump. That’s where people get confused. Oh, they hate Donald Trump, to be sure. He is aesthetically displeasing to them, rejecting their carefully curated image of what it means to be in the American ruling class. It’s not just his style, but his attitude. They find him vulgar and crude because he ignores their complex and emasculating social conventions that enforce collectivist commie conformity. They also hate him because he has money, and much of our ruling class really doesn’t – for example, most regime media scribblers would double their income if only they knew how to do plumbing or drive a truck. There’s a gulf between their prestige and their pay, and Trump’s flagrant celebration of his own riches generates the greenest of envy.

But they also hate him because he’s a class traitor. He understands them because he was one of them until he got tired of them, and he has nothing but contempt for them. He knows they’re weak, stupid, and greedy, and he won’t honor their pretensions to intelligence and competence. Trump was a guy who had to build tall buildings. He either did it right, or the buildings fell. His opponents build nothing. They talk and write. They suffer no consequences for failure, and his critique of their fecklessness is the closest they’ll get to accountability. They hate him for that.

But that’s all personal. That’s why they hate Trump as an individual. But Donald Trump also operates as an avatar for the normal Americans he represents. What the ruling caste really hates is you. They hate normal people. They hate people who devote themselves to faith, family, and the Flag. They have to. They need to hate you because, through hating you, these unaccomplished hacks find a purpose and meaning. They don’t go out and slay dragons. They go out and nag people on Twitter. We, on the other hand, largely live real lives. Many of us are veterans – and we have seen it get real. Occasionally, someone in the ruling class does a tour in the Army and milks it forever – Happy March 29th, Vietnam Veterans Day, to the hero of the Tet Offensive, Senator Dick Blumenthal! – but being in the military is dirty and icky, and you’re stuck with people who are also dirty and icky. You know, Americans.

They do jobs where they talk and despise Americans who have jobs where they sweat. Remember, among our ruling class, the ultimate gig is to sit and run your mouth. Look, there’s nothing wrong with running your mouth for a job – I do it – but if that’s the only thing you’ve ever done, that breaks your mind. I’ve worked at McDonald’s, been fired from Denny’s for gross incompetence, been a private in the army, and jockeyed rental cars at San Francisco Airport, where everyone in the lot was either a college student on break or a convict on parole. Your past is probably similarly colorful. But the color of our ruling class’s past is flat white. They went to the University of College, then they started writing somewhere, and that’s it. They never sweat, never bled, and probably never drove a car with a stick shift or a V8.

We are not the same. They were the student government geeks and drama dorks in high school. As all adults know, adulthood is simply high school writ large. Much of our ruling class is collectively trying to get revenge on us for never getting invited to drink Coors behind the gym in high school.

Barack Obama gave the game away with his clinging to their guns and religion quote, as did Hillary Clinton with her basket of deplorables gaffe. Our ruling class, to which the Democrats are devoted – the party hasn’t been a workingman’s party since back when everybody agreed that a man can’t menstruate – distinguishes itself by its great self-regard rather than by its great achievements. It has no great achievements. What has our ruling class achieved in the last 60 years? Vietnam? The Iranian Revolution? The Iraq War? The Wall Street collapse? Obamacare? Grindr? Our ruling class has failed and everything. Is there anyone out there who thinks the world is better now than it was in the 80s? Certainly not anyone who lived in the 80s. Sure, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed, but that was despite our ruling class, thanks to the efforts of Ronald Reagan, who is a lot Trumpier than the Trump haters will ever give him credit for. Yet despite failure after failure after failure, our ruling class still believes they are geniuses.

We, normal people, know the truth, and our failure to genuflect to our alleged betters grates at them. How dare we! We, normal people, are the essence of America, and that makes our ruling class hate America. It seems strange that they would hate what they seek to rule over, but Satan does, so why not The Squad? Understand that they are powered by an all-encompassing contempt for people like you and me, and our patriotism and love of country require that these people despise their own country. America is bad, they believe, built on a foundation of racism, genocide, and transphobia, and all sorts of other badnesses. Since none of them has a religion, this ideology has to serve as a substitute. We are their heretics, their demons, their anti-wokes, and they want us to pay.

Which means they want our country to pay. They were positively giddy when a lucky drone shot killed a half-dozen Americans. They were delighted when a random missile hit took out one aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia. They are hoping against hope that they can somehow turn a military campaign of unprecedented skill and daring into a disaster. In the first few days of this war, we decapitated the entire Iranian government. We shattered their nuclear program. We destroyed their air force, sank their navy, and generally blew the snot out of anything worth blowing the snot out of. Our planes fly through their skies unmolested. The Democrats and their allies among the disaffected grifter class are reduced to claiming that Iran’s ability to fire the occasional missile indicates America has been completely defeated. They are aided in this propaganda initiative by the regime media, which got the memo. They must turn this victory into defeat, and they’re trying to do it. They’re not doing it very well, in the sense that anyone who is not a complete moron sees through it. But then again, nearly half of America voted for Kamala Harris, so America has a significant moron problem.

They want us to lose because they think America, and therefore Americans, deserve defeat. They also want Trump to lose because they think it’s going to help them politically. So, we now have our ruling class largely rooting for these retrograde barbarians to somehow pull victory from the jaws of defeat. And the regime media will help; no matter how this ends, all the networks and the newspapers are going to tell you that this war was a failure. But you know how you know it’s not a failure? Because there’s no head ayatollah running around. The former one got blasted to bits. His son probably did too; right now, his legendary impotence is the least of his medical concerns. Oh, and the fact that all of Iran’s ships are resting at the bottom of the ocean, there are no planes left, and they can only squeeze off a couple of shots from random drone and rocket launchers every day, is a pretty good indicator of victory. Never in history has there been such a comprehensive defeat of an entire modern nation in such a short time.

Still, people in our own country wish for our defeat, and if those wishes aren’t granted, they’ll try to manufacture a defeat. It’s bizarre to see so many Americans so eager for America to lose, but that’s where we are right now. We’ve got Americans who want Americans to lose a war to a generational enemy with American blood on its paws. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they have no shame. Shame goes hand in hand with accountability, and they can’t accept the idea that they are accountable to anyone other than their own class. But just remember what’s happening here. Remember how much they must hate you to want their own country to be defeated by a bunch of fanatical freaks. And govern yourself accordingly. 

Kurt Schlichter

Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

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NATO endures on American backing while many allies demand U.S. action abroad but withhold it when asked, exposing a widening gap between rhetoric and responsibility.

NATO members are not legally required to join any member’s military operations that are not formally sanctioned by the alliance or not aimed at protecting the homelands of the membership.

But they often do just that.

Some NATO members joined the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq on the theory that, in the post-9/11 environment, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were dangers to all Western security.

They followed the precedent set by America’s 1999 intervention in the distant Balkans, leading a three-month NATO campaign to dismantle Slobodan Milošević’s often bloody ambitions of a Greater Serbia. The U.S. also joined the 2011 U.N.-approved, and French- and British-inspired, NATO “coalition of the willing” bombing campaign in Libya.

That effort proved a seven-month misadventure—especially since the targeted Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons program and was desperately trying to cut a deal with the West.

When NATO members in the past have operated unilaterally to defend their own national interests, they have often called on the U.S., as NATO’s strongest member, for overt help.

For nearly 40 years, the U.S. had offered logistical, intelligence, reconnaissance, refueling, and diplomatic support to the French in their unilateral and postcolonial efforts to protect Chad from Libya and, later, Islamists.

During the 1982 Falklands War, a solitary Britain faced enormous logistical challenges in steaming halfway around the world to eject Argentina from its windswept and sparse islands.

U.S. aid was critical to the effort.

So America stepped up to help with intelligence, reconnaissance, the supply of some two million gallons of much-needed gasoline, and crucial restocking of Britain’s depleted Tomahawk missiles.

The American tilt to Britain prompted anger from most Latin American nations of the shared Western hemisphere, as well as from many Hispanic American citizens at home.

No matter—Ronald Reagan rightly saw the importance of solidarity with a NATO member and a long-time American ally. So he gave Britain a veritable blank check for American aid.

Currently, America has not asked NATO members to help bomb Iran—even though Europe, not the U.S., was in range of Iranian ballistic missiles, and soon perhaps nuclear-tipped ones as well.

Europeans are far more vulnerable to Iranian-inspired Islamic terrorism. They are more reliant on foreign oil from the Middle East, some of it passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

All the U.S. had initially asked for was basing support in disarming a common Western enemy that, for nearly half a century, has slaughtered American diplomats and soldiers and tried to kill a U.S. president and secretary of state.

Follow the Money: Foreign Billionaires Are Bankrolling America’s AI Surrender