A transcript of President Donald Trump’s speech on U.S. airstrikes on Iran on Saturday as transcribed by The Associated Press:

Thank you very much.

A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.

Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not. Future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.

For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular. So many were killed by their general, Qassim Soleimani. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.

I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done. And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades.

Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack.

With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago.

Tomorrow, Gen. Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8 a.m. at the Pentagon. And I want to just thank everybody and, in particular, God. I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Donald Trump and America for denying “the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

The U.S. military used precision bombing to strike three sites in Iran early Sunday, directly joining Israel’s war aimed at decapitating the country’s nuclear program.

Trump, first in a social media post and then in a speech delivered from the White House, said the U.S. “completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan.”

Netanyahu, whose forces began their own airstrikes on Iran on June 13, thanked Trump for his “bold decision.”

“Congratulations, President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.

“In Operation Rising Lion, Israel has done truly amazing things. But in tonight’s action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, America has been truly unsurpassed. It has done what no other country on earth could do.”

U.S. and Israeli officials have said American stealth bombers and 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground.

The prime minister said Trump’s actions could transform the Middle East.

“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Netanyahu said. “His leadership today has created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.

“President Trump and I often say, ‘Peace through strength.’ First comes strength, then comes peace. And tonight, President Trump and the United Stated acted with a lot of strength.”

Netanyahu ended his statement by asking for God’s blessings.

“President Trump, I thank you. The people of Israel thank you. The forces of civilization thank you,” he said. “God bless America, God bless Israel, and may God bless our unshakable alliance, our unbreakable faith.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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

By J.B. Shurk

Why should taxpayers have to fund a government that hates them?

There is plenty of evidence that taxpayer dollars are funding the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Here’s how that happens: domestic agitators set up “non-profits” and other kinds of “non-governmental organizations” with deceptively innocuous names. They apply for monetary grants from state and federal agencies. Government agencies use their discretion to award outside groups. These groups then pay rioters to cause mayhem on the streets. Voila! Government-funded pop-up revolutions are ready to go!

This isn’t anything new. Politicians have been diverting taxpayer funds to their favorite “public policy” groups for so long that a large professional class now exists whose entire business model consists of establishing new “foundations,” bilking government agencies of fresh taxpayer dollars, filling their own bank accounts, and occasionally doing the bidding of the government bureaucrats responsible for doling out the “free” money.

Have you ever wondered why so many government-adjacent “influencers” who show up on cable news are the “president,” “founder,” or “CEO” of organizations with serious-sounding names whose activities sound peculiarly vague? Most of those empty suits with fancy titles are the heads of recently made-up entities that specialize in leeching off the taxpayer. Whenever their prefabricated organizations miss out on easy government money, they simply create new ones and play the game again.

These government-funded third parties produce nothing of value. Their names suggest that they pursue charitable missions, but they help only themselves. They are parasites that suck taxpayer wealth from working families, and if their own “work” impacts a local community at all, it is usually in the form of organized “protests” that block traffic, shut down businesses, and prevent Americans from getting to actual jobs. They are government-subsidized agents of chaos.

Consider how insane this arrangement is.  In Los Angeles alone, dozens of law enforcement officers have been injured during the last two weeks of riots.  Shops have been vandalized and looted.  Citizens are effectively blackmailed to support anti-ICE terrorists or suffer serious consequences.  As the famous “Libs of TikTok” social media account has repeatedly pointed out, “Democrats are funding the riots and destruction of our cities.”  While speaking in Los Angeles, VP Vance noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass “actively encouraged illegal migration” and then put American citizens in harm’s way by fanning the flames of the anti-ICE riots.

Let’s break this down.  Taxpayers fork over money to pay the government salaries of Newsom and Bass.  They pay for a police force and provide that force with the vehicles and equipment necessary to defend the civilian population.  They pay for public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and pay for trash removal and sanitation crews to keep their cities clean.  

However, they also pay the agitators — who receive taxpayer grants — to destroy city parks, vandalize businesses, graffiti streets, and attack residents.  They pay for Newsom, Bass, and other Democrat blowhards to make speeches that defend the actions of rioters and condemn the actions of law enforcement officers.  They pay for damaged police vehicles and equipment and cover overtime expenses.  They pay for the hospital bills of injured officers.  They pay to repair broken windows, busted concrete, and burnt-out buildings.  They pay in the form of higher insurance premiums.  They pay in lost time and money while government-subsidized domestic terrorists block traffic and threaten drivers.  They pay by diverting police resources away from other assignments that might prevent or solve crimes.  Most seriously of all, taxpayers pay big time if they or their loved ones are hurt or killed during these government-financed, Democrat-sponsored riots. 

On Thursday, President Donald Trump chose Juneteenth to post his belief that some Americans have too many paid days off from work.

A longtime adviser to Trump, Bruce LeVell, told Newsmax on Friday that regardless of his own opinions he stands with the president on “good, common-sense things for all Americans.”

“I’ve been celebrating Juneteenth as long as I can remember. We acknowledge it no matter if it’s a holiday or if it’s not. We know what happened historically in 1866, when for two years that slavery was still going on. But let me tell you, every day in Atlanta, Georgia, I put a key in the door as 31 years of business.

“For my wife and I, every day for me is Juneteenth. That the fact that a successful Black business owner can put a key in the door and be profitable and keep trucking,” LeVell said on “Finnerty.”

Michaelah Montgomery, CEO of Conserve the Culture, a nonprofit that is “dedicated to preserving American democratic principles and promoting an educated vote based on facts,” according to its website, joined the conversation and took issue with some media pundits who have called the president a rast.

“I think the way that the left has been able to paint Trump as a racist needs to be studied, because prior to him running for public office, that was never the sentiment surrounding him. 

“And as somebody who Trump personally invited to his home, along with 15 of her other Black friends who he sat with personally for four hours, I can give my personal testimony that there’s nothing racist about this man.”

James Morley III, Newsmax

California can’t build housing or railroads on time or on budget—and thanks to a bloated, value-driven bureaucracy, neither can the rest of America.

Just over two months ago, the Rand Corporation released a study on the cost of producing multi-family housing in three states: California, Colorado, and Texas. The results were paradoxically shocking, yet utterly predictable. California, it turns out, is a ridiculous place, run by ridiculous people, with ridiculous regulations. Or, as the folks at Rand put it, “The average market-rate apartment in California is roughly two and a half times the cost of a similar apartment constructed in Texas on a square-foot basis—and regional differences within California, where costs in the San Francisco Bay Area are roughly 50 percent higher than costs in San Diego.” Additionally, “[t]he time to bring a project to completion in California is more than 22 months longer than the average time required in Texas.” According to Rand, the culprit for these grotesque disparities is, to no one’s surprise, the differences in regulatory burdens between Texas and California and between various jurisdictions within the (allegedly) Golden State.

Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was forced to issue a threat to the government of California, warning the state that the federal government was considering rescinding future funding for its high-speed rail boondoggle. According to a department report, the federal government had released more than $7 billion to California for the project over the last several years, and it had, unsurprisingly, spent all of the money, yet somehow managed not to lay even a single foot of track. As The New York Post noted at the time, “the 800-mile rail line was supposed to be completed in two phases on a $33 billion budget by 2020.” Nevertheless, the proposed line has now been abbreviated to a mere 119 miles. Its budget has ballooned to nearly $130 billion, and it appears highly unlikely that it will be completed by its new 2033 deadline.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail project—in India, for crying out loud—began planning in 2014 and is moving along quite nicely. According to Newsweek, India Railways “reported that as of June 2025, more than 300 kilometers of elevated viaduct structures had been completed….Fourteen river bridges, seven steel bridges, and five prestressed concrete bridges are now finished.” More to the point, the project, which will span nearly 600 km, is expected to be fully completed by 2030 at the cost of a mere $15 billion.

As it turns out, when it comes to building things, California is not only not competitive with Texas, but it’s also not competitive with India, an actual, real-life Third World country. Once the economic engine that drove the nation, California is now an anchor, dragging everyone and everything down with it into the mire.

All of that said, it’s probably not fair to single out California here. These days, no American state—no city, no county, not even the federal government—could build a high-speed railroad on budget and on schedule. The federal government, with its massive military budget, struggles to build ships. Heck, it struggles even to maintain the ones it has. America just doesn’t build things or complete large, complex projects anymore. Or at least it doesn’t do them well or effectively. We used to build things, but we don’t anymore. Once upon a time—and not that long ago—we built the greatest system of roads ever known to man, spanning the entire continent, east-to-west and north-to-south. Now, the interstate system would never even be started, much less finished. Somehow, sometime along the way, American governments at all levels lost their ability to do or build much of anything.

The biggest part of the problem here can be summed up in one word: “bureaucracy.” Now, I know that just two weeks ago, in these very pages, I wrote that “For all the criticism it receives, bureaucracy remains the most rational and effective organizational structure known to man for the effective and efficient operation of large systems.” While this remains inarguably true, American government bureaucracy seems not to operate at all. It appears irrational, ineffective, and, at times, totally dysfunctional. But why?

The good news is that the problem with American bureaucracy is actually fairly easily diagnosed. The bad news is that this “problem” is entrenched in American administrative practice and is unlikely to be excised without concerted and prolonged effort.

In 1948, Dwight Waldo, an American political scientist, penned his magnum opus, a book titled The Administrative State. Waldo’s primary goal was to undermine the “neutrality” of American bureaucracy, to subvert the Wilsonian “politics-administration dichotomy” that had been characteristic of American administration since Woodrow Wilson famously expounded on its ideal characteristics. The dichotomy aligned American bureaucracy with Weberian theory and made the American administrative state like all others. It was imperfect, to say the least, mostly because it was undemocratic, but at least it worked. Until Waldo came along, that is.

The problem was that Waldo’s main objection to the politics-administration dichotomy was not based on the fact that it was undemocratic. Rather, his objection was to the idea that administration could be neutral or “scientific.” He believed that it was impossible, in the application of administration, to distinguish between “value” and “fact.” What this meant in practice was that “effective” administrators would not be able to act neutrally, in Waldo’s vision, as they did everywhere else. Instead, they would have to apply their “values” to bureaucratic decision-making. This, in turn, was taken as a license by administrators and, more to the point, those who taught administrators to become values advocates, supporters of the application of largely left-leaning values to the administration of the state.

In 2018, on the 70th anniversary of The Administrative State and the 50th anniversary of Waldo’s famous Minnowbrook Conference, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, remembered the man and his contributions, noting that “Waldo’s 1948 book challenged the idea that public administration is value-neutral, performed in a dispassionate, almost mechanical manner. He argued that public servants should become active, informed, politically savvy agents of change” [emphasis added]. George Frederickson, a public administration professor at the University of Kansas and the organizer of the “Minnowbrook II” conference in 1988, told the Maxwell School magazine that Waldo’s contributions included “three lasting themes in PA: social equity; democratic administration; and proactive, advocating, non-neutral public administration.” In short, Waldo changed everything.

By the late 1960s, it had become accepted practice, but only in the United States, for public administrators to see themselves as value advocates and social justice warriors. And within a decade or so, that attitude had become profoundly ingrained among bureaucracies at all levels of government, throughout the country. Unsurprisingly, not long thereafter, American governments became incapable of doing much of anything.

The Waldo-revolution turned what should have been executive-dependent, value-neutral, efficient bureaucracies into left-wing social justice machines. Not only does that explain the American bureaucracy’s overall dysfunction, but it also explains why politically left-leaning jurisdictions like California are even worse off than most places. Just as with their politicians, their bureaucrats adhere to different values—or cling to the same values more firmly and unrelentingly—making everything dysfunctional to the point of collapse.

The bottom line is that if the United States wants to compete in the twenty-first century, it will have to do something about its bureaucracies. The administrative state is massive and overgrown, to be sure, but more than that, it’s guided by its own values, which render it hopelessly ineffective and, ironically, radically undemocratic. Cutting it—at all levels—would be a start, but it won’t be the end. The whole concept has to be reformed from top to bottom, with the application of “social equity” and other highly subjective values purged from both practice and theory.

Stephen Soukup, American Greatness

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” —Marcus Aurelius

You must have noticed by now how this Fourth Turning bidness disorders the collective mind. The churning zeitgeist is hard on the nerves, while something strange is birthed by mankind, the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. Everybody’s got a story, and most of them are pretty spooky — A-I Globalist hell. . . de-pop and neo-slavery. . . chemtrail death. . . lizard people. . . caliphate on-the-march across Western Civ. . . World War Three. . . escape to Mars. . . . Mercy!

The last thing you might imagine is a tranquil evening in the town square among happy and prosperous neighbors, the dogs frisking and the children chasing each other as lights begin to twinkle against the lovely violet sky. Rather, you have to wonder just when is that hard rain a’gonna fall? When will some obdurate enemy try to bust a cap in your country’s ass? And at the center of this psychic maelstrom, the provocative visage of Mr. Trump.

So, let’s stipulate that it’s natural to be alarmed by events. But must you lose your mind? Many did during the Covid set-up, and they have not recovered. Most particularly the political Left. The Covid operation was supposed to rid the world of DJ Trump for good, and it flopped. What it accomplished politically for four years was to demonstrate that the Left cannot be trusted to run our nationckal affairs. That, and the cumulative failures of lawfare, have made the Left crazier than ever — while the Democratic Party goes broke and bleeds out support-wise.

Meanwhile, the political Right struggles to hold things together, especially the morale of the people. The great national megaphones — CNN, The New York Times, et al. — are no help at all. They only multiply the mental disorder. And they will do everything possible to undermine the efforts of MAGA to reform a system that foundered under corruption and delusion. Where there is not gridlock these days, chaos breaks out. . . violence of action and opinion.

The focus of all this angst for the moment is Israel. Suspicion runs deep that Israel “owns” America, bends us to its will, treats us like a mere lackey in its quest to dominate the world. It does this, they say, through AIPAC, its chief lobbyist, stuffing money into every pocket and every campaign treasure-chest in DC. In reality, political payoff-wise, AIPAC, at $3.3-million (according to OpenSecrets.org) doesn’t hold a candle to the National Association of Realtors at $63.5-million, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, at $30-million, and the US Chamber of Commerce, at $29.6-million.

Of course, the AIPAC suspicion tends to redound upon plain-old, age-old hatin’ on the Jews. (Full disclosure, yours truly is one.) It’s true enough, for such a low percentage of the US population, Jews seem to run an awful lot of things here: Wall Street firms, Ivy League universities, medical research, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the news media. How to account for that? Well. . . it is said that in the shtetls of old Europe, the richest fathers married off their daughters to the smartest young men in the village. Hence, their offspring sailed into Ellis Island with a certain advantage. It could be as simple as that. What else might it be? Luciferian magic, some seem to think.

So now, obviously, Israel is engaged in trying to beat the crap out of Iran in order to persuade them to discontinue that country’s quest for deliverable nukes. Every other means of persuasion has failed, you understand, while Iran has never ceased to advertise its wish to “wipe Israel off the map” — a leitmotif not subject to disambiguation. Strange to relate, this has utterly inflamed the political Left against Israel and the Jews. Strange especially because until the day-before-yesterday the political Left in America was dominated by Jewish orgs, Jewish money, and Jewish individuals.

As we speak, Jewish Democratic Party lawyers run the Lawfare endeavor: Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Benjamin Wittes, Michael Bromwich, Brooke Goldstein (Exec Director of rc Elias has served as the Left’s chief election law finagler through three national elections, while Norm Eisen coached Special Counsel Jack Smith, New York AG Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in mounting their cases against Donald Trump.

Now, ironically-to-the-max, The Lawfare project is battling against the wild outbreak of antisemitism on Ivy League campuses (surprise, surprise) — Harvard, in particular, where the antisemitic frolics are presided over by the university’s Jewish president, Alan Garber. So, now it’s Jew-on-Jew, which is just another angle on the political Left eating itself alive. In case you’re wondering, I consider the Jewish lawfare ninjas a disgrace to my ethnic group, for the simple reason that their years’ long exploits against Mr. Trump have been altogether garishly dishonest. The lawfare gang has done much more damage to our country than AIPAC ever has.

And also now, at this inflection point in the Fourth Turning, Mr. Trump stands by in Israel’s campaign to put Iran’s nuke project out-of-business. This dilemma has inflamed both ends of the political spectrum. Looks like Mr. Trump is very reluctant to commit the US to an act of war. He is apparently unconvinced that our bunker-buster MOABs can successfully penetrate Iran’s nuclear Fordo mountain stronghold. For the moment, he is playing for time, probably hoping that Israel alone can “finish the job” (de-nuke Iran) somehow without US intervention. There is even some reasonable hope that Iran’s mullah theocracy can be tossed out, at best by the Iranian’s themselves.

Israel is much-resented for beating up on its enemies. It left Gaza for dead after the horrific Oct 7, 2023, rape, murder, and hostage attack. The American Left has labeled Israel “Hitler 2.0” for that. The American Left is insane of course. The news media is working the story hard that Israel is now hated by everybody in the world, even Ol’ Tucker Carlson. The Jewish lawfare ninjas are just layin’ low on this one, which seems a bit churlish for such otherwise combative punks. Only Alan Dershowitz dares speak up for Israel, and he’s not associated with the Left anymore. It remains for Mr. Trump to keep a clear head about this while everybody else runs around with his and her hair on fire.

I will make a bold prediction: Iran will be successfully de-nuked. The world will be better for it. Eventually, world opinion about Israel will shift. The world will be grateful that Israel dared to take on this problem. Eventually, too, the lawfare ninjas will find themselves in court — but, this time, sitting at the defendant’s table on a seditious conspiracy rap. That will toast my bagel.

James Howard Kunstler

Much controversy has erupted over how certain WNBA players treat Caitlin Clark, a white athlete with the Indiana Fever, and many people are pointing to racism. But many people on the left insist that blacks can be prejudiced, but they can’t be racist. A former editorial editor at Harvard’s Crimson publication writes on the ideology here:

As one African-American lead character from the 2014 movie ‘Dear White People’ argues, ‘Black people can’t be racist. Prejudiced, yes, but not racist. Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can’t be racists since we don’t stand to benefit from such a system.’

Therefore, as the left would argue, the abuse that Clark has had to tolerate primarily from black players on other teams must be something other than racism.

This debate goes far beyond basketball, and reflects a mindset of the black community for believing that they are victims. Angel Reese, a black player, has been at the center of the controversy of verbal and physical attacks on Clark, and has alleged that there have been racist attacks on her, too:

The WNBA launched another investigation into alleged racism toward Angel Reese, who portrays herself as Clark’s chief rival. Once again, the league found nothing. Angel Smollett struck again.

Add that to the growing list of hoaxes in the world of sports.

Meanwhile, there are actual examples of racism in the WNBA. Days after Reese appeared to lie to reporters about the alleged racist chants, she shared a TikTok video mocking Clark as a little ‘white girl afraid to catch a fade’ with a photo of Reese trying to fight her.

Last Thursday, Brittney Griner appeared to utter ‘Trash, fucking white girl’ from the bench of a game against the Fever.

But some people recognize the abuse that Clark has sustained and are not afraid to speak out about it:

After the Wednesday loss to the Sun, Fever head coach Christie Sides joined Clark in speaking out against the racist abuse some of the WNBA players have endured.

‘Just proud of the adversity these guys went through,’ Sides said. ‘Just the expectations were insane for us to start this season and what people thought we should be doing and just the outside noise that these guys had to endure from game one until now.

Some black players are upset because Caitlin Clark is such an outstanding performer on the court: how dare a white, straight woman be competition to the black players? The basketball court has always been primarily their domain. And the black community which sees itself as victims doesn’t realize that they are putting themselves in this pitiful position, all by themselves.

Caitlin Clark isn’t afraid to speak out against this vicious behavior:

‘Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments, and threats,’ Clark said. ‘Those aren’t fans, those are trolls, and it’s a real disservice to the people in our league, the organization and the WNBA.’

‘There are a lot of really good fans, whether they’ve been fans for 20+ years or they’re new fans in our league,’ Clark said. ‘I think continuing to uplift this league in a very positive light is the best thing we can do… there are so many positive storylines that can be written and celebrated.’

It’s time to face these actions and behaviors and call them out for what they are—black racism:

So, can we finally have an honest talk about race? If so, some obvious statements should be made.

Caitlin Clark’s fans are not racist. The people angered at the success of a white woman are the racists. Clark doesn’t have white privilege. If she did, she wouldn’t have to keep apologizing for her skin color. More people hate Clark because of her skin color than love her for it.

None of that should be so hard to say, yet so few people are willing to say it.ricn

The discussion around Caitlin Clark underscores how anwe are a nation still too afraid to discuss race honestly. And that has to change.

This is bigger than basketball.

People in the white community have gone above and beyond and acquiesced to the claims of the black community that we are to blame for the racism they say they still experience.

Perhaps those black folks who are angry should take a closer look in the mirror to determine who is really to blame.

Susan Quinn, American Thinker

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles Dodgers were hoping to attract large crowds at tonight’s game against the Washington Nationals by offering a limited edition MS-13 bobblehead to commemorate the recent L.A. anti-ICE riots.

A social media ad for the event read, “¡Hola! Don’t miss MS-13 Bobblehead Night at Dodger Stadium on 7/20 presented by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)! The first 2,000 undocumented migrants get their very own MS-13 Bobblehead! ¡Ay, caramba!”

The limited edition MS-13 bobblehead features a Latinx cis-male with face tattoos and a penchant for vandalism. The figurine wears an unbuttoned Dodgers jersey to show off his abs and carries a Glock 19 for use in fighting back against colonizers. The prized item is also made of extra-flammable material, so it can double as a convenient Molotov cocktail substitute when needed.

To receive a free Limited Edition MS-13 Bobblehead, fans must provide proof that they are not American citizens. Dodgers security had reportedly promised to keep ICE agents far from the event so that undocumented migrants could enjoy their MS-13 bobbleheads in peace while watching the game. Natural-born citizens can purchase their own bobbleheads in the Dodgers gift shop for the low price of $574.93.

At publishing time, the Dodgers had also announced that Saturday night’s game would feature a giveaway of free cinder block chunks to the first 15,000 fans so they could have something to throw at ICE agents on their way home.

Babylon Bee

The comparisons are flying fast and loose. As Israel continues to dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program with surgical precision, and as President Trump weighs the next phase of American involvement, critics and skeptics are reaching for two familiar cautionary tales: Libya and Iraq.

But Iran is not Libya. And it is not Iraq either. The current campaign has a defined, lawful objective. It is not a regime change. It is not nation-building. It is not an open-ended war. The mission is the complete and irreversible destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That mission is already well underway and showing results.

In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya under the banner of humanitarian protection. Within months, the mission morphed into full-scale regime change. Gaddafi was killed. His government collapsed. And the coalition walked away.

Libya descended into chaos, with rival factions, terrorist safe havens, and foreign powers turning the country into a proxy battlefield. The state ceased to function. There was no plan for the day after.

Iran is not Libya. It is not a broken shell of a state held together by one strongman. It has a functioning economy, strong institutions, a middle class, and a deep bench of scientists, engineers, and a robustly well-educated society.

Iran is not going to unravel because key nuclear facilities are destroyed. It will not spiral into anarchy from airstrikes. It is far more resilient, far more dangerous, and far more embedded in regional and global power dynamics. The Iraq comparison is just as flawed. Iraq was a full-scale invasion. It was based on faulty intelligence and executed with no coherent postwar plan. It involved hundreds of thousands of American troops, a toppling of the entire government structure, and years of bloody counterinsurgency and sectarian violence. That war left deep scars on US foreign policy and strategic credibility.

What is happening now with Iran looks nothing like Iraq. There are no American boots on the ground. There is no occupation. There is no attempt to transform Iran into a Western-style democracy. This is a limited military campaign targeting a specific threat: the infrastructure, personnel, and technology behind Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons effort.

Israel has already delivered devastating blows to Iran’s nuclear program. Enrichment facilities at Natanz and Isfahan have been struck. The heavy water plutonium reactor at Arak has been rendered unusable. Multiple weaponization labs have been destroyed. According to reports, 14 of the 15 nuclear scientists on Israel’s high-value target list have been eliminated. That is not symbolic. That is a strategic victory. The only parallel would be eliminating Oppenheimer and every member of the Manhattan Project before they ever arrived at the Los Alamos Laboratory.

President Trump is not rushing in because there is no need to. Israel is achieving the mission step by step. Trump is using the time to mitigate risks, prepare for contingencies, and hold the cards. American assets are moving into the region not to invade, but to finish the job if needed, or to deter escalation.

The choice now lies with the regime in Tehran. As Trump might say, we have the cards, Israel has the cards, and Iran can take the diplomatic offramps offered by the United States and Europe, or it can continue on a path that ends with its program being destroyed.

This is not the beginning of a new war. This is the long-overdue end of a decades-long campaign by Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, destabilize the region, and threaten the world. It is a campaign being carried out with intelligence, airpower, cyber capabilities, and precision. There is no appetite for occupation. There is no plan for regime change. There is only a clear, achievable military objective rooted in international law and shared security interests.

If the Iranian regime collapses under the weight of military defeat, economic pressure, and domestic unrest, that will be the result of its own failures. But that is not the goal. The goal is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. Nothing more, and nothing less.

This is not Libya. This is not Iraq. This is strategic clarity in action. And it is working.

John Spencer, Jerusalem Post

No matter how much left-wing agitators want to riot to oppose enforcing immigration law, the American people still support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and deporting illegals.

That is the takeaway from a new Harvard/Harris poll taken in the middle of the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots that have been excused by Democrat leadership like city Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In fact, 80 percent of respondents in the poll support a plan to deport criminal illegal aliens, which clocks in at the second most popular overall policy proposal (of 15) after lowering prescription drug prices for the elderly and low-income Americans. When asked more specifically if respondents favored what the Trump administration is doing to achieve the deportations, 74 percent agreed, including 57 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents.

The fifth most popular policy proposal is closing “the border with added security and policies that discourage illegal crossings,” with 67 percent support.

While the general goals of immigration enforcement are supported by a majority of Americans, Democrats have tried to demonize ICE and President Donald Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard to protect ICE agents and provide riot control.

Fifty-six percent of Americans favor Trump calling in the National Guard to “help suppress anti-ICE riots,” including a majority of independents and nearly 30% of Democrats.

A majority (55 percent) also said Trump should “deploy the national guard to protect federal agents and property when local city and state law enforcement won’t act.” Similarly, 71 percent of respondents want local police to help ICE if they get attacked by rioters, and 65 percent of Democrats agree.

These views, including from Democrats, are bolstered by separate polling that shows Trump well above water on approval for his immigration policies, with 49 percent approving and only 33 percent disapproving. That poll found that about 25% of Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris also support Trump’s immigration policies.

The Harvard/Harris poll does appear to have some ideological inconsistencies, however, which are difficult to decipher.

For example, only 41 percent of respondents believe that Democrat elected officials of the so-called “sanctuary cities” are encouraging violence against federal immigration enforcement officers. While 67 percent of Republicans believe they are, 59 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents do not believe that is the case.

Bass, for her part, effectively threatened more violence and resistance to ICE officers unless and until they leave Los Angeles, as The Federalist reported.

That being said, a majority (54 percent) of respondents also favored an approach of waiting to see how Trump’s immigration enforcement policies play out over the next two weeks, as opposed to going full opposition mode against Trump. Seventy-six percent of Democrats want to go full resistance mode, while 80 percent of Republicans want to wait and see, along with 58 percent of independents.

In another seemingly incoherent response, in the context of the other statistics, 55 percent of respondents also blame the Trump administration’s immigration policies and sending the National Guard for contributing to the riots in Los Angeles, where 45 percent blames Bass and Newsom for “calling to resist federal agents and not deploying the police to stop violence.”

That being said, Bass’s and Newsom’s favorability ratings are extraordinarily low, at 17 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

That is the takeaway from a new Harvard/Harris poll taken in the middle of the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots that have been excused by Democrat leadership like city Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In fact, 80 percent of respondents in the poll support a plan to deport criminal illegal aliens, which clocks in at the second most popular overall policy proposal (of 15) after lowering prescription drug prices for the elderly and low-income Americans. When asked more specifically if respondents favored what the Trump administration is doing to achieve the deportations, 74 percent agreed, including 57 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents.

The fifth most popular policy proposal is closing “the border with added security and policies that discourage illegal crossings,” with 67 percent support.

While the general goals of immigration enforcement are supported by a majority of Americans, Democrats have tried to demonize ICE and President Donald Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard to protect ICE agents and provide riot control.

Fifty-six percent of Americans favor Trump calling in the National Guard to “help suppress anti-ICE riots,” including a majority of independents and nearly 30% of Democrats.

A majority (55 percent) also said Trump should “deploy the national guard to protect federal agents and property when local city and state law enforcement won’t act.” Similarly, 71 percent of respondents want local police to help ICE if they get attacked by rioters, and 65 percent of Democrats agree.

These views, including from Democrats, are bolstered by separate polling that shows Trump well above water on approval for his immigration policies, with 49 percent approving and only 33 percent disapproving. That poll found that about 25% of Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris also support Trump’s immigration policies.

The Harvard/Harris poll does appear to have some ideological inconsistencies, however, which are difficult to decipher.

For example, only 41 percent of respondents believe that Democrat elected officials of the so-called “sanctuary cities” are encouraging violence against federal immigration enforcement officers. While 67 percent of Republicans believe they are, 59 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents do not believe that is the case.

Bass, for her part, effectively threatened more violence and resistance to ICE officers unless and until they leave Los Angeles, as The Federalist reported.

Breccan Thies, The Federalist