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April 2025

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Anti-Israel Officials Sabotaging His Efforts to Disarm Iran by Con Coughlin

By on April 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21564/trump-anti-israel-officials-iran

The appointment, however, of several officials to key national security positions in the Trump administration, who vehemently oppose direct military action against Iran, has raised concerns that the White House might be backing away from its commitment to eliminate the threat Iran poses to global security.

In particular, these concerns relate to the recent appointments to the Pentagon of influential figures such as John Byers for Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (South and South-East Asia), and Michael DiMino, a former career CIA military analyst and counterterrorism official, for Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Middle East).

Similarly, concerns have arisen that DiMino will be able to use his position as the Pentagon’s new chief Middle East policy adviser to advance an anti-Israel stance while questioning the Trump administration’s confrontational stance towards Iran.

As with Byers, DiMino was previously linked to the libertarian Koch brothers, having held tenure as a fellow at the Washington think tank Defense Priorities, which is funded by the Koch team.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff recently downgraded Trump’s professed demands by asking Iran just to lower uranium enrichment — a statement he quickly had to walk back. Iran has already stated that it could move its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium to “safe and undisclosed locations,” presumably for use at a later time. Russia, in an apparent burst of generosity, has offered to host the enriched uranium. How kind of them!

While Trump keeps offering perfect negotiating parameters, such as, “All hostages must be released by Saturday or all hell will break out,” or, “Iran issue is easy to solve, they cannot obtain nuclear weapons,” his statements always seem to be instantly undermined.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Democrats’ Bizarrely Misplaced Empathy Ben Shapiro

By on April 18th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/benshapiro/2025/04/17/democrats-bizarrely-misplaced-empathy-n4939001

This week, Democrats decided to expend their quickly diminishing political capital in defense of a deported Salvadoran illegal immigrant named Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia was deported to El Salvador some weeks ago; the Department of Justice initially admitted that his deportation was an “administrative error.” It turns out that Garcia had an order withholding removal to his home country, due to his claims that returning to El Salvador would risk his life. Nonetheless, the administration flew him to that country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, where he is apparently being held to date.

Initially, a district court judge ruled that Abrego Garcia’s removal was violative of due process, and that the administration had to “facilitate” his return to the United States. The case was elevated to the Supreme Court, which found 9-0 that while the executive branch likely had the power to order his deportation, it still had to follow court orders to “facilitate” his temporary return for due process reasons. The Trump administration, for its part, claims that it has already “facilitated” his release from custody — that they’ve asked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele nicely to release him, and that Bukele has refused. Bukele sat in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump and said just that: “The question is preposterous: how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”

Regardless of the legal wrangling over the case — and there is in fact a solid legal basis to the idea that the administration ought to temporarily return Abrego Garcia just to receive a court hearing, after which he can be deported right back again — Democrats have wrong-footed themselves yet again. This week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., decided to fly down to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia; other Congressional Democrats vowed to do the same. In their telling, Abrego Garcia is an innocent caught up in the mills of wrongheaded justice.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Questions for Carney That the legacy media aren’t gonna ask. by Lloyd Billingsley

By on April 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/questions-for-carney/

Before Canadians cast their votes on April 28 they might run a few questions by Prime Minister Mark Carney, starting with the man Carney has already replaced. For example, did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ever do anything with which you disagreed? Carney hasn’t made that clear, and there’s more to it.

During the Covid pandemic, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of protesting truckers. Does you approve of that action? Does it square with your concept of free speech and civil liberties?

Do you share Justin Trudeau’s admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship?” Did the People’s Republic of China ever do anything with which you disagreed? The PRC maintains police stations in 30 countries, including Canada. Is that a wise policy? Has Canada ever collaborated in any way with China’s military?

Do you agree with David Frum that Pierre Trudeau was “a bad man and a disastrous prime minister?” As Frum explained, Pierre Trudeau “traveled to Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union to participate in regime-sponsored propaganda activities.” Was that a wise choice on Trudeau’s part? Why did the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service destroy secret files on Pierre Trudeau? Can the CSIS be trusted?

According to Justin Trudeau, “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.” Do you agree with Justin? Did Fidel Castro ever do or say anything with which you disagreed? Why does Justin Trudeau look so much like Fidel Castro?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Courage to Fight By John J. Waters and Adam Ellwanger

By on April 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/18/trumps-courage-to-fight/

When the White House invoked the “Immortal Chaplains” to illustrate the history between the United States and Greenland, it touched on a theme emerging in the second Trump administration: the importance of courage.

On February 3, 1943, the American steamship SS Dorchester embarked with 902 souls – soldiers, merchant seamen, and civilians – bound for a U.S. Army base in southern Greenland to support the buildup of military personnel during World War II. The ship’s captain ordered those on board to sleep in their uniforms and life jackets in case of an attack by German submarines, but many disregarded the order because of heat from the ship’s engine.

Just after midnight, a U-boat’s torpedo slammed into the Dorchester’s starboard side below the water line. Four Navy chaplains — a rabbi, a Methodist minister, a Catholic priest, and a Protestant reverend — gave up their own life vests and guided panicked crewmembers to the lifeboats. The Dorchester sank in 20 minutes. One of the 230 survivors later recalled what he saw as he swam away from the ship: “The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could.”

Courage means feeling fear but behaving in a way that is noble and good, as the chaplains did when they acted on their deepest convictions aboard the Dorchester. Donald Trump once wrote that courage is not the absence of fear but “the ability to act effectively, in spite of fear.”

In 2016, Trump showed moral courage when he spoke the truth to American voters: a parasitic “establishment” of political and corporate interests had been exploiting our workers, farmers, and soldiers. When Trump challenged 16 opponents in the Republican primary, he exposed untruths in a conservative orthodoxy passed down from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush. Establishment foes hounded him with investigations and impeachment proceedings throughout the four years of his presidency, but Trump refused to compromise his principles or check his ambition to “make America great again.”

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

DNI Gabbard Must Reverse “Stupid” US Intelligence on Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program U.S. intelligence still claims Iran has no active nuclear weapons program—despite stockpiles of near-weapons-grade uranium and evidence of covert weaponization efforts. By Fred Fleitz

By on April 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/18/dni-gabbard-must-reverse-stupid-us-intelligence-on-irans-nuclear-weapons-program/

Iran’s nuclear weapons program made tremendous advances over the past four years and can now enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb in less than a week. Despite this fact, America’s intelligence agencies are sticking to their longtime position that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.

This line of reasoning is so ridiculous that a former CIA director once called it “stupid intelligence.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard should do away with this “stupid intelligence” immediately because the evidence for an active Iranian nuclear weapons program is overwhelming and undeniable.

Iran claims it is enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes to produce fuel for its one operational nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, two or three small research reactors, and to make radiopharmaceuticals. This claim is farcical. Iran imports fuel rods for its Bushehr nuclear power reactor because it cannot produce them domestically. Iran could also obtain radiopharmaceuticals and fuel for its research reactors at a much lower cost on the international market.

More importantly, the huge amount of near-weapons-grade uranium Iran is enriching is clearly part of a nuclear weapons program because enrichment at this level can be used for only one purpose: nuclear bomb fuel. Iran can now enrich enough uranium to fuel one nuclear weapon in less than a week and 14 in about four months, according to a February 2025 report by the Institute for Science and International Security.

This is a significant increase from late 2020, when Iran could only enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for two bombs in about 5.5 months.

In addition, Iran has spent billions of dollars to develop a covert nuclear weapons infrastructure and to conduct research on producing nuclear warheads. The Iran Nuclear Archive—secret documents on Iran’s nuclear weapons program stolen from Iran by Israel in 2018—also revealed that Iran has acquired several nuclear bomb plans.

The Iran Nuclear Archive also confirmed that although Iranian officials scaled back their nuclear weapons effort following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the program quietly continued as a classified operation with a sophisticated deception effort to conceal its existence from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and the world.

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BOOKS, ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Understands the Enemy It Faces — Do the Rest of Us? Douglas Murray

By on April 18th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/06/israel-understands-the-enemy-it-faces-do-the-rest-of-us/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module

From the book On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, by Douglas Murray. Copyright © 2025 by Douglas Murray. Reprinted by permission of Broadside Books, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.

Iran against the West

Today the government most responsible for spreading the accusation that Israel is expansionist and colonialist is the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran, which has spent recent years assiduously expanding its colonies. What has Gaza become but a colony of Iran? What has Iraq become since Iran moved into the vacuum left by America after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Or Yemen? Or Syria, into which Iran had poured Hezbollah and other forces? Iran and its proxies and mouthpieces in the West have spent years accusing Israel of being a colonial, expansionist state while all the time expanding and colonizing everywhere they can reach in the region. Why did the mullahs order Hezbollah to engage in the Syrian civil war except to prop up Syria as a forward base of Iran? And what of Lebanon, which even in 2006 still had a government able to distance itself from the actions of Iran’s army, Hezbollah. By the time Hamas started its October 2023 war against Israel and Hezbollah joined in, Lebanon had become practically a colony of Iran — with Hezbollah ruling the country by terror and setting up its weaponry among Lebanese civilians. For years Hezbollah had set up checkpoints at Beirut Airport for passport control and had acted as the government of that country, whether the people wanted that or not. And there is much evidence that they do not.

Everywhere the same rule holds. Groups like Hamas that delight in their bloodlust accuse the Israelis of being insatiable killers. Palestinian groups and their supporters who encourage their youth to view death through “martyrdom” as the highest form of valor claim that the Jews are bloodthirsty child-killers. People who use rape as a weapon of war accuse the Israelis of insatiably raping prisoners in Israeli jails.

On January 31, 1979, a flight took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Its destination was Tehran, where it would land the following day. The plane was carrying the Ayatollah Khomeini, a fanatical Shiite leader who had been living in exile from his native Iran for more than 14 years. His return heralded the end of the reign of the shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), the overthrow of the shah’s government, and the turning point of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Khomeini and his supporters swiftly seized power, took 52 American citizens and diplomats hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran, and proceeded to kill their domestic political opponents. This included the communists and trade unionists who had struggled alongside the Islamists to overthrow the shah.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Tal Fortgang Universities Are Hiding Behind “Due Process” Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber seeks to distract from his university’s tolerance of anti-Semitism.

By on April 18th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-columbia-university-anti-semitism-princeton-christopher-eisgruber-due-process

“All process arguments are insincere,” political historian Michael Barone once observed wryly. So it’s no surprise that Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber, in defending the nation’s elite universities, has reached for precisely such arguments. After all, insincerity may be all these institutions have left.

Eisgruber has taken a curious stance in an Atlantic essay and a follow-up interview with the New York Times on the Trump administration’s response to anti-Semitic activity at Columbia University. On one hand, he declares that opposing anti-Semitism is “a fundamental responsibility for any university president,” and concedes that it was “legitimate” for the government to “require the university” to address the problem. On the other, he accuses the Trump administration of disregarding “due process” in cutting off Columbia’s federal funds—an action he claims undermined “academic freedom.”

This argument collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

Consider the process “due” under the Civil Rights Act to universities accused of tolerating discrimination. The Department of Education begins by opening an investigation—as it has at Columbia and Princeton. It must then give the university an opportunity to come into “voluntary compliance” with the conditions set to remedy the discrimination.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Do Desperate Dems Really Want To Die On Illegal Immigration Hill?

By on April 18th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/18/do-desperate-dems-really-want-to-die-on-illegal-immigration-hill/

The Democratic Party is twisting in agony over its newfound lack of popularity among rank-and-file voters, including those within its own party. To understand why, the party needs look no further than its support for bringing illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia, you see, was among those here illegally who were deemed criminal enough to be shipped immediately back to their home country. Abrego Garcia is not an American citizen; he is Salvadoran, both by birth and by legal citizenship.

Sending Abrego Garcia back should have been a slam dunk. And it was, until U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg found “probable cause” for holding the Trump administration in criminal contempt of his March order forbidding the deportation of Abrego Garcia.

Now we’re told this is a “constitutional crisis.”

It’s true the Justice Department admitted making an “administrative error” in sending Abrego Garcia back when they did, but that error wouldn’t have changed his deportation status; only it’s timing.

It’s also true that the Supreme Court has said that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, as if Trump controls El Salvador’s prisons.

For the record, on Monday, meeting at the White House with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Trump explained why he couldn’t “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from prison.

Because he can’t.

Indeed, Bukele was asked point blank by the media if he’d send Abrego Garcia back. His response: “Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Will Trump and Witkoff repeat Obama and Kerry’s Iran blunders? Negotiations led by a compromised envoy for an administration that remains divided over stopping Tehran’s nuclear ambitions aren’t likely to succeed. Jonathan Tobin

By on April 18th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/will-trump-and-witkoff-repeat-obama-and-kerrys-iran-blunders/?utm_campaign=

It’s too soon to declare the Trump administration’s policy toward Iran a failure. In time—and perhaps less time than Tehran might think—President Donald Trump may resolve the open debate between members of his foreign-policy team over whether continued efforts at diplomacy are the proper course of action or if military force is needed to stop the Islamist regime from getting a nuclear weapon.

At present, however, the debate going on inside the administration about the issue and the manifest incompetence of his already compromised Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, does not, to understate the matter, inspire much confidence in a good outcome being achieved. The only reason to think otherwise is if you trust the president’s ability to tell the difference between a deal that actually eliminates the Iranian threat and one that won’t, and believe that he’s truly willing to back up his bellicose language with action.

What stands out about the situation is that it appears to be the only major issue on which Trump’s appointees are not speaking with one voice and pursuing a common agenda. And it is that division within its councils that is both preventing a decisive approach and likely causing the Iranian regime to think that it can get away with the same tactics that allowed it to emerge as the victor in past negotiations with the Obama and Biden administrations.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Witkoff In His Own Words Is Witkoff breaking new ground or repeating Biden’s errors? by Daniel Greenfield

By on April 17th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21563/wikoff-in-his-own-words

Witkoff, whatever his flaws, is far more honest than his PR men on X or Capitol Hill, and has never denied that he was just implementing the policies of the Biden administration.

What new solutions has Witkoff come up with? The Obama ones. Negotiate with terrorists. Pretend they’re reasonable. Give them what they want. Act confused when it doesn’t work out.

Figuring out what the terrorists want and trying to give it to them were the signature diplomatic policies of the Carter, Clinton and Biden administrations. Those are the “old-school globalist solutions,” which is why President Donald Trump is such a breath of fresh air and Witkoff isn’t.

Whatever Witkoff’s agendas are, he’s in over his head, and he outsourced his negotiations to everyone from the Biden team to the Islamic terror state of Qatar, with whom he’s done business and whose terrorist leaders he has repeatedly praised. Knowing nothing about the Middle East hasn’t given him a fresh perspective: it just made him an easy dupe for everyone who does.

It’s an honest admission. Witkoff’s defenders, who pretend that he’s a genius shaking up diplomacy by appeasing Islamic terrorist states, could at least try to be as honest as him.

What new solutions has Steve Witkoff come up with? The Obama ones. Negotiate with terrorists. Pretend they’re reasonable. Give them what they want. Act confused when it doesn’t work out.

Steve Witkoff, the real estate tycoon turned international negotiator, has become the subject of controversy with some conservatives attacking him and others rushing out to defend him.

“In a world left in chaos thanks to Joe Biden, Steve Witkoff is the diplomat America needs right now,” US Senator Jim Banks claimed this month.

Tucker Carlson hailed Witkoff as “the most effective American diplomat in a generation.”

But Witkoff, whatever his flaws, is far more honest than his PR men on X or Capitol Hill, and has never denied that he was just implementing the policies of the Biden administration.

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