The first sentence of Section I of the 14th Amendment — a small piece in our grand Constitutional puzzle  — has left Justice Samuel Alito and his colleagues considering it a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery — along with the rest of America.
It reads: &#8220;All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.&#8221;
As the Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump v. Barbara — the birthright citizenship case now before the nation’s highest court — America is finally confronting a constitutional question that should have been settled long ago: Who, exactly, is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States?
Under the prevailing interpretation of this clause, any child born on U.S. soil is automatically an American citizen — full stop. It doesn’t matter whether the mother is a permanent resident, a tourist on a 90-day visa, or someone who crossed the border illegally last Sunday. Born here, citizen here, benefits and rights that come with an American citizenship — activated.
On his first day back in office in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, directing federal agencies to stop issuing citizenship documents to children born here to parents who are either unlawfully present or lawfully present only on a temporary basis. Essentially, if neither of your parents is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, the Trump administration says the 14th Amendment does not guarantee your child citizenship simply by virtue of being born on American soil.
Predictably, lower courts blocked the order. Now it’s before the Supreme Court.
Regardless of the outcome, it’s a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/officialbenshapiro/videos/us-district-judge-temporarily-blocks-president-trumps-executive-order-to-end-bir/1118885666149694/">legal win</a> for the Trump administration — but the broader debate placed a spotlight on a flaw the Founders and post-Civil War Congress never contemplated: the deliberate weaponization of birthright citizenship by adversarial nations.
One slice of the problem reveals the amendment&#8217;s most cynical exploitation: birth tourism, especially by China.
This is an organized, for-profit industry that treats American passports as a commodity. Author and political consultant Peter Schweizer recently documented what he describes as a &#8220;massive effort&#8221; by Chinese nationals — many with Communist Party ties — to secure U.S. citizenship for children raised entirely in China. He estimates that between 750,000 and 1.5 million Chinese-born U.S. citizens are currently being educated under CCP indoctrination.
The business model is brazen. Chinese companies advertise packages costing $40,000 to $80,000. Pregnant women fly in, stay at maternity hotels — often in California — deliver in American hospitals, obtain U.S. birth certificates and passports, and return home. Federal prosecutors have worked to dismantle high-profile rings: in one Southern California case, operators of USA Happy Baby and similar outfits were convicted of conspiracy and money laundering for running maternity houses that served thousands of Chinese clients. The U.S. government has identified hundreds of such firms operating inside China with the sole purpose of gaming our immigration system.
Birth tourism is not the numerical majority — illegal residents produce far more births — but it’s uniquely corrosive. These children are raised abroad with zero lived connection to America. At 21, they gain full voting rights, access to classified jobs, and the power to sponsor their parents for green cards. It is demographic arbitrage. Beijing is cultivating a reserve of future &#8220;anchor citizens&#8221; capable of influencing American elections and policy from within, while owing their primary loyalty elsewhere.
The clause that has long been glossed over — &#8220;subject to the jurisdiction thereof&#8221; — will be central to the administration in oral arguments. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to overturn the Dred Scott decision and secure citizenship for the children of freed slaves. Its authors understood “jurisdiction” to mean full political allegiance, not mere physical presence. Diplomats’ children, children of invading armies, and those whose parents owed no permanent duty to the United States were explicitly excluded.
The Supreme Court’s 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark decision granted citizenship to the child of legal, domiciled Chinese immigrants, but nothing about illegal entrants or short-term visitors. Illegal immigration on today’s scale and the jet-age business of birth tourism simply did not exist.
As Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro has argued, the phrase &#8220;subject to the jurisdiction thereof&#8221; means you are NOT subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign nation. He makes the point — if an illegal immigrant from Mexico gives birth on U.S. soil, that child remains a Mexican citizen under Mexican law — the child is NOT solely subject to American jurisdiction.
As of 2023, the Pew Research Center estimates roughly 320,000 children are born each year to unauthorized or temporary-migrant mothers, meaning approximately 1 in 10 children born in the United States is born to an illegal immigrant mother.
The vast majority of these children are born to parents who intend to stay and raise them here. Those children receive the same benefits as any other American citizen, and they can eventually sponsor their parents for legal residency — a process commonly known as chain migration. In the meantime, 59% of non-citizen households use one or more major federal welfare programs, compared to 33% of native-born households. It is these citizen children — not their illegal parents, who are often eligible for direct benefits — who strain schools, hospitals, and education services.
The Supreme Court may rule that the executive branch cannot, for now, rewrite 150 years of precedent. But the debate itself has been clarifying. The 14th Amendment was not written to hand foreign nationals a backdoor into American democracy nor to grant them a nine-month maternity vacation.
It’s long past time to unravel that mystery.

Fran Martinez, front, and other protesters gather outside San Bernardino County Superior Court as a

China’s Birth Tourism Profits From Our Constitutional Confusion

14th Amendment

birthright citizenship

China

Illegal Immigation

Supreme Court

A renewed commitment to the Moon, Mars, and American leadership can define the next great era of national achievement.
With President Trump and Jared Isaacman pointing the way, the United States has a chance to lead humanity beyond Earth once again.
After decades of drift, America is finally preparing to reclaim its place at the forefront of space exploration.
For the first time in 50 years, Americans are traveling to the Moon and beyond.
No one should understate the importance of this decision to venture into the solar system beyond near-Earth orbit.
The recent announcements about the Moon, Mars, and beyond by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and the statements and executive orders of President Donald J. Trump are clear signals that America is back on track to carry freedom into space.
This is an important, indeed vital shift from the policies of the last half-century.
America met President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to go to the Moon by the end of the ‘60s — with landings beginning in 1969 and continuing through 1972. Then, the country sadly turned its back on the Moon and settled into a focus on low Earth orbit for a variety of commercial, national security, and scientific activities. During that half-century, we learned an amazing amount about how to operate close to the Earth, and our lives are impacted every minute of every day by these activities. For example, you would not have a cell phone in your pocket were it not for our innovations in low Earth orbit.
However, after the last American left the Moon in 1972, we neglected to invest in the kind of program that would have maintained the momentum of the Apollo program.
In President Trump’s first term, he indicated clearly how strongly he was committed to having America lead in space. He resurrected the National Space Council and then-Vice President Mike Pence did a great job bringing together every element of the Space community. President Trump created a Space Force dedicated to developing American military superiority in space and across the planet.
After a four-year period of neglect under President Joe Biden, the second Trump administration focused once again on pioneering in space and growing commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit.
By picking Isaacman to be the head of NASA, President Trump reached out to a unique and remarkable person. Isaacman had been a successful entrepreneur and was worth well over a billion dollars. He was also passionate about space and had spent a considerable amount to fly into space twice as a customer of SpaceX. He is the only civilian who has completed a space walk outside the International Space Station.
Because Isaacman is a visionary and an entrepreneurial manager, he has already begun to create a new, dramatically more powerful set of goals for NASA. The recent briefing outlined a permanent return to the Moon, the first voyages to preposition equipment on Mars for human development, and the high priority of building a nuclear-powered rocket (which will radically reduce travel time beyond the Moon). These are big, decisive investments in moving freedom into the solar system.
Artemis II will take four astronauts further into space than anyone has ever gone before. Soon, its larger successor, SpaceX’s Starship will revolutionize travel beyond the Earth.
As big as Artemis II is (a little more powerful than the huge Saturn rockets which carried our first manned space flights) it will be dwarfed by Starship.
As a SpaceX customer, Isaacman understands the power of Elon Musk’s determination to get things to work. The SpaceX development of reusable rockets collapsed the price of putting satellites in orbit by 90 percent. This was possibly the biggest affordability breakthrough of the last generation. Today about half of all launches in the world are SpaceX. Starship will be an even greater revolution.
Starship will launch 100 passengers or 100 tons of cargo — and will be usable repeatedly.
The Artemis II launch was the wake-up call that America is back.
This time we are not just going to visit the Moon. This time we are going to develop the Moon as usable property and learn how to get hydrogen out of the water ice which has turned out to be surprisingly abundant. Mastering in-situ resource manufacturing skills will be essential for future missions to Mars.
This time we are not just going to send clever robotic vehicles to the surface of Mars. We are going to land and begin to learn how to terraform and evolve Mars into a more hospitable, productive, and survivable environment.
There was one seeming mishap on the opening days of Artemis II, which — if looked at properly — is a sign of how far we have come.
The toilet suddenly stopped working.
Since it was a $30 million toilet, the first reaction was bad jokes and great skepticism.
Then, as the story came out, it was clear how far we had come in putting humans in space. Artemis II is the first vehicle going beyond low Earth orbit to have a toilet. It is the first time astronauts have a private room. The challenges of relieving oneself in space are enormous (think zero gravity and your imagination will do the rest). The original true pioneers in the Apollo program had astonishingly primitive systems and at times found it embarrassing.
Nevertheless, the toilet is now fixed, the mission continues, and it’s amazing how far we have come — and will go.
As Isaacman warned us, the Chinese are aggressive and serious competitors. They would like to make totalitarianism the standard across the solar system.
We are now on track to carry freedom everywhere, and Congress and the American people must rise to the occasion.
The future is now — if we are prepared to grab it.
* * *
Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of <a href="https://www.gingrich360.net/">Gingrich 360</a>.

TOPSHOT-US-SPACE-ARTEMIS II-NASA

The Race To The Moon And Mars Is Back And This Time Freedom Is On The Line

Artemis II

DW Opinion

John F. Kennedy (JFK)

NASA

Newt Gingrich

SpaceX

Trump Administration

United States Space Force

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-DEMONSTRATION

The ‘No Kings’ Protests Released New Levels Of Absurd

Democratic Socialism

Democrats

Donald Trump

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Minneapolis

New York City

Opinion

Republicans

Eight million people just took to the streets to stop a king who does not exist.
They say they are protesting tyranny. But if you look at who&#8217;s actually holding the megaphone — and more importantly, who&#8217;s signing the checks — this grassroots movement starts looking a lot less grassroots and a lot more like a sophisticated and coordinated operation by Hollywood elites and radical activists having public meltdowns demanding labor militancy. 
The real story isn&#8217;t the useful idiots on the streets. It&#8217;s the apparent $3 billion web of funding tied to a tech tycoon living in Shanghai and a wedding-turned-mysterious summit in Jamaica. 
Who are these shadowy figures funding the chaos? Why are America&#8217;s enemies cheering from the sidelines?
These people are not turning out because they suddenly oppose centralized government. You think Democrats are anti-centralized government? Against a bigger federal government run by the executive branch?
No way.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2398-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Presidents Obama and Biden radically expanded the power of the executive branch. Funny, there were no protests then.
They&#8217;re also not turning out in the streets because they oppose an intervention such as what&#8217;s going on in Iran or because they oppose tyrants. They were fine with Barack Obama&#8217;s interventions in Libya, Syria, and in the drone wars. They were totally fine with Joe Biden&#8217;s funding of the war in Ukraine.
They&#8217;re not anti-tyranny, the “No Kings” people; they&#8217;re perfectly pro-tyranny in foreign countries, and they tolerate their friends’ tyranny at home.
We all know the real reason: A lot of people hate President Trump, and they hate the American system.
How do they get this many people organized?
A lot of money. Where exactly is that money coming from?
Fox News <a href="https://www.wfmd.com/2026/03/28/500-groups-with-3b-in-revenues-are-behind-the-nokings-protests-and-communist-call-for-revolution/#:~:text=A%20network%20of%20about%20500,a%20Fox%20Digital%20News%20investigation.">reported</a>:
<blockquote>A network of about 500 groups with an estimated $3 billion in combined annual revenues is behind the coordinated nationwide “No Kings” protest Saturday, including communist groups who are using the day to call for a “revolution,” according to a Fox Digital News investigation. 
According to a copy of the permit for the “flagship” march in St. Paul, Minn., Indivisible, a national well-heeled Democratic political advocacy organization funded by billionaire George Soros, is the lead coordinator for the protest.
But Fox News Digital has also identified key participation by a network of radical socialist and communist organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American tech tycoon and avowed communist living in China.
Over nearly a decade, Singham has financed a constellation of activist institutions that promote revolutionary socialist politics and frequently collaborate in protest campaigns, including the People’s Forum in New York, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition and CodePink, whose co-founder Jodie Evans is married to Singham. These groups work closely with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.</blockquote>
So there’s a communist living in China who is funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into various protest groups.
Fox News also <a href="https://www.wfmd.com/2026/03/23/power-couple-of-chaos-how-a-tycoon-and-activist-built-a-revolutionary-base-at-the-house-of-singham/#:~:text=A%20monthslong%20Fox%20News%20Digital,a%20superpower%20through%20economic%20programs">noted</a>:
<blockquote>As far-left American activists flood Cuba to support its flailing communist regime, U.S. officials have opened a sprawling investigation into an anti-America, pro-China nonprofit network forged during a wedding celebration in late February 2017, off Runaway Bay on Jamaica’s northern coast.
There, beneath a canopy of palm trees, an elite cadre of activists, intellectuals, celebrities, political organizers and comrades in a global Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement assembled to celebrate the “Revolutionary Love” of two luminaries, both 62 at the time: Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, and Jodie Evans, a red-haired veteran activist and co-founder of CodePink Women for Peace.
Like the opening scene of “The Godfather,” where powerful families consolidate power, the wedding celebration was about much more than the union of two people.
Over four days of dancing, lectures and late-night conversations in venues from the Flavor Beach Bar to Sharkey’s Seafood, celebrating the bond of “Roy and Jodie,” alliances were formed that would shape protests, unrest and political agitation over the next decade, from the fiery 2020 scenes in Minneapolis to demonstrations today supporting the regimes in Cuba and Iran.</blockquote>
Apparently, Singham has pushed some $278 million into organizations that sow discord in the United States.
None of these protests are innocent. They are not happening by accident. It takes an awful lot of money to make this magic happen.
Singham said in 2025: “If we want to therefore have a new world order that is based on multilateralism that President XI and CPC and China have proposed, we have to undo the ideological damage that has been done by the narrative of World War II. &#8230; China has a very important role, and we in this forum have a very important role, that to envision a new multi-polarity order requires that, quite frankly, this deconstruction or restoration, a history of what really happened.”
He said there should be a multipolar world order with China and Russia as leading forces and that we need to rewrite the history of World War II in order to achieve this new world order.
Outside forces are trying to destroy America — and President Trump.
And it’s our job to make sure that does not happen.

No Kings Protests Across The US Rally Against Donald Trump

‘No Kings’ Rallies — Paid For By A King

Ben Shapiro

Communism

George Soros

Protests

Socialists

In current foreign-policy debates on the Right, some have pushed for dividing the world into “spheres of influence.” The United States would get the Americas, the People’s Republic of China would be granted sway over Asia, and Vladimir Putin would have carte blanche to intervene in European affairs. Far from being steely-eyed “realism,” splitting up the world in that way might actually not take the national interest seriously enough.
The “spheres of influence” gambit has a superficial logic. By some measures, the United States is a smaller portion of the global economy than it was fifty years ago. It faces growing fiscal burdens. Its industrial infrastructure has withered. Some of its longstanding allies have hit economic and demographic slumps. The growth of other regional powers means that the geopolitical landscape has become more multipolar. Yet withdrawing from much of the globe would hamper the ability of the United States to respond to those changed circumstances and would also undermine the policy aims of American populists. International networks will be critical for renewing American industry and reinforcing national sovereignty.
While some European partners need urgent reforms (from cutting red tape to hiking defense budgets), the continent remains a major global economic hub. The White House’s recent <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf">National Security Strategy</a> observed that Europe “is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions” and that it retains robust manufacturing and technology sectors. A full-scale American withdrawal from Europe could close down a crucial market for American industry (including defense sales) and could also threaten regional stability. Ending NATO and shuttering American military bases would create a power vacuum in that continent and also hurt the ability of the United States to project power abroad.
Nor can the United States afford to ignore Asia. Responsible for about half of <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/media-center/cusp-of-new-era-in-asia">global manufacturing output</a>, Asia has become the workshop for the world. The People’s Republic of China is already a manufacturing powerhouse, and it could consolidate industrial dominance if the United States severs its commitments to allies in the Pacific. That is especially the case for the advanced technologies that are the building blocks of the digital economy. A link in countless international supply chains, Taiwan produces about <a href="https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/taiwan-semiconductors-including-chip-design-ai">90%</a> of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. If the People’s Republic of China conquered that island, it would have a chokehold on the American and global economies. It could cut off the chips that are needed for cars, computers, missiles, and phones. Beijing is already trying to use its control of key market sectors to influence policymaking in the United States. Responding to American tariffs and industrial policy, China has floated restrictions on some critical minerals, including those that are essential for <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-new-rare-earth-and-magnet-restrictions-threaten-us-defense-supply-chains">defense technologies</a>.
Populists have rallied around the claims of national sovereignty, but allowing the Chinese Communist Party to cut off the American economy at a whim is the antithesis of national independence. While building out American domestic semiconductor production is a national-security imperative, that’s also a very long process. The United States cannot afford to surrender economic self-governance for the indefinite future while it waits for some eschaton of economic autarky.
Conversely, coordinating with allies in Europe and Asia can bolster economic agency. For example, the PRC is responsible for over <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-tungsten.pdf">80%</a> of the global annual production of tungsten, which is used for drills, computer chips, aerospace, x-rays, and more. The United States has not even mined tungsten commercially in over a decade. In addition to bringing back domestic tungsten production, American allies could help de-risk the tungsten market. Australia has massive tungsten reserves, and South Korea’s <a href="https://www.mining.com/sangdong-tungsten-mine-in-south-korea-returns-to-production-after-30-years/">Sangdong Mine</a> has returned to production for the first time in decades. Accessing those resources will require keeping Pacific alliances strong — and not surrendering that region to Beijing.
Likewise, allies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will continue to be important for American national-security aims. Even as it has stressed the need to reform certain geopolitical arrangements, the Trump administration’s foreign-policy strategy is premised on the United States being a global great-power. Losing the hard power that backs the dollar’s reserve-currency status would cause an immediate economic crisis at home, but a global defense infrastructure also helps target American foes abroad. The Jacksonian tradition of foreign policy — which prioritizes the targeted use of military force to defend the national interest — has achieved a renewed prominence in the Trump presidencies. Jacksonianism could be a way of rebalancing global commitments by keeping America’s rivals off-balance without tying down the United States. International alliances can help optimize such Jacksonian exertions of force.
From its very founding, the United States has prioritized having access to global markets. When the Barbary pirates threatened American ships, Thomas Jefferson sent frigates to Tripoli. To open up Japan, Commodore Matthew Perry brought the United States Navy to Edo Bay. The network of alliances in the aftermath of World War II could be seen as an extension of a long-term strategic imperative: that the Stars and Stripes should be able to move freely throughout the world and that those who live under that banner should be safe from both foreign and domestic threats.
We now face a very different political landscape from 1946 or 1999. Implementing “liberal democracy” in a country is a lot harder than getting an Amazon package there. If policymakers had sought to integrate the world into some post-historical bazaar, their dreams have been sorely disappointed. Great-power competition is back, and populist movements have roiled political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic. Those changes indicate the need to rethink international alliances without abandoning them entirely.
Yes, the United States needs to recognize the limits of power and to try to defer existential conflict with its competitors. It also needs to understand the interests of those competitors. At the same time, the United States needs to understand its own interests. Cutting itself off from allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere would squander a major geopolitical advantage and undercut efforts to build a stronger nation at home.
* * *
Fred Bauer is a writer from New England. Find his work at National Review, City Journal, The Atlantic, UnHerd, and The Washington Post. @fredbauerblog

Strategic world map with shipping infographics, flags and dice

The Plan To Split The World Into Spheres And What It Means For America

The Plan To Split The World Into Spheres And What It Could Means For America

Economics

Europe

National Security

Russia

U.S. Military

U.S. Navy

Do you agree with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin about the world? 
Are you convinced that America ought to surrender its global power to a multipolar order?
If so, you might be a Quisling, a fifth columnist, an America Laster.
There are plenty of them. They&#8217;ve spent years lying about America, about our history, about our foreign policy, about our enemies, about our allies.
In the end, the only unifying feature of their bizarre amalgam of conspiracism and untruth is an agenda; an agenda to reduce America&#8217;s role in the world.
Let’s talk about the America Lasters, the people who play defense for Iran, Russia, and China, but who go on offense against the allies who fight alongside the United States. What do these people want? What is their actual agenda and why? Why do they so despise America&#8217;s dominant role in the world?
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2393-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
To understand the America Lasters, first we have to understand a basic reality: They are liars. They are lying about the nature of reality, and they have to lie because their lies are the only path toward American defeat, particularly in the current conflict with Iran.
I&#8217;ve been saying for weeks that those who most ardently oppose President Trump&#8217;s action are at best misinformed, and at worst, lying on behalf of the Iranian regime.
Since the beginning, they have argued that Iran was not a true threat to America or her interests; that President Trump was bamboozled into the war by lying, nefarious Israelis and domestic American voices, that all of this with regard to Iran is overblown, or even that Israel is the bad guy with regard to Iran.
Over the weekend, Iran blew that entire narrative up. Iran demonstrated full-scale that all of their defenders were useful idiots or America Lasters. The fools who claim that Iran posed no threat beyond the immediate region? They were parroting Iranian lies.
Just a few weeks ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi — who is likely not long for this non-72-virgin world — announced that Iran had limited its own missile range to 2,000 km, roughly 1,200 miles. That would make Iran a threat to the Middle East, but not to the heart of Europe.
Top American officials at the time warned it was not true. Senator Tom Cotton said to CIA director John Ratcliffe last week:
<blockquote>Iran has always had a space launch program, which is flimsy cover for the first part of that intercontinental missile program. I haven&#8217;t seen any Iranian astronauts in space lately. And second, they have medium-range ballistic missiles, which already have a reentry vehicle. So if you crudely married those two technologies together, I&#8217;ve heard some analysts say that Iran could have had a functioning intercontinental missile to threaten the United States in as few as six months. Would you agree with that assessment?</blockquote>
Ratcliffe replied: 
<blockquote>You&#8217;re right to be concerned about Iran&#8217;s development of longer range ballistic missiles, Senator. If Iran were allowed to develop IRBM ranges, which is 3,000 km, it would threaten most of Europe.</blockquote>
Over the weekend, American officials announced that Iran had launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S. airbase in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is 4,000 miles away from Iran.
What does that mean? Virtually all of Europe is in Iranian ballistic missile range, based on the attempt to hit the Diego Garcia airbase.
The Iranians appear to have been lying, which is not a shock because they lie all the time, whether it is ballistic missiles, their nuclear program, or their support of terrorists.
What would a world with a burgeoning Iranian nuclear program with intercontinental ballistic missile capacity look like? That is precisely the threat laid out by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu over the course of the last several years, that Iran had already developed missiles that could threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they&#8217;re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.
We were told by the America Lasters that all of this was untrue. But their lie was invalidated by the fact that there was a long-range missile that was aimed at Diego Garcia, which is thousands of miles from Iranian territory.
The America Lasters, people who actually really do despise America&#8217;s history and her present, are openly siding with China and Russia, just as they have with Iran in the current conflict.
Tucker Carlson recently told The Economist, “We can no longer be the sole author in terms of commerce of anything. We have to share power with China &#8230; because of their scale.” Tucker&#8217;s guests make this argument all the time, and just as often they are Chinese propagandists.
Take, for example, Jeffrey Sachs, a true globalist shill, basically an unofficial spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party. He said: 
<blockquote>In many ways, the United States cannot compete with China, certainly on manufacturing production across a wide range of industries; can&#8217;t compete with China in a wide range of diplomatic areas; and this is very disruptive. It probably would be intrinsically disruptive, because this is a change of power and a change of the international order. And I think we all feel that it&#8217;s not the temporary phenomenon, but really the end of the U.S.-led geopolitics and even more fundamentally, the end of the Western-led geopolitics.</blockquote>
Carlson consistently repeats Sachs&#8217;s messaging, and he did so over the weekend while interviewing a man he called a prophet. This Chinese propagandist said:
<blockquote>What I would do is basically sit down, everyone, including Russia, China, Iran, and say it&#8217;s time for a new world order where we are partners in this relationship. &#8230; Now what we want to do is open a dialog where everyone is respected, where America is no longer the bully, but a winning partner in creating a new economic order that benefits everyone and not just a few.</blockquote>
“I think that&#8217;s the wisest possible advice and probably the only path that preserves civilization,” Carlson responded. “The one country standing in the way of that is Israel.”
So Israel — that tiny country in the Middle East, not the United States — is the one that&#8217;s blackmailing America into not giving up its global power?
Right.
It’s important to recognize what he is talking about when he calls for what you might call a “new world order”: a partnership between the United States, China, and Russia to restructure global economics to “not benefit a few.”
If you don&#8217;t find that alarming, it&#8217;s because you are full-scale ignoring what Tucker Carlson is saying.
To understand why the America Lasters seem to have power in the online space, we have to understand that the America Last philosophy is rooted in a deep conspiracism about the United States.
Here’s the point: To the untrained eye — the eye of a normal American who grew up in America, who loves America, who was born in America — a world with more American power is a better world, a freer world, a more prosperous world.
When I say “untrained,” I mean a non-conspiratorial eye. I might look at the increase of power of America since World War II and see overall, unprecedented economic prosperity, the defeat of the Nazi empire and the Soviet Union, the spread of democratic values, and the spread of economic freedom.
America Lasters — on the Left and the Right —see something else: a worse world since World War II, a world of evil American capitalism destroying local communities, of “racist military might” overwhelming people of color everywhere.
The story of the world since World War II in the left-wing America Last perspective is a world of unending tragedy: The failure of the Marxist dream of the Soviet Union, the collapse of a “fairer” vision to the reality of free markets, the emptying out of left-wing thought in favor of neoliberalism, while on the Right, the American Lasters see a worse world since World War II as well: a world of evil American capitalism emptying out the communitarian world of real America, a world of American imperialism spreading vile secularism abroad, a world of false meritocracy providing cover for an emptying out of so-called “heritage Americanism” decided by bloodline rather than American ideals. Those are ideals that they consider a sham and a ruse.
This would be why America Lasters are fully in favor of the destruction of American power abroad.
But to destroy American power, first, you have to change American minds. To do that, you have to explain that a world of increased American power is actually terrible, darker, and more evil. And to make that claim, you have to believe a bunch of conspiracies. You have to believe that American meritocracy is actually a lie, that the Declaration of Independence is a lie, that in reality, America is run by a secret coterie of evildoers who manipulate systems and events for their own specific, insular benefit. 
The America Last Movement relies on unchecked conspiracy theorizing, conspiracism run amok. And that conspiracy is not just on the rise, it&#8217;s on an exponential rise.
It&#8217;s no shock that all these figures on all sides of the American Last movement are radically anti-Israel, because Israel actually is a powerful ally acting in concert with the United States. Israel has spent decades building its military power, sharing intelligence and tech with the United States, destroying incipient threats to the West from the Iraqi nuclear reactor back in the 80s to the Syrian nuclear reactor in the mid-2000s to Iranian proxies, and now the Iranian government.
And all these people despise Israel for it. Hassan Piker, Tucker Carlson, and the propagandist for the Chinese government are all on precisely the same page.
How little must you think of America to believe that China and Russia ought to have more influence in the world and that this would somehow be better for the world and America?
American hegemony is the best thing for the world. It is we who keep the trade routes open, ensuring freedom of the seas and the trade that provides the lifeblood of the global economy. It is we who stand down the world&#8217;s most evil regimes, achieving the world&#8217;s most dangerous weapons. It is we who support the rise of allies who share our values. It is we who prevent the spread of perverse cancerous power emanating from imperialist tyrants of communist and fascist persuasion.
The alternative world, the one the American Lasters want, is dominated by the same people who ran the One-Child program, and who currently throw dissidents in prison to linger and die, like Jimmy Lai. A world run by people who currently chuck their political opponents from the roofs of buildings, or poison them with nuclear materials, as the Russians have done, while allying with regimes that murder people who oppose radical Islam and support radical Islamic terror all over the world.
America First has nothing to do with America Last.
And it shouldn’t.

America Last

America Last: Conspiratorial Collaborationists Root For Our Enemies

Iran

Middle East

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1933-the-new-ayatollah-of-iran-is-gay?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
We&#8217;re not supposed to say anything but good about people who&#8217;ve just died. As the saying goes, speak no ill of the dead.
This man, however, left a wake of death, destruction, and catastrophe wherever he went. And most people don&#8217;t even know his name: Paul Ehrlich.
I write about Paul Ehrlich at some length in my book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Speechless-Controlling-Words-Minds/dp/1684510821/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y2L5GPaNcg2v5jnT9SD5ksR5a40NcpExppW6aHVVBg2FzlIHja61O5i6m-pH9wpIMWHGSkrLhkrd8rHzMDQN1iA3BuBH-UVJi0EyStx6M6l_7HKhwR0GKrN8w6e8rOUE18q_fPEggyexww619c7-BErp7yFNm38xTMhU_w6ZaMi3k03CxrXWwSCCSRcazdNo3eNXnHdUbDw3bae74VylSnpc0SFRJr6jlNhYAX6vRAs.q0vDzxnV2mm76BoF3WDe4Demnp2J-5X6usahlx1IIbo&amp;qid=1773785807&amp;sr=1-2">Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds</a>.” 
And now, here we have his obituary in <a href="https://x.com/SonnyBunch/status/2033466323842331077">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
“Premature,” lol. The abject refusal to just admit this guy was completely wrong is one of the funnier Boomer-coded traits. <a href="https://t.co/oM5GYgDEtR">pic.twitter.com/oM5GYgDEtR</a>
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) <a href="https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/2033466323842331077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Source: @SonnyBunch/X.com
The headline and sub-headline reads: 
<blockquote>Paul Ehrlich, who alarmed the world with The Population Bomb, dies at 93. 
His bestselling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement, but he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature.</blockquote>
Here we go. Big lie. 
His predictions “proved premature.” What were his predictions? His prediction was that if the population grew any more, we would have widespread famine, because the Earth could not sustain all those people.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1933-the-new-ayatollah-of-iran-is-gay?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
His prescriptions, therefore, were to stop having kids and sterilize people. We should use the government to reduce the population. These policies of his led to the one-child policy in China and forced sterilizations in India. This guy is — not single-handedly, but pretty close — responsible for the population crisis (or depopulation) that we face today.
And they say his predictions &#8220;proved premature.&#8221; 
Since he made his prediction that we would inevitably face mass starvation because the population was growing too much, since that time, the world population has doubled and global malnutrition has been cut dramatically. Today there are twice as many people as when he made his prediction, and we are more well-fed than ever.
It&#8217;s not that his predictions proved premature. They were completely wrong. Totally wrong. 
The New York Times is covering for Ehrlich in its obituary of him. Ehrlich did more evil than almost anybody in the 20th century. And the consequences of his stupid predictions and prescriptions — because he prescribed policy to governments — were mass evil.
The consequences of his ideas led to mass death, sterilization, the violation of basic rights, and he never let up on it.
Here is Paul Ehrlich, in the 1970s, discussing the problem as he saw it:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
In a 1970 interview, Paul Ehrlich stated: &#8220;The FCC should see to it that large families are always treated in negative light on television.&#8221;
He added that if this approach failed, then the government should &#8220;legislate the size of the family&#8221; and &#8220;throw you in jail if you have… <a href="https://t.co/Ij7C5eso4W">pic.twitter.com/Ij7C5eso4W</a>
— Gentry Gevers (@gentrywgevers) <a href="https://twitter.com/gentrywgevers/status/2033583323864568245?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Source: @gentrywgevers/X.com
In the interview, Ehrlich says,
<blockquote>The first thing the government should do is try and take the pressure off to reproduce &#8230; Young couples — if they don&#8217;t have children — people say, &#8216;gee, they must be sterile.&#8217; They never say, &#8216;gee, maybe they like good wine and going to the theater and so on, they prefer that to scraping diapers.&#8217; So there&#8217;s pressure to have children. So the first thing that should happen is that the president ought to say, &#8216;From here on out, no intelligent, patriotic American family ought to have more than two children, preferably one, if you&#8217;re starting a family now.&#8217; He ought to make the FCC see to it that large families are always treated in a negative light wherever they appear &#8230;  you can move to giving women bonuses for not having babies, that almost certainly would do the job. 
If that didn&#8217;t have the effect, then you could move to changing the tax structure so that people who had the money and had the children paid more for them — in other words, increase taxes on people with children rather than decrease them, since when they have the children they require more services. 
If that doesn&#8217;t work, then you&#8217;ll have the government legislating the size of the family. And people say, &#8216;Oh that&#8217;s impossible, government can never intrude and tell you how many children to have.&#8217; Well, I got news — you know it intruded a long time ago and told you how many wives you can have and there&#8217;s not the slightest question that if we don&#8217;t get the population under control with voluntary means that in the not-too-distant-future, the government will simply tell you how many children you can have and throw you in jail if you have too many.</blockquote>
So God tells us in the book of Genesis to &#8220;Be fruitful and multiply.&#8221; 
This Antichrist figure comes out in the 1970s and says, &#8220;Do not have children. It&#8217;s unpatriotic to have children.&#8221;
It&#8217;s funny because patriotism comes from the word &#8220;Pater,&#8221; meaning father — it&#8217;s an extension of filial piety, it&#8217;s an extension of the family — and he&#8217;s saying the pro-family thing to do is to destroy your family.
He says, first we&#8217;re going to incentivize people — we&#8217;re going to discourage them culturally. Say having kids is bad, you should just drink good wine instead. 
All these arguments you hear today — Don’t you want to travel? Don’t you want to have experiences? Don’t have kids.
And if that doesn&#8217;t work, we&#8217;re going to pay people not to have kids. Give women bonuses. Subsidize it. Say instead of having kids, go work at the widget factory, do spreadsheets, we’ll give you money.
That doesn&#8217;t work? Okay, now we punish you. Forget the carrot, now it&#8217;s the stick. If you have kids, we&#8217;re going to tax you. We&#8217;re going to make you pay for the privilege.
And if that doesn&#8217;t work, we&#8217;re just going to stop you from having kids.
What does that mean in practice? Because China implemented this. It means forced abortion. The government comes in and kills your child. You want to keep your child? No. Government kills your child.
It leads to policies like in India, where people were told you can only get access to food and resources if you sterilize yourself.
That happened because of this guy. Because of his book. Because of his ideas.
He said in &#8220;The Population Bomb&#8221;: 

<blockquote>The battle to feed all of humanity is over… hundreds of millions of people will starve to death… nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.</blockquote>
Totally wrong. Could not have been more wrong.
He said we must have population control — hopefully through voluntary means, but by compulsion if necessary. That was his thesis.
He described population growth as a &#8220;cancer.&#8221; Population growth just means more people. So if more people are a cancer, then people are the disease.
Human beings are a disease.
The left has held on to that view for a very, very long time. And this is where the truly wicked origins of leftism — which endeavors to invert reality — began, during the French Revolution as an assault on the Church. This is where the real satanic, Luciferian character of liberalism really begins to show itself. One of the fruits of liberalism is the view that human beings are a disease that must be cured, that must be eradicated from the earth. 
And now this guy is eradicated from the earth. And it&#8217;s sad, because every man&#8217;s death diminishes me because I&#8217;m a human. 
As John Donne wrote in his famous poem, &#8220;No Man is an Island&#8221;:
<blockquote>No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man&#8217;s death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.</blockquote>
We should pray for him, because he led a very, very evil life. And in many ways, maybe he didn’t fully understand what he was doing. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But we can’t just think about him — we have to think about the institutions.
This guy got everything wrong. Not a little wrong — perfectly wrong. And he never paid a price for it. He kept his positions, his prestige, his influence. His policies were implemented. They led to enormous harm. And the institutions backed him up.
And now one of the chief cultural institutions, The New York Times, is still covering for him — still saying his ideas were just “premature.”
Not premature. Wrong.
And as a final note, that idea — “forgive them, for they know not what they do” — this connects to something else.
The world feels tense right now. The stakes feel higher. There’s conflict in Iran, division at home, a lot of strain in the culture. For Christians, this is Lent. And if you’ve paid attention over the years, this season often feels like that — more tension, more conflict, more difficulty. In the story, this is the period in the desert, the temptation, the struggle.
And then comes Easter.
I’m not saying everything magically gets better overnight. But if you believe in spiritual realities, that there is a meaning to history, a rhythm to the liturgical calendar, then it’s not surprising that things feel strained right now.
Sometimes things look like they’re falling apart — like when Christ was crucified on Calvary — right before they come back together.
That’s the pattern.

Paul Ehrlich at a press conference this afternoon at Macquarie University.Internationally famous biologist, Paul Ehrlich, is visiting Australia and will be taking the position of Visiting Professor in Environmental Studies at Macquarie University.

One Of The Most Evil Men In History Just Died

Abortion

babies

Birth Control

Children

Death

Obituaries

Population

The New York Times

Ben Saul, the U.N. Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, accused the Trump administration of “naked aggression” and “renewed imperialism,” while lauding Somalia’s record on human rights.
“Countering terrorism has excused naked aggression and renewed imperialism against Iran and Venezuela, raining death and making us all less safe,” he told the U.N. Human Rights Council. “Despite these abuses, many responsible states remain committed to human rights while countering terrorism. My report on visiting Somalia last year shows how a country facing an existential terrorist threat is strengthening, not sacrificing, human rights.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
U.N. SAYS SOMALIA LEADS ON HUMAN RIGHTS: Ben Saul, the U.N. Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, says the U.S. is “raining death”—but Somalia is a model “responsible state” that “is committed to strengthening human rights.”
FYI: China donated $150,000 to Ben Saul. <a href="https://t.co/74ILPalq2P">pic.twitter.com/74ILPalq2P</a>
&mdash; UN Watch (@UNWatch) <a href="https://twitter.com/UNWatch/status/2033918733693997279?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
Last week, Saul <a href="https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/un-expert-rejects-us-justification-for-iran-war-warns-of-risk-for-further-destabilisation/dGFnOnJldXRlcnMuY29tLDIwMjY6bmV3c21sX1ZBMzQ0MzEyMDMyMDI2UlAx?utm_source=chatgpt.com">asserted</a> the United States had no lawful right to attack Iran because its only justification would be to intercept &#8220;an order to the state’s military to fire a weapon in the very near future,&#8221; meaning that a nation would have to wait until the nuclear bomb was ready to be sent before acting.
“There must be an armed attack occurring, or an armed attack must be imminent,” he stated. “Imminent means ‘about to occur,’ there’s some elasticity in that concept, of course, but it does not extend to bombing a country when they don’t even have the weapon yet that you say you fear, let alone having made any decision to use them against any other country. Imminent means you’ve intercepted an order to the state’s military to fire a weapon in the very near future.”
Saul&#8217;s office <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4079072/files/A_HRC_58_70_Add.1-EN.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com">received</a> $150,000 from China in 2025.
As for Somalia’s record, even left-wing Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/africa/east-africa-the-horn-and-great-lakes/somalia/report-somalia/">acknowledged</a> in 2024:
<blockquote>
Civilians continued to bear the brunt of the ongoing armed conflict between the Somali government, supported by its international allies, and the armed group Al-Shabaab. While large numbers of civilian casualties were reported, there was no accountability for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
The UN Assistance Mission in Somalia reported 854 civilian casualties (295 killed and 559 injured) between January and September. Al-Shabaab was responsible for 65% (560) of all recorded casualties, while the others were attributed to state security forces, clan militias, and international and regional forces. Internally displaced people continued to face significant human rights violations and abuses. More than 552,000 were internally displaced due to floods, drought, conflict and food insecurity. According to the UN, nearly 200,000 people – most of whom were already internally displaced – were forcibly evicted nationwide between January and December. Women and children, who faced risks of gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and evictions, constituted more than 80% of the displaced population.
</blockquote>
The Coalition of Somalia Human Rights defenders <a href="https://cshrds.org/somalia-annual-human-rights-report-2025">reported</a> in 2025: “This report documents grave human rights violations committed in Somalia during 2025, including abusive use of the death penalty, torture, extra-judicial killings, conflict-related sexual violence, violations against women and children, enforced evictions, and mass displacement. In 2025, Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in Somalia operated in an increasingly hostile and high-risk environment marked by systematic intimidation, violence, and repression.”
Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/somalia?utm_source=chatgpt.com">noted</a> last year, “In May, the Somali government called on the United Nations Security Council to terminate the UN political mission in Somalia (UNSOM), later walking back on the timeframe. &#8230; The government did not review the country’s outdated penal code or establish a national human rights commission.”

SWITZERLAND-UN-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT

UN Official Accuses Trump Of ‘Naked Aggression,’ Heaps Praise On Failed State Instead

UN ‘Human Rights’ Official Slanders U.S. As ‘Imperialist,’ Praises Somalia, Takes Cash From China

Somalia

United Nations

Venezuela

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent slammed reports that President Trump’s meeting with China would be delayed if Beijing did not agree to secure the Strait of Hormuz. 
“There’s a false narrative out there,” said Bessent. “If the meetings are delayed, it wouldn’t be delayed because the President has demanded that China police the Strait of Hormuz. If the meeting for some reason is rescheduled, it would be rescheduled because of logistics. The President wants to remain in D.C. to coordinate the war effort, and traveling abroad at a time like this may not be optimal.” 
Bessent traveled to Paris to begin trade talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Sunday to set the stage for President Trump’s state visit to Beijing at the end of March. The Treasury Secretary added he had a successful meeting with Lifeng, discussing China’s purchase commitments to the United States and the new tariff regime. 
Trump first announced his visit in late November after a phone call with China&#8217;s President Xi Jinping. Xi <a href="https://www.trumpstruth.org/statuses/33994?utm_source=chatgpt.com">invited</a> Trump to Beijing following their meeting in South Korea.
Bessent’s assurance that any delay to Trump’s visit would be logistical follows Beijing’s rejection of Trump’s suggestion that China deploy warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passage through which more than one-fifth of the world’s oil supply travels.
When asked about the proposal, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/china-rejects-trump-appeal-help-us-against-iran-11682132">said</a>, “China’s position is clear. We once again call on all sides to immediately cease military actions, avoid further escalation, and prevent regional turbulence from having a major impact on global economic growth.”
Along with not taking Trump up on his proposal, China has condemned the United States&#8217;s role in the attacks on Iran. However, George Chen, partner at the Asia Group, does not expect the issue to be a central topic during April&#8217;s talks. “U.S.-China relations are already complicated enough for President Trump and Xi to handle,&#8221; he <a href="https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/chinas-response-us-attack-iran-foreign-policy-130712305">said</a>. Adding Iran to the mix &#8220;won’t be something that both sides are keen to do.”
What will be central to the talks are tariffs. In response to the Supreme Court knocking down Trump&#8217;s sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the administration has turned to other trade authorities, including Section 122 tariffs and potential Section 301 tariffs led by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Section 122 allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 10 percent for 150 days without congressional approval. Section 301 tariffs, meanwhile, require a formal investigation conducted by the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
Before IEEPA was overturned, Trump could impose a levy as quickly as posting to Truth Social. But stripped of the power of IEEPA, Bessent says 301 will not be imposed until July, and he will need congressional action after 150 days for section 122. 
“We assume there will be very little change in Tariff revenue,” said Bessent. “The ultimate purpose of tariffs is to reshore production. At the end of the day, we want to reshore manufacturing in the US, especially strategic manufacturing.” Bessent said that goal also shaped the administration’s approach to trade talks with China. He added that the administration does not want to fully decouple from China, but does want to bring key strategic manufacturing back to the United States.
&nbsp;

President Trump Signs Executive Order In The Oval Office

Bessent Slams ‘False Narrative’ on Trump-China Talks

Media

Politics

Scott Bessent

President Donald Trump warned Sunday that NATO&#8217;s future could be at risk if the alliance does not help the United States secure the Strait of Hormuz. 
The comment came as Trump said that he had started reaching out to other countries for help keeping the strait safe from Iranian attacks. Iran has vowed to keep the strait, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes, closed while the war continues. 
“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1ca6d121-760b-4ec5-b6ad-514fdaa94873">told</a> the Financial Times. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”
Trump echoed those sentiments while flying back to Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening. 
“We are talking to other countries about working with us on the policing of the strait and I think we&#8217;re getting a good response. If we do, that&#8217;s great. And if we don&#8217;t, that&#8217;s great, too,” Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLKD2ulnBF4">told</a> reporters. 
He added that he would like to see NATO step in because of the funding the United States has provided for Ukraine. 
“We&#8217;re always there for NATO. We&#8217;re helping them win Ukraine,” Trump said. “Doesn’t affect us, but we&#8217;ve helped them. It’ll be interesting to see what country wouldn&#8217;t help us with a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the strait open.”
Trump said asking NATO to step in was “small” by comparison because Iran &#8220;has very little firepower left.”
“Really I&#8217;m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory. It&#8217;s the place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect it,” Trump said. 
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas <a href="https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/eu-weighs-action-strait-hormuz-open-131109449">said</a> Monday the bloc was “discussing” what it could do regarding the strait because it was in Europe&#8217;s interest to keep it open. 
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that he was looking to assist “a viable collective plan” to reopen the strait. He said that the United Kingdom would “not be drawn into the wider war.”
Iran again vowed Monday to keep the strait closed. 
“The Strait of Hormuz will not be open to any country intending to harm Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said. “The armed forces are controlling the transit, and no country will be able to use the Strait of Hormuz to strike against Iran.”
Trump also said he would like to see China get involved and take a role in securing the strait. He noted that China gets roughly 90% of its oil through the strait. Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month. 
Global benchmark Brent crude oil rose above $100 per barrel on Monday morning, climbing as high as $106.27. Gas prices across the United States have also risen, with the <a href="https://gasprices.aaa.com">national average</a> increasing to $3.71 per gallon from $2.92 a month ago.

President Trump And First Lady Melania Trump Host Women’s History Month Event At The White House

Trump Warns NATO’s Future Could Be ‘Very Bad’ If Allies Refuse To Help Secure Strait Of Hormuz

Executive

Gas Prices

NATO

Operation Epic Fury

Strait of Hormuz

If you have ever lived in a country that is not governed by a functional democratic system, you would probably notice that, by and large, its citizens hold a different standard for fairness and justice. For them, getting unmerited benefits through one’s connection to the powerful is entirely acceptable. In fact, forfeiting such a backdoor opportunity and going through proper channels is considered utterly foolish. However, it would be a mistake to assume that people in such a society are inherently dishonest. Since their culture does not stress the notion of fairness and justice as exercised in the United States, they find other ways to achieve the same end.
Many practices in China can be considered fraudulent when judged by American standards. But there is one institution that remains untouched by corruption – the annual National College Entrance Exam, also known as the Gaokao Exam. As long as I can remember, the process upholds the highest degree of integrity, standing as a startling aberration in Chinese culture. This is the area where one’s reward correlates with one’s performance irrespective of one’s connections and social status.
<h3>The Annual National College Entrance Exam</h3>
Why do the Chinese people behave so differently in this particular area? What drives them to overcome cultural norms and vigilantly guard the integrity of this examination process?
<div id="attachment_1059965" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059965" class="size-large wp-image-1059965" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828188-864x576.jpg" alt="NANJING, CHINA - DECEMBER 20: Examinees review their study materials outside an examination site for the 2026 postgraduate entrance exam on December 20, 2025 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province of China. 2026 China's national exam for postgraduate enrolment kicked off on December 20. (Photo by Liu Jianhua/VCG via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828188-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828188-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828188-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828188.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Liu Jianhua/VCG via Getty Images</div>
Confucianism, the primary philosophy in Chinese culture, puts great emphasis on education. Confucius believed that knowledge provides the foundation for morality. The more knowledge one has, the deeper one’s moral conviction becomes. Accordingly, a government official who is intelligent and learned would govern more judiciously, for such an erudite person certainly holds a higher moral standard. In the 7th century, the Chinese government formally began to select its administrators using a vigorous and elaborate system called the Imperial Examination. Through this process, the brightest and the most knowledgeable men were chosen to serve in government posts. In reality, however, a person’s high intelligence and profound knowledge did not necessarily reflect his moral conviction, nor his ability to govern. There have been plenty of immoral and incompetent government officials in Chinese history.
Nonetheless, success on the Imperial Examination can change one’s destiny, especially for those from a lower social stratum. In a culture where bribery receives tacit consent, holding a government post opens up endless opportunities for personal gain. This was the primary reason for the creation of a national obsession with education. Eventually, education became the national identity. After the Imperial Examination was abolished in 1905, the annual National College Entrance Exam – though with a much broader purpose – took its place in cultural significance. It was only briefly interrupted during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
The survival of this national identity is entirely contingent upon the integrity of the examination process. Should corruption occur, such as changing one’s score or using an imposter as a substitute, education would lose its objective measure and become culturally meaningless. Indeed, any dishonesty would pose a direct threat to the existence of the national identity. Consequently, any misstep in the process must be categorically eliminated. Considering that Chinese culture is based on intricate and complex relationships and is highly prone to corruption, the successful guarding of the examination process is by no means a small feat.
<div id="attachment_1059967" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059967" class="size-large wp-image-1059967" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828256-864x576.jpg" alt="FUYANG, CHINA - DECEMBER 20: Examinees walk out of an examination site for the 2026 postgraduate entrance exam on December 20, 2025 in Fuyang, Anhui Province of China. 2026 China's national exam for postgraduate enrolment kicked off on December 20. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828256-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828256-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828256-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252828256.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />VCG/VCG via Getty Images</div>
<h3>What Sets America Apart?</h3>
What sets America apart from other nations? What is America’s national identity?
As an immigrant from an authoritarian regime, I can unequivocally state that America stands for freedom, human rights, and equality under the law. This identity is protected and secured by our political system of a constitutional republic, within which the right of the citizen to participate in different electoral processes serves as the linchpin.
However, America is not the only place that holds elections. I participated in an election in China during my senior year in high school in the 1980s. The whole process felt contrived and incongruent with the cultural environment I was in. Knowing very little about democracy and the value of voting, I simply followed the direction of the lady at the voting station who guided me to select the predetermined names. Authoritarian regimes can also call an election – and they often do – masquerading as lovers of democracy. But their process is only a sham, an exercise in fraud.
What sets America apart is its electoral integrity, the cornerstone and prerequisite of our political system that safeguards our national identity – freedom, rights, and equality under the law. For over 200 years, our electoral system has seldom faced challenges. For most Americans, electoral fraud is not just downright wrong but unthinkable. Indeed, our relatively lenient election law, compared with many other nations, suggests that electoral integrity is so engraved in the hearts and minds of the American people that it is taken for granted. Consequently, any claim of large-scale electoral fraud comes across as incredibly conspiratorial, provoking cognitive dissonance and will be met with denials.
Yet, electoral fraud does occur in America. Even before Covid, there were <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/108824/documents/HHRG-116-JU00-20190129-SD020.pdf">proven cases</a>. A look at the 2018 congressional race in North Carolina shows the result was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/mark-harris-nc-voter-fraud.html">overturned</a> by the state election board because of mail-in ballot fraud. In 2019, Elbert Melton, the mayor of Gordon, Alabama, was <a href="https://electionfraud.heritage.org/case/200627">convicted</a> of voter fraud and removed from office. And, of course, the electoral integrity of the 2020 election, in the midst of the Covid outbreak, still remains in question for many.
<h3>The New Threat To Electoral Integrity</h3>
Today we are facing yet another tangible threat. How can we prevent the illegal immigrants Biden’s open-border policy produced from participating in the voting process only granted to American citizens? The law that prohibits illegal immigrants from voting has not been strictly enforced. For instance, according to court documents, in Pennsylvania, an illegal immigrant who had been ordered to leave the United States was able to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/illegal-immigrant-charged-voting-pennsylvania-5-presidential-elections">cast ballots</a> in every presidential election since 2008. This is far from being an isolated case. The two million illegal immigrants the Trump administration has deported is still a small minority compared with the army of foreign voters the Biden administration intentionally let in. Today, they pose a substantial threat to electoral integrity.
<div id="attachment_816347" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-816347" class="size-large wp-image-816347" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/Untitled-design-43-1024x576.jpg" alt="A migrant caravan walks into the interior of Mexico after crossing the Guatemalan border on October 21, 2018 near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico The caravan of Central Americans plans to eventually reach the United States." width="1024" height="576" />(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)</div>
The Safeguard America Vote Eligibility Act (SAVE America Act) is specifically designed to deal with this threat, prohibiting states from registering voters who are not American citizens, requiring voter ID at the point of voting, and eliminating mail-in ballots with a few exceptions. The bill has already passed the House vote and is currently in the Senate. Yet, Senate democrats rallying around Chuck Schumer vowed to kill it.
If we fail to prevent electoral fraud from taking place, America would soon evolve into a nation no different from many other places where corruption, rather than law and order, marks the characteristics of the society. Citizens, ruled by a corrupt and unaccountable government, would live without freedom, rights, and the protection of law. America would lose her identity and cease to be America.
The Chinese, who are culturally lenient towards bribery and cheating, have meticulously protected the integrity of their examination process in order to safeguard their national identity. Should we, who hold a higher standard of honesty, do less?
<h3>American Identity</h3>
Further, if the Chinese lost their national identity, the obsession with education, China would still survive. At most, they would have a reduced number of highly educated people. However, if America forsook our national identity, America would not survive. America would become just like any other nation where tyranny replaces freedom, scarcity substitutes for prosperity, and obedience is swapped for liberty. America as the “city on a hill” would vanish in history. Consequently, the threat of electoral fraud we are facing is not just an inconsequential blunder, but an existential threat to our nation, the equivalent of a foreign invasion.
When the Japanese invaded China during WWII, the Chinese Communist Party of Mao and the Chinese Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek temporarily joined forces in order to deal with their common threat. They recognized that if they allowed this threat to destroy their country, neither party would survive even though in peacetime they themselves had been rivals.
American citizens have recognized the common threat we are facing. Gallup polls show that 83% of Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-voting-voter-verification.aspx#:~:text=Stacked%20bar%20chart%20showing%20Americans,applications%20to%20all%20eligible%20voters.">support</a> requiring proof of citizenship for first-time voter registration. Pew research also suggests that 83% of Americans are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/22/majority-of-americans-continue-to-back-expanded-early-voting-voting-by-mail-voter-id/#:~:text=Requiring%20all%20voters%20to%20show%20government%2Dissued%20photo%20identification%20(83%25)">in favor</a> of voter ID laws. These statistics reveal that SAVE America Act has received a wide range of support transcending political and ethnic barriers. Yet, in spite of the unity behind this bill, Senate Democrats – and a few Republicans – have been going all out to stop it, laying out various pretexts, such as discrimination against the poor who do not possess the required documents for proof of citizenship. 
<div id="attachment_1059985" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059985" class="size-full wp-image-1059985" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2266146798.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 12: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (C) talks with reporters as he heads for the Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. Thune is being pressured by conservatives to do away with the 60-vote cloture threshold and move the SAVE America Act forward, a priority for President Donald Trump going into the midterm elections. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)" width="1024" height="574" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2266146798.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2266146798-300x168.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2266146798-768x431.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</div>
The truth is that Democrats care little about the poor who are merely a useful tool in their power struggle. Neither do they care about Biden’s illegal population. Hiding behind egalitarianism is the real intention – using an illegal voting bloc to seize political power. Their willingness to sacrifice America in order to gain power is treasonous. Even ruthless Mao, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese, didn’t have the nerve to surrender his own country. Those who oppose this bill have managed to sink below the monstrous Mao.
Today, whether you are left or right, blue or red, we are facing a common threat, and have a mutual self-interest in electoral integrity, without which our freedom and rights will vanish. And we, too, will vanish with it. At this crucial moment before the midterms, we must get behind President Trump and demand that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act to save America.
* * *
Chenyuan Snider was raised in Communist China and majored in Chinese language and literature in college. After immigrating to the United States and studying at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School, she became a professor at Christian colleges and seminaries. She and her husband live in Northern California and have two grown children.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: The term Gaokao Exam refers to China&#8217;s annual National College Entrance Exam, not the Imperial Examination.

China’s Gaokao Exam Begins Grading

What China’s Exam System Taught Me About Saving America’s Elections

Congress

Election Fraud

Elections

SAVE America Act

U.S. Senate

Voter ID

Voters

Scammers in Southeast Asia couldn&#8217;t hide behind their online profiles last week when the Royal Thai Police arrested 21 people in Bangkok as part of an international crackdown on scam centers targeting Americans.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, teamed up with the FBI, the Department of Justice&#8217;s Scam Center Strike Force, and Thai authorities to disrupt the networks. The company disabled 150,000 accounts tied to the scam operations.
In videos shared with The Daily Wire, armed Thai officers are seen going door to door, questioning individuals before placing suspects in handcuffs and taking them into custody. The arrests showcase the expanding effort by law enforcement to dismantle global cybercrime operations, a priority highlighted in a recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;"><iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/00tkSucJYTGX5uN027rvsgy5XMBz7DzZK8?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=29919c7e-1e20-467a-b39e-4c65aecc7bd5&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-03-11%3A%20Social%20Media%20Scammers%20Arrested&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F0da278b2-3534-4789-aa46-9fcc7a19fa0b.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;"><iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/gKU9A021OJ8pDv2Yw027OFb2WHtKyXnCln?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=b25bf3aa-1f85-4071-8cfe-ee237d9dc962&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-03-11%3A%20Social%20Media%20Scammers%20Arrested%20%232&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F9982ada5-a318-4eb4-83a9-14d240c70f45.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
On March 6, Trump signed an executive order on &#8220;Combating Cybercrime and Fraud,&#8221; directing federal agencies to prioritize prosecutions of cyber fraud and strengthen coordination to prevent, disrupt, investigate, and dismantle scam-center networks.
&#8220;This operation is a testament to how sharing information and coordinating our efforts can make real progress in disrupting this criminal activity at its source,&#8221; said Chris Sonderby, Meta&#8217;s vice president and deputy general counsel. &#8220;Our work to combat scams is never done, and we will continue to invest in technology and partnerships to stay ahead.&#8221;
The recent operation in Asia follows a December cybercrime sting in which Meta joined the FBI, Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service, and other agencies to share information on scam networks. That effort resulted in the removal of 59,000 accounts from Meta platforms and six arrest warrants.
Chinese criminal groups run many scam farms operating across Southeast Asia. The region has become a hub for Chinese-linked social media scammers who have stolen tens of billions of dollars from Americans in just the past few years.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent body that provides recommendations to Congress, wrote in a 2025 <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-exploitation-scam-centers-southeast-asia">report</a> that “the spread of China-linked scam compounds in Southeast Asia is fueling corruption and violence, promoting human trafficking, [and] undermining the ability of governments in the region to control what happens in their territory.”
Massive scam farms have set up shop in countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/why-southeast-asias-online-scam-industry-is-so-hard-to-shut-down">reported</a>. The foreign operations often target Americans with fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes, fake work-from-home jobs, and “task scams,” which promise high commissions but require victims to pay upfront fees.
According to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1140187">United Nations</a>, around 120,000 people are being forced to work for online scam farms in Myanmar, and another 100,000 people are being used as forced labor for the scam industry in Cambodia. Workers are often forced to send scam messages for 12 to 16 hours a day, according to the Associated Press.
The development of artificial intelligence has also aided social media scammers and their ability to target more Americans, <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/research/protecting-americans-china-linked-scam-centers-update-emerging-trends">according</a> to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The commission warned that AI enables scammers to “increase the sophistication of scams,” which can “make it difficult for even the most discerning potential victims to distinguish fact from fraud.”
In addition to using global law enforcement partnerships to battle online crime, a Meta spokesman told The Daily Wire that the company has added extra security measures for its users to fight the elusive scammers. This month, Meta plans to launch an advanced AI-powered scam detection tool for Messenger, allowing users to submit suspicious messages for review.
Meta is also testing a feature that will alert users of potentially suspicious friend requests, such as those from accounts with no mutual connections. On WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, users will receive alerts if an attempt to link their account to another device seems suspicious, a tactic scammers sometimes implement to hijack accounts.
&#8220;These operations cause real harm,&#8221; Meta said in a statement. &#8220;They upend lives, destroy trust, and are deliberately designed to avoid detection and disruption. The work to protect people against scammers is never done, and requires ongoing collaboration with partners across the tech industry and law enforcement to ensure a safer experience for everyone online.&#8221;

Thai Police arrest social media scammers

WATCH: How Facebook Teamed Up With The Trump Admin To Bust Scammers In Thailand

WATCH: Trump DOJ Teams Up With Meta, Thai Police To Bust Scammers Stealing From Americans

Department of Justice

Facebook

scams

Social Media

Menu