RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5291004-republicans-trump-support-agenda/

That didn’t take long. After a few months of celebrating Donald Trump’s astonishing political comeback by offering the president near-unanimous support, Republicans are going squishy.

The Trump agenda is hanging by a thread. Congress, which up to now has done very little to help the White House solve our border crisis, codify DOGE spending cuts or rebalance our justice system, now has to act. They have to pass a “big beautiful” bill to extend the tax reductions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act while incorporating some of the campaign promises the president made, like eliminating taxes on tips.

This is no time for weak knees; failing to extend the tax cuts could throw the economy into recession and clobber Republicans in the midterms.

Unhappily, some GOP legislators have been wilting over cutting Medicaid, while others torpedoed President Trump’s pickfor U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. It looks like a dip in Trump’s approval rating and uncertainty about the success of his economic program are causing palpitations throughout the caucus.

We hoped for more. After all, Republicans would likely not be in charge of the House or Senate but for Trump’s extraordinary win. Surely that should earn him more than 100 days’ support.

At the top of Trump’s agenda is the reconciliation bill, into which Congress will jam as many of the president’s campaign promises as possible. Under the rules governing reconciliation measures, reductions in revenues for not taxing overtime, for instance, must be paid for. One solution is cutting Medicaid, a program that has spiraled out of control and is ripe for a serious overhaul.

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/05/08/wheres-the-beef-its-in-trumps-trade-deal-with-britain-n4939594

The first of the cascade of trade and tariff deals expected under the new Trump administration was announced in the Oval Office on Thursday. The “unprecedented” deal was the first time in decades that American producers will have freer and “streamlined customs” access to the U.K. markets.

The announcement allows the sale of U.S. beef into the U.K. for the first time in decades and ensures an increase in the purchase of Boeing commercial jetliners.

Flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance and on a conference call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President Donald Trump announced an agreement “worth billions of dollars” with the U.K. that reconfigures tariff prices on goods, expands the market for American farmers and ranchers, and added a phalanx of Boeing jetliners to that nation’s commercial fleet.

The Trump White House called it “a breakthrough” and “a good deal.”

The “unprecedented” deal not only includes U.S. tariffs but also a reduction in tariffs by the U.K. The deal introduces a reset of the baseline framework for trade, which will create a $5 billion in exports opportunities for American farmers, ranchers, and other producers can sell into the U.K. That includes beef. 

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that the beef deal with “exponentially” increase the amount of beef that ranchers sell. 

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/08/would-the-left-finally-explain-the-inexplicable/

Somewhere between 10 and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration.

As far as logistics go, Biden could not flee Afghanistan without getting 13 Marines killed and abandoning to the terrorist Taliban $50 billion in munitions, a billion-dollar embassy, and a $300 million retrofitted huge airbase.

But Biden and his handlers proved far more logistically capable when their target was fellow Americans.

After all, they somehow managed to stop the congressionally approved continuance of the border wall, to subvert federal immigration law, to emasculate the border patrol, and to ensure that millions of people around the world could simply walk into the U.S. illegally, unaudited and with impunity.

But why did Biden or his puppeteers do something so anarchic, so injurious to their fellow Americans?

Why cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in massive new entitlements?

Why swamp the social services of our own poor citizens?

Why turn loose half a million criminal aliens and gang members to prey on our own weak and defenseless?

Was the idea to alter the demography in one fell swoop? To grow the dependent class, thereby expanding government?

Was it pure spite born of hatred of half the country?

Was it to ensure future constituencies, given that the Democratic agenda no longer appeals to most Americans?

Was it a globalist gambit to demonstrate borders are anachronistic?

Was it to fast-track new voters under the laxity of post-2020 early- and mail-in voting protocols?

Those who perpetrated the greatest ruse in American presidential history by staging the Biden presidency will never tell us what their ultimate agenda was.

https://tomklingenstein.com/george-soros-the-man-and-his-empire/

He’s the universal symbol of progressive tyranny, the image of Davos despotism. He’s the immigrant who broke the Bank of England and hedge fund master who plundered Wall Street. He’s a globe-trotting globalist active in dozens of countries, yet loyal to none. He’s the embodiment of philanthropy’s decay from its biblical pedigree into cultural Marxism. He’s a narcissist out to remake the world in his own cynical image. To those familiar with his “open society” ideology, he’s a menace bent on killing the West. 

For millions across the world, George Soros is simply the face of evil.

But much of the notorious mega-donor’s life and legacy is complicated and hazy. Even at 94, Soros wields enormous influence over the institutional Left — the armada of activist, lobbying, policy, and litigation groups that really run the modern Democratic Party — something he aims to pass on to his 39-year-old playboy son and heir, Alexander, who took control of his father’s hedge fund and foundations less than two years ago.

This writer began reporting on George Soros’s dark money spigot at its zenith in the early Trump years, when it seemed money could buy anything in Washington. Fast forward to 2025, and Soros’s open society vision is itself on the ropes — and that’s stunning.

For decades, Soros shaped the Left into the emerging totalitarian force Americans roundly rejected in November 2024. Billions of his dark money dollars launched Washington’s professional activist class from the fringe to the heart of the Democratic establishment. Now, however, even Democratic strategists are complaining that the party takes too many directives from the woketariat: the “college-educated elites” guilty of “placing a hard ceiling on Democrats’ appeal and fatally wounding them in the places they need to win,” as one operative groused after Election Day. 

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“The only Democrat group that is not actually proud of their country to a large extent at this point is progressive activists,” says liberal pollster Ruy Teixeira, who once predicted the rise of a permanent Democratic majority. “If you are trying to sell to people the idea that…America is fundamentally a benighted, almost dystopian place that was born in slavery, marinaded in racism, and white supremacists of this very day, and, you know, runs around oppressing the world’s people[,] I don’t see why anyone would sign up with you.”

For anyone familiar with the Democratic machine’s inner workings, that’s tantamount to rebellion, and utterly unprecedented. For two decades, Beltway activists — and the multi-billion-dollar foundations behind them — have ruled America’s liberal party with an iron fist. Yet in his twilight years, George Soros may live to see that once unshakeable legacy collapse. 

The Early Years

The project to fundamentally transform America may have peaked around 2020, but its most influential architect began his life in 1930 Budapest.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/08/defund-the-united-nations/

The United Nations is running short of cash. This is not a crisis but an opportunity. Please rid us of this meddlesome, venal and baleful organization.

The Economist reports that “internal modeling” at the U.N. “suggests that the year-end cash deficit will, without cuts, probably blow out to $1.1 billion, leaving it “without money to pay salaries and suppliers by September.”

Apparently “some members are paying their bills late and others not at all” and it is the U.S. and China that “are pushing it to the brink of financial collapse.”

Who says the U.S. and Beijing have no common interests?

Two weeks into the second Trump administration, the White House announced it was considering withdrawing the country from, and ending funding for, three U.N. agencies, including the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“UNRWA has reportedly been infiltrated by members of groups long designated by the secretary of state as foreign terrorist organizations,” says the White House, “and UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.” 

Meanwhile, “UNESCO has demonstrated failure to reform itself, has continually demonstrated anti-Israel sentiment over the past decade” and has shown that it will not “reform itself.”

The U.S. is also quitting the U.N. Human Rights Council, which it has done once before, in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term. The misnamed Human Rights Council “has protected human rights abusers by allowing them to use the organization to shield themselves from scrutiny,” says the White House.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/doge_is_doing_the_clean_up_leftists_can_t_stand.html

In this allegorical scenario, Honey and Hank moved into a cozy home in a small community in New England 30 years ago.  The next day, their neighbor, Irene, brings over a hot, homemade casserole to welcome them to the neighborhood.

Within minutes, Honey and Irene “connect” in a phenomenon known as human chemistry.  They just seem to “get” each other.  And as their relationship evolves, they learn that they are on the same page on just about everything: raising kids, favorite foods, must-see TV programs, Mommy-and-Me classes, even the crocheting and knitting that their grandmothers taught them.  And each of them has three children, with two of them having the same name!

As luck would have it, their husbands also hit it off and have quite a lot in common, the biggest that both are on-the-road salesmen.

Over the years, the couples become so close that they vacation and celebrate birthdays and holidays together.  Honey and Irene even exchange house keys and list each other as emergency contacts on medical forms.

All good…for 30 years!

Uh-Oh…

Then, one day, Honey gets a phone call from her bank manager, Mr. Hervey, requesting that she and Hank come in for a sit-down.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/07/hyperbole-lies-and-delusions/

CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s speech in New Hampshire last week was greeted by the media as yet another stirring call to arms for the rudderless Democratic Party.

“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption – but I am now,” Pritzker thundered. “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.”

Republicans protested that the governor came close to inciting political violence – and they have a point, given the attempts to assassinate Donald Trump, the dangerous attacks on Tesla, and the near-kidnapping of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

However, what Pritzker had to say in his speech before channeling Maxine Waters’ infamous call to harass Republicans should not be overlooked. It raises an important question: Is Pritzker delusional, a liar, or merely hyperbolic?

Hyperbole, lies, and delusions are all forms of falsehoods, but of different magnitudes. The first are exaggerated claims not meant to be taken literally. Trump himself is no stranger to this oratorical device. Lies are exaggerations or falsehoods the speaker wants others to believe – and, while shameful, are a too-frequent feature of modern political discourses. Delusions are false beliefs at odds with observable reality.

Jerry Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” is an example of hyperbolic name calling. Seinfeld and his audience understood it was an exaggeration so grotesque that it was funny. No one thought the soup guy was actually a member of the SS. Jussie Smollett’s claim that MAGA bros assaulted him was a lie, albeit a calculated, elaborate, and harmful hoax. The Salem witch trials were the terrible consequence of a mass delusion.

So, is Pritzker channeling Seinfeld, Smollett, or Cotton Mather?

“It’s wrong to snatch a person off the street and ship them to a foreign gulag with no chance to defend themselves in a court of law,” Pritzker said.

“Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the most effective campaign slogan in history,” he said before adding, “Today it’s an immigrant with a tattoo, tomorrow it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21597/ve-day-national-holiday

I was just a young boy when World War II ended, but I can still remember the enormous burst of elation in my Brooklyn neighborhood when it was announced on May 8, 1945 that Germany had surrendered. We knew that Imperial Japan was still a tough and dangerous adversary, but no one knew that three months and two atomic bombs later, the war would be brought to an immediate end.

As we approach the 80th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II, we are morally compelled to reflect on a seminal conflict that took over 70 million lives. We need to memorialize that enormous loss while appreciating that it reshaped the global order then, and continues to impact us today and far into the future.

President Donald J. Trump is correct in stating that the end of this conflict is so important it deserves to be observed by this nation every year.

His comments recognize the sad reality that the final frontline witnesses to this war are departing, transforming our relationship with this historical period from one of personal recollections to the documents written by historians. This irreparable loss requires us to safeguard those first-person stories and, equally important, to impart the war’s lessons to a new generation of Americans, many of whom remain sadly ignorant of even the most basic facts about World War II.

While the focus has traditionally been viewed through the experiences of Europeans and Americans, we need to appreciate that the war impacted people across Northern Africa, Asia and the Pacific. It created a United Nations organization that is still struggling to be relevant and effective as an honest peacekeeping force. Postwar, the United States assumed the role of economic global superpower, a trust it continues to this day.

As I remember the Brooklyn celebrations of Victory in Europe (VE Day), some might say, “Why continue to commemorate a conflict that should now be consigned to the bookshelf?” Because it reminds our nation of the sacrifices required to defend our freedoms and how missteps, errors of judgment, and national unpreparedness can lead to catastrophe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/trump-takes-on-a-globalist-trading-system-rigged-against-the-u-s/

For decades, U.S. presidents and congressional leaders from both parties rolled over and accepted global trading arrangements that have put the United States at a great disadvantage. The result is that the United States had a $1.2 trillion goods trade deficit in 2024, the largest of which has been with China.  

A fact sheet issued by the White House on April 2nd explains the stakes in what amounts to other countries’ economic attacks on America: “Large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits have led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base; resulted in a lack of incentive to increase advanced domestic manufacturing capacity; undermined critical supply chains; and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries.”

President Trump has decided that enough is enough. He is using America’s enormous leverage to pressure its trading partners to ditch their unfair trade barriers and level the playing field. The White House fact sheet calls this “the golden rule on trade: Treat us like we treat you.”

America’s trading partners have imposed tariffs on U.S. goods imported into their countries that are far steeper than the tariffs that the U.S. has imposed on their goods. Even more insidiously, America’s trading partners have erected high non-tariff trade barriers that stifle U.S. companies’ access to their markets. These countries also flood the U.S.’s far more open markets with goods at prices subsidized by foreign governments that American companies cannot compete with.