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Trump Abandons the Field on DEI

The Department of Education is not appealing court rulings against a crucial “Dear Colleague” letter. Why not?

Mar 11, 2026 T.J. Harker

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In February 2025, a newly installed Trump Department of Education (ED) issued a so-called Dear Colleague Letter. The letter put educational institutions on notice that ED intended to enforce the nation’s anti-discrimination laws, particularly those in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and in the Constitution. It further specified that “discriminatory practices” would not be tolerated merely because they had been repackaged “under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’).”

Left-wing media pundits went berserk. They said the policy announcement was a “threat to equal opportunity,” called it an “extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and claimed it had “no obvious parallels in modern American history.”

The letter put institutions on notice that the Department of Education intended to enforce the nation’s anti-discrimination laws.Lawsuits ensued, including one by the National Education Association in March 2025 and another by the American Federation of Teachers the same month. New Hampshire District Court judge Landya McCafferty wasted no time in granting NEA’s preliminary injunction in April. Maryland District Court judge Stephanie Gallagher followed suit in August, vacating the letter in its entirety. On October 13 of last year, ED filed a notice of appeal in the Fourth Circuit. Then, in late January, ED unexpectedly dismissed its appeal. Why? Before we get to that, we must consider some background on the explosion of DEI on university campuses.

In late January, the Trump administration unexpectedly dismissed its appeal. Why?Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

Until about five years ago, universities referred to their lawless racial discrimination as “affirmative action.” Federal courts played along in cases such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger. These decisions glossed over the racism of our nation’s universities by making the constitutional rights of white students contingent on the purpose of the discrimination against them (“attainment of a diverse student body … is a constitutionally permissible goal”) or the passage of time (“25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further [the racial discrimination] approved today”).

But these opinions were not serious legal reasoning, and, by June 2023, even the Supreme Court had had enough. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice Roberts summarized what normal people had known since the Civil Rights era: “A student … must be treated … as an individual—not on the basis of race.” As such, racially discriminatory “admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of” the Constitution. Roberts’s conclusion was also a logical extension of his pithy remark, penned 17 years earlier in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Justice Thomas, as expected, stated the truth most plainly: “All forms of discrimination based on race—including so-called affirmative action—are prohibited under the Constitution.” This, ED knew, included DEI.

Even though these conclusions were obvious to most Americans, I predicted 15 months ago that “admissions offices [didn’t] care about the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA” and wouldn’t comply. Why? Because, “to left-wing political operatives, [laws] are mere words—parchment barriers that can be obeyed or ignored as circumstances warrant.” Once again, university administrators would turn to semantic trickery to conceal their racism. This proved correct, as Orwellian terminology such as “affirmative action” became the even more Orwellian “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” or DEI.

Though DEI dates back to the 1960s or earlier, widespread use of the terminology dates to about 2023. It’s not a coincidence that DEI programs (described as such) exploded on university campuses following SFFA. They were a convenient new cover for an old practice.

This time, however, Trump’s new Department of Education under Linda McMahon was on top of the ball. ED issued the Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) shortly after Trump’s inauguration. That missive immediately exposed DEI for what it was: a new mask cloaking ancient left-wing racism.

Litigation

Judge McCafferty enjoined ED from enforcing the DCL in April 2025, dismissing ED’s reliance on the Supreme Court’s SFFA ruling as “boilerplate,” which she was “not bound” to follow. Her opinion is full of sloppy reasoning and startling naiveté. For example, she observes that, prior to the DCL, ED “had not indicated a belief that [DEI] constituted unlawful discrimination.” Furthermore, in the wake of SFFA, ED issued a “questions-and-answers document in which it stated” that schools could “continue to articulate missions and goals tied to student body diversity.” Thus, McCafferty said, ED’s about-face must support the plaintiff’s claim, since it “force[d] schools to choose between [ED’s] 2023 guidance … or trying to adapt their conduct to the 2025 [DCL] requirements.” In other words, ED couldn’t object to racist DEI practices in 2025 because it hadn’t done so in 2023 under President Biden. Using this backward reasoning, neither Dred Scott nor Plessy v. Ferguson would have been overturned.

According to Judge McCafferty, ED couldn’t object to racist DEI practices in 2025 because it hadn’t done so in 2023 under President Biden.Then, in a section of her order arguing that the term “DEI” was “vague,” McCafferty imagined that a teacher “could seek to establish [DEI] by asking her students [to] sign a collective pledge to follow the ‘Golden Rule’.” This would result in an ED crackdown, McCafferty feared, because “it is more than arguable that such a practice would come within the ocean-wide definition of DEI.” At the risk of stating the obvious, this isn’t serious legal reasoning. Nobody believes DEI is code for “do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

McCafferty’s sloppy reasoning was matched by Judge Gallagher’s technical nitpicking.McCafferty’s sloppy reasoning was matched by Judge Gallagher’s technical nitpicking concerning the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which has become a powerful end-run around the United States Constitution. It’s so powerful, in fact, that left-wing activists routinely cite the APA when the Constitution isn’t on their side. Here, the Equal Protection Clause, the Supreme Court, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act all prohibit discrimination on the basis of race. Yet Gallagher vacated the DCL because ED didn’t follow the notice-and-comment rulemaking process of the APA. The absurdity of subordinating constitutional rights to inane statutory requirements was highlighted by another of Gallagher’s findings: The DCL had to be vacated because ED failed “to comply with, or even consider, the Paperwork Reduction Act.” Got that? Your constitutional rights can’t be enforced because the government wasted paper.

That said, it must be acknowledged that ED’s litigation tactics made the courts’ decisions easier. For example, both McCafferty and Gallagher had to find that the DCL was binding in order to strike it down under the APA. This put ED in the awkward position of arguing that the DCL wasn’t binding. While technically true (the DCL merely reminded educators of the requirements of the United States Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which are binding), the rhetorical effect of ED’s position was the equivalent of wading in the Rubicon without crossing it. That’s not a smart move: akin to saying “we didn’t really mean it” after striking the first blow.

But this is a small criticism. Judges McCafferty and Gallagher, like all activist judges, had made up their minds before the cases began. The fact remains that DEI is a thin veneer concealing invidious racial discrimination by the nation’s universities and other schooling institutions—discrimination that the Left has fully embraced and will not relinquish. That’s essentially what the DCL said. On this primary issue, ED was on solid ground. Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA, ED had reason to be confident in its ultimate success.

So why didn’t it appeal?

Political Appointees Versus the Deep State

The DCL was issued only weeks after Trump’s inauguration. Ordinarily, the short turnaround would suggest that it was rushed. Its contents suggest otherwise. It is a well-reasoned and thorough attempt to erase decades of misguided ED directives in favor of a plain understanding of the law: American educational institutions shall not discriminate on the basis of race using DEI or other theoretical underpinnings. These facts show that the DCL was not the product of career ED lawyers, who rarely act quickly and never against prevailing left-wing orthodoxies. Career ED lawyers were kept out of the loop until the DCL was ready to be released.

It stands to reason, then, that the DCL was the product of thoughtful work by one or more political appointees with experience handling civil-rights issues. These yeomen performed their work in relative secrecy, perhaps beginning shortly after Trump’s election. Moreover, these political appointees knew that the DCL would result in immediate litigation against ED, just as it did.

Once sued, ED staffed the case with trial attorneys who supported the mission. Those trial attorneys would have anticipated an adverse district-court ruling from the outset, steeling themselves for the inevitable appeals process. In short, everything about the DCL—its contents, release, and the ensuing district-court litigation—would have been handled by political appointees or trial attorneys hand-selected based upon their support for the cause.

When Judge Gallagher vacated the letter, career appellate lawyers at the Department of Justice had their chance to gum up the works.But then, when Gallagher vacated the DCL, career appellate lawyers at the Department of Justice had their chance to gum up the works. How? Executive-branch agencies such as ED cannot pursue a “discretionary appeal” without the approval of the solicitor general, whose office is part of the DOJ. That office is staffed by career lawyers. ED couldn’t appeal Gallagher’s ruling without their approval. But, as career lawyers, they shared the leftist plaintiffs’ sentiments and opposed the DCL’s conservative agenda.

When it comes to lawfare, the Left is the undisputed champion of the world.Admittedly, this is a partial explanation. The fact remains that the ultimate decision must have been made, or at least approved, by the solicitor general himself. Here, that meant John Sauer, nominated by Trump to be solicitor general in January 2025 and confirmed by the Senate in April. Sauer could have overruled the Deep State career lawyers and authorized ED’s appeal, but he didn’t. Which brings me to the second part of my explanation.

The Trump administration is mired in lawsuits. According to one tracker, approximately 655 cases challenging Trump’s executive actions have been filed since the president’s inauguration. Of those, plaintiffs have amassed a 49-5 win-loss record, 72 cases have been dismissed, and most of the balance are ongoing. DOJ is involved in most or all of them. Sauer would have known these facts. Furthermore, his office has only two dozen attorneys or so. Even with the help of other appellate attorneys—those at various federal agencies such as ED and the United States Attorneys’ Offices—the fact remains that the administration is legally outgunned and drowning in lawsuits. This is by design. When it comes to lawfare, the Left is the undisputed champion of the world.

I suspect that the above explains why the DCL was deep-sixed. Career lawyers at DOJ, miffed at being kept out of the loop when their approval wasn’t required, seized the opportunity to tank the DCL when it was. They may have advanced their agenda to Sauer with practical arguments about limited staffing and legal arguments about the notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements of the APA. If so, the practical arguments were valid. The legal ones, not so much. One does not restore constitutional rights with labyrinthine bureaucratic processes and interminable delays.

In the end, the administration abandoned a major battle to restore the constitutional rights of the majority of Americans harmed by DEI. As a result, universities won’t stop discriminating.

T.J. Harker is the general counsel of a Knoxville, Tennessee, company. Prior to that, he was an assistant United States attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, where he investigated and tried national white-collar fraud and espionage matters. He writes at Amicus Republicae on Substack.

A senior adviser to President Donald Trump is urging Washington to seek a swift exit from the escalating conflict with Iran, warning that continued fighting could further destabilize the Middle East and continue to rattle the global market even worse than they already have.

David Sacks, the White House adviser overseeing artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy, said the United States has already achieved significant military objectives and should now consider stepping back before the conflict widens further.

Speaking on the widely followed “All-In Podcast,” Sacks argued that the moment may have arrived for Washington to pursue an off-ramp rather than escalate further. “We’ve degraded Iranian capabilities massively,” Sacks said. “This is a good time to declare victory and get out.”

The remarks represent one of the clearest calls from a prominent Trump-aligned figure urging a negotiated exit from the conflict. Sacks framed the issue not in ideological terms but as a matter of strategic realism and American national interest. “If escalation doesn’t lead anywhere good, then you have to think about how you de-escalate,” he said, adding that de-escalation would likely involve a ceasefire or negotiated settlement.

The conflict began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iranian military targets. Tehran responded with missile and drone attacks across the region, while its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon launched additional strikes against Israel.

The growing confrontation has already rattled financial markets and pushed energy prices higher. Oil prices have surged as investors brace for potential disruptions to Middle Eastern supply routes and infrastructure.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations says more than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran since the conflict began. Israeli authorities report 12 deaths from Iranian-linked attacks inside Israel, while the American military has confirmed that seven American service members have been killed during the fighting.

Despite those casualties, Sacks argued that Washington must carefully consider whether prolonging the conflict actually serves American strategic interests. Within the America First wing of the Republican movement, skepticism toward open-ended foreign wars remains strong.

Many national-conservatives argue that American foreign policy must prioritize sovereignty, stability, and the well-being of American citizens rather than drifting into prolonged regional conflicts. Sacks’ comments appear to reflect that cautious strain of thinking within the broader Trump coalition.

He warned that deeper escalation could unleash a cascade of consequences across the region. One scenario he described involves Iranian retaliation against Gulf oil infrastructure, which plays a critical role in global energy supply.

Even more alarming, Sacks suggested, would be attacks on desalination plants that provide drinking water across much of the Arabian Peninsula. “I think it’s something like 100 million people on the Arabian Peninsula that get their water from desal,” he said, warning that such strikes could trigger severe humanitarian and economic disruption.

Sacks also cautioned that prolonged missile exchanges could strain Israel’s air defense systems if the conflict drags on. The broader danger, he suggested, is that the war could spiral into a wider regional confrontation that becomes increasingly difficult to control.

He described Iran as possessing what he called a “dead man’s switch over the economic fate of the Gulf States,” referring to the country’s ability to threaten energy infrastructure and shipping lanes that are essential to the global economy.

Financial markets appear to be reacting to that risk. Oil prices have already jumped sharply since the conflict began, reflecting fears that prolonged fighting could disrupt critical energy supplies.

Sacks suggested that a rapid de-escalation could calm markets and reduce economic uncertainty. “This is clearly what the markets would like to see,” he said.

The geopolitical stakes became even more apparent after President Trump announced a major American bombing raid targeting Iran’s Kharg Island, one of the country’s most important oil export terminals. The facility handles roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports.

Trump said American forces had “obliterated” military targets on the island. The strike underscored how closely military escalation and global energy markets are now intertwined.

A wider conflict could threaten oil flows and intensify economic instability across much of the world. Inside Washington, however, the debate over how to proceed remains unsettled.

Some policymakers favor maintaining pressure on Tehran and continuing military operations. Others fear that a prolonged war could drain American resources while creating new strategic vulnerabilities. The divide reflects a broader shift within the American right. While national conservatives strongly support defending American interests and allies, many remain wary of repeating the mistakes of earlier interventionist eras.

Sacks’ intervention highlights that emerging debate. His argument is not that Iran should be trusted or appeased, but that strategic victories sometimes require strategic restraint.

In his view, the United States has already demonstrated its military power and deterrence. Continuing the war indefinitely could risk triggering instability that ultimately harms American interests.

Robert Semonsen, Gateway Pundit

Gun control advocates do not just oppose civilian gun ownership; they also argue that guns in the hands of police make people less safe.

In January, a Border Patrol agent in Portland shot and wounded two Venezuelan nationals who belonged to the violent Tren de Aragua gang after they allegedly tried to run agents over with their vehicle. In response, Kris Brown, president of Brady United, tweeted the following:

“We don’t know the details behind the shootings of 2 people by a Border Patrol agent in Portland. But I know one thing for certain: whether in the hands of federal officers or everyday Americans, guns do not make us safer. Yet Trump is reshaping our country based on this lie.”

What were the Border Patrol agents supposed to do when an illegal alien with a criminal record tries to run over an agent? How are unarmed agents supposed to apprehend and detain violent gang members?

Currently on its website, Brady United explains: “Why Police violence is gun violence … As we work to tackle the gun violence epidemic in America, we cannot ignore police violence or its devastating effects.”

The same claim is made repeatedly by other gun control groups.

“Police violence is gun violence and that’s why our movement must be responsive as well,” declares Shannon Watts, president for Moms Demand Action.

“Police violence is gun violence,” proclaims Gabby Giffords, with the Giffords Law Center.

These last two statements are from 2021 and 2020, so their opposition to police having guns isn’t a new focus.

Gun control groups sometimes openly acknowledge their goal of banning all guns. In a 2023 interview with Time magazine, for example, Gabby Giffords – who heads the Giffords Law Center – answered a question about her goal by saying: “No more guns.” When the interviewer asked whether she meant no more gun violence, Giffords clarified: “No, no, no. Lord, no. Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.”

Time magazine itself treated the remark as significant enough to place Giffords’ line – “No more guns, Gone” – in the headline.

If firearms are bad per se, it should be easy to find places where either all guns or all handguns have been banned and murder/homicide rates have gone down. One would think out of randomness there should be at least one place where murder rates have gone down or at least stayed the same, but every single time, even for island nations, murder rates have gone up immediately after the ban.

A simple logic is at play here: Who is most likely to obey the law? While such statutes may take a few guns from criminals, they primarily disarm the most law-abiding citizens, making it easier for criminals to commit crimes.

Similar problems exist for police. Taking away the guns that both civilians and police have doesn’t mean that criminals will readily forfeit their weapons. Criminals have strong incentives to keep and obtain weapons. Drug gangs can’t go to the police and ask for help to get their drugs back when another gang steals their drugs. The gangs have set up their own little paramilitaries to protect their valuable stash.

Gun control advocates point to the low murder rate in the United Kingdom, with its largely unarmed police forces, as evidence that disarming police can make people safer. But they ignore that the U.K. had an even lower homicide rate relative to the U.S. before they enacted strict gun controls, and that after a 1997 handgun ban, Britain experienced increases in homicide rates.

Gun control advocates often frame their proposals as modest steps to reduce violence, but their own statements often reveal a far broader goal. The evidence from places that have banned guns also shows a troubling pattern: Disarming the law-abiding does not disarm criminals. If we want to reduce crime and protect the public, policies must focus on stopping criminals – not on leaving both citizens and police defenseless.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Click To Republish

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

“But the American people are probably not willing to accept the level of pain economically in the world that is commensurate with what Iran is willing to tolerate for its own people.”

Morris argued that Iran’s leadership has historically demonstrated a willingness to absorb significant hardship in pursuit of geopolitical goals — a dynamic that could create a mismatch with what U.S. voters would accept if tensions escalate and disrupt global markets.

Because of that imbalance, Morris said the United States should focus on limiting Iran’s ability to cause widespread harm rather than pursuing broader goals such as regime change.

“The objective must become to curb Iran’s ability to inflict massive global harm and stop Iran from destroying the global economy,” Morris said. “Even if Iran is allowed to survive, that’s good enough for us.”

Morris also warned that conflicts abroad have historically damaged U.S. presidents when policy goals become too expansive or idealistic.

“I think that there’s a real potential here for serious damage to the MAGA coalition and to President Trump,” he said.

Morris said he had written down his thoughts earlier in the day to clarify the risks.

“The presidents failed when their policy objectives become so important to them that they take over their administration and lead them to destroy themselves,” Morris said.

“[Former President Lyndon B.] Johnson in Vietnam, [Former President Joe] Biden in Afghanistan, Bush 43 [former President George W. Bush] in Iraq are potent examples of how idealism gone astray took over the presidency and led to its ruin.”

He said in those conflicts, U.S. military dominance did not translate into lasting victory because adversaries were willing to endure far greater hardship.

“In these cases, the willingness of our adversaries, economic and human, exceeded our ability to accept pain and led to a humiliating defeat,” Morris said. “We will always fail to realize how a modern military arsenal is no match for our enemy’s fanaticism.”

Morris cautioned that U.S. military superiority could create a sense of overconfidence if policymakers assume battlefield strength alone will determine the outcome.

“It’s easy to see how military superiority could lead Trump to overconfidence and his administration to ruin,” he said. “And this is really what worries me.”

Instead, Morris said Trump should narrow U.S. objectives to preventing Iran from inflicting major economic or geopolitical damage while avoiding a broader effort to overthrow the Iranian regime.

“Stop them from destroying the world’s economy, stop them from inflicting tremendous harm,” Morris said. “But don’t accept the political destruction of MAGA in an effort to change the regime in iran.

Political analyst Dick Morris warned Saturday that escalating conflict with Iran could damage President Donald Trump politically if U.S. war aims expand beyond limiting Tehran’s ability to threaten the global economy.

Speaking on Newsmax’s “Saturday Report,” Morris said Trump’s core supporters remain loyal but cautioned that the broader American public may not tolerate the economic pain that could accompany a prolonged confrontation.

“I think the MAGA base has long patience with Donald Trump,” Morris said.

Iran has been at war with the United States and Israel for 47 years now. We didn’t start it; they did. But we are finally getting around to finishing it.

In the first week of the 2026 action, we demolished over 3000 major targets in Iran, largely succeeding at the goal of decapitating the mullahs’ regime and eliminating their military capacity. Our airstrikes are rapidly wiping out their launch sites, their arms factories, their air force and naval vessels, while making a valiant effort to do all this without causing innocent civilian casualties.

(As in any war, there are going to be some civilian casualties no matter how hard one tries to avoid it, but it is commendable how hard Israel and the USA are trying to contain their targets to the clear and overt elements of the mullahs’ regime).

Within a week, Iran’s ability to wage war was almost entirely degraded. They could shoot rockets, but they couldn’t really aim them; they could explode bombs but they couldn’t really deliver them. They could threaten, but they couldn’t really follow through.

So how did the ruling mullahs – those of whom are still alive – respond, in light of this new reality?

They spent the week firing missiles anywhere they could, regardless of the merit of the target, even regardless of whether the target was an opponent or an ally. As the Iranian mullahs’ regime was rendered more and more toothless, they just fired anywhere, even at countries that had desperately tried to stay neutral, even been friendly to them, for decades. The Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, even Qatar, took incoming fire from Iran. Why?

A rational government, having been rendered militarily impotent in a week, would sue for peace, hoping to get away with their lives as they relinquish control of a nation no longer theirs to rule.

Instead, the remaining mullahs keep on trash-talking the Western world as if they were the nuclear power they have always aspired to be, and they announced a new ruler, son of the old ruler, just as committed to the Shi’ite theocratic tyranny that they have forced on the poor people of Iran for 47 years.

To say they haven’t learned their lesson is putting it mildly.

But perhaps what’s more important is that we understand why they have these positions, since these positions are not going to change.

We Americans don’t normally think of the religious views of a foreign adversary nation; We don’t tend to assume that it matters much whether another country is Catholic or Protestant, Buddhist or Hindu. Perhaps we should, but we rarely do.

When facing an admitted theocracy, however, we simply must consider their religion. We have no choice.

Like many religions, there are many types of muslims. There are those who take it very seriously; there are those who don’t. There are those who don’t really believe in it but who pretend to because it’s expected.

There are those who are muslim in public, but are in fact secret Christians, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Hindus, Jews, and atheists, in the privacy of their homes.

And then there are the ones we would call moderate muslims, a huge sector with a thousand meanings, one which too often really means they would never engage in jihad themselves, but they happily fund and hide others who do.

And it is very difficult – almost impossible – for outsiders to tell which is which.

Then there is the most famous distinction, the one that the mainstream press always leads with: the general split between Sunni and Shia.

The Shi’ite muslims in Iran – the mullahs who have ruled for 47 years – are Twelvers, and are believers in what we would call the most extreme branch of Mahdism, the apocalyptic expectation of the return of a twelve-century-old descendant of Mohammed who will someday take over the world.

They aren’t alone in expecting an apocalypse; lots of religions, both mono and poly theistic, have expected an apocalypse someday. The difference is, with Iranian Twelvers, they believe it is their religious duty to do everything they can to bring about that apocalypse.

Unlike most other believers in an eventual Day of Judgment, from the ancient Norsemen to modern Christians, the Shia feel personally called to work as hard as they can to rush it along.

This helps explain their commitments to terrorism, to mass murder, to all sorts of excessive evil; they believe that the more violent upheaval there is on earth, the more quickly the Mahdi will return.

And it explains their insistence on developing nuclear bombs. Unlike the Russians and Americans, the British and French, and most other nations with nuclear weapons, who have them as deterrents and pray that they’ll never be used – the Shia theocrats running Iran do want to use them. They desperately want the ability to kill as many of their enemies as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s part of their particular brand of theology. And that’s why we in the West have tried so hard to keep Tehran from ever getting such weapons – because we don’t think they’d be an eventual threat; we believe they would be an immediate threat. If possible, the mullahs would likely have used such weapons before the West even realized they had them.

And this understanding also explains the mullahs’ actions during the first week of the war:

An outsider would expect the mullahs to face the reality that they are soon to be deposed, but instead, they defiantly keep on appointing new placeholders to fill the roles that the coalition has made vacant. They will not willingly give up control of Iran because they care more about their goal of bringing about the apocalypse than they care about their own health and safety.

Nothing else could explain Iran launching missiles at Bahrain, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and even Qatar. At a time when our Western analysis would expect them to try to get their fellow muslim countries to rally around one of their own, they instead fired indiscriminately at their own muslim neighbors. Why?

Because the concepts of peace, alliance, fellowship and honor have no place in the context of a desperate cultish acolyte’s effort to rush the arrival of the end times.

When we wonder why the old ayatollahs, the current ayatollahs, and the future ayatollahs, are all behaving so strangely, we must remember their real goal.

Once we understand that this crowd of apocalyptic zealots is never going to change their views, we can understand two things:

That it was right to finally start the process of trying to eject them from power, however expensive this project may be, and

That it will be equally necessary to work with the eventual replacement government to build safeguards into their new secular constitution, ensuring the prevention of such authoritarian Shi’ite fanatics gaining political power ever again.

Because when we started reading the news, it looked like it was the mullahs who were stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality – the reality of the western alliance’s dominance, the reality of the mullahs’ defeat.

But the unavoidable conclusion is the discovery that it’s really the West that has been refusing to acknowledge reality, for some 47 years now, in our vain hope that the mullahs could eventually be negotiated with, could be rendered peaceful, cordial, cooperative, like normal people elsewhere across the world.

The actual reality is that the apocalyptic Shia/Twelver mullahs of Iran – and their adherents – must never be entrusted with power in any way, ever again, because they will use it to bring about death and destruction wherever they can.

Iran was a peaceful, rapidly modernizing, Western-facing nation once, under the Pahlavis.

And it can be again.

Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. Once a County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, after serving as president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009. Professionally, he is a licensed Customs broker, and has worked in freight forwarding and manufacturing for over forty years. John is available for training seminars ranging from the Incoterms and free trade agreements to the challenge of re-shoring to minimize tariff impacts (https://tradecomplianceseminars.com/), as well as fiery speeches concerning the political issues covered in his columns.

His book on vote fraud, “The Tales of Little Pavel,” his three-volume political satires of the Biden-Harris regime, “Evening Soup with Basement Joe,” and his 2024 non-fiction work covering the issues of the 2020s, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

Canada’s central bank just told business leaders to prepare for economic pain that will outlast most of them. Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem declared the country’s old economy dead last Wednesday in Toronto, warning of “painful” and permanent restructuring that will take decades. He’s advocating for big gambles he admits may not work, asking households to pay higher prices for a payoff they likely won’t live to see. 

Canadian Economic Downturn Structural, Not Cyclical

The BoC delivered an unusually political message this week: The country’s downturn isn’t cyclical, but structural. Cyclical issues are related to the business cycle, rising and falling with the natural booms and busts we’ve all come to love and hate. Structural changes are permanent and require drastic changes for the economy to operate. The Governor attributes this shift to three forces: slowing population growth, a breakdown in US trade relations, and artificial intelligence. 

“The impact of these forces on the Canadian economy will not be a temporary cyclical fluctuation. These are deep structural changes…” BoC Governor Macklem.

Canada’s Era of Population-Driven Growth Is Over

The country’s era of population-driven economic growth is over, and they aren’t just referencing recent immigration blunders. The Governor explains the labour force grew an average of 1.5% annually for the past 20 years, but the BoC sees it “hardly growing at all over the next few years.” 

Canada’s central bank just told business leaders to prepare for economic pain that will outlast most of them. Bank of Canada (BoC) Governor Tiff Macklem declared the country’s old economy dead last Wednesday in Toronto, warning of “painful” and permanent restructuring that will take decades. He’s advocating for big gambles he admits may not work, asking households to pay higher prices for a payoff they likely won’t live to see. 

Canadian Economic Downturn Structural, Not Cyclical

The BoC delivered an unusually political message this week: The country’s downturn isn’t cyclical, but structural. Cyclical issues are related to the business cycle, rising and falling with the natural booms and busts we’ve all come to love and hate. Structural changes are permanent and require drastic changes for the economy to operate. The Governor attributes this shift to three forces: slowing population growth, a breakdown in US trade relations, and artificial intelligence. 

“The impact of these forces on the Canadian economy will not be a temporary cyclical fluctuation. These are deep structural changes…” BoC Governor Macklem.

The Muslim scholar also praised Elias Rodriguez for the “assassination of two Zionists,” according to Smith’s video.

“God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives,” Abdou said.

Rodriguez is facing numerous charges after he allegedly killed two Israeli Embassy employees in 2025 in Washington, D.C. Authorities allege his motivation was antisemitic, The Hill reports.

Regarding higher education, Abdou told students to “be a threat.”

“If you throw a wrench into that system, you’ll discombobulate. So be a threat, fulfill it,” he said, according to the video.

A spokesperson for the seminary condemned the remarks in a statement emailed to The Fix late Thursday, saying administrators were “not aware of the violent nature of the event” when they authorized it.

“When we became aware, we withdrew our support,” Union spokesperson Afsheen Shamsi stated. “The violent and hateful rhetoric expressed at the non-Union, off-campus event is in complete contradiction of UTS’s values, and we forcefully condemn it. To put it plainly, this is not who we are.”

Abdou’s talk originally was scheduled to be held in-person on the Union Theological Seminary campus. 

However, organizers accused administrators of shutting down the event hours before it was scheduled to occur. In an Instagram post, Queer Muslims NYC accused the seminary of “flagrant Islamophobia and utter disregard for Muslim students.”

However, the group also posted what appeared to be a quote attributed to an unnamed seminary administrator that suggests Queer Muslims NYC and other organizers agreed to move the event off campus. 

“In consultation with other offices, we support your offer to host the iftar at an off-site location,” the administrator was quoted as saying.

The administrator also stated that the group should not use the seminary-issued Zoom link for the event, adding, “Otherwise, I wish you a successful event and hope we can remain partners in better communication for future events you wish to hold on campus.”

The quote also suggests the seminary agreed to pay for the cost of food for the in-person event.

Queer Muslims NYC blamed pro-Israel groups for “blasting” the event on social media and threatening to call Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to disrupt it.

“What does UTS do in response to flagrant Islamophobic and xenophobic attacks? They pull out their protection and support,” the group wrote on Instagram. It also urged supporters to contact the seminary to complain. 

According to the Beacon:

A flyer advertising the event features the inverted red triangles used in Hamas propaganda videos to identify Israeli targets. Its cosponsor is Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, a radical campus group that has called for an “intifada revolution” at Columbia and protested alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the anti-Semitic student organization behind the encampments that plagued Columbia in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.

Prior to Columbia, Abdou formerly taught at Cornell University and the University of Toronto.

He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Fix through his website, asking about the X video of his remarks and the seminary’s decision to cancel the event.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include a statement from the Union Theological Seminary.

Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either,” Abdou said.

The Muslim scholar also praised Elias Rodriguez for the “assassination of two Zionists,” according to Smith’s video.

“God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives,” Abdou said.

Rodriguez is facing numerous charges after he allegedly killed two Israeli Embassy employees in 2025 in Washington, D.C. Authorities allege his motivation was antisemitic, The Hill reports.

Regarding higher education, Abdou told students to “be a threat.”

“If you throw a wrench into that system, you’ll discombobulate. So be a threat, fulfill it,” he said, according to the video.

A spokesperson for the seminary condemned the remarks in a statement emailed to The Fix late Thursday, saying administrators were “not aware of the violent nature of the event” when they authorized it.

“When we became aware, we withdrew our support,” Union spokesperson Afsheen Shamsi stated. “The violent and hateful rhetoric expressed at the non-Union, off-campus event is in complete contradiction of UTS’s values, and we forcefully condemn it. To put it plainly, this is not who we are.”

Abdou’s talk originally was scheduled to be held in-person on the Union Theological Seminary campus. 

However, organizers accused administrators of shutting down the event hours before it was scheduled to occur. In an Instagram post, Queer Muslims NYC accused the seminary of “flagrant Islamophobia and utter disregard for Muslim students.”

However, the group also posted what appeared to be a quote attributed to an unnamed seminary administrator that suggests Queer Muslims NYC and other organizers agreed to move the event off campus. 

“In consultation with other offices, we support your offer to host the iftar at an off-site location,” the administrator was quoted as saying.

The administrator also stated that the group should not use the seminary-issued Zoom link for the event, adding, “Otherwise, I wish you a successful event and hope we can remain partners in better communication for future events you wish to hold on campus.”

The quote also suggests the seminary agreed to pay for the cost of food for the in-person event.

Queer Muslims NYC blamed pro-Israel groups for “blasting” the event on social media and threatening to call Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to disrupt it.

“What does UTS do in response to flagrant Islamophobic and xenophobic attacks? They pull out their protection and support,” the group wrote on Instagram. It also urged supporters to contact the seminary to complain. 

According to the Beacon:

A flyer advertising the event features the inverted red triangles used in Hamas propaganda videos to identify Israeli targets. Its cosponsor is Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, a radical campus group that has called for an “intifada revolution” at Columbia and protested alongside Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the anti-Semitic student organization behind the encampments that plagued Columbia in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.

Prior to Columbia, Abdou formerly taught at Cornell University and the University of Toronto.

He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Fix through his website, asking about the X video of his remarks and the seminary’s decision to cancel the event.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include a statement from the Union Theological Seminary.

The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” – Proverbs 21:1

One of the oldest themes in the Bible is God putting his will into the hearts of rulers to do what he wants them to do. In fact, he not only chooses the rulers, raises them up or takes them out, but he decides what they will do during their administration, or during the period of their rule, even though they think they are in charge.

Fox News, Reuters, and Axios are all reporting that Ali Khamenei was killed, and his body has been found. The 86-year-old Khamenei led Iran for the last 35 years. He has plunged Iran into conflict with many major nations and his own neighbors. Many are glad to hear of his demise.

Over a period of nearly fifty years, thousands of Americans have died at the hands of Iran. Many of the Americans were wounded by roadside bombs built by the Iranians and will carry their wounds throughout the rest of their lives. There is little love lost over the death of Khamenei in the United States.

But Religion and Politics Do Not Mix

We’re using the term “religion” in the broadest sense here, but what we mean is any kind of prayer or intervention on the part of religious advisors, or leaders. The greatest heroes of our days, especially in times of conflict or war, have been men who have gone to God. They have bent their knees , they have called for wisdom, they have asked to be guided. What we have here, today, is a case where President Trump has already done that.

The idea that theology and politics can’t come to a meeting is an absurdity given to us by Satan, the god of this present world. We must always seek God in all matters, but especially when millions of lives are involved or at stake.

It would be easy to conclude that Iranian leaders probably have also prayed, but it is the fruit of a man or a nation that shows to which God they are praying.

In the case of Iran, we see them attacking civil centers, destroying people randomly in hospitals, in apartment houses, on the street, and without any discrimination.

We watch the United States and her allies striking military targets only to cause Iran to lose her power to strike or to harm others. We don’t need to ask which God they are praying to. They are praying, obviously, to the God of life, not the god who promotes death for all people that Iran and other Muslims consider infidels.

Beyond the question of which God people pray to is the math of the Bible. The Bible explains quite clearly that there aren’t several gods to choose from. Americans probably know more about Greek and Roman gods and other nonsense fed to them by the secular world, but the Bible counts the gods for us. How many are there? Let’s look at it.

“For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.” (De 32:36-39)

This is the math of the Bible – “there is no god with me,”

There is only one God, not many, and the refusal to see this basic truth will cause suffering and death around the world until the very last moment of time.

Muslims introduced a new god in the seventh century, but he is no god, and if he were, he would be 700 years too late. God established his kingdom through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, starting at about 4 BC.

We have only to ask three simple questions

Does our president humbly confer with God to ask Him for his wisdom, his guidance, and his help in all the decisions he makes? Anyone who knows Donald Trump can say yes, he has prayed and he will pray until the end of this entire matter.

The second question is, does he, Donald Trump, care about the safety of Americans? Asking this question almost seems ridiculous, because that would be the most basic impetus for his even entering into this fray against Iran. It is because he is concerned about the safety of his fellow Americans.

The final question is: is he concerned for the safety of others, like our allies, or even nations who may not necessarily be our allies but they may be attacked by Iran. President Trump has made his concern known for Israel and other nations surrounding Iran repeatedly. He cares about other nations being pummeled or pulverized by a nuclear power and a nation that believes it has a right to terrorize all of its neighboring countries

Just today, the Iranians sent a ballistic missile and bombed a synagogue. Later in the evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described how a rocket, a ballistic missile the size of a bus, came slamming into this synagogue at the speed of Mach-8. This is what they think is normal warfare. This is something that neither Netanyahu nor Donald Trump nor any right-minded modern leader would think to do to another country.

This is why Iran is being pummeled at this moment.

Let’s put it this way.

America is praying. Iran is paying. And the righteous are saying, “You get what you pay for.”

“And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” (Daniel 4:35)

Michael Bresciani

Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef, who ran the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit from late 2004 until late 2014, witnessed agents hired under Jim Comey’s watch, for political leanings and warned of potential for abuse of surveillance programs. Those warnings were ignored.

The former FBI agent who ran the bureau’s warrantless spying program said this week that he personally witnessed the director and other senior officials recruiting agents based on political leanings, not qualifications, during Director James Comey’s tenure.

Bassem Youssef, a retired special agent who ran the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit from late 2004 until his retirement in late 2014, also says he warned senior officials about the potential for civil liberties abuses in the surveillance program that he oversaw, but said neither Comey nor the White House took his warnings seriously.

FBI’s improper — possibly illegal — snooping

The FBI’s surveillance practices have been back under a microscope in recent months. FBI records released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, last year showed the bureau snooped on phone records of Republican elected officials as part of its investigation into Jan. 6.

Just the News also reported in February that the Government Accountability Office assessed that the FBI opened 1,200 probes related to politicians, journalists, religious leaders, academics and others tied to “sensitive investigative matters,” using a special investigative tool that required no factual predicate to launch. The vast majority of those probes were closed without accusations of wrongdoing or criminal charges against those targets being scrutinized.

Youssef told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Tuesday that he believes the failure of the bureau to learn from past intelligence collection mistakes, like in the Trump-Russia probe whose underlying allegations were later discredited, is because FBI leadership had begun to hire employees based on political leanings rather than merit or capability.

Comey’s “soft recruitment of people of like mind”

“When I worked in the bureau, in field offices, and then eventually at FBI Headquarters, where I oversaw the Communications Analysis Unit that there was already a process where you could see that from the highest levels of the FBI, meaning the director’s office and the executive assistant, directors that there is a soft recruitment of people of like mind that didn’t necessarily meet the requirements for the job, but they were recruited because of their leaning, which was, in fact, very politically motivated,” Youssef said.

Just the News reported this week that President Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that subjected hundreds of Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career.

FBI Director Kash Patel has led an effort in the administration to review the four operations code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo and Arctic Frost that stretched from summer 2016 to January 2025.

Those who have seen the records told Just the News they chronicle how the FBI’s expanded counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions after the Sept, 11, 2001, terrorist attacks eventually became hijacked by politics and led agents to deploy tools meant for terrorists and spies against everyday Americans in a bid to find a way to bring criminal cases against Trump.

“It tells you that the FBI, unfortunately, during the previous administration has cast a wide drag net that got so many people who were not involved in any way,” Youssef told Just the News. “And I hate to use that word, but it’s really framing those people for some kind of malfeasance when there really wasn’t in the first place.”

Before Youssef departed the bureau in 2014, he approached then-Director Comey to warn that he saw the potential for civil rights abuses in the FBI’s warrantless surveillance, which he oversaw from his perch atop the Communications Analysis Unit.

Snowden’s leaks raised, but given mere lip service by Obama

“I had been trying to brief the director at that time, it was Comey, of this special program, the program that was leaked by Snowden, if you remember, in 2012 and the executive assistant director under him was blocking me from briefing him,” Youssef said.

Edward Snowden, who was a National Security Agency contractor, leaked classified information in 2013 detailing several U.S. surveillance programs, including the FBI’s PRISM program to monitor internet communications and details about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court.

“I had a concern about this particular program,” Youssef said.

“And eventually, I went up to see [Comey], before I retired, [and] explained to him that the program has some issues and could be misused and abused, and he assured me that the program would be taken a very good look at it,” the former official explained.

“At that time, the then-President, Barack Obama, gave a press release saying that this is unacceptable, that we will definitely curb the authority of this program, if not shut it down altogether,” said Yousseff.

“Fast forward to the end of his tenure, the end of his administration, and to find out that the program was not curbed, but in fact, it was expanded, and authority was given to people who had no business in the Intel world, such as the then UN ambassador who was given access to that program,” he said.

Youseff previously detailed his specific concerns with the program, including an audit that showed it was generating large numbers of “false negatives and positives.”

Additionally, he said “there was collateral damage in terms of civil liberties” of Americans whose phone records were unnecessarily searched or who were falsely identified as connected to terrorism, Just the News rep

Steven Richards, Just the News