Donald Trump was for the Iran war before he was against it. His latest post on social media about the conflict indicated that he is once more calling off a sweeping military action, this time at the behest of his Gulf allies who are apparently quaking at the thought of a renewed conflict. Trump’s initial sentence was quite a mouthful:
I have been asked by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place, and that, in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America, as well as all Countries in the Middle East, and beyond.
Its import seems clear enough: Trump is going wobbly. Small wonder. Trump thought he was getting a Venezuela 2.0. Instead, Iran has played Ronda Rousey to his Gina Carano. Iranian General Abdolrahim Mousavi Abdollahi, commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, told Trump that Iran is “more prepared and powerful than ever.” He added that it would respond to a fresh attack “swiftly, decisively, and with overwhelming force.”
If leaked American intelligence reports are anything to go by, the general isn’t whistling Dixie. Those reports indicate that Tehran has reconstituted much of its missile force. So much for Trump’s repeated claims that Iran’s military has been laid waste.
Here’s hoping that Trump’s palpable hesitation about a renewed bombing of Iran prompts him to seek a genuine modus vivendi with the country, one that will require him to abandon the demand that it surrender its entire stash of enriched uranium. Containment of Iran should be his goal. It has always seemed strange that a president who could play kissy-face with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un would deny himself the opportunity to reach a peace deal with Iran.
Yes, the regime is an odious one, but there’s no indication that it’s going anywhere. If anything, Trump’s ill-conceived military campaign appears to have bolstered the mullahs as they exercise the right of usufruct over the Straits of Hormuz. Should the war continue much longer, it will torpedo, not Iran’s military, but the world economy.
Trump, in other words, has good reason to seek an exit posthaste. For one thing, his poll numbers could hardly be more dismal. He can enforce discipline against the likes of Senator Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary, and Congressman Tom Massie, who appears about to lose his, but Trump’s wider unpopularity threatens the fortunes of the Republican party itself (though whether this is of acute concern to him is another matter).
According to a New York Times/Siena poll a mere 30 percent of Americans approve of the decision to go to war with Iran while 64 percent disapprove. Overall, his approval rating stands at 37 percent.
Then there is the economy. Here, too, Trump is cratering. Inflation is headed towards 5 percent. Trump plans to swear in Kevin Warsh as the new head of the Federal Reserve at the White House, a break from tradition. Trump wants Warsh to serve as his faithful retainer at the Fed rather than an independent steward of America’s finances.
But how Warsh, a lifelong inflation hawk, can accede to Trump’s incessant demands for swift and sweeping interest rate reductions at a moment of soaring prices is as murky as the UFO files that the government has been releasing.
The truth is that for all his bluster about ushering in a new golden age, it has been back to the future under Trump. Back to the high gas prices of the Biden administration. Back to soaring inflation. And back to a president who, more often than not, has trouble remaining awake to perform the most elementary of his duties.
U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., has had a lower profile than other Democrats, but now is a contender to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. That higher profile is coming with more scrutiny of her past positions, including her positions on Cuba.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said if Bass becomes vice president she “will be the highest-ranking Castro sympathizer in the history of the United States government.” Democrats who represent large exile communities in south Florida have raised concerns, too.
Bass rejected Rubio’s characterization and called the Castro regime “brutal.”
“Well, one, I don’t consider myself a Castro sympathizer,” she said on Meet the Press recently. “Number two, my position on Cuba is really no different than the position of the Obama administration.”
Bass’ record on Cuba has raised questions about whether it will torpedo her chances to help Biden in Florida, a state with exiles who fled repressive regimes, including Cuba and Venezuela. In 2018, Florida Republicans attacked Democrats repeatedly as socialists and ultimately won those races by tiny margins.
Her critics point to three things about Bass and Cuba: her visits to the island as a young person in the 1970s, her comments on Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, and her overall policy positions on Cuba.
We found that Bass supported former President Barack Obama’s re-engagement policy on Cuba. She has walked back her comments on Castro’s death, and she has said that her early visits there need context.
Bass as an elected official
Bass won her election for the California state assembly in 2004. She visited Cuba while in the state assembly and a few times after joining Congress in 2011. She traveled with the Center for Democracy in the Americas in 2011 to visit American political prisoner Alan Gross and with MEDICC to look at diabetes medication, her office said.
In a TV interview in August 2015, Bass, who had worked in the past as a physician assistant, spoke about her desire to test medications from Cuba used to help diabetics and about business opportunities in Cuba.
“Why wouldn’t we have a relationship with an island 90 miles off our coast with a population about the size of L.A. County — not exactly a threat?” she said.
During Obama’s second term, Obama called for normalizing relations and making it easier for Americans to travel there. Biden has said that he would return to Obama’s Cuba policy.
“In large part, I would go back,” Biden told CBS4′s Jim DeFede. “I’d still insist they keep the commitments they said they would make when we, in fact, set the policy in place.”
Bass repeatedly praised Obama’s policies to re-engage with Cuba. In 2014, she said she hoped it would lead to a “free flow of ideas and trade, including a new avenue for agricultural businesses in California” and provide opportunities to “test and share medical breakthroughs.”
Bass traveled with Secretary of State John Kerry to Havana in 2015 when the American flag was raised at the U.S. embassy.
She also traveled with Obama in March 2016 on his visit to Cuba when Obama met with Raul Castro and spoke to the Cuban people. During that visit, Bass tweeted a photo of herself from her 1973 visit to Cuba.
“#ThrowbackThursday to my first visit to #Cuba in 1973. Never imagined I would one day return with @POTUS!”
Bass visits to Cuba in the 1970s
Bass first visited Cuba in 1973 when she was 19 years old. The Atlantic magazine reported that she traveled as part of the Venceremos Brigade, a program jointly organized by the Castro government and the Students for a Democratic Society, a U.S. group. The Brigade organized trips for left-leaning Americans to Cuba.
“We built houses during the day,” Bass said, “and then we had what they called cultural activities and we called parties. There was great music, rum, dancing. And we toured the country.” She said she went to hear Castro speak and found him “charismatic,” although she couldn’t understand what he said.
Bass, who is now chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told The Atlantic that she saw a connection between Black Cubans and Black Americans, but knew that Cubans didn’t have the same freedom to protest.
“I didn’t have any illusions that the people in Cuba had the same freedoms I did. I came home and was protesting everything; I knew that the Cuban people didn’t have the ability to do that,” she told The Atlantic.
Bass was in Cuba eight times in the 1970s and saw Castro speak multiple times.
There have been allegations that Cuban intelligence was connected to the Brigade and that the Cuban military gave weapons training to the group. But Bass told The Atlantic that she was never involved in anything like that and never used a gun there. She was taught how to use a gun for target practice during a Brigade campaign trip in California and later learned the person was an undercover police officer.
What Bass said when Castro died
Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008 and handed over power to his brother Raul. When Fidel Castro died in November 2016, Bass released a statement:
“As Cuba begins nine days of mourning, I wish to express my condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Fidel Castro. The passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba. I hope together, our two nations will continue on the new path of support and collaboration with one another, and continue in the new direction of diplomacy.”
The phrase “Comandante en Jefe” translates to commander in chief. The phrase was used by Castro to refer to himself in an effort to give him legitimacy, and it was used by the Cuban government. Using the title can be considered the equivalent of calling a dictator by his chosen title, said Sebastián A. Arcos, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
Using that title would anger and offend exiles, said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Miami.
“For the Cuban exile community it is akin to giving Hitler the deference of ‘Fuhrer’ to an audience of Holocaust survivors,” Amandi said. “The title was never ordained by the Cuban people; it was self-appointed by Castro himself without validation by any type of popular election.”
Bass told The Atlantic and MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and Chris Wallace on Fox News that she used the wrong words.
“I was expressing condolences to the Cuban people, to the people in Cuba, not Cubans around the world. I don’t think that is a toxic expression in California,” she said on Meet the Press. “But let me just say, Chuck, lesson learned. Wouldn’t do that again. Talked immediately to my colleagues from Florida and realized that that was something that just shouldn’t have been said.”
But that explanation is still problematic, said Amandi.
“Why offer condolences to oppressed Cuban people after the demise of their oppressor, jailer torturer and, in many instances, murderer?”
America has repeatedly been declared a dying empire, yet every rival—from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union to China—has ultimately fallen short of US power and resilience.
America: The Real Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon America has repeatedly been declared a dying empire, yet every rival—from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union to China—has ultimately fallen short of US power and resilience.
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 19, 2026
e Right alike, especially among the hate-Trump crowd—is that the communist colossus will be forever ascendant, with continued astonishing levels of food production, ship construction, and industrial output.In this pessimistic view,China will soon replace America as the world’s predominant power. We are, supposedly, like an exhausted British Empire circa 1945, and China is the new version of the postwar American powerhouse.
Yet even Beijing’s miraculous 30-year leap out of poverty into first-world affluence and Westernized power is hardly the same as parity with the US. In truth, Trump held almost all the cards at the current summit and will do so again when Xi Jinping visits the US this autumn. According to nearly every historical measure of power, the US leads China by sizable margins—in wealth, economic output, fuel, food, and military strength.
China has roughly four times the population of the US, but produces only about 60 percent of our total GDP. A crude way of looking at this asymmetry is that one US citizen accounts for 40 percent more goods and services than his four Chinese counterparts. Americans enjoy a per capita GDP (roughly $95,000) over six times higher than China’s (roughly $15,000).
We are the largest oil and gas producer and exporter in history; China must import 11 to 12 million barrels of oil every day. The US is also the greatest food exporter in history; China, for all its miraculous increases in agricultural productivity, still must import 30–40 percent of its food, a number that keeps rising as China becomes more affluent and more diverse in its food consumption.
The US still spends almost three times as much on defense. Its nuclear forces are roughly six times larger, and its 11 carrier strike groups are nearly four times more numerous than China’s three conventionally powered carriers. The US has more than 100 years of experience in carrier warfare; China has less than 15 years.
American universities’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments dominate global rankings. In terms of market capitalization, eight US companies are in the world’s top ten. American companies, along with NASA, have regained prior American primacy in space exploration. In new frontiers such as robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, cryptocurrencies, and bioengineering, a once sluggish US has woken up, rebounded, and is reasserting its preeminence.
True, the US fertility rate is down to 1.7. But China’s is 1.0, and its population is rapidly shrinking and aging.
But most importantly, China is an autocracy. It is superficially efficient, but its technology is ultimately derived from the free and wide-open atmosphere of the West and of the US in particular. There are usually around 300,000 Chinese students here in the US—and they are not art history majors, but sent here to master and appropriate US scientific expertise and then return home to clone it.
China has spent over $4 trillion in the last decade on its Belt and Road, mercantile, and imperialist agendas and on its military-industrial complex. Yet recently, its effort to pull Latin America away from the US has been failing miserably. China lost its client, Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela, and, with his arrest, Venezuela’s discounted oil imports. Its insidious effort to control the Panama Canal was aborted by Trump.
For now, China has also lost its discounted oil from Iran. If, in the months ahead, the Iranian theocracy falls, China will have no presence in the oil-rich Middle East, even as its appetite for oil grows exponentially. In terms of China’s stranglehold on rare-earth minerals, a once sleepy US is planning its own huge new mines in mad dash fashion everywhere from Greenland to California, Utah, and Wyoming.
The latest Chinese air defenses have failed miserably in Iran in 2025–26. But US naval and air power—both weapons and personnel—performed brilliantly against Iran.
Geostrategically, the US enjoys two vast oceans off its coast and, despite tensions, considers Canada and Mexico allies. Both are dependent on the US economy and ultimately the American military for their defense. And North America may be the most natural-resource-rich continent in the world. China, by contrast, shares a border with nuclear-armed arch-rival India and an always unpredictable nuclear Russia—not to mention volatile, nuclear North Korea. Besides these, China, which suppresses 12 million Uyghur Muslims, has five Muslim neighbors. The US and its European NATO partners often bicker, but again, China’s North Korean “ally” is a nuclear global pariah.
Critics claim the Iran war plays into China’s hands, but they rarely convincingly explain how or why Beijing is stronger than before the war started. Its trading partner and oil supplier, Iran, is in shambles and now fires on Chinese tankers seeking oil in the Gulf. Israel and the US allies in the Gulf are ascendant, and in the years to come, they will remember that China was an enabler of their shared archenemy Iran.
If there is peace soon in Ukraine, Russia will likely seek to triangulate with the US against China and vice versa, as in the old days of Henry Kissinger’s great-game balancing act (“China will be no friendlier to Russia than to the US, and Russia no friendlier to China than to the US”).
China is about as popular in the Pacific as was the hated Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of World War II. It takes some effort to alienate formerly anti-American nations like Vietnam and the Philippines and drive them into the US sphere of influence. In truth, China has legitimate worries about its neighborhood, since it is surrounded by its own “ring of fire,” nations that are far more potent and dangerous than the motley crew of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis that Iran once used to encircle Israel. Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam are all rearming, seeking closer military relations with the US, and forming a loose alliance against what they see as their common existential enemy China.
As far as leverage goes, tomorrow the US could deny visas and green cards to hundreds of thousands of Chinese students and technicians, effectively aborting China’s fifty-year effort to absorb and replicate US technology.
Tomorrow, Trump could announce that he seeks “parity” and “equity” with China in a spirit of “friendship” as he announces that the number of Chinese nationals in the US from now on will match the number of their US counterparts residing in China. China can buy as much US farmland as Americans can buy Chinese farmland. Chinese can buy property as close to US bases as Americans can purchase land near Chinese bases.
Finally, the Ukraine and Iran wars have taught the world that cheap drones can sometimes nullify missile defenses and are nearly as effective as $100 million combat aircraft and $4 million missiles. The US is now rapidly incorporating the data from these two wars and will soon deploy a vast fleet of its own air, surface, and submarine drones.
The idea of a third of a million Chinese troops steaming across the 110-mile Taiwan Strait to land on the beaches of Taiwan, while fighting, in transit, and on arrival, thousands of drones, is not an appealing invasion scenario.
True, America can be sluggish, insular, complacent, and naïve.
But historically, its innately resilient free people, singular constitutional government, robust federalism, and free-market economy eventually wake up to the next rising threat—if often just in the nick of time. In the 1930s, a disarmed America, mired in depression, was told that fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and militarist Japan were the paradigms of the future, armed to the teeth, fielding millions of goose-stepping, scary soldiers, and engaging in massive rearmament.
When war broke out in 1939, the US Army ranked 19th in size worldwide. Was it hopeless? No. By war’s end in August 1945, Nazism, fascism, and Japanese militarism were in ruins, and the US fleet and economy were larger than those of all the war’s belligerents combined.
A communist Russia on the move, we were told, starting in the late 1940s, would destroy the US. And indeed, the Red Army loomed huge, and thousands of Russian nuclear missiles were eventually pointed at the US.
The Soviet Union, we were further warned, was taking over the globe, as an unstoppable communism seemed to spread unchecked through Latin America, Africa, and Asia to our doorstep in Cuba. But after the crackup of the Soviet Empire, Russia’s GDP today is pathetically one-thirteenth the size of the US economy, and it has become a shrinking, aging, and unhealthy society.
Next, Japan, Inc. was also supposed to bury us in the 1980s, as confident, rich Japanese investors bought up the iconic Pebble Beach Golf Course, Rockefeller Center, and Columbia Pictures. We were told Honda and Toyota were light-years ahead of the soon-to-go-bankrupt Ford and GM. Today, Japan remains mired in deflation, and US corporations dwarf their Japanese counterparts.
Then, at the beginning of the millennium, it was the European Union’s turn to be the next supposed wave of the future, with America once more relegated to the past. When the US in 2008 was mired in the Iraq War, short of oil, and faced with soaring gas prices, the dollar fell, and the euro rose to $1.60. Soon, President Barack Obama would lecture Americans that we were no more an exceptional nation than Greece or the United Kingdom. “Lead from behind” became his new declinist mantra, and “apology tours” the way of the future.
Yet now the energy-short Europeans import American natural gas, and in early 2025, the euro fell to about $1 before rising later in the year. Moreover, the Iran war revealed the European Union as militarily weak and energy-short, with vast numbers of unassimilated and often hostile illegal aliens, suicidal green policies, and a shrinking and aging population—and as reliant upon the US economy and military for its continued prosperity and security.
The latest supposed Chinese existential threat is not to be assessed by how fast and impressively the nation rose from its own prior weakness, poverty, and irrelevance. What matters instead is to what degree its innate system ensures that such ascendance will be permanently continued and whether its political system, food and fuel capacity, military, and scientific community are on par with those of America’s.
And so far, in these regards, China, like all the other rivals of the last hundred years, has not come close.
After months of resisting endorsing a successor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, officially threw her support behind a fellow progressive, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Connie Chan, on Monday. She is one of the party’s most successful fundraisers, and Chan is expected to benefit from her fundraising network.
Connie Chan is an immigrant from Hong Kong, her politics are well to the left and anti-American, and there have been some questions asked about her ties to Communist China’s propaganda infrastructure.
Chan’s 2022 decision, as District 1 Supervisor, to designate Sing Tao Daily—a national Chinese-language newspaper with a documented history of alignment with Beijing—as an official city outreach venue for Chinese-speaking residents.
This single administrative action, buried in a routine media-contract amendment, has taken on new significance amid mounting U.S. intelligence warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD) and its sophisticated influence operations inside American cities.
Sing Tao Daily registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 2021 precisely because of its role in advancing political narratives favorable to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The episode is not an isolated footnote. It sits within a larger pattern of UFWD activity in San Francisco, elite-capture tactics documented in the Bay Area, and a broader CCP strategy that U.S. officials have described as the most expansive foreign-influence campaign ever directed at the United States.
It’s not as if Pelosi had any good choices here.
The alternatives here were Scott Weiner, whose signature issue is sexual creepiness, and Saikat Chakrabarti, an AOC-ite. Chan is not exactly a political talent and Pelosi will have to work hard to get her over the top. But the choices are between a Communist, a Communist and a Communist pervert. That’s Pelosi’s legacy.
President Donald Trump has called for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the state of Maryland for sending out mail-in ballots to individuals of the incorrect political party ahead of the state’s closed primary elections.
#BREAKING: Trump demands DOJ probe into Maryland voting, allegedly 500,000 illegal mail-in ballots were issued.— Insider Wire (@InsiderWire) May 18, 2026
After the mistake, the Maryland Board of Elections made the decision to mail out additional correct ballots despite having no ability to indicate which ballots were originally sent out incorrectly. Elections officials have not publicly released a plan for how to invalidate the original ballots.
Dan Cox, a candidate in the gubernatorial race, criticized the decision as it created an environment for “doubling the potential for vote fraud via mail in ballots.”
BREAKING: It is being reported the MD BOE will be mailing new ballots to all mail in voters due to an alleged “mistake,” thus effectively doubling the potential for vote fraud via mail in ballots. I am committed to learning how the Md Board of Elections plans to ensure no…— Dan Cox (@dancox4maryland) May 16, 2026
Trump’s statement laid the blame at the feet of Maryland’s Democrat Governor Wes Moore, saying that the move was “to make sure that Democrats win.”
“In addition, many of these Ballots went to Democrats, so any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “This was done by the Corrupt Governor of the State, Wes Moore. He allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win. It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why. I’m sure this has gone on for years.”
“I’m going to ask the Attorney General of the United States, and the DOJ, to bring an immediate investigation into this situation,” Trump added.
The Maryland primary elections will be held on June 23.
For the last two years, MassResistance has aggressively campaigned to reverse same-sex “marriage” by promoting nonbinding state legislative resolutions in several state legislatures, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. We have consistently maintained that Obergefell is an illegitimate judicial overreach that contradicts the Constitution’s original understanding, natural law, biological reality, and the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Our model resolution frames Obergefell as fundamentally flawed, based on the most unfounded legal reasoning. The majority decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, relied on the judicial fiction of substantive due process, which unleashed a host of terrible Supreme Court precedents. From there, Kennedy argued that there is a right to same-sex marriage, even though marriage is not defined in the Constitution nor rooted in our nation’s history and traditions.
We drew most of our resolution’s legal arguments from the dissenting Justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito), who argued that Obergefell undermined democratic processes, imposed an unjustified moral vision on the country, and ignored federalism.
Most importantly, however, redefining marriage caused great harm to the country, as MassResistance predicted. Same-sex “marriage” has unleashed an accelerated decline in marriage rates overall, challenges to religious liberty (bakers, photographers, adoption agencies), the spread of LGBT ideology in schools and public institutions, and harm to public health and public order. Our resolutions serve as a first step and signal to a post-Dobbs Supreme Court that states retain interest in this domain, much as Dobbs (2022) returned abortion to the states by correcting judicial overreach.
Despite successes in deeply conservative chambers—such as the Idaho House passing the resolution in both 2025 and 2026, and the North Dakota House advancing it—we have encountered significant opposition in many Republican states. Our resolutions have stalled in committees or never get a hearing. Our legislative sponsors continue to face lukewarm support from members and quiet rejection from leadership. Such cowardice exposes how many Republicans in red states are just liberal politicians masquerading as conservatives.
Worse yet, this pattern of capitulation reveals the growing fissures within the conservative movement. Where is the commitment to effective pro-family policies? They should prioritize Obergefell’s reversal, but most Republican lawmakers focus on low-hanging fruit, like keeping boys out of girls’ sports or protecting parents’ rights in the schools. All these issues matter, but the core problem that unleashed LGBT tyranny began with the destructive redefinition of marriage.
Idaho’s repeated House passage demonstrates that there is some appetite to pass our Resolution. Yet broader red-state inaction still dogs our efforts. In our conversations with our different legislative sponsors across the country, they complain about their colleagues, who show little interest or courage to take on this fight.
From what we have experienced, the following factors explain why Republican legislators will not support our Resolution:
1. Too many GOP legislators and operatives view same-sex marriage as a settled cultural issue. They look at the polls and conclude that most of the nation supports same-sex “marriage,” although there is declining Republican support in some surveys. Despite our best efforts, many pro-family conservative legislators still struggle to articulate why same-sex marriage is wrong.
The question then becomes where we go from here. MassResistance remains committed to adopting a multi-pronged, long-term strategy rooted in persistence, education, and institution-building.
First, we are maintaining and intensifying grassroots pressure on these legislatures. Our activists are reaching out to church networks, homeschool communities, and parent groups to demand votes on record.
Second, MassResistance is committed to building broader intellectual and coalition support. We continue to frame the issue around evidence-based family policy: homosexuality is inherently destructive to human beings, and the behaviors are born out of trauma and abuse, not genetics. Natural marriage is a public good for stable child-rearing, supported by decades of sociological data showing that two biological parents confer advantages. Think tanks and legal scholars need to consider our efforts and arguments, then start launching their own test cases in courts.
Third, MassResistance is considering parallel legislative vehicles. Beyond resolutions, legislators have asked us to provide draft legislation that would advance covenant marriage laws, annul the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses altogether, and remove all LGBT ideological programs in schools.
The fight against this core value of the aggressive homosexual lobby will require patience and a realistic perspective on outcomes. Social change is slow; Obergefell followed decades of activism. Reversing it requires a cultural majority or at least a durable coalition, not just legislative majorities. Red states failing to act reveal a movement still maturing beyond anti-left reactivity toward an affirmative vision of human flourishing.
Despite the ongoing setbacks, MassResistance’s successes in Idaho and North Dakota prove that our strategy can gain traction where courage exists. Unfortunately, we not only face the lack of support from legislators, but the silence of other pro-family groups has been disappointing. Our Resolution is an easy step towards taking a stance and pushing for a renewal of natural marriage and family in this country. They should be working with us, not ignoring us.
MassResistance intends to keep pushing against this core tenet of the LGBT agenda. Legislators across the country have indicated their interest and support for our resolution. Lawmakers who worked with us last year and this year intend to refile the resolution for upcoming sessions. We also hope that this year’s primaries will clear out the liberal members and weak leaders who have frustrated our efforts up to now. MassResistance has never shied from a major fight, and we have no plans to abandon this one.
Legislators fear that confronting this issue risks alienating voters and donors. With midterms and presidential cycles looming, party leadership wants to focus on easier fights, such as taxes, immigration, education reform, and economic growth. They simply don’t want to fight and win the culture war on family. Their timidity also stems from fear of intense media attacks, potential primary challenges from the left of the party, and fundraising problems from individual and corporate donors wary of LGBT cancel culture.
3. The broader conservatism movement has fragmented. Libertarian-leaning GOP factions in state legislatures emphasize individual rights over the state’s definition of marriage. Business-oriented Republicans fear economic disruption from renewed cultural conflict. Evangelical and traditionalist bases support MassResistance’s vision, but secular or nominal conservatives do not, and they are even thwarting our efforts. Declining religiosity and generational change within the GOP have also reduced urgency to restore natural marriage. Some view the fight as lost post-2015, preferring damage control (religious liberty protections) over reversal.
Last week, in the wake of the Democrats losing the redistricting battles, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “We will beat the far-right extremists. We’re going to win in November, and then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people.”
To Politico, this is a sign that Democrats had “ditched the niceties,” calling it “a marked reversal from years of high-minded Democratic rhetoric.” MS NOW reports that “Democrats say they are done playing defense.”
“Niceties”? “High-minded rhetoric”? “Playing defense”? When have Democrats ever been like that?
Let’s rewind the clock to 2003. That was when Mr. Civility, George W. Bush, was president.
When not relentlessly mocking Bush’s malapropisms, they were saying things such as “his existence” was “a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche,” and “the Bush administration is the most dangerous force that has ever existed. It is more dangerous than Nazi Germany.” They called Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” and said he’d unleashed “squadrons” of “brownshirts.”
Fast forward a decade. Barack Obama – who when running for president said that “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” – was in the White House, and Democrats controlled the Senate. (Republicans had just regained control of the House in the mid-term elections.)
Republican Senators were threatening to filibuster a spending bill and shut down the government. How did those “high-minded” Democrats respond? They called Republicans extortionists and hostage-takers, terrorists, saboteurs, and squealing political pigs.
Nancy Pelosi said they were “legislative arsonists.” Then-White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer described them as “people who have a bomb strapped to their chest.” Then Sen. Angus King said, “those people are guilty of murder.”
That shutdown, by the way, lasted all of six days.
A couple of years ago, Libs of TikTok compiled more than two minutes of video of Democrats calling for violence during Donald Trump’s first term. [X link at article]
This is just a teeny, tiny sampling that we pulled together quickly for this editorial.
There’s been no let-up since, despite three assassination attempts against Trump.
And it’s not just Trump.
Here are some of the “high-minded” words Democrats used to describe ICE agents – you know, federal law enforcement officers charged with enforcing current immigration laws:
– “A reign of terror.” Sen. John Hickenlooper.
– “Deranged.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal
– “Modern-day Gestapo.” Gov. Tim Walz
– “Secret police.” Gov. Gavin Newsom
– “Terrorizing people.” Gov. Kathy Hochul
– “A clear and present threat.” Sen. Tina Smith
– “Masked thugs.” Rep. Eric Swalwell
This time around, Democrats are hopping mad because their attempt to out-gerrymander Republicans has embarrassingly failed. But it doesn’t matter what the issue is. Democrats are never high-minded, they are never nice, they are always on offense (and always offensive).
Eight years ago, when we were at Investor’s Business Daily, we wrote that:
That’s always been the left’s response to politicians they don’t agree with: Harass, attack, belittle, demean, threaten, scream … and repeat. Unlike Republicans, however, the left never gets called on its hate-mongering.
As you may be aware, early this year President Trump commenced a personal litigation against the federal government, seeking compensation for various alleged wrongs committed against him during the Biden presidency, and even during his own first term. According to this New York Times piece from yesterday, the wrongs that Trump has alleged against the government include “leak of his tax returns during his first term, as well as the investigations into his handling of classified documents after he left office and into his 2016 campaign’s potential ties to Russia.” The amount of damages Trump seeks has been reported as $10 billion.
And then two days ago (May 14) there comes news that there is a tentative settlement in the case. ABC News appears to have been the first with the story. Excerpt:
President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself. While the settlement is expected to be agreed upon in the coming days, sources caution that the final terms will not be set until they are officially announced.
So how do you feel about that?
You will not be surprised to learn that the New York Times is outraged. Here is an excerpt from their piece linked above:
The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the president’s allies and others investigated by the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., creating an ethical and political minefield for Republicans and the department’s leadership. The unusual plan, which Democrats and former government officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, is being fast-tracked. . . .
So, according to the Times, this potential settlement is “an ethical and political minefield,” and the plan for a compensation fund is “unusual” or, in another place, “highly unusual.” But is it? The Times piece strongly insinuates that this potential settlement is improper because the Justice Department is not really adversarial to Trump at the current moment when he is their boss, and also that setting up a compensation fund for political allies as part of a legal settlement is something unique. But the Times doesn’t provide the reader any further context to make an independent judgment about whether this settlement is “highly unusual” versus the norm for the agency going by the dubious name of “Department of Justice.”
So let me provide some context. In fact prior administrations have regularly used litigation settlements to accomplish goals that they could not get enacted by Congress, including setting up large slush funds to hand out to political allies. Before now this strategy has been almost entirely a phenomenon of Democratic administrations. Conservative critics have dubbed the strategy “sue and settle.” The strategy particularly took off during the Obama presidency, and then exploded under Biden. As far as I am aware, the New York Times has never criticized any of this as long as it was done by their ideological allies in support of causes that they approved.
The “sue and settle” game has several variants. One is where the government gets sued by an ideological ally of the bureaucracy, seeking some outcome that they would like to implement. A quick collusive settlement with the plaintiff avoids the difficulty of going through a notice-and-comment rule making process, let alone the necessity of getting a statute passed by Congress.
There are many hundreds of examples of this phenomenon. Perhaps the most notorious have been instances where lawsuits by environmental groups have been used to restrict economic development of public lands. For example, here is a piece from Real Clear Investigations in February 2024 reporting on Biden administration agreements to remove certain federal lands from oil and gas leasing. The agreements were in apparent contravention of Congressional intent, but accomplished through the form of settlement of lawsuits brought be environmental groups friendly with the administration. Excerpt:
When the Biden administration announced in 2022 that it would remove some 4 million acres of federal land in Western states from oil and gas exploration, environmental groups hailed the decision as a milestone in their fight against global warming. . . . The administration’s move was part of a private settlement of a lawsuit filed by WildEarth and others over the objections of energy consortiums, whose efforts to intervene in the matter were dismissed. . . . A similar thing happened last August, when the Biden administration announced it had agreed to exclude 6 million acres of the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico seabed from exploration to settle a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, including the Sierra Club – an announcement that triggered operational delays for the industry and expensive litigation to overturn. Administration critics say these moves reflect the resurgence of a practice embraced by the Obama administration . . . “sue and settle.” The tactic is simple: An advocacy group sues a federal agency for failing to enforce laws or regulations. Agency officials and the plaintiffs then come to a private agreement and that deal is ratified by the courts via a binding consent decree.
And here is a piece by Donald Kochan from November 2023 that appeared in Bloomberg News, again critical of use by the Biden administration of “sue and settle” tactics to remove territory from potential oil and gas leasing, in this case in contravention of the Inflation Reduction Act. Excerpt:
The Biden administration’s resistance to holding the lease sales for oil in the Gulf of Mexico required of it by the Inflation Reduction Act is the latest example of its disregard for regular constitutional order. And its method could set a dangerous precedent for the future of the rule of law. A tactic dubbed “sue and settle” is increasingly allowing powerful interest groups to use the courts system as a pawn in developing environmental law without Congress. It works as follows: An interest group sues a friendly administrative agency, claiming the agency has violated the law. Rather than seek dismissal of a likely meritless claim, the agency settles, because the settlement agreement is a way to avoid a court setting limits on doing what the plaintiffs request, to exceed its authority, and to impose new rules—without going through the normal order of deliberative processes.
Another variant of the Obama/Biden “sue and settle” program involved the creation of huge slush funds to pass out to political allies. As one big example, after the 2008/09 recession, the Obama administration brought a series of completely phony cases blaming the recession on big banks. All of them settled, many for multi-billions of dollars. Here is a report from James Copland of the Manhattan Institute from March 2015 discussing several of those settlements. One big settlement was with Bank of America. From Copland’s description of that settlement:
The $16.65 billion Bank of America settlement resolves civil claims with the federal government and various states; $9.65 billion of this amount is allocated [to government agencies] as follows: . . . On top of these government payouts, the Bank of America settlement forces the bank to allocate $7 billion to “consumer relief” credits, including:
• Loan principal write-downs, with a cap of $2.15 billion for nonperforming loans and $3 billion for performing and home-equity loans (“extra” credits can be awarded under certain conditions)
• Loans underwriting new “affordable housing” developments, with a minimum of $100 million allocated (and substantial extra credits awarded on a dollar-for-dollar basis to discharge toward the $7 billion consumer-relief total)
• Grants to community-development and housing groups; the bank must give a minimum of $50 million to community-development funds or institutions, $30 million to legal-aid groups fighting foreclosures, and $20 million to various government-sanctioned housing-activist groups. . . .
In other words, some $7 billion from that one settlement alone went to slush funds doled out to delinquent debtors and left-wing advocacy groups friendly to the administration and Democratic Party. And that’s just one settlement. All of the big banks entered into similar settlements. For some more, check out my February 2016 post “The Latest In The Endless Series Of Bank Shakedowns.”
So no, New York Times, there is nothing “unusual,” let alone “highly unusual,” about the government using settlement of a litigation to set up a slush fund to pass out to political friends and allies. The only thing unusual is the use of this strategy by a Republican President. It took him a while, but it looks like he finally figured out that two can play this game.
I should mention that I am not a fan of this business, no matter which side is practicing it at the moment. But the only way to get rid of such tactics will be for the likes of the New York Times to criticize their own side, which they will never do. When they give their own side a pass, and then claim that Trump is doing something unique and unheard of, it only makes themselves look ridiculous.
Iranian attacks and the stoppage of seaborne transit have paralyzed Qatar’s vital gas exports, stalling the economic pivots intended to anchor the country’s growth.
In Qatar, a desert peninsula protruding into the Persian Gulf, natural gas turned the country from a pearl-diving backwater into one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Qatar spent three decades building supply lines, shipping tens of billions of dollars of liquefied natural gas each year through the Strait of Hormuz to ports across Asia and Europe.
The state, which derives more than 60 percent of its revenue from gas and gas-related exports, used that money to transform the peninsula into a gleaming metropolis. Unpaved desert roads were replaced by monolithic corporate skyscrapers, at the base of which irrigation systems water perennial blankets of grass and fuchsia flowers.
Gas wealth funded a metro system linking the capital, Doha, to Lusail, a northern city that is home to a Parisian-style mall and a theme park with artificial snow. The riches were also funneled into the world’s most expensive World Cup, and a $600 billion sovereign wealth fund with stakes in everything from Heathrow Airport in London to the Empire State Building in New York.
Then, in February, Qatar’s door to the world slammed shut.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means virtually no gas has left Qatar’s shore for more than two months. The nation is also cut off from the sea routes through which it imports everything from vehicles to produce. Fears of regional instability have hurt tourism and eroded business sentiment.
Ras Laffan, Qatar’s industrial center for gas production, is shuttered, and roads are blocked. At the vast Hamad port south of Doha, loading cranes stand paralyzed. Throughout the capital, hotels and boutiques sit in noticeable silence. Qatar’s growth forecasts have been slashed amid the cessation of L.N.G. trade.
For Qatar, gas shipments “are nothing short of foundational,” Ahmed Helal, a managing director at the Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm, said in an interview in Doha recently. “Nothing you see here would have been possible without the wealth of energy,” he added. “That is why Qatar is quickly falling into a very challenging fiscal situation.”
Qatar’s economic transformation started in the 1990s. It made a large bet on supercooling gas from the North Field — the world’s largest natural gas reservoir, in Qatar’s northeast — to minus 162 degrees Celsius. This turned the fuel into a liquid, allowing Qatar to bypass regional pipelines and ship gas to every corner of the globe.
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The Iran War Is Crippling One of the World’s Wealthiest Nations
Iranian attacks and the stoppage of seaborne transit have paralyzed Qatar’s vital gas exports, stalling the economic pivots intended to anchor the country’s growth.
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Qatar has tried to transform itself into a tourist destination and a hub for international business and finance.Credit…Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In Qatar, a desert peninsula protruding into the Persian Gulf, natural gas turned the country from a pearl-diving backwater into one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Qatar spent three decades building supply lines, shipping tens of billions of dollars of liquefied natural gas each year through the Strait of Hormuz to ports across Asia and Europe.
The state, which derives more than 60 percent of its revenue from gas and gas-related exports, used that money to transform the peninsula into a gleaming metropolis. Unpaved desert roads were replaced by monolithic corporate skyscrapers, at the base of which irrigation systems water perennial blankets of grass and fuchsia flowers.
Gas wealth funded a metro system linking the capital, Doha, to Lusail, a northern city that is home to a Parisian-style mall and a theme park with artificial snow. The riches were also funneled into the world’s most expensive World Cup, and a $600 billion sovereign wealth fund with stakes in everything from Heathrow Airport in London to the Empire State Building in New York.
Then, in February, Qatar’s door to the world slammed shut.
QatarEnergy halted its liquefied natural gas production in Ras Laffan more than two months ago because of Iranian strikes and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.Credit…Getty Images
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means virtually no gas has left Qatar’s shore for more than two months. The nation is also cut off from the sea routes through which it imports everything from vehicles to produce. Fears of regional instability have hurt tourism and eroded business sentiment.
Ras Laffan, Qatar’s industrial center for gas production, is shuttered, and roads are blocked. At the vast Hamad port south of Doha, loading cranes stand paralyzed. Throughout the capital, hotels and boutiques sit in noticeable silence. Qatar’s growth forecasts have been slashed amid the cessation of L.N.G. trade.
For Qatar, gas shipments “are nothing short of foundational,” Ahmed Helal, a managing director at the Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm, said in an interview in Doha recently. “Nothing you see here would have been possible without the wealth of energy,” he added. “That is why Qatar is quickly falling into a very challenging fiscal situation.”
Qatar’s economic transformation started in the 1990s. It made a large bet on supercooling gas from the North Field — the world’s largest natural gas reservoir, in Qatar’s northeast — to minus 162 degrees Celsius. This turned the fuel into a liquid, allowing Qatar to bypass regional pipelines and ship gas to every corner of the globe.
It was the birth of an energy superpower. Kicked off by its first shipment of 60,000 tons to Japan in 1996, Qatar’s production capacity had jumped to 77 million tons by 2010. For most of the next decade, Qatar was the wealthiest country in the world per capita.
Locals remember this as a period of rapid change. North of Doha and carved out of the desert, the industrial city of Ras Laffan spans more than 100 square miles of gas-processing and liquefaction facilities.
South of the capital, miles of industrial facilities stretch along the coastline, churning out ammonia and fertilizer made from gas piped down from Ras Laffan. Towering gas flares shoot orange flames into the sky, punctuating a landscape otherwise blurred by sand and smog.
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From the 1990s to the 2010s, the economy boomed, growing at an average annual rate of roughly 13 percent. To power this build-out, Qatar relied on an influx of foreign workers. Today, about 90 percent of its 3.2 million residents are noncitizens.
Seeking to build on that momentum, Qatar said in 2019 that it would expand the amount of L.N.G. its North Field could produce to 126 million tons a year by 2027. Before the war, its capacity was about 77 million. The expansion is considered one of the largest energy projects ever planned.
Then, in late February, much of that activity ground to a halt. Unlike its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have pipelines that can bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Qatar is geographically trapped behind the waterway.
Within 24 hours of the Iranian blockade, QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy giant, announced it couldn’t fulfill its contracts. Two weeks later, Iranian missiles and drones struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant, damaging critical equipment and causing a 17 percent reduction in Qatar’s production capacity.
The damage means that even if the strait were to open tomorrow, it would take years to return to prewar output. Analysts estimate that QatarEnergy has already lost billions of dollars since the war started, and every day that the strait remains closed, the country bleeds hundreds of millions more in lost sales and shipping charter fees.
The International Monetary Fund expects Qatar’s economy to shrink 8.6 percent this year before rebounding in 2027. For countries like Qatar, each day the strait is closed further darkens the outlook, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the I.M.F., said at a recent briefing.
The war has also exposed another kind of vulnerability. As part of a long-running effort to diversify beyond fossil fuels, Qatar has tried to transform itself into a tourist destination and a hub for international business and finance.
In 2019, Qatar scrapped a requirement that foreign firms maintain local partners, while the country began subsidizing luxury hotel stopovers for transit passengers. From Formula 1 to fencing tournaments, residents say scarcely a month went by before the war without a major international sporting event.
Since the war began, however, the number of international visitors to Qatar has plummeted amid travel advisories from the United States and other governments. Many multinational companies, fearing regional instability, have sent staff out of the country. In March, the World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that the Middle East was losing $600 million a day in tourism revenue.
In Qatar, the shift in mood is palpable. At Souq Waqif, the city’s traditional market, vendors report far fewer international travelers in the closing weeks of what is usually peak tourist season. In the city of Lusail, a choreographed fountain show at the Place Vendome mall on a recent Wednesday afternoon drew a single spectator, slumped against a stone wall, eating a sandwich.
For Qatar, like many of its neighbors, the diversification strategy hinges on sustained foreign capital, a steady supply of expatriate labor and, above all, the perception of stability, according to a recent report by Frédéric Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
Images of Qatar’s airport under air raid warnings and Ras Laffan under missile attack, broadcast worldwide, are “incompatible with that perception in ways that are slow to reverse,” Mr. Schneider wrote. In that sense, he said, “the war has harmed Qatar’s hydrocarbon and post-hydrocarbon economic foundations simultaneously.”
The Qatari government, for its part, is working to project stability while shielding the population from the immediate shocks of the standoff.
Because Qatar imports about 90 percent of its food, the maritime impasse has forced a major reworking of supply chains. Fresh produce from Europe and grain from the Americas, which once arrived by sea, are now being diverted to costly airfreight routes or trucked through Saudi Arabia.
Such a shift would typically set off runaway inflation, but prices for imported goods — like avocados now airlifted from places like Tanzania — have risen about only 5 to 10 percent, according to supermarket workers, a result of aggressive government subsidies aimed at keeping the cost of living stable.
Residents say they generally feel safe, yet the strike on Ras Laffan remains a source of lingering anxiety. Some in Doha described watching an enormous column of fire rise on the horizon on the night of the attack, the flames so intense they could be seen from the capital, accompanied by the smell of acrid smoke.
Economists forecast that even if L.N.G. revenue were to vanish for years, Qatar’s deep pockets would allow it to continue paying salaries and maintaining essential services. S&P Global Ratings, which maintained Qatar’s sovereign rating this month, noted its “sizable accumulated fiscal and external assets.”
At the same time, the authorities have pressured international firms to return to prevent an exodus of foreign capital and talent. The concern is that if companies are allowed to collapse, the country’s overwhelmingly foreign work force could quickly disappear, said Mr. Helal of the Asia Group.
“If there’s a migration out, then that starts to get quite scary,” Mr. Helal said. So far, the Qatari authorities have “done a good job of projecting calm and managing the fallout,” he said. “But is there a big fiscal gap hole that’s forming? Of course,” Mr. Helal added. “It really depends on the duration of the strait remaining closed.”
River Akira Davis
I am a correspondent for The New York Times, covering Japan, including its businesses, politics and economy. I am based in Tokyo.
According to a statement released by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), archaeologists unearthed a mysterious tunnel beneath the streets of Jerusalem. During construction work near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, workers unexpectedly discovered the entrance to an ancient cavity, measuring 16 feet high and 10 feet wide, that was once accessed via a rock-cut staircase. At first researchers believed the passageway may have been part of an ancient water installation built to access underground springs, but this was subsequently ruled out, since the walls of the tunnel were not covered in plaster as they typically would have been. Geologists also found no evidence of any subterranean water sources in the area. Instead, experts now suggest that the tunnel may have been cut in order to reach chalk layers suitable for quarrying building stones or producing lime. There has been no evidence yet uncovered that might help researchers to date the feature’s construction, although it may be related to two nearby Iron Age sites that date to the first millennium b.c. “This discovery joins many others being uncovered every day, hour by hour, throughout the city,” said IAA archaeologist Amit Re’em. “Usually we have explanations for the discoveries we uncover, but sometimes, as in this case, we stand astonished and amazed.” To read about another discovery from Jerusalem, go to “Bound for Heaven.”
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 