When Donald Trump vowed to tackle excessive federal spending, few expected Elon Musk, the world’s most prominent entrepreneur, to lead the charge. Yet, in a move that reflected Trump’s unconventional style, Musk was appointed head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with dismantling the bloated federal bureaucracy.

DOGE launched ambitiously, aiming to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, eliminate inefficiencies, and overhaul vast parts of the public sector. However, just months into the experiment, the initiative has faltered. DOGE now finds itself politically isolated, legally tangled, and far from fulfilling its promises.

Musk has since become a sharp critic, calling Trump’s budget—the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—a “disgusting abomination” that deepens the deficit. The collapse of DOGE and the backlash to the bill highlight a deeper truth: America’s budget crisis can’t be addressed without tackling deeper structural issues.

DOGE Downfall: Why the Hype Didn’t Match the Reality

DOGE’s biggest failure was its inability to deliver its promised sweeping transformation. From the start, its $2 trillion savings target was unrealistic. Cutting nearly 30% from a $7 trillion budget was never feasible, especially with politically untouchable programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense off the table.

Musk’s claim that eliminating waste alone could close the gap didn’t hold up. While most budget experts support cutting inefficiencies, they agree that waste isn’t the main driver of the fiscal crisis. Even slashing all discretionary spending would save only $1.7 trillion. The real pressure comes from mandatory programs, which account for nearly two-thirds of the budget, leaving only a quarter of spending truly up for debate.

As reality set in, Musk’s savings claims shrank from $2 trillion to just $150 billion. While DOGE cites $170 billion saved, independent estimates suggest closer to $63 billion, less than 1% of federal spending, with many claims either inflated or unverifiable. Some savings were credited to long-canceled contracts. Though headline-grabbing layoffs and cuts were made, they were often botched, forcing agencies to rehire staff or reverse course. Meanwhile, federal spending rose by $166 billion, erasing any gains. Trump’s fiscal agenda worsens the outlook with the first-ever $1 trillion defense budget, sweeping tax cuts, and protected entitlements—all while annual deficits approach $2 trillion.

Yet DOGE’s failures ran deeper than mere fiscal naiveté. What began as Musk’s role as a “special government employee” quickly expanded into an unchecked exercise of executive power, raising constitutional alarms. His team reportedly accessed classified data, redirected funds, and sidelined entire agencies—actions taken without Senate confirmation, potentially in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Legal pushback swiftly followed, with fourteen states suing Trump and Musk over the constitutionality of Musk’s White House-granted authority.

Meanwhile, glaring conflicts of interest became impossible to ignore. Musk’s companies—X, SpaceX, and Tesla—hold $38 billion in federal contracts, loans, tax breaks, and subsidies while facing over 30 federal investigations. His push to dismantle regulatory agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—while X launches the “X Money Account,” a mobile payment service subject to CFPB oversight—only deepened concerns. Musk was legally obligated to separate his business dealings from government decisions. One major result has been the impact on Musk’s reputation. Once hailed as a visionary for his promotion of electric cars, he is now viewed unfavorably by many former fans.

Why Real Fiscal Reform Must Go Through Congress

America’s budget crisis isn’t just about waste—it’s about scale. While headlines fixate on symbolic cuts and political theater, the real drivers of the deficit lie deeper, buried in the structural commitments of federal spending. Musk’s DOGE initiative promised big savings but ran into a hard truth: real spending lies in mandatory programs, not discretionary ones. Cuts to USAID and DEI made headlines but barely moved the needle.

Some now doubt that DOGE was ever a serious reform effort. To many, it now looks less like governance and more like a chaotic, headline-driven power grab, by a youthful team of Musk staffers who were out of their depth. While its goals were admirable, real and lasting fiscal reform can only be achieved through lawful, institutional channels, not executive overreach.

DOGE did strike a chord with a public weary of government overspending and more inclined toward spending restraint than tax increases to address the deficit, but meaningful reform demands that Congress confront the politically difficult structural drivers of the deficit. It will take more than headlines—it needs bipartisan will and a serious commitment to fiscal reality.

Congress must reassert its constitutional role in the budget process and restore a measure of fiscal discipline. That means using tools like rescissions and budget reconciliation as originally intended—to reduce deficits, not widen them. Anything less amounts to complicity in a deepening fiscal crisis, one that threatens growth, fuels inflation, and drives up the national debt.

• Mohamed MoutiiMohamed Moutii is a Research Associate at the Arab Center for Research, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues (IREF Europe), and a member of the Ibn Khaldun Initiative for Free Thought. He has translated numerous books from English to Arabic, helping to spread free-market literature in the Arabic-speaking world. His work includes articles, analyses, and policy briefs published by various Western and Arab think tanks.

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In the Soviet Union, the most common type of housing was the communal apartment, where multiple families shared common areas of a single, small apartment.

In America, even among the working or welfare poor, this seems unthinkable.

Yet as New York City, under its forthcoming Communist mayor, plans to freeze all rents, you can expect something similar. When government outlaws the cost of rental housing set by even a semi-free market, you artificially inflate demand relative to supply. Price controls create shortages: EVERY SINGLE TIME. And the inherent inefficiency of Communism, combined with outlawed profit, destroys the incentive of builders to build.

New York City will become a 21st Century version of Soviet Russia. Trump will get the blame. And after he’s gone, capitalism will get the blame. There will be no more capitalism on earth, unless red states and cities move decisively capitalist and libertarian. Then the new Cold War will be between the Free States of America–and the Woke States.

“We will eventually be 2 separate countries….how can it be otherwise?” from an astute observer on my Facebook thread.

I agree. Leftists have radicalized and will NEVER back down. If the same (about never backing down) can be said of the MAGA/pro-liberty/pro-Constitution side, then how can the United States remain a republic? Voters in New York City vs. rural Texas/Florida do not inhabit anything like the same universe, let alone the same country. The United States of America? It’s increasingly an abstraction; a fantasy.

Most of California overtly eschews the Constitution daily. Its governors and mayors deliberately let violent criminals run freely and wildfires burn down cities. And now New York City prepares for bread lines, Soviet-style rental rules (prepare for 20 in a small apartment), government genital mutilation of children, and Sharia Law.

It’s not sustainable. Civil war, national divorce or outright submission to rabid totalitarianism. It’s not a pretty choice. But on our present, unsustainable and I now believe irreversible course — it’s the choice you and your children and grandchildren have.

Remember when leftists at least claimed to be for the individual rights of women? Now leftists totally in charge of the U.K. unconditionally import Muslims, and Muslims do not believe in the rights of women. It’s an interesting clash that leftist media, politicians and scholars will never, ever acknowledge. But it’s still the reality. Coming in 2026: New York City’s new Muslim Marxist mayor will of course let his religion have an unfettered run over infidel citizens, particularly as he dismantles and defunds the NYPD. What happens when this religious totalitarianism clashes with the LGBTQ population of New York City?

It’s difficult to fathom and process the blinding, arrogant stupidity and insanity of our times.

Even Ayn Rand and George Orwell never predicted it would get this bad. But it has. There is still a lot great about America. But there is also a bottomless pit of ignorance and stupidity that’s beyond repair. New York and the rest of blue America are like a falling plane about to crash into the ground. It’s too late for blue cities.

Michael J. HURD, Daily Dose of Reason

President Donald Trump on Friday thanked the Supreme Court for ruling against nationwide injunctions of “radical left judges.”

Trump spoke shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that individual judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions.

“This morning the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation or powers and the rule of law,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room while being flanked by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “In striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch, the Supreme Court has stopped the presidency itself.

“This last hour, there are people elated all over the country. I’ve seen such, such happiness and spirit. Sometimes you don’t see that. But this case is very important.

The court’s decision, though, left unclear the fate of Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.

“Some of the cases we’re talking about would be ending birthright citizenship, which now comes to the fore,” he said. “That was meant for the babies of slaves. It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.”

Adding that he expected the Supreme Court to rule on birthright citizenship in the next term beginning in October, Trump said the justices’ decision will allow him to pursue his agenda.

“I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers,” Trump said.

“It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly. And instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation.”

Trump said he was “grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem” of nationwide injunctions.

Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said.

Before his news conference, Trump took to his social media platform to comment on the high court’s decision.

“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard,” he posted on Truth Social. “It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process.”

Charlie McCarthy ✉  Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.

By John Horvat II

The Left always likes to portray itself as the angry party. It defines itself by its ability to champion causes that recall the French Revolution’s trilogy of liberty, equality, and fraternity and the mob storming the Bastille.

Wherever there are restrictions — even legitimate ones — the Left calls for liberation and license. Where differences appear — even natural ones of talent or effort — the Left denounces them as injustice and demands absolute equality. The angry party is always looking for a good revolution to incite or a crisis not to waste.

However, this angry party image is now in trouble in America. Since the last election, the Left has been rudderless, disoriented, and uninspired. It has gone from being the party of clamor to that of whining. There is no thunder on the Left, only incoherent rants.    

A Global Populist Movement

This lack of direction is a sign that something major has gone awry. It is not a matter of tweaking, framing, or remessaging. Some observers suggest that the world is transitioning from one historical epoch to another. The debate shifted, and the Left was left behind.

The New York Times editorial writer David Brooks, who himself shifts from Left to Right as the mood seizes him, describes the current phenomenon as “a world-shifting political movement” affecting both the Left and the Right. He compares it to the Communist Revolution, the New Deal, the Sixties, feminism, the LGBTQ+ revolution and other key movements that marked modernity.

He calls this massive shift the “global populist movement.” It is characterized by a general distrust of social structures, governmental programs, and institutions. People consider everything to be “rigged, corrupt and malevolent.” They question everything, harbor social resentment and demand signals of trust. 

A Failure to Adapt

Brooks thinks conservatives have taken note of this new movement and begun to adapt. However, most rank-and-file leftists did not get the memo and cling to old, exhausted models and rhetoric that no longer reflect how things have changed. 

Between lattes, the Left’s wealthy liberal elites are still looking for downtrodden masses to hail. They are stuck with outdated leftist scripts that are too worn to refresh. They claim to speak in the name of “the people,” with whom they rarely associate.

The Wrong Focus

Angry leftist narratives have always focused on attacking power structures based on the erroneous Marxist idea that everything can be reduced to power and money. They automatically divide society into haves and have-nots. Every problem can be resolved by taking money away from those who have too much and throwing it, as government funding, at those they deem have too little.   

Since the sixties, the Left has concentrated on infiltrating and conquering the institutions of power: academia, media, industry, culture, and government. It has succeeded fabulously and used its new-found power to redistribute wealth and suppress the Right.

The problem with taking over institutions of power is that one becomes identified with them. Together with power, the Left also assumed complacent and bourgeois attitudes.

Thus, the Left neglected the “proletariat” of ordinary Americans and adopted a new, more learned and sophisticated one with an alphabet soup of LGBTQ-type causes associated with identity politics. From its positions of influence and control, the Left became woke and imposed a cancel culture on all who stood in their way.

Responding to Cancel Culture

In response, the Right complained bitterly of this oppression, took up the cause of working (not woking) class Americans, proposed credible alternatives and won elections. It spoke to voters in a language they could understand and reassured them that they mattered.

However, from the comfort of its ivory towers, movie studios, and corporate C-suites, the Left’s response to electoral defeat has been to return to its tired and spent rhetoric. The problem is that the Left cannot return to its angry politics against the establishment because it is that establishment.

This leftist establishment is disconnected from the American reality and mesmerized by an alternative woke reality. To put it bluntly, in 2024 electoral terms, the Left now represents they/them, not you.

Return to the Culture

Thus, conservatives have successfully shifted the debate from the economic field to the cultural one. Accordingly, before the Left can propose anything credible in the economic field again, it will need to reconnect with the culture first. David Brooks claims, “The Left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.”

In other words, what Brooks is saying is that if the Left ever wants to win again, it must stop being yesterday’s angry Left. In this historical movement of resentment and distrust, the Left has become the easy target of an army of forgotten and aggrieved voters.

The only way to placate them is for the Left to change. It must speak to voters in soft, reassuring, and patriotic language to earn the trust of the man on the street. Its radicals need to tone down their message and pronoun usage. They must eat less organic avocado toast and more apple pie.

The Left must rein in its woke activists who, like trans athletes, are running unfairly and far ahead of a public that only wants normalcy. It must get its pseudo-champions to return their ill-gotten trophies.

Such a dramatic shift might mean throwing corrupt union cronies, border haters, tree huggers, and police defunders under the bus.

Brooks argues that mastering such contradictions is what it will take for the Left to navigate “the tectonic shift” that lies ahead.

That is why the Left is in big trouble. To survive, it must rewire its DNA. The party born of rage that feeds on unbridled passions must now go lite. It is an existential challenge. Brooks is asking the Left to come up with a new identity and grand narrative that will “take decades.”  

This new image that Brooks prescribes as a remedy will make many angry leftists angry. It is not only that they see no need to change, but they also don’t know how to make it happen. They will double down on their old turf of Marxist boilerplate. The Left cannot understand why David Brooks says that, at the height of power, having full mastery of the institutions and believing itself victorious, it must “think anew.”

What Brooks did not mention is that the anger of the radicals might turn to despair when they finally realize the Left has nothing new about which to think.

By John Horvat II, American Thinker

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn appeared on Fox News Thursday to describe how the New York City primaries were manipulated to benefit Socialist Democratic New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

With 88% of ballots counted, Mamdani was ahead with 43.5% of first-choice votes, while former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo trailed with 36.3%. During an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” Penn said the timing and structural shifts in the election process have significantly benefited far-left candidates at the expense of moderate Democrats.

“This is a big problem, and there is a lot of panic, I think, in New York, generally, in terms of what can they do? How can they get someone in the general election? Remember, these primaries were played with,” Penn told host Laura Ingraham.

Penn said that only around 400,000 votes determined the outcome.

“This used to be in September. And there would have been a runoff between Zohran and Andrew Cuomo in the old system with much higher turnout. Right now, you have a city of 8 million people, 400,000 votes one way or the other here is determining an extreme move to the left, with a voting system nobody could figure out,” Penn said.

Penn said the revised voting system confused voters and further suppressed turnout.

Geopolitical turmoil has prompted price hikes for long-term storage survival food. Heaven’s Harvest is the exception because their all-American food is sourced locally. Use promo code “Patriot” for a nice discount today!

“This has been played with and moved to the dead of summer when turnout is going to be low, and activists can win the day. So, we need to get our election system back. And right now I think this is a really bad turn for the Democratic Party if something isn’t figured out here before Election Day,” Penn said.

The primary election system in New York City was moved from September to June, which Penn believes led to a significant decrease in voter turnout.

If Mamdani maintains his lead, he will face Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in November as well as incumbent Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for reelection on independent ballots after skipping the Democratic primary. Unlike the primary, the general election for mayor will not utilize ranked-choice voting.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

CAMBRIDGE, MA — The Department of Homeland Security announced that a massive terrorist sleeper cell was discovered hiding just outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Authorities found the large group of infiltrated terrorists after a routine patrol around a well-known university’s infamous quad uncovered dozens of Iranian sleeper cell operatives.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” FBI spokesman Agent Dale Johnson said. “On the outside, they appeared to be dressed like college students and faculty, but every single one of them was a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. We have reason to believe that the entire campus is, in fact, a terrorist training site.”

Suspicions mounted after local law enforcement and Homeland Security agents began seeing concerning news stories coming out of one of the nation’s oldest and most respected universities.

“We started to receive calls that groups of so-called ‘students’ were chanting ‘Globalize the intifadah!’ right here on campus, out in the open,” Agent Johnson continued. “Then we started learning that individuals were harassing Jewish students and yelling at white people, and we put things together and discovered this massive cell of terrorist operatives living right here in the United States. It’s the largest sleeper cell bust in history.”

At publishing time, over 15,000 sleeper cell agents had been arrested at the site, with authorities saying they suspected many terrorists trained at the school had already infiltrated corporations and institutions throughout the country.

Babylon Bee

By Olivia Murray

What radicalized me? Oh gee I don’t know, maybe stories like this one?

Per a report at Fox News, township officials in the unincorporated community of Cranbury, NJ are in the process of seizing a historic family farm that has been under the family’s ownership for 175 years—that means since 1850—because they want to use it for a welfare housing project.

Benji Farraro reports that in April, Andy and Christopher Henry, the two brothers who currently own the farm, received a letter that informed them that Cranbury would be seizing all 21 acres, but government officials have now decided that they’ll make do with just half of the farm, and benevolently leave the house for the Henry family—now the Henry family gets to be neighbors with the third world foreigners who will no doubt be taking up residence in the “affordable housing” units built on Henry land! (Kind of reminds of when Abraham Lincoln spitefully directed the federal government to seize land that belonged to Mary Custis Lee as retribution for her husband’s allegiance to country over the Union, citing a “tax” dispute.)

The only thing I found surprising was that one of the owners of the farm was “shocked” that the government would operate in such an evil way:

‘It makes me feel terrible,’ Henry said. ‘It was a shock. We are surrounded by warehouses, been turning down developers for years. We just wanted to be left alone and take care of our place like my ancestors did before us.’

I’m sorry sir, but where in the he** have you been?

The entire system is built on theft, murder, and all other evils.

Operation Northwoods? Operation Paperclip? MK-Ultra? Ruby Ridge? Waco? Tuskegee experiments? Poisoning in St. Louis? Testing Big Pharma drugs on foster children? Operation Mockingbird? Fauci and the beagles? Lockdowns for “non-essential” businesses? Mandated participation in experimental drug trials? Legalized abortion? State-sponsored kidnapping when parents don’t want their children to be trans-ed? The inability to actually prosecute the Epstein buyers? The mass importation of violent and anti-American third world forgners? Two-tiered justice systems? The ATF gunwalking scandal? Intelligence officials conspiring to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop to help cheat Joe Biden into office?

Don’t the Henry brothers pay income taxes? Property taxes?

I’m limited on my word count, so for brevity’s sake, I’ll stop there—but there’s literally no shortage of examples.

As Andrea Widburg commented, eminent domain was only ever intended for infrastructure projects like roads, dams, and railways. (I still think it’s criminal.) It was not a vehicle for social justice experimentation though.

But, thanks to a state mandate, New Jersey must build “146,00 affordable housing units by 2035.” Isn’t socialism just utterly horrendous?

Of course I get it that the Henry brothers just “want to be left alone”—we do too—but the side that wants to win will always beat the side that doesn’t realize they’re in a war.

Olivia Murray, American Thinker

It has been many years since a political party was cast as far into the wilderness as the Democrats of 2025. Fresh off their second defeat at the hands of their mortal enemy, Donald Trump, it was reasonable to assume that the party would realize the need to abandon the progressive policies that repelled the broad center of the electorate. Instead, it appears that the opposite has occurred, as proven in both the response to President Trump’s strike on Iran and Tuesday’s (June 24) Democratic mayoral primary in New York City.

Democrats Doubling Down Democratic Party leaders must understand by now that they need to offer the public more than virulent opposition to Trump and every move he makes. They must realize that being branded a socialist party is a formula for electoral disaster. That’s why they put their thumbs on the scale to ensure that Bernie Sanders would not be their presidential standard bearer in 2016 and 2020 and why they ruled out a Kamala Harris candidacy until Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race left them no other choice. But how must their brand look to ordinary Americans now that avowed anti-Israel socialist Muslim Zohran Mamdani has been nominated to represent the party in the city with the larget Jewish population in the world outside of Tel Aviv?

As a New York state assemblyman, Mamdani introduced legislation to crack down on non-profits sending money to Israel. According to Fox News and the antisemitic watchdog group Canary Mission, he became prominent in anti-Israeli protests in the city shortly after the Oct. 7 massacre. A native of Uganda, Mamdani is the son of parents who have long been outspoken anti-Israel activists. His father is a “Marxist” professor at Columbia University, ground zero for post-Oct. 7 protests in the United States, and is “known for his anti-Israel views and obsession with ‘colonialism.’” The election of Mamdani would undoubtedly empower pro-Palestinian activists and throw gasoline on the fire of rancorous disputes raging between New York’s pro- and anti-Israel advocates. His vow to offer universal health care, free childcare, free public transit, rent controls, and a $30-per-hour minimum wage, all paid for by increasing taxes on the usual suspects – corporations and the rich – would certainly drive many people out of such a high-tax environment. His pledge to create a Department of Community Safety that would replace the police in responding to many 911 calls seems sure to negatively impact public safety.

In short, a Mayor Mamdani would mean New York would never be the same.

They Can’t Help Themselves Meanwhile, though a few Democrats have applauded Trump’s strike on Iranian nuclear sites, the party as a whole has done everything it can to demean the president. Instead of at least praising those who carried out the audacious and successful mission or remaining silent, the response has mostly been to claim either that Trump is lying when he says he has obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, that his attack was unconstitutional, and/or that he should be impeached. Democrats may be acting in response to polls showing a majority of the American people were opposed to Trump’s action, but that will surely change if peace breaks out in the Middle East or, at a minimum, hostilities between Israel and Iran cease and no further US involvement is forthcoming.

There are times, such as after 9/11, when the country should be expected to come together regardless of everyone’s political differences. Doing everything in the president’s power to eliminate the ongoing and increasing nuclear threat posed by the world’s leading purveyor of terrorism would seem to be one of those times. And yet, the left simply cannot get over its obsession with attacking all things Trump. Progressives continue to dominate the discussion about the evil orange man as if the November election never took place. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and now Zohran Mamdani have been dominating the headlines about the Democratic party. What this says to everyday Americans is that the party, far from tacking to the center, has actually become even more progressive than it was in 2024.

Is the current dilapidated state of this ever more radical party ultimately a threat to the stability of the country? Is it healthy for one party to be so unpopular that it cannot mount a credible opposition to those in power? And above all, how can Democrats expect the 2026 and 2028 elections to end differently than 2024 if they double down on the very ideology that cost them control of the White House and Congress?

Tim Donner, Liberty Nation

Just because the judiciary chooses to violate the Constitution does not mean the other branches are required to follow suit.

Since returning to office, President Trump has faced what can only be described as a judicial coup. Through the use of overreaching nationwide injunctions, predominantly Democrat-appointed judges have gleefully granted requests from left-wing activists to block enforcement of the agenda 77 million Americans voted for last year.

Yet, despite this egregious affront to America’s constitutional framework, Trump and his administration are neglecting to stop it.

The latest example of the administration’s refusal to uphold separation of powers is its ongoing battle with a Massachusetts-based federal judge over the president’s deportation of illegal aliens to so-called “third countries.” After District Judge Brian Murphy placed a sweeping injunction blocking the policy’s enforcement, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which temporarily stayed the Biden appointee’s order on Monday.

In a stunning act of rebellion against the justices, Murphy — seemingly believing his power usurps that of SCOTUS — issued a separate edict hours after the high court’s ruling in which he declared his initial order “remains in full force and effect.” The judge further claimed, “The District Court’s remedial orders [were] not properly before the [Supreme] Court because the Government has not appealed them, or sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”

So, what did Trump and his administration do?

While U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer correctly characterized Murphy’s power grab as a “lawless act of defiance,” the administration continued to grant the rogue judge’s order legitimacy it doesn’t have. Instead of implementing the president’s policy and telling Murphy to pound sand, team Trump went running back to SCOTUS to ask the justices to “clarify” their Monday stay on the judge’s initial injunction.

But there’s nothing to “clarify.” The high court already spoke on the matter, and there’s no logical or legal reason the administration shouldn’t be executing Trump’s directives — irrespective of what Murphy claims.

Trump and his team’s “strategy,” as it seems, is to continue following the same playbook previously disclosed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. When asked by Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway last month about how the administration plans to confront the judicial coup undermining the president’s executive authority, Leavitt said that the game plan is to “comply with the courts’ orders” and “win on the merits of these cases.”

In other words, the administration is going to continue granting the premise that what these rogue judges are doing is lawful and the notion that the judiciary has the final say on matters of law and public policy in America — otherwise known as judicial supremacy.

Except, that’s not the system of government the Founding Fathers had in mind when drafting the Constitution. If anything, framers like Alexander Hamilton viewed the judiciary as the weakest of the three branches, as it lacks the “sword” of the executive and the “purse” of the legislature and relies “upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

Contrary to claims made by Chief Justice John Roberts, the courts are not supreme to the other two branches. And just because its members choose to violate the Constitution does not mean the executive and legislative are required to follow suit.

As president, Trump has an obligation to abide by the nation’s founding document. It is he who is granted Article II authority to execute the nation’s laws — not rogue judges seeking to usurp such powers.

As Justice Samuel Alito recently observed, federal matters involving nationwide injunctions “may take two or three years before it could come up” to the Supreme Court to be fully adjudicated. That would mean that by the time cases involving the Trump administration reach the high court for final rulings, Trump’s second term would effectively be over.

The longer Trump continues to play along with leftists’ judicial coup, the longer the votes of those who supported him last year will be rendered meaningless, thus ending a presidency before it could even begin.

Shawn Fleetwood, The Federalist

Citing new intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, said that Iranian nuclear facilities have been destroyed by U.S. airstrikes and that if the Iranians attempted to rebuild those facilities it would likely take them years.  

The new Gabbard statement comes as a separate early intelligence assessment found that the United States failed to destroy core component of the Iranian nuclear capacity. According to details of that assessment which were leaked to CNN Tuesday, the strikes only set back Iran by a matter of months.

That report was a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the Pentagon. The White House has sought to downplay it as “incomplete intelligence,” noting that the assessment was of “low confidence.”

The kerfuffle comes after American B2 bombers dropped 14 30,000-pound GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrators, on two nuclear facilities buried deep underground in Iran and decades after the U.S. War on Terror, which sowed public doubts about intelligence failures. For his part, President Trump has said unequivocally that the facilities were “obliterated.”

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that the American strike on the reinforced Iranian nuclear site at Fordow “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”

Asked about the origin of the intelligence that Gabbard cited, an intelligence official told RealClearPolitics that “this is new U.S. intelligence.”

Gabbard slammed what she described as “the propaganda media” for trying to undermine what was otherwise heralded as a historic bombing campaign and “President Trump’s decisive leadership.”

On this front, the administration was momentarily on the backfoot ahead of the strikes. Testifying before Congress in March, Gabbard said that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Asked about the testimony aboard Air Force One, Trump replied, “I don’t care what she said.”

Less noticed in the press, however, was testimony from Gabbard that Iranian “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” The White House told RCP that Trump ordered the strikes under Article II authority to defend the United States against anticipated attacks.

“President Trump and the administration have always been right to say that if Iran chose to make a nuclear bomb, they could do so within weeks,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, told reporters last week, “which obviously poses an imminent threat to the U.S. and the world.”

Now that ability has been destroyed. On this point, and at least publicly, all parties seem to agree, even the Iranians. “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera.

Three facilities were struck by the United States last Saturday – two centers where enrichment was performed, the Natanz and Fordow facilities, and a third center, Isfahan, where enriched uranium is converted into weapons grade material. Overseas at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized the latter.

“You can’t do a nuclear weapon without a conversion facility,” said Rubio, who also serves as national security advisor. “We can’t even find where it is, where it used to be on the map,” he continued, speaking of the conversion facility. “The whole thing is blackened out. It’s gone. It’s wiped out.”

Any debate over the nuclear capacity of Iran is beyond the pale, according to Vice President JD Vance. “President Trump has obliterated the Iranian nuclear program,” he wrote on social media. “The American media seems destined to obliterate their own credibility on this fake story.”

Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.