Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott made a predictable recommendation to President Donald Trump to reduce crime in major cities.

During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Scott suggested that banning AR-15s would magically decrease violence in Washington, DC, and other high-crime areas across America.

As you note, violent crime in Baltimore is down. It has come down. Baltimore is still number three on the list of U.S. cities with the highest violent crime rates in 2024. That’s according to the FBI’s crime database, which relies on reporting from local jurisdictions such as Baltimore,” Tapper began. “So specifically, what is working in Baltimore, as you were just discussing, and what federal help could help you bring the violent crime numbers down even further?”

The mayor responded, explaining that the city has a “comprehensive violence prevention plan” where it does “all of the above.” 

We have a deep partnership with my office, the police department, our State’s attorney, our attorney general, our governor, and other federal law enforcement partners, where we have our group violence reduction strategy or focus deterrence, where we actually go to the very small group of people who are the most likely to be a victim or perpetrator of gun violence and say, choose, change your life. They actually get a letter directly from me as the mayor that says, change your life. We’ll help you do that. But if you don’t, we will remove you.

The mayor further stated that Baltimore police have “taken 2,500 guns off the street each of the last two years.”

Scott continued, arguing that more gun control is the solution for high crime rates. “The president could also do some very simple things for us, Jake. Not just for Baltimore, but for the whole country,” he said. “The president can say, no one will no longer be able to go into a store and buy a AR-15. The president could join mayors around the country and standing up to Glock to end these Glock switches that allow our residents and our police officers to be shot with a gun that is now automatic. And that can only happen with one company. He could end ghost guns in this country. He could do all of these things, but he won’t.”

Crime in Baltimore has declined considerably over recent years. But it is doubtful that gun control is contributing to the decrease. Moreover, the notion that banning AR-15s and other “assault” rifles will reduce homicides is laughable when one looks at the numbers.

Between 2007 and 2017, rifles of all types accounted for only 3.2 percent of total homicides. They were used in only three to six percent of homicides involving firearms each year. If the government banned rifles, these numbers would likely not change. Those who wish to commit gun crimes would simply use handguns or other firearms. 

Of course, it’s obvious what Scott is doing. He’s using the controversy over President Trump’s decision to federalize DC’s law enforcement agency while sending in the National Guard to deal with the district’s high crime rates to push for more gun control. As with all anti-gunners, he is exploiting the victims of violent crime to disarm responsible gun owners.

What we must remember is that gun control isn’t about protecting people. It is about empowering the state to exert more control over the populace, which is why they seek to punish non-criminals for he actions of a few who do use firearms for nefarious purposes.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Jeff Charles, Townhall

Jerry Newcombe Author

250 years ago this month, the British chopped down an important symbol of American freedom—the Boston Liberty Tree. To add insult to injury, they ignominiously turned that once-stately elm into mere firewood.

I knew virtually nothing about the Liberty Tree—until I was informed by Dr. Peter Lillback, the founding president of Providence Forum, for which I serve as executive director. Lillback has even begun a project to restore Liberty Trees, but that is the subject for a future column.

Noted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger wrote on the importance of Liberty Trees as a powerful symbol in America for the New England Quarterly in 1952.

The Liberty Tree has all but been forgotten by most Americans, yet it was an important symbol of our resistance to tyranny during the late colonial times. In fact, in the heyday of the American War for Independence, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Liberty Trees throughout the colonies, according to History.com.

And it all began in Boston—as did so many key developments in early America.

Here is the context: After the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the British Parliament, with the king’s blessing, decided to tax the American colonists, since a large piece of the government budget went to protecting them. But these taxes were imposed on the colonists without American input. In 1765, Parliament declared one such tax—the Stamp Act, which put a tax on virtually any paper product in the colonies—newspapers, stationery, receipts, even playing cards.

As the Stamp Act was being debated in Parliament, pro-American member of Parliament Isaac Barré argued that it was the oppression of the British that caused the colonists to flee in the first place. Indeed, British anti-Christian tyranny caused the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Catholics, etc. to flee to America. In that speech, Barré coined the phrase “sons of liberty.” It became a welcome label to many of the American patriots.

After hearing the news of the Stamp Act, many patriots gathered in the shade of a large elm tree near Boston Common. This tree had been planted in 1646 by the Puritan settlers.

Soon this tree became known as the Liberty Tree—again, the prototype of others to follow. It became the center of controversy in August 1765.

The Constitution Center notes: “Hoisted on the tree was an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the city’s stamp tax agent. Soon, a mob of several thousand people attacked Oliver’s office and his home, and the effigy was stomped, decapitated and burned.”

Oliver was so intimidated, he resigned the post of Stamp Act collector, before he even worked one day at it.

The seminal figure Samuel Adams—whom we could call the grandfather of America—was not there, but he would write about this momentous event later: “The Sons of Liberty on the 14th of August 1765, a Day which ought to be forever remembered in America, animated with a zeal for their country then upon the brink of destruction, and resolved, at once to save her.”

Ironically, the Stamp Act proved ineffective in collecting revenues—but it did one thing: awaken the sleeping giant of America. In his 1997 book, A History of the American People, the late historian Paul Johnson writes of George Grenville, England’

Prime Minister at that time: “His Stamp Act cost a lot in administration too but raised nothing. It proved unenforceable. Colonial assemblies pronounced it unconstitutional and unlawful. The irresistible popular catchphrase, ‘No taxation without representation,’ was heard. The stamps were publicly burned by rioters.”

The Boston Liberty Tree was routinely used as a type of bulletin board with many postings for patriotic consumption. And it was there that the Sons of Liberty hoisted a banner that had nine red-and-white stripes hanging down—a clear forerunner to the U.S. flag. 

Schlesinger points out that it is no coincidence that the chopping down of the Liberty Tree in Boston came the same year as the actual start of the war: “The outbreak of hostilities in April, 1775, at Concord and Lexington released all the pent-up fury of the British adherents against the hated tokens of insurgency. Fittingly enough, Boston’s Liberty Tree, progenitor of the numerous brood, fell the first prey, the beleaguered redcoats ‘with malice diabolical’ hacking it down in August.”

But, as the patriots remarked after the tree was chopped down, the British may have destroyed that symbol, but in reality, the “Grand American Tree of Liberty” had begun to “spread its branches over the whole continent,” notes Schlesinger.

In modern America, as the beneficiaries of the patriots who won our freedom 250 years ago, we would do well to learn about the brave men and women who resisted tyranny, using such symbols as the Liberty Tree.

Dr. Jerry Newcombe

Newly declassified FBI records have fingered Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) as a likely conduit for damaging leaks aimed at undermining President Donald Trump, along with disgraced Rep. Adam Schiff.

According to the FBI’s own 302 interview summaries, now in the hands of Congress thanks to FBI Director Kash Patel, the whistleblower noted that “Rep. Swalwell has been the source of a lot of leaked information and had to be counseled to be more careful.”

According to Emmy-winning investigative journalist Catherine Herridge:

“I have obtained a newly declassified @FBI interview summary from 2017 about intelligence leaks from the Russia probes.

While the interview subject’s name is withheld, it appears to be a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

According to the FBI report known as a ‘302,’ (redacted) “noted Swalwell has been the source of a lot of leaked information and had to be counseled to be more careful.”

I have reached out to staff for @RepSwalwell congressman for comment.”

Rather than address the substance of the allegations, a clearly panicked Swalwell responded on social media with an unhinged barrage aimed at Kash Patel and anyone reporting the facts.

On X, Swalwell raged:

“More bullshit in service to Trump to try and keep me quiet. Come get me, Kash. This Trump stooge long ago put me at the top of his book’s enemies list. This nonsense is just more of that. I won’t be silent.”

In another post, he sneered at the whistleblower who came forward:

“This ‘whistleblower’ made this bullshit up when Trump was President. If they had anything, they would have indicted me. Trump would have done anything to destroy me if he could have. They didn’t indict me. Therefore, they had nothing. What’s next?”

When confronted by critics online, Swalwell lashed out again—blaming reporters for supposedly failing to include an Inspector General report he claims debunks the allegations.

“And when reporters fall for this, and don’t give full context (like an IG report saying this is all BULLSHIT) the death threats roll in. Great work!”

This isn’t Swalwell’s first brush with scandal involving questionable judgment and compromised credibility.

His notorious relationship and reported affair with a Chinese intelligence asset should have ended his career and landed him behind bars, yet Democratic leadership shielded him from consequences, even allowing him to remain on the House Intelligence Committee for years.

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit

ged in the “terrorist practice of blocking roads as a form of political speech” to face the same repercussions they do in Florida.

The freshman congressman has introduced the Reinstating Orderly Access for Drivers (ROAD) Act, but Fine simply refers to the bill as “thump thump” – the sound of a two-axeled vehicle cruising over a protestoer-sized bump.

“When a pregnant woman can’t get to the hospital to have a baby, when an ambulance can’t get through traffic to get to the hospital, that’s a form of terrorism,” Fine told Breitbart News, referring to protesters blocking streets and highways. “It disrupts our lives. And it’s not a reasonable form of protest.”

If you ask me, “thumping” is letting them off too easily. We’re talking about terrorists here. Terrorize them back with the full force of our military strength. They abandoned their individual rights when they opted to shut down civilization.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Intellectual loneliness isn’t about wanting ‘deep talks.’

It’s about realizing how few people can tolerate complexity.

It’s noticing how quickly people rush to have an answer not to understand, but to feel right. It’s watching people form entire worldviews off headlines, vibes, and whatever reels told them last.

It’s the silence that follows when you say something that doesn’t fit neatly into someone’s script. It’s not arrogance. It’s exhaustion, from always having to code-switch between what you actually think and what’s safe to say around people who shut down at nuance.

And no one warns you: Once your brain learns to stretch, small talk doesn’t just bore you, it alienates you. You’re not looking for smart people. You’re looking for people who are still thinking.

[author unknown]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified a Top Secret email from then-DNI James Clapper exposing his efforts to suppress concerns raised by then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers regarding the politicized January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that President Obama ordered.

On December 22, 2016, Rogers wrote an email to Clapper, then-FBI Director James Comey, and then CIA Director John Brennan expressing serious concerns over the NSA’s lack of “sufficient access,” warning that NSA personnel “aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments.” Clapper responded, “We may have to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities” and “more time is not negotiable.”

“The leading figures in the Russia Hoax have spent years deceiving the American public by presenting their manufactured and politicized assessments as credible intelligence. The email released today reinforces what we already exposed: the decision to compromise standards and violate protocols in the creation of the 2017 manufactured intelligence assessment was deliberate and came from the very top,” said DNI Gabbard. “Clapper’s own words confirm that complying with the order to manufacture intelligence was a ‘team sport.’”

Clapper’s response to Rogers came just hours before the authors of the ICA were set to deliver the initial draft of the politicized ICA to Intelligence Community leaders.

You can view the declassified emails here.

Read more about the Russia Hoax in ODNI’s previous releases on July 18, July 23, and July 30.

DNI Clapper to NSA Director Rogers: “That’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it” Stunning admission that manufacturing intelligence is a “team sport” requiring “compromise on our ‘normal modalities’”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified a Top Secret email from then-DNI James Clapper exposing his efforts to suppress concerns raised by then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers regarding the politicized January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that President Obama ordered.

On December 22, 2016, Rogers wrote an email to Clapper, then-FBI Director James Comey, and then CIA Director John Brennan expressing serious concerns over the NSA’s lack of “sufficient access,” warning that NSA personnel “aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments.” Clapper responded, “We may have to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities” and “more time is not negotiable.”

“The leading figures in the Russia Hoax have spent years deceiving the American public by presenting their manufactured and politicized assessments as credible intelligence. The email released today reinforces what we already exposed: the decision to compromise standards and violate protocols in the creation of the 2017 manufactured intelligence assessment was deliberate and came from the very top,” said DNI Gabbard. “Clapper’s own words confirm that complying with the order to manufacture intelligence was a ‘team sport.’”

Clapper’s response to Rogers came just hours before the authors of the ICA were set to deliver the initial draft of the politicized ICA to Intelligence Community leaders.

You can view the declassified emails here.

Read more about the Russia Hoax in ODNI’s previous releases on July 18, July 23, and July 30.

Democrats decry “destroying democracy” while dismantling long-standing institutions, weaponizing agencies, and undermining the very systems they claim to defend.

“Destroying democracy”—the latest theme of the left—can be defined in many different ways.

How about attempting to destroy constitutional, ancient, and hallowed institutions simply to suit short-term political gains?

So, who in 2020, and now once again, has boasted about packing the 156-year-old, nine-justice Supreme Court?

Who talks frequently about destroying the 187-year-old Senate filibuster—though only when they hold a Senate majority?

Who wants to bring in an insolvent left-wing Puerto Rico and redefine the 235-year-old District of Columbia—by altering the Constitution—as two new states solely to obtain four additional liberal senators?

Who is trying to destroy the constitutionally mandated 288-year Electoral College by circumventing it with the surrogate “The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?”

Does destroying democracy also entail weaponizing federal bureaucracies, turning them into rogue partisan arms of a president?

So who ordered the CIA to concoct bogus charges of “collusion” to sabotage Trump’s 2016 campaign, the 2016-2017 transition, and the first 22 months of Trump’s first term?

Who prompted a cabal of “51 former intelligence officials” to lie to the American people on the eve of the last debate of the 2020 election that the FBI-authenticated Hunter Biden laptop was instead the work of a “Russian intelligence operation?”

Who ordered the FBI to connive and partner with social media conglomerates to censor accurate news deemed unhelpful to the 2020 Biden campaign?

Who pulled off the greatest presidential coup in history by using surrogates in the shadows to run the cognitively debilitated Biden presidency, then by fiat canceled his reelection effort, and finally anointed as his replacement the new nominee Kamala Harris, who had never won a single primary delegate?

Who ordered FBI SWAT teams to invade the home

Who tried to remove an ex-president and leader of his party from at least 25 state ballots to deprive millions of Americans of the opportunity to vote for or against him?

Who coordinated four local, state, and federal prosecutors to destroy a former and future president by charging him with fantasy crimes that were never before, and will never again be, lodged against anyone else?

When have there ever been two near-miss assassination attempts on a major party presidential candidate during a single presidential campaign?

Who destroyed the southern border and broke federal law to allow in, without criminal or health background audits, some 10–12 million illegal aliens?

Who created 600 “sanctuary jurisdictions” for the sole purpose of nullifying federal immigration law, in the eerie spirit of the renegade old Confederacy?

Who allowed tens of thousands of rioters, arsonists, and violent protestors over four months in 2020 to destroy over $2 billion in property, kill some 35 people, injure 1,500 police officers, and torch a federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church—all with de facto legal impunity?

How do the purported destroyers of democracy find themselves winning 60–70 percent approval on most of the key issues of our times, while the supposed saviors of democracy are on the losing side of popular opinion?

How does a president “destroy democracy” by his party winning the White House by both the popular and Electoral College vote, winning majorities in both the Senate and House by popular votes, and enjoying a 6–3 edge in the Supreme Court through judges appointed by popularly elected presidents?

So what is behind these absurd charges?

Three catalysts: one, the new anguished elitist Democrat Party alienated the middle classes through its Jacobin agenda and therefore lost the Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, and now has no federal political power.

Two, the Democrat Party is polling at record lows and yet remains hellbent on alienating the traditional sources of its power—minorities, youth, and Independents.

Three, Democrats cannot find any issues that the people support, nor any leaders to convince the people to embrace them.

So it is no surprise that the panicked Democrats bark at the shadows—given that they know their revolutionary, neo-socialist agenda is destroying them. And yet, like all addicts, they choose destruction over abandoning their self-destructive fixations.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

There has been an alarming increase in violent attacks on churches in the United States over the past five years, according to a report from the Family Research Council (FRC).

The organization released its 2024 analysis of attacks on US churches and found at least 415 incidents. “[A]cts of vandalism remained the most prevalent type of hostility against churches, accounting for 284 of the 415 incidents.” Researchers found 55 arson attacks, 28 gun-related incidents, and 14 bomb threats against churches.

FRC warned that “with Christianity seemingly losing influence and respect in American life…there may be less societal pressure to discourage would-be criminals from targeting churches.”

Reports of vandalism ranged from smashed windows to major thefts. In some cases, the vandals caused six-figure worth of damage. “It was angry, intentional, from all I could see,” said a Texas pastor whose church was targeted. “It hurts me there is that kind of anger towards a church.”

Four churches in Ohio faced serious damage from arsonists. A church secretary in Tennessee lost her life in an arson attack. In Florida, a woman who had received assistance from a church torched the building with the flames reaching “30 feet high before firefighters managed to extinguish them.”

In another disturbing incident, a man pointed a pistol at a pastor in the middle of a sermon in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, churchgoers tackled the man before he could open fire.

Some of the attacks appear to be motivated by political ideology. In Florida, a man carried out a bomb threat when he left packages with notes decrying “wokism,” taxes, the war in Ukraine, and other grievances. In another incident, a Kentucky church staffer was assaulted with a hammer.

The report notes that “although the total number of incidents did not increase in 2024, it remained high, indicating a persistent lack of respect and even intolerance toward Christianity and religion in America.”

Other violent incidents involve pro-abortion activists targeting churches for espousing pro-life positions. After a Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe v. Wade was leaked to the public, a spate of pro-abortion violence against churches and pro-life organizations ensued. Vandals hurled Molotov cocktails at church buildings and wrote pro-abortion messages in graffiti on the buildings.

However, many of the attacks did not involve political ideology. Instead, they were crimes of opportunity or personal vendettas. Some of the perpetrators stole copper wiring, air conditioners, and other items so they could sell them for financial gain. The report noted that “not all crimes against churches are motivated by hatred for Christianity.”

However, these attacks reveal a troubling reality: Respect for the church and Christianity seems to be waning in America. It might be tempting to believe that Christianity’s influence has also diminished over recent years. In some ways, I believe this is true.

A Gallup poll released in March 2024 showed that between 2021 and 2023, only 30 percent of adults attended religious services weekly or nearly weekly. This represents a 12-point drop from 42 percent in 2000 to 2003.

But I have to ask the question: If Christianity is no longer as influential in America, then why is it being targeted at unprecedented levels? After all, if the church isn’t exercising influence over the culture, there wouldn’t be a reason for these attacks, would there?

This tells me that while Christianity’s role in American society has taken a serious hit, it is not yet irrelevant. There are some who still view the church as a threat to their ideological agenda. This means all is not lost. Christians still have a strong voice in America. It’s critical that we make sure this doesn’t change.

Jeff Charles, Townhall.com

Putin has decided to talk peace with Trump while he dominates the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. His troops are closing in on Donetsk’s main urban centers, whose capture would give him total control of Donbas, where he already fully occupies the province of Luhansk. But it could be looking to get the best deal possible while he is ahead.

The prolonged sieges and intense urban warfare that capturing Donetsk’s cities of Kramatorsk, Kostyantynivka, and Sloviansk with a combined population of one quarter million and fortified by Ukrainian military engineers during months, risks dangerously overstretching his army and straining Russia’s overheated economy, whose oil revenues have dropped by 18.5 percent, due as much to sanctions as to persistent Ukrainian done strikes against refineries. (RELATED: Putin Caught in an Expanding Spiderweb)

These factors, combined with the secondary sanctions that the White House has just announced against India to start blocking Russian oil exports through third countries, are what’s driving him to meet Trump in Alaska this Friday. It’s Putin who requested face-to-face discussions with Trump, according to U.S. officials who say that he instantly agreed to hold the summit on U.S. territory in an unexpected show of deference that indicates much eagerness on his part.

Putin is losing everywhere except Donetsk, and as he focuses on encircling the Ukrainians, Trump is working to encircle him.

When talk of peace talks began soon after Trump took office last February, The American Spectator noted a brief statement by Putin saying that negotiations would start in “six months.” That was how long he might have projected it would take for his army to enter Donetsk’s main urban centers, containing Ukraine’s military logistical hub in Donbas and important industrial facilities and rare earth mines. (RELATED: Zelensky Has Left Ukraine With a Poor Hand)

Time is now up, and Russia has cut the main arteries connecting Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka to the surrounded citadel of Pokrovsk at the southern end of Ukraine’s defensive lines in Donetsk’s defensive lines, which are effectively broken.

Last week, Russia finally cleared the hilltop fortress town of Chasiv Yar, controlling strategic high ground above Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka — after a 16-month siege. Putin may be getting close to his objectives, but more intense fighting lies ahead as his generals increasingly opt for tactics of gradual encirclement rather than massed frontal assaults to spare the huge casualties that the army may no longer be able to sustain and adapt to a growing shortage of tanks.

Even as Putin moves on Kramatorsk from all directions, the heightened level of fighting anticipated as the U.S. starts squeezing Russia’s war machine with stepped-up sanctions has clearly incentivized Putin to get sincere with Trump after ignoring his previous calls for a ceasefire. He desperately needs to test whether Trump can arrange Ukraine’s handover of Kramatorsk in return for a cessation of hostilities, which is the U.S. president’s long-stated objective.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” said Trump, aware of the grim battlefield realities and President Zelenskyy’s doctrine of holding every inch of Ukrainian territory at all costs. Ukraine’s president has publicly opposed ceding territory to Russia as the latest plan gets unveiled, but Trump says that Zelenskyy should be included in future meetings with Putin, to which Vlad the Impaler has surprisingly agreed. (RELATED: Why Trump and Zelensky Don’t Get Along)

Trump talks about “land swaps” in which Ukraine might concede Donetsk in exchange for Russian withdrawals from other parts of eastern Ukraine. According to State Department sources familiar with the Moscow talks between Putin and White House special envoy Steven Witcoff, Russia would return the southern provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

This seems unrealistic, and Witcoff has walked back statements attributed to him concerning Putin’s willingness to abandon the territories providing vital land corridors linking Russia and the Donbas to the strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea occupied in 2014 and incorporated through a referendum. The most that Putin could readily agree to are limited withdrawals from empty land surrounding a nuclear power reactor located along the outer layers of the Russian front lines. It has been operating under the protection of the U.N.’s IAEA since the start of the war.

Russia might also return areas it has recently occupied along the marshy Dnieper river delta, separating the Ukrainian-held part of Kherson on the west bank from the Russian-occupied east bank. Moscow is unlikely to have much of a problem in formally agreeing to divide the region with the waterway as the demarcation line in a prospective ceasefire.

Putin might also be expected to pull troops out of the northern province of Sumy, which he invaded in pursuit of Ukrainian forces expelled from Russia’s neighboring Kursk region last April. Zelenskyy gambled on holding Kursk for a big land swap with Putin but lost badly at great cost to his army, whose crack units got decimated.

Putin’s daily missile and drone barrages on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities also seem to be taking their toll on Ukrainian morale. According to the latest Gallup polls, 69 percent of Ukrainians favor conceding territory for a peace deal with Russia, the inverse of where public opinion stood six months ago. (RELATED: New York Times Commits Sin of Honesty)

Putin has Zelenskyy squarely on the back foot but fears that a prolonged siege of Kramatorsk could exhaust his army, undermine his strategic position, and gradually weaken future negotiating leverage. Trump says that he wants to “stop the killing as soon as possible,” but may hold back on a deal with Putin and even up the ante economically and militarily to get concessions from him.

Aside from the sanctions that Trump is gradually implementing and will take some time to impact Russia’s war machine, there are reports that the administration is preparing to step up arms deliveries to Ukraine to enhance its defensive as well as offensive capacity.

According to unconfirmed reports, a $10 billion package is on its way to Kyiv that includes Patriot batteries scraped up from U.S. stocks over the objections of certain sectors of the Pentagon: large numbers of AMRAAM missiles for the 32 F-16s delivered by NATO allies allowing Ukraine to challenge Russia’s air superiority and new HIMARS systems and ATACMS missiles for added punch. (RELATED: While Trump Arms Ukraine, US Firms Arm Russia)

It’s telling that when Putin’s National Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev went on one of his customary rants about going nuclear against countries supporting Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian territory, Trump announced that he was moving two U.S. nuclear submarines closer to Russia. Trump also reportedly called Zelenskyy to ask if he could hit Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to what seems like a controlled leak to the Financial Times.

There are further reasons why Putin is suddenly jumping at the chance to talk to Trump. In the same week that the White House announced the Alaska summit, Trump met at the White House with the presidents of Russia’s neighboring Central Asian states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which formed part of the former Soviet Union. He brokered a peace deal over a longstanding territorial dispute between them and established a U.S. strategic presence along Russia’s sensitive underbelly.

The agreement establishes rights of U.S. energy companies to manage a “South Caucasus transit corridor” for gas pipelines into Turkey and eastern Europe and lifts restrictions on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the U.S. In the aftermath of Putin’s manifest impotence against the U.S. and Israel in the war with Iran, closer ties between his Muslim neighbors and the U.S. are of serious concern to the Kremlin.

Putin seems to be losing everywhere except Donetsk, and as he focuses on encircling the Ukrainians, Trump is working to encircle him. Russia’s leader may be a dangerous sociopath but is not divorced from reality. Another major factor present in his mind is Trump’s deal with Europe for the purchase of $750 billion of American fossil fuels. This leaves Russia out of the European market, which has continued to consume Russian gas, eliminating Moscow’s economic leverage on America’s NATO partners. NATO’s agreement to raise its defense spending to 5 percent similarly vanishes any real chance Putin may have of reconstituting the Soviet empire and turning all of Ukraine into a vassal state.

As Putin tests Trump on getting him Donetsk so he can consolidate the only reconquest he is ever likely to make and sell it as a victory to the Russian people, Trump might gauge whether Putin could be scared enough to settle for a ceasefire demarcation line in Donetsk, somewhere east of Kramatorsk.

Martin Arostegui

Martin Arostegui is a terrorism analyst who has reported from conflict zones around the world for various news organizations, including Voice of America, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Times, the London Times, and Diario las Américas. He is author of a book on Special Forces called Twilight Warriors (Bloomsbury, St Martin’s).

The mayoral candidate’s support comes from a young, mostly white, often childless, likely temporary population insulated from the consequences of the urban decline they’re about to cause.

There is a version of American liberalism that treats progress as a shared destiny, social improvement being the gradual and unstoppable realization of the popular hope for a better country and world. This was the rhetoric of the Obama era, a time when the arc of history was bending ever forward and when liberals saw their coming accomplishments as the just and natural fulfillment of past movements and ideas. Leaving aside Zohran Mamdani’s statement that the now widely reviled Bill de Blasio was the best New York City mayor of his lifetime, the 33-year-old state assemblyman and Democratic Party mayoral candidate makes no claims to be completing something that somebody else began. Mamdani dreams of turning America’s capitalist engine into a national beacon of entitlement, a place where the authorities solve all major problems of body and spirit: “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few,” Mamdani said in his victory speech on June 24. “It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker.”

Who doesn’t want “a life of dignity” guaranteed by City Hall? Reality isn’t so accommodating: Leftist experiments in American municipal governance have been a bloody and wasteful disappointment, swiftly earning the hatred of the people these projects claimed to have wanted to help. In San Francisco, progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin lost a 2022 recall election amid the city’s nationally embarrassing deterioration. By 2021, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the once-renowned progressive mayor of Atlanta, was too unpopular to run for reelection. In New York, the left-wing de Blasio, an admirer of the Sandinistas in his youth and probably beyond, struggled to break double digits in polls for a Park Slope congressional primary after two unpopular terms in Gracie Mansion.

However unpopular he may now be, de Blasio looks like a civic giant, the early-21st-century New York mayor likely to have the deepest and longest impact on the city. The charismatic inheritor of de Blasio’s unfinished and unloved ideological project, Mamdani wants a $30 minimum wage, which would strangle law-abiding businesses or drive service jobs into the selectively tolerated informal economy; an indefinite freeze on government-regulated apartment rents, which would further warp an already distorted and exorbitant housing market; a halt on hiring police officers and a focus on a new Department of Community Safety, an experiment that might jeopardize the city’s significant but fragile recent reductions in crime; and free bus service, which would deprive the Metropolitan Transit Authority of about a third of a billion dollars in annual revenue in order to turn the city’s transit fleet into a rolling homeless shelter.

These are not changes that a majority of New Yorkers seem to want. The most optimistic polls for Mamdani have him at about 40 percent support among registered voters, good enough for a commanding lead over a four-way field that includes disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, semi-disgraced current mayor Eric Adams, and 71-year-old paramilitary leader Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. Even with this shambolic opposition, Mamdani is on pace to post the weakest showing for a Democratic mayoral nominee since Bill Thompson cracked 46 percent of the vote in his losing bid against Michael Bloomberg in 2009. It has been generations since a Democratic candidate for the city’s top office polled in the mid-30s, as Mamdani has in several post-primary surveys.

Mamdani’s soft numbers aren’t surprising: His campaign comes at a time when New York has moved steadily to the right. Elected Republicans now represent sections of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island in the City Council, the State Assembly, or in Congress. Donald Trump went from roughly 19 percent of the vote citywide in 2016 to more than 30 percent in 2024. The single Manhattan precinct that Trump won in 2024 was in Chinatown, reflecting Asian American frustration at “equity”-driven attempts to gut merit-based programs in New York City public schools. Dozens of Jewish, Black, and Hispanic neighborhoods were more pro-Trump in 2024 than they had been four years earlier.

Mamdani should be beatable, even with a field divided between unattractive alternatives. Endorsees of the Democratic Socialists of America, the hard-left activist network that pushed Mamdani to victory in his 2021 campaign for a state assembly seat in Queens, hold two of the 51 seats on New York’s City Council, the most ideological of the elected bodies representing the Five Boroughs.

The triumph of a leftism with limited appeal in New York and poor results in the rest of the country increasingly seems inevitable in the New York City that Bill de Blasio built. Inchoate plans for multiple anti-Mamdani super PACs are currently so disorganized that the consultants involved are trashing each other in public: “The usual gaggle of members of the political industrial complex are going to grab as much cash as they can,” Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic political operative, told The New York Times. Centrist Democratic donors in finance and real estate are hesitant to oppose the new face of their party, out of fear of never again being invited to join a museum board or a gallerist dinner or of having their children targeted by private school teachers and administrators who are part of the rising Mamdani voter class. Mamdani has paid just enough lip service to the idea of government-mandated density and policies geared toward preferred private-sector clients—a mix of half-hearted or nonsensical proposals, aimed squarely at the scared and credulous, that commentators have dubbed “Halal-cart socialism”—to earn the non-opposition of the market-friendly right wing of Democratic-aligned domestic policy voices.

The city’s Jewish leaders are approaching Mamdani as if he were already in Gracie Mansion. “No one thinks it’s going to be good for the Jewish community to be hostile and to be in constant war with the next mayor,” one unnamed source told Jewish Insider in an article stacked with similarly cowering and pathetic quotes from activists and foundation officials who would rather not be named. “For the community’s sake, we have to move on.” Who cares if Mamdani remains incapable of condemning would-be globalizers of the “intifada” against Israeli Jews and their supporters, or that he’s spent his brief and unimpressive career in Albany on a quixotic mission to strip many of the state’s Jewish charities of their tax exemptions? The potential costs for these so-called communal organizations opposing a Democratic nominee who got a record 565,000 votes in a mayoral primary are too high, even with his polling average stuck in the high 30s and top Democratic Party leaders declining to endorse him.

Armin Rosen, Tablet Magazine