By Victor Davis Hanson

Recently, Kash Patel, who’s been under fire by the Left in a variety of ways, the new FBI director, he announced that he is shutting down the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., where there’s about 1,500 employees, as I understand it.

There was a lot of outrage. But remember that this was not his original decision. It was the decision during the Biden administration of then-FBI Director Christopher Wray that this 50-year-old building was unsuitable. It was decrepit.

But what was more interesting, in addition to thinking he was going to shut down the building, we don’t know where he wants to relocate the headquarters.

I would prefer—I think some of you—if he put it in Kansas City or somewhere away from the proverbial deep state in Washington. He also said he didn’t understand, of the 35,000 employees, why a third were in Washington. Washington, as dangerous as it can be, does not account for a third of all crimes.

So, he’s trying to disperse or recalibrate the FBI. And are we going to lament the closure of that office and what it represents symbolically? I don’t think so.

Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, was the head of the Special Counsel’s Office. Remember that? And he had the dream team—the all-stars, a hunter/killer team—with the Left. He was almost giddy about that they were gonna get President Donald Trump on Russian collusion. Forty million dollars, 20 months later, they didn’t find anything.

We found all sorts of improprieties within that investigation. Andrew Weissmann and others cleaned their cellphones so that no one could see their text messages. We had Peter Strzok and Lisa Page dismissed from the investigation because of their notorious and now infamous tweets.

We had Robert Mueller go before the House Intelligence Committee and claim that he didn’t know what the Steele dossier was nor what Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was. That was impossible. Those were the two catalysts that prompted his own appointment.

His successor was James Comey. He’s in the news right now for that weird tweet where he said he was walking on the beach and he saw “8647”—get rid of Trump; or maybe, you know, kill Trump; or whatever “86” can mean, it can mean a lot of stuff—and he didn’t understand it. But he’s also got a novel coming out right now about a supposed right-wing celebrity who threatens people and then something happens to the people he threatened. Was this a stunt for his book? I don’t know, but it’s in line with his character.

He went before the same House Intelligence Committee on 245 occasions. He pled either “I don’t know” or “I can’t recall” or “I don’t have that information” or “I shouldn’t give you that information.” Two hundred and forty-five times.

He was the one that set up Michael Flynn and bragged about how naive Michael Flynn was not to have an attorney when he sent agents in to ambush him on the Logan Act. My gosh, nobody ever invokes that.

He was the person who lied to Donald Trump and said, “We don’t have an investigation of you, Mr. President.” And then he went out and recorded that conversation. He did have an investigation. And then he had a third party leak it to The New York Times.

He was the one who hired Christopher Steele. He was an FBI contractor. They used the Steele dossier, which was fraudulent, to get FISA court warrants to, I think, unproperly and unlawfully spy on people like Carter Page. That same office gave us Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who doctored a FISA email to spy on Carter Page.

That same office then gave us the successor to James Comey, interim Director Andrew McCabe. He lied four times, the inspector general said, to federal authorities and three of them were under oath, which was a basis for his firing.

He was followed by Christopher Wray. Why was he spying on parents at school board meetings? Why was he spying on what they called “radical-traditional Catholics”? Why did they go after abortion protesters, but not in the same way people who were protesting pro-life?

And why did they do the Mar-a-Lago raid? Why did they go in there with props and special files and scattered the files on the ground, where they were not there when they came, and then take pictures of them and add a little “classified”? Why did they take away 13,000 documents? And out of the 13,000 documents, they only found 102 that were classified, 0.007%. I could go on with Christopher Wray. This is what he gave us.

He had the chief counsel, James A. Baker, of the FBI working with Twitter and Facebook to suppress news of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The laptop was authenticated by Christopher Wray’s FBI. They kept it silent while 51 supposed intelligence authorities said that it was Russian disinformation. Why didn’t the FBI say, “No, it’s not. We’ve authenticated it for over a year”? Why? Why? Why?

Add it all up—Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Clinesmith, Christopher Wray, Strzok, Page—and I think it’s been a very good but overdue thing to close down that Washington office and close a sad chapter in the history of a once-great agency.

First published in the Daily Signal

By Phyllis Chesler

I have lived in many worlds, and I was privileged to have done so when time moved more slowly, when there was so much more of it for me and for everyone else. Or so it seemed. For those of us who, like me, are now in their eighth decade of life on earth, time has speeded up; it is now at warp speed; days become months, months swiftly become years, and few of us can keep up.

Perhaps one’s experience of time–or perhaps time itself–is now hurtling along on some accelerated track to the future; perhaps younger people still experience time as I once did. I may have less time left in which to do my work. Time has become more precious; it can no longer be taken for granted; one must use it while one still has it.

Yes, I know: The masked demons are burning their diplomas at Columbia. The entire world is engaged in a jihad-like media onslaught against Israel. It has gotten worse. I saw what was coming a long time ago…while I would never desert the battle, I do not want to spend my time jumping on every headline and repeating myself.

I often feel that I have exhausted all my subjects, that my work is now honorably part of the historical record, and that others are now on the job. I’ve had my pioneering say on madness, divorce, custody, motherhood, legalized surrogacy, female psychology, male psychology, feminist legacies, a woman’s right to self-defense, the politically correct mania that has now engulfed us, the trans issue–as well as my work on Israel, antisemitism, Islamist Jihad, Islamic gender and religious apartheid, femicide (honor killing), FGM–and on the existential danger in which Western Civilization now finds itself, etc.

At least in terms of the Israel-related work, others have preceded me; many have also shared the honor and the burden with me on this subject; currently, still others, younger, have joined us on the front-line issues of cognitive warfare, propaganda, the Western curriculum, and on the extraordinary, astounding, unacceptable, and accelerating hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

I have trolled the mainstream media for many years, both in Europe and in North America, and all I can say is that the hatred has only gotten worse; the Big Lies have gotten bigger–but also, that some new groups have begun to acknowledge and try to address these problems.

To repeat myself: The New York Times demonizes Israel every single day. The articles always begin on the front page and continue within, often for two to three full pages, every single day. The international organizations and European countries sanction only Israel (not Russia, not Iran, not Hamas), as often as they can. Even as–or especially because–Israel is making incredible progress in its latest war of self-defense, and at the highest cost possible, the Big Lies, the street demonstrations, the campus interruptions/invasions, the marching hordes have accelerated in the West.

In my last article posted here, I did not include what the consequences have been of the last sixty-five years of vast Muslim migration into Europe, which has led to a dangerous, radical Islamism, one which now threatens to bring Europe down, and further, which has also threatened North America in terms of our education, media, legal systems, and foreign policy. This is the ninth war that Israel is simultaneously fighting.

Yesterday, Germany’s leading feminist, Alice Schwartzer, came to visit and interview me. She is the founder of Emma magazine, and the one who wrote the introduction to my first book, Women and Madness, in German. She was both glad and saddened that we two Second Wave “icons” agree on what faux-feminism is and on what is going on globally.

I told her that while all the young women on American campuses are busy face-veiling themselves as a way of supporting radical, terrorist Islamism, and insisting that it is an anti-racist or pro-free speech for fascism kinda statement–that our very best feminist ideals are now quite alive in many Muslim countries, among dissidents and feminists, and among Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists in the West. I told her that I’ve also discovered that my work on honor killing has been cited many hundreds of times in academic journals published in central Asia and in the Middle East.

So: Am I done? Not by a long shot. I have just finished a sixth and final draft of a new book titled: Talking to the Dead. I plan to work on editing my diaries (1958-1978) next as well as getting as many of my titles back in print and into as many foreign languages as possible. My diaries embarrass me; they are almost like Anais Nin’s diaries. Will I have the courage to reveal my shamelessness, all my mistakes?

Yes, of course, I will continue to weigh in on Israel and the Jews–how can I ever give up this fight? But I may not need to do so quite as often. Perhaps I’ll publish more reviews of operas, films, novels, classics, and historical works (often with Jewish themes), and I’ll study and, from time to time, publish some more Torah interpretations.

Any other burning requests from my most valued readers?

First published in Phyllis’ Substack

By Conrad Black

After less than four months in his second term, President Trump is no less controversial yet steadily more accomplished. Illegal immigration, which reached the proportions of the barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., has effectively been ended. Almost forgotten now are the shameful compromises of Senator McConnell and others claiming that an excellent goal would be keeping illegal immigration to two million people a year.

Even fewer now remember the endless years of hypocritical claptrap from Senator McCain and others about “comprehensive immigration reform,” a euphemism for doing nothing or making conditions worse. The Democratic desire for more votes to be regimented and delivered, despite the lack of citizenship of this new election-clinching constituency, united with the avarice of Republican employers to exploit cheap labor, and to hell with the national interest. The press allowed President Biden and some of his predecessors to claim legislation was necessary to enable them to honor their presidential oath in defending America’s borders.

It isn’t clear how great the savings accomplished by the DOGE may be, and with Elon Musk one must always be ready for hyperbole. Doubtless some people are being disemployed unwisely, and such incidents will receive maximum publicity. Yet this is an effort worth making that will produce material results as well as shaking the complacency of the gigantic Democratic pustule of government in and around the District of Columbia.

Mr. Trump’s opponents tried to turn a thoroughly undesirable person who had entered the country illegally into a civil rights hero while only defending “due process.” This is a bit rich coming from all those who sanctimoniously cheered on the politicization of the intelligence agencies and the FBI, to present Democratic campaign smears in 2016 as the work of legitimate intelligence gatherers so clearly truthful it could be published without any verification, and who supported spurious impeachments and indictments of Mr. Trump, attempts to keep him off the ballot, and who may have been at least indirectly complicit in lapses of security so serious that they almost cost the former president and leader of the opposition his life.

The Democratic Party has allowed itself to become entangled with visa-holding students supporting antisemitism and sanctifying terrorists. All the while, Mr. Trump is accused of being a rudderless force for chaos with Hitlerian ambitions. No effort whatever was made by the previous administration to bring the Ukraine war to an end. It was assumed that Russia would win easily, and the Biden administration completely misread the correlation of forces. For two years, Mr. Biden and NATO gave Ukraine enough material support to survive, but not to win, and there was never any exit strategy, much less one with a satisfactory strategic outcome. Mr. Trump will eventually get a cease-fire because he alone has the ability to create conditions in which both sides need an agreement. His opponents accuse him of being motivated entirely by a desire for a Nobel Peace Prize.

He is the only president who has taken serious counter-measures against the Communist Chinese campaign of unfair trading, industrial espionage, currency manipulation, and intimidation of smaller trading partners, all while being overtly contemptuous of America. There has been the customary press effort to present the recent de-escalation of tariffs between America and China as a climb-down by Mr. Trump, but it is obvious the world is far more concerned with access to the American market than it is with placating the Chinese. So far, Mr. Trump’s tariff plans appear successful and the 130 countries seeking negotiations are looking to limit their own concessions, not aggravate American complaints. Mr. Trump also has the distinction of being the first president since Bill Clinton to pay any attention to the federal budget deficit and to the trade deficit, though it has been a concern since the Carter years.

Ultimately more important than individual policy areas is that the Trump administration is now armed with the knowledge it did not possess in its first term of the depths of perfidy and tenacity of the corrupt Washington establishment, which sustains itself not by popular support but by the self-interest of the elites and the occupation of the commanding heights of unelected, bureaucratic, and regulatory government. Now that the prosecution service has been torn from their hands, they have engaged in industrial-league judge shopping, and redefined democracy as the ability of a thousand district judges individually to stop anything the president of the United States wishes to do. The challenge to the Academy to maintain reasonable toleration of a variety of opinion and to avoid the degradation of higher learning into a battering ram for the destruction of American society and civilized traditions is denounced as fascist authoritarianism, when as the public sees, that is in fact what it is opposing.

About 80 percent of the national political press and the visible academic elite are leftist and they had succeeded in foisting upon a hostile nation anti-American education, systematically dishonest media, biological men destroying womens’ sports, a permanent welcome-mat for the destitute and criminals of the world, hemorrhaging debt, a politicized and corrupt legal system, and diminishing armed forces harassed by racial and gender nonsense. Mr. Trump’s assault on the unrepresentative biases of the academic, journalistic, entertainment, and financial elites is generally popular, and because he is much more knowledgeable of the methods of his enemies than he was eight years ago, and has so convincingly debunked the defamations of those who represented him as a meteoric freak and mountebank, the forces of national defeatism are finally in a state of cold and almost inarticulate terror.

If there is a potential Achilles’ heel on what should now become one of the most important presidencies in American history, it is the president and his family’s fondness for commercial hucksterism. To some extent, this is a question of taste, but some of the Trumps’ recent commercial initiatives, particularly with countries he is in intimate official negotiation with, do not appear to be entirely above suspicion. Mr. Trump is very close to a series of colossal triumphs that will make him a world-historic figure. He should be careful not to give any hostages to his enemies as a result of commercial habits that could be inappropriate to a holder of his great office.

First published in the New York Sun

By Phyllis Chesler

Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago man, executed two people–employees of the Israeli Embassy when they attended the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. As Rodriguez pulled the trigger, he shouted, “Free, Free, Palestine.”

Clearly, he must have felt compelled to do this because he believed every single Big Lie that has been broadcasted and recycled for at least the last sixty years in the West. Assuming his post at X/Twitter is not a fake, Rodriguez, a former member of The Party for Socialism and Liberation and a supporter of Black Lives Matter, posted a Manifesto there. According to The Jewish Voice, The Times of Israel, and The Forward, this Manifesto is in the name of “kyodo.leather” and is signed by a Elias Rodriguex. In it, he writes:

“The atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification … (it is) genocide. The Gaza health ministry records 53,000 killed by traumatic force … what more can one say about the proportion of mangled and burned and exploded human beings whom were children….”.

My God! He is repeating all the articles that I’ve read, over and over again, in The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and in Ha’aretz. Perhaps Rodriguez has read them all. I wonder whether he’s also read Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, and the Electronic Intifada?

Rodriguez no longer believes in non-violent demonstrations but favors “the morality of armed demonstration…. The (his) action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware  of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for whom the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.”

The scholar Bat Ye’or (1971, 2005) understood that the purposeful execution of two people at the D.C. Jewish Center on May 21st was not only bound to happen–but that such executions were already well underway. By the turn of the twenty-first century,  the information, the warnings, the predictions, and the analyses of Islamist Jihad, Islamic gender and religious apartheid, and the true nature of Israel, were in our hands. I both read and was privileged to work with the following visionaries, journalists, and scholars, all of whom were condemned as racist Islamophobes and conservatives.

I am thinking of Jean Raspail (1973), Steven Emerson (1995), Oriana Fallaci (2001, 2004), Daniel Pipes (2002), Alan Dershowitz (2003), Irshad Manjie (2003), Paul Berman (2003, 2010), Pierre Rehov (2004, 2006), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2004, 2006), Natan Sharansky (2004), Andrew Bostom (2005), Bruce Bawer (2006), Nonie Darwish (2006, 2008), Brigitte Gabriel (2006, 2008), Ibn Warraq (2007), Douglas Murray (2007), Robert Spencer (2008), Richard Landes (2008), Gloria Greenfield (2008, 2011), Wafa Sultan (2009), Abigail Esman (2010), Nancy Kobrin (2010), Charles Small (2013), Nidra Poller (2014). This is far from an exhaustive list.

Even I knew that the Western world had been saturated with incendiary Big-Lie propaganda against Israel and the Jews. Such ideas inevitably lead to attacks on Jews in Israel, and on Jews in the West on streets, in synagogues, at Jewish Centers, Jewish Museums, in restaurants, on trains, at nightclubs, and on college campuses in Jihad-like hordes.

This is one way of actualizing the chants to “globalize the Intifada.”

I called for an Iron Dome against the propaganda at least fifteen years ago. I wrote and lectured about this. There were never any takers.

Now, when it is almost too late–really, when it is far too late–people are beginning to wake up. Americans, both Jews and Christians, as well as dissident Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus, are alarmed. Parents of college-age students are concerned; they are starting to advise their children not to attend Ivy League schools, where Jew hatred has long been protected under the banner of free speech and academic freedom; universities where they also hide their Jew hatred by insisting that their anti-Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism.

As I claimed in 2002 and 2003, anti-Zionism is an essential part of the “new” antisemitism. Denying that this is so is tantamount to Holocaust denial.

What must be done when it is long past midnight?

Groups to support Jewish students on American campuses now exist.

For more than a quarter-century, organizations such as MEMRI, Palestinian Media Watch, and HonestReporting have translated and analyzed the unbelievably filthy propaganda against Jews and Israel that exist in Arabic. Canary Mission identifies those in the academic and political worlds whose views are beyond hateful.

NGO Monitor identifies the left-wing and Islamic funding of both propaganda and terrorism.

Long may they continue to do so.

Newly formed groups within the professions (I am familiar with psychology groups) are banding together in various ways to fight the Jew hatred/antisemitism within their professions.

Last night, I was impressed by the press conference held by Washington D.C.’s mayor and chief of police and attended by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Attorney General Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. President Trump personally called all those involved, beginning with the Israelis.

It is all not enough. Israel must be allowed to rid Gaza of Hamas, its rule, its weapons, its tyranny. Israel and the United States must stop Iran in every way possible. Paradoxically, while making economic deals with Qatar, the Trump Administration must stop Qatar, as well as Iran, from funding global terrorism.

Even that is long overdue and simply not enough.

The deprogramming of billions must get underway. And that may take a half-century. This is our next great battle.

First published in Phyllis‘ substack

By Conrad Black

Three weeks ago, all of Spain was startled by a complete electricity blackout without warning. Air traffic control could not contact airplanes, trains stalled in stations or stopped on their tracks mid-journey, telecommunications were knocked out, and a national emergency was declared. These blackouts spread into southern France and Portugal, conveying the regrettable and apparently unsuspected message that if one nation mismanages its grid, it takes its neighbours down with it.

It appears almost certain that the cause of these blackouts was Spain’s hyperactive green energy policies, and the disruption that occurred, unless preventive avoidance measures are taken, was a sobering glimpse into the future for the more environmentally militant countries. Portugal’s grid operator initially blamed the blackouts on “anomalous oscillations” in long-distance high-voltage lines. This supposedly caused an “induced atmospheric variation,” which in turn generated failures of synchronization and power disturbances across the entire European system. Of course, this explanation is incomprehensible even to specialists and appears to be a jumble of technical terms crafted to muddy the political waters about what really happened and who is to blame for it.

All complicated power systems require a steady flow from the source of supply to the place of demand. According to the initial Portuguese explanation (which Portugal’s grid operator has since said was falsely attributed to it), the flow of power was disrupted at some point, which caused an automatic demand for increased backup power from wind and solar sources. This in turn aggravated the desired state of inertia and the entire system failed.

Subsequent reporting indicates that Spain had a small amount of what is known as dispatchable power generation, which means the sources that can be tapped to meet increased demand, such as nuclear power and natural gas. These sources are used to maintain a steady frequency but they do not include wind and solar power, which are known as intermittent power. This is an area where Spain overachieved and produced an unusually high potential contribution from those sources, as much as 80 percent. As Spain is a proverbially sunny country, photovoltaic solar power is comparatively reliable, so when the so-called “atmospheric oscillations” occurred, if they did, the Spanish grid was vulnerable because of its relatively small resources of dispatchable power.

Dispatchable resources are produced by turbines which, when there is some form of overload or apparent oscillation, shut down gradually, unlike renewable power which shuts off abruptly. At the time of writing, the consensus appears to be that the renewable shutdown caused the hemorrhaging blackouts on April 28. Over a week before, on April 16, wind, solar, and hydroelectric together made up 100 percent of the power generated in Spain, causing great publicity and self-congratulation.

Spain, like Germany under the former government of Angela Merkel, has been browbeaten or cajoled by radical environmentalists into building up wind and solar sources of power to enable the shuttering of the much more efficient and reliable nuclear plants, which Germany did in 2023. This reduced Germany to a state of energy vassalage to Russian gas supplied by pipeline. After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Germany conscientiously transferred a good deal of this away from Russia to American liquefied natural gas and lignite coal. Many readers will recall that it was at this point that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unbelievably informed the German chancellor that there has “never been a strong business case” for exporting Canadian LNG to Europe.

In the case of Spain, because of its heavy dependence on wind and solar power, a durable solution to the sort of problem that shut down the country is made more complicated by its deliberate policy decision not to have a substantial replacement capacity of dispatchable power. While the reason for the blackout in Spain has not been absolutely confirmed, the fact that it occurred at all and affected neighbouring countries has severely shaken the customary gamecock self-confidence of the militant greens.

Most advanced Western countries have noted the strength of a bias in favour of the cleanest air and water possible, which is commendable and was overdue in asserting itself. This was a point famously made by John Kenneth Galbraith in his influential book “The Affluent Society” in the mid-1950s. He described a family picnic beside a polluted river and speculated that they could “contemplate the curious unevenness of their blessings.”

The economic realities of the cost of sharply reducing fossil fuel use to the average individual and family have generally collided with and overwhelmed the natural preference all people have for the cleanest possible environment. When these economic considerations are torqued up by acute crises of reliability in the energy supply, the environmental activists are going to be routed. To have recourse again to the jargon of contemporary electric power questions, Spain’s electricity supply has “no graceful failure mode.”

The lesson in all this for Canada is a cautionary one. We have among the greatest hydroelectric resources of any country in the world, and Hydro-Québec remains a world leader in its field. Ontario Hydro preceded public power in Quebec and was a world-admired and pioneering organization, carefully studied by then-New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt and emulated in many aspects in the tremendous project known as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), with which he brought electricity as well as flood and drought control and a canal system to millions of people. The TVA also served as a source for the original creation of atomic energy.

The success of Ontario Hydro is what enabled Sir Henry Pellatt to build Casa Loma in Toronto, but that great enterprise was seriously mismanaged at times, in particular by the McGuinty government, and has been disassembled.

The message Canada should take on board is the danger of over-reliance on so-called sustainable and renewable energy. Such energy is also extremely expensive and perilously unreliable. Access to adequate electric power for everyone is a criterion of modern life that vastly transcends the fads and fashions of environmental zealots. One dares to hope that our new prime minister, who long toiled in the vineyards of environmental zealotry, has taken note of these events.

First published in the Epoch Times

According to the public access Court listing website the Judge is now summing up in the trial of seven men charged with sexual and violent crimes against two young girls in Rochdale. 

To recap

• Mohammed Zahid, 64, of Station Road, Crumpsall, Manchester, is charged with 10 counts of rape; four counts of indecency with a child; and six counts of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse
• Kasir Bashir, 50, of Napier Street East, Oldham, is charged with two counts of rape; and two counts of indecency with a child.
• Mushtaq Ahmed, 66, of Corona Avenue, Oldham, is charged with four counts of rape; four counts of indecency with a child; and a single count of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse
• Roheez Khan, 39, of Athole Street, Rochdale, is charged with a single count of rape
• Mohammed Shahzad, 43, of Beswicke Royds Street, Rochdale, is charged with eight counts of rape; indecency with a child; indecent assault; and assault by penetration
• Nisar Hussain, 43, of Newfield Close, Rochdale, is charged with four counts of rape; indecent assault; and assault by penetration
• Naheem Akram, 48, of Manley Road, Rochdale, is charged with 11 counts of rape; indecency with a child; indecent assault; and assault by penetration

By Victor Davis Hanson

 President Donald Trump just wrapped up a very successful tour of the Middle East Gulf states and touched upon the tense negotiations with Iran, touched upon the Russian/Ukraine war, in addition.

And he took that occasion of being overseas, quite irregular, to blast the prior administrations. I think he was talking specifically about the George W. Bush administration as a faulty foreign policy administration, in the sense that they were nation-building. He blasted neoconservatism. He said that they tried to interfere in the internal affairs of traditional societies.

There’s all an element of truth to that. But it elicited a lot of criticism. Elliott Abrams has been blasting Trump. Rich Lowry has been blasting Trump.

What is their criticism? Their criticism is that his traditional Jacksonian foreign policy—no better friend, no worse enemy; intervening on the behalf of allies; trying to win over neutrals; punishing enemies; not engaging in optional Middle East wars; retaliation only, as in the first term, get rid of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, get rid of Qassem Soleimani, get rid of the Wagner Group, etc., but not insert troops on the ground—that has morphed, according to his critics, now into a mercantile foreign policy where the chief element is to make money and not to have any idealistic element.

But I would say that just because Donald Trump didn’t mention idealism and that we were supporting democratic institutions, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not doing that.

What he’s emphasizing is that there is a common bond in the world. And that common bond is in the heart of everybody. They want peace and they want prosperity and they want security. That’s not necessarily antithetical or exclusionary of freedom because, obviously, economic ability—the ability to make money and the ability to be secure—often has an element of what? Freedom.

And so, Donald Trump’s idea about foreign policy I think is the following: If you get people to agree on particular elements, barometers of peace, and you engage with them economically, then they will see that it’s to their advantage not to commit terrorism or war but to try to mutually profit.

And how does that work throughout the world in these conflicts?

One: In the Ukrainian war, he’s suggesting there be a DMZ between the two sides that are now fighting. They disengage. There’ll be a commercial corridor where foreign entities have concessions to mine rare earths and sanctions are lifted. And then Russia and Ukraine stop this insane war where there’s 1.5 million casualties and counting aggregate on both sides.

In the Middle East, he’s saying to the Middle East: Under the Abraham Accords, if you make a deal with Israel, it’s gonna be beneficial for everybody. You will tap into Israeli expertise, technology. Your oil money will be able to purchase artificial intelligence, biotech, genetic engineering, all of these wonderful things. And you have a Western country right near you.

First published in the Daily Signal

From the Telegraph, X and Fox 5 DC . HT Phyllis Chesler

A gunman shouted “free Palestine” after killing two Israeli embassy workers in Washington DC, authorities said on Thursday morning.

The FBI launched an investigation into the shooting outside the city’s Jewish museum as Israel denounced the attack as a “depraved act of antisemitic terrorism”.

Donald Trump, the US president, said on social media: “These horrible DC killings, based obviously on anti-Semitism, must end, NOW!  Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”

The victims, a man and woman who were planning their engagement, had been walking beside two other people as they left a reception for Jewish diplomats on Wednesday night, when a stranger armed with a handgun approached them and opened fire.

According to Amanda Rothschild of the White House, who was there

The AJC event was for young Jewish professionals working in foreign policy. The panel was on multi faith efforts to address the humanitarian situation in Israel & Gaza. The people who lost their lives tonight were young people dedicated to service & alleviating human suffering.

Police said the suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, then tried to enter the Capital Jewish Museum where the event was taking place. He was detained by security as witnesses rushed to help the victims.

Pamela Smith, the chief of Washington Metropolitan Police, said the suspect had been seen “pacing back and forth” outside the museum before the attack.

She said: “He approached a group of four people, produced a handgun, and opened fire, striking both [of the victims]. After the shooting, the suspect then entered the museum and was detained by event security. Once in handcuffs, the suspect identified where he discarded the weapon, and that weapon has been recovered, and he implied that he committed the offence.

“The suspect chanted ‘free, free Palestine’ while in custody.”

Ms Smith said authorities had not received information about any terror threat and were not aware of the suspect having any prior interaction with police.

Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US, said he had spoken to Mr Trump after the shooting and was reassured by his commitment to tackle anti-Semitism.  He didn’t identify the victims by name during the press conference Wednesday night but said

“The couple that was gunned down tonight in the name of Free Palestine was a young couple about to be engaged. The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem.”

He added that Israelis and the people of the US are “resilient people”. “Together, we won’t be afraid, together we’ll stand – and we’re going to overcome this moral depravity of people who think they’re going to achieve political gain through murder,”

Yoni Kalin, who was at the event, told Fox 5 DC that he heard gunshots. “I did see somebody run in. The security guard happened to let this guy in,” Yoni said. “I guess they were thinking that he was a victim, and he was covered in rain. He was clearly in trauma. He was in shock. Some of the people at the event brought him water. They sat him down. ‘Are you okay? Were you shot? What happened?’ And he’s like, ‘Somebody call the cops, bring the cops in.’ So about 10 minutes later, when the cops actually came in, he said, ‘I did this.’ He said, ‘Sir, I’m unarmed.’ He put his, put his hands up, he grabbed a red keffiyeh out of his pocket and started the ‘Free Palestine’ chant.” Yoni said the suspect continued to yell “Free Palestine” while being dragged out of the building. “I tried to hand his keffiyeh back because I didn’t really realize that he murdered two people,” he said.

From Fox 5 DC He’s quite blatant about his motivation. 

This is from the event at the Capital Jewish Museum, taken by Katie Kalisher. The man being led out by police yells, “free free Palestine.” Kalisher said she did not witness the shooting, but that this man took responsibility for it.@fox5dc https://t.co/fQctdXj39J pic.twitter.com/s6Hivs26uW

— Josh Rosenthal (@JoshRosenthalTV) May 22, 2025

Authorities say they have not had any interactions with Rodriguez before and MPD Chief Pamela Smith said there was nothing in his background that would have placed him on police radar.

Smith says Joint Terrorism Task Force is working very closely with the FBI to do a deep dive into his background.

It’s not yet clear what charges Rodriguez will face, or if this incident will be investigated as a hate crime or even an act of terrorism. But during Wednesday night’s press conference, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser alluded to it.

“I want to be clear that we will not tolerate this violence or hate in our city. We will not tolerate any acts of terrorism and we’re going to stand together as a community in the coming days and weeks to send a clear message that we will not tolerate anti-Semitism,” she said.

From the Telegraph who had the story the earliest that I have found.

A member of Kneecap has been charged with a terror offence after a flag showing support for Hezbollah was displayed at one of the band’s gigs.

Liam O’Hanna, 27, has been accused of displaying a flag in support of the banned terror group on Nov 21 last year.

The Metropolitan Police has said he “displayed an article, namely a flag, in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation, namely Hezbollah, contrary to section 13(1)(b) and (3) of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

Mr O’Hanna (or Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh in the Irish language they speak, and as reported in the Irish Times) will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on June 19.

A rap band from west Belfast who perform mostly in Irish, Kneecap are Mo Chara, DJ Próvai and Móglaí Bap – real names Liam Óg hAnnaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh (John Joseph O’Docherty) and Naoise Ó Cairealláin (Carollan) respectively.

The band are successful – they regularly perform to sell-out crowds, and an eponymous feature film won Iftas and a Bafta – but also controversial, with opponents accusing the rappers of glorifying terrorism.

He hasn’t even been released yet and the authorities have their next silencing tactic lined up. We expected him to be arrested as he left the prison gates…

From the Manchester Evening News

Tommy Robinson is due to appear in court after being charged with harassment.

The 42-year-old far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has been charged with two counts of harassment causing fear of violence, prosecutors said on Wednesday (May 21).

He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for a hearing on June 5.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “We have authorised the Metropolitan Police to charge Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, 42, with harassment causing fear of violence against two men.