The Trump administration&#8217;s massive earthquake relief operation in Venezuela is highlighting a remarkable shift in U.S.-Venezuelan relations just six months after U.S. special forces captured former dictator Nicolás Maduro.
After two massive earthquakes measuring magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 struck north-central Venezuela last week, the United States launched a robust relief operation, <a href="https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/06/update-on-the-trump-administrations-robust-and-rapid-delivery-of-life-saving-u-s-assistance-to-venezuela">committing</a> more than $300 million in aid and deploying troops, humanitarian workers, and search-and-rescue teams across the country.
So far, the death toll stands at roughly 2,295 people, with that number expected to rise as more bodies are recovered from the rubble.
The response stands in contrast to the hostile relationship that existed only months earlier, when the United States seized Venezuelan oil tankers, threatened military action against Maduro&#8217;s regime, and ultimately carried out the operation that removed him from power.
Promising a swift response to the disaster, Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href="https://share.america.gov/expert-search-and-rescue-teams-save-lives-in-venezuela/">told</a> reporters, &#8220;It&#8217;ll be big; it&#8217;ll be fast; and it&#8217;ll be effective.&#8221;
The State Department announced Monday that the administration increased its commitment to more than $300 million after U.S. personnel on the ground identified urgent humanitarian needs. The funding includes $200 million for aid organizations and another roughly $100 million dedicated to specialized American logistics, military support, search-and-rescue operations, and emergency supplies. 
Officials emphasized that the money is flowing through established humanitarian partners rather than directly through the Venezuelan government. Organizations receiving support include Samaritan&#8217;s Purse, Catholic Relief Services, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, Project Hope, the International Organization for Migration, International Medical Corps, and the Red Cross. 
The United States has deployed four elite urban search-and-rescue teams from Fairfax County, Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County, and the City of Miami, totaling more than 300 first responders and 23 search dogs. The teams are conducting round-the-clock operations in some of the hardest-hit areas to locate survivors, provide medical care, and conduct structural assessments, according to the State Department.
The U.S. military has played a significant role in the relief effort. American airmen rapidly repaired and reopened Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas. A specialized Air Force team now coordinates tower and ground operations to keep humanitarian flights moving and supplies flowing to disaster zones. 
Offshore, the U.S. Navy transport dock ship, USS Fort Lauderdale, is supporting aid deliveries near La Guaira, where U.S. sailors and Marines are ferrying supplies to devastated coastal communities. American naval personnel are also working alongside Venezuelan authorities to repair and reopen the earthquake-damaged Port of La Guaira, a critical hub for incoming aid.
Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Caleb Orr is scheduled to travel to Venezuela from July 1 through July 3 amid the relief operations. 
Just six months ago, the two countries appeared headed toward a direct confrontation. Today, American troops and Venezuelan officials are working together to deliver aid.
What began as a maximum-pressure campaign early in Trump&#8217;s second term escalated into the seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers and culminated in a lightning-fast 88-minute U.S. special operations raid that captured Maduro in January. 
According to American officials, the mission was among the most complex military operations in recent years. Venezuelans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-never-seen-anything-like-it-maduros-security-guard-lays-out-what-its-like-facing-u-s-military">who witnessed</a> the assault described a force so overwhelming that Maduro&#8217;s security apparatus never stood a chance, with some claiming American commandos slipped in undetected, overwhelmed hundreds of security guards, and employed sonic weapon technology they had never seen before.
The raid culminated in an unforgettable scene: Maduro, once one of Washington&#8217;s most defiant adversaries, being escorted in New York City by American law enforcement. The scene went viral, turning the longtime bully into a humiliating symbol of his era’s collapse.
After Maduro&#8217;s capture, Trump signaled an expansive American role in Venezuela&#8217;s recovery.
“We&#8217;re going to run it, fix it,” Trump said at the time. “It&#8217;s a broken country.”
But the Trump administration ultimately established a working relationship with President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro&#8217;s former vice president who assumed power after his removal.
Despite international backlash and accusations that the operation violated Venezuela&#8217;s sovereignty, Washington moved to stabilize the country and revive its economy. Relations between the two nations improved rapidly.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spearheaded the administration&#8217;s diplomatic outreach, seeking not only to stabilize Venezuela politically but also to rebuild relations between the two countries. At the same time, the administration encouraged American companies to invest in reviving Venezuela&#8217;s battered economy and oil industry.
In recent months, the administration has eased sanctions, restored direct commercial flights between the two countries for the first time in seven years, and backed economic reforms designed to attract foreign investment. Senior U.S. officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, have traveled to Venezuela.
<a href="https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/061026-trump-official-says-venezuela-oil-recovery-on-track-after-maduro-ouster#:~:text=Venezuelan%20state%20oil%20company%20PDVSA,from%20the%20Ministry%20of%20Hydrocarbons.">According to S&amp;P Global</a>, Venezuela increased oil output from about 940,000 barrels per day in January to more than 1.15 million barrels per day in May. Government officials expect production to keep growing and reach 1.37 million barrels per day by the end of 2026, bringing help to the South American country’s struggling economy.
Venezuela&#8217;s economy has shown signs of improvement in recent months. Inflation, which topped 600% in 2025, has fallen dramatically, with monthly inflation now below 10%, according to Orr.
The improved relationship has implications beyond humanitarian aid or economic partnerships. By drawing Venezuela closer to Washington, the administration has sought to diminish the influence of adversaries such as China, Russia, and Cuba, all of which expanded their foothold in the country during the Maduro years.
The shift has also been welcomed by many Venezuelan Americans, particularly in South Florida, where large diaspora communities have long advocated for Maduro&#8217;s removal and closer ties between the United States and a post-Maduro Venezuela.
Now, as Venezuela confronts one of the worst natural disasters in its recent history, the United States is playing a leading role in the international relief effort — a scene that would have been almost unimaginable just months ago.
Leona Salinas contributed to this report.

Search and rescue operations continue in earthquake-hit Venezuela

Earthquake Relief Marks Historic Shift In U.S. Relations With Venezuela

U.S. Earthquake Relief Marks Stunning Shift In Relations With Venezuela

Marco Rubio

Natural Disaster

Nicolas Maduro

Trump Administration

Venezuela

You’re paying more for groceries, gas, and everything else. Politicians blame tariffs and supply chains. Another real culprit is hiding in plain sight: <a href="https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/">California’s unelected Air Resources Board (CARB)</a>, which is writing energy policy for the entire country and sending us the bill for its climate fantasy.
You never voted for CARB. Your senators didn’t. No one in your state did. Yet federal waivers let this rogue agency impose extreme emissions rules that exceed federal law, jack up costs for every business serving the national market, and have no real-world effect on the climate.
CARB’s rules drive up trucking, shipping, and freight costs in California, and those costs hit every American because <a href="https://centerforjobs.org/ca/trade-reports/california-trade-report-for-march-2025">California ports move nearly 40%</a> of all U.S. imports. That is not a regional impact. That is a national tax levied without representation.
Congress and the Trump administration took important steps in response last year. In June 2025, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was used to <a href="https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/05/up-in-the-air-congress-nullifies-clean-air-act-waivers-for-california">revoke three major Biden-era CARB waivers</a> covering electric vehicle mandates for passenger cars, heavy-duty trucks, and engine emissions.
That was the right call. The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/06/statement-by-the-president/">bipartisan support</a> it received proved that people across the political spectrum are fed up with California making expensive decisions that the rest of the country has to live with and pay for.
But California refused to accept defeat. <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CRA-Response-EO-N-27-25_-bl-formatted-GGN-Signed-6-11-954pmFinal.pdf">Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately signed an executive order</a> directing agencies to circumvent Congress. CARB kept enforcing the voided rules anyway. The Department of Justice had to sue the state in August 2025 to force compliance.
This isn’t a state defending its rights. It’s a state defying democracy by attempting to impose its ideology on the rest of us by any means necessary.
Active waivers are still doing real damage. The <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/10/20/2023-23261/california-state-nonroad-engine-pollution-control-standards-ocean-going-vessels-at-berth-notice-of">At-Berth Regulation, operating under a waiver</a> granted by the Biden administration to CARB in 2023, requires cargo ships docked at California ports to shut down their diesel engines and either plug into the state&#8217;s grid or pay fines of nearly $50,000 per day.
CARB has collected tens of millions of dollars in penalties since 2025. Shipping companies do not absorb that cost. They build it into freight rates. Freight rates flow into wholesale prices. Wholesale prices hit you at checkout.
CARB put the <a href="https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/barcu/regact/2019/ogvatberth2019/2nd15dayattb.pdf">price tag at $2.23 billion</a> by 2032. They called that figure reasonable. It is not reasonable when the people paying for it never get a vote.
The same scam runs with <a href="https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/drayage-trucks-seaports-railyards">drayage truck rules</a>, forcing zero-emission vehicles on an impossible timeline. The technology and infrastructure aren’t ready. The costs simply roll through the supply chain to every American.
Californians can choose this path. The rest of us never did. California has every right to its own policies. It has no right to export the costs to families in Ohio, Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Right now, they get to feel virtuous about their climate agenda while spreading the bill to people who had no say in writing it. That is not environmentalism. That is cost-shifting dressed up as moral leadership.
On June 12, 2026, the EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-fulfills-statutory-obligation-transmitting-four-california-waiver-rules-congress">transmitted four additional CARB waivers</a> to Congress for action under the Congressional Review Act. These cover strict vehicle emissions, greenhouse gas standards, and small off-road engines. This latest move confirms the administration is systematically reviewing California’s overreach and that the legal path for ending At-Berth shipping and drayage trucking waivers is wide open.
There is a straightforward solution. The At-Berth shipping and drayage trucking waivers should be the <a href="https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/06/epa-sends-4-more-california-vehicle-emission-waivers-to-congress">next ones submitted</a> to Congress under the CRA. The administration has implicitly confirmed that these waivers are eligible for review. The precedent is set. The legal authority is established. What is needed now is the political will to use it.
Midterms are coming. Lawmakers who want to campaign on lowering costs now have a clear, concrete chance. One state should not dictate national energy and shipping costs while sticking the rest of America with the bill.
Call your representatives today. Demand they end CARB’s power to run national policy from Sacramento. The tools are in place. The only question left is whether Congress will use them.
***
Frank Lasee is the president of Truth in Energy and Climate.

Container Ships at the Port of Los Angeles

California’s Climate Tab Is Being Sent To The Rest Of Us

California

California Air Resources Board (CARB)

California Ports

Climate Change

DW Opinion

Joe Biden opened the border.
Donald Trump closed the border, and the Supreme Court just ruled that is okay.
The Left and the legacy media are going insanely crazy. They say the Supreme Court is now a Right-wing tool as an evil stand-in for vicious racism.
Yesterday, two Supreme Court decisions came down, both 6-3. It was the Republican appointees on the Court versus the Democratic appointees. The first decision concerned people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. The other had to do with the Trump administration labeling countries like Syria and Haiti as dangerous for the purposes of deporting people here on temporary protected status.
Before we get to the content of these decisions, we first need to understand what the Supreme Court does. Why is that important?
Because the Left wants the Supreme Court to be a thing it is not. They yell at the Supreme Court when it doesn&#8217;t do what they want.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-ben-shapiro-show-episode-2454?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
What is the Court supposed to do? It does not make policy, good or bad. It does not decide what the policy is, good or bad. That&#8217;s why we elect a Congress and a president. It&#8217;s why the Supreme Court is an unelected branch of government: its job is to interpret what the law means and decide what the law says.
It doesn&#8217;t get to say, “We read the law. That was bad. Now we&#8217;re overturning the law and putting a new law in its place.&#8221;
Going back to the 1930s, the Left decided the Supreme Court ought to act as a super-legislature, a group of really smart people who can simply rewrite policy they don&#8217;t like into good Left-wing policy.
In fact, what they want is for the Supreme Court to say that when the president or Congress does Left-wing things, that&#8217;s legal. When the president or Congress does Right-wing things, that&#8217;s illegal.
But that&#8217;s not the job of the Supreme Court. And yesterday, the Supreme Court did its job.
It doesn&#8217;t matter whether you agree with what the Trump administration actually did at the US-Mexico border or with Haitian migrants. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to agree or disagree with such action. The question is, under our Constitution, who has the authority to do what?
The Supreme Court said that the Trump administration acted within its legally defined purview and that it could not simply overrule it based on whether it liked it or not. If you don&#8217;t like the policy, elect a different Congress or a different president.
These things became Supreme Court cases because of a long history of bad legislation. And then presidents take advantage of bad legislation, which is the story of congressional-presidential relations since Woodrow Wilson.
Congress would pass vague laws. Presidents would take advantage of that in order to maximize their own power.
Let&#8217;s start with the first decision. It was called Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. In 2016, the Obama administration set up a process called metering. There was heavy migration at the southern border, as you recall, and until 2016, if you were a non-citizen seeking asylum at a port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, you crossed into U.S. soil and then had to wait in line for inspection.
At that point, we had a legal duty to listen to you. And most people would come and claim asylum. They would claim they couldn&#8217;t return to their home country due to a specific threat.
That is a different thing from temporary protected status; asylum requires you to show that you face a specific threat. You can&#8217;t just say, “I want to come here because my home country sucks.” In order for that to be adjudicated, you would come, wait in line for inspection at a port of entry, and once you were on American soil, we had a duty to actually listen to your asylum claim.
Toward the end of the Obama administration, there were so many people arriving at the border trying to get in that the government approved something called a metering policy, under which border agents would basically stand at the border and say, “Don&#8217;t come in. You don&#8217;t have travel documents or a visa. The port of entry is full. Come back later. You stay there.”
Why did they do that? Because the law says you only have to process people who are in the country. If you don&#8217;t come in, we have no legal duty to process you. The first Trump administration expanded and formalized the metering policy, and then the Biden administration rescinded it.
And then they went even further. They said, “Welcome to the border. Claim asylum and say the magic words, ‘I fear for my life, and I can&#8217;t go back to my home country,’ and we&#8217;ll let you basically run around in the United States and stay forever.”
So the Trump administration, Part II came in and said, “No, no. No metering policy back in place. You&#8217;re going to wait over there, and we will not process you. The border is closed. It&#8217;s not a matter of whether the ports of entry are full. You&#8217;re not coming in. Period. And if you&#8217;re not on American soil, we have no duty to you. “
If you don&#8217;t like that policy, you can vote for Democrats to go back to the Biden way of passing laws. Or you could rewrite the law so that people who apply for citizenship have to remain in Mexico, the Trump “Remain in Mexico” policy. Or theoretically, you could rewrite the law so that everyone who applies for citizenship, no matter where they are, has to be given an asylum hearing, even if they don&#8217;t come into the United States, and we don&#8217;t have a duty to house them.
There are a bunch of ways you could do this. But that&#8217;s what Congress exists for.
The role of the various branches of government is important. You elect people to change the policy. The Supreme Court is here to interpret what the law currently says, not what it should say or who should be elected.
The plaintiffs in this case are a group of non-citizens.
They were trying to get into the United States, and they say that their rights were violated because their asylum cases were never heard, because they were in line, and that is as good as being in the country. They never entered the United States. They were turned away at the border.
In a decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court said, “No. ‘In the United States’ means in the United States. You&#8217;re not in the United States if you&#8217;re waiting on the other side of the border.”
Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence, which said something further: that Congress has no power to force the president to bring aliens into the country. He said the Constitution allows Congress the power to regulate who doesn&#8217;t get to come in. But the Constitution does not specify a certain number of people who must be allowed into the country. Also, said Thomas, the people in this case are neither naturalized nor on the path to naturalization. You have no rights under the U.S. Constitution if you do not live in the country, if you are not on the path to naturalization, or if you&#8217;ve never entered the country.
In the more controversial case involving Haitian migrants, the only reason it reached the Supreme Court is that Congress passed an incredibly vague law that handed tremendous authority to the president. And then various presidents deliberately abused the law in various ways.
In 1990, Congress passed something called the Immigration Act. One of the provisions of the Immigration Act is something called Temporary Protected Status. The idea is, you come to the United States on a travel visa, you&#8217;re tooling around, and suddenly your home country goes nuts. There&#8217;s a coup, terrorists take over; you could be given temporary protected status by the executive branch.
At the time, Congress designated one country and one country only, El Salvador, as a country where things were so dangerous that you didn&#8217;t have to be deported back to your home country, even if you were, for example, overstaying your visa.
So what happened? Over the course of decades, the list of countries that became dangerous expanded, and the borders opened.
The Obama and Biden administrations used TPS to radically change immigration law. They would open the borders, bring in a bunch of people from crappy countries, label all those home countries dangerous, and now those people could stay forever.
The average temporary protected status holder in the United States has been here for 20 years.
So the Trump administration said, “It&#8217;s supposed to be temporary. It&#8217;s in the word temporary.”
Democrats are saying, “No, no, no, the focus should be on ‘protected.&#8217;’’
There are now 17 countries from which people are protected from going home. The Trump administration came in and they declared that a bunch of these countries are no longer dangerous for the purpose of deporting people. Those countries include places like Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Yemen, South Sudan, Haiti, Syria, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
I want to be clear about what&#8217;s factual and what&#8217;s not factual. Many of these countries are wildly dangerous; Haiti is one. It is the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere by a long shot. Five thousand and five hundred people were murdered in Haiti last year alone. Sex trafficking is rampant. Gangs basically run the place. It is now a hellhole.
But here&#8217;s what happened. Democrats are claiming that temporary protected status is a one-way ratchet; a president can legalize vast swaths of illegal immigration by labeling a country dangerous. But then a subsequent president cannot relabel that country unless there&#8217;s a showing that the country is not dangerous.
The question is what tools did the Trump administration have under the law?
According to stats from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS as well as the Congressional Research Service), in 2010, there were between 50,000 and 70,000 Haitian TPS holders. Sixteen years later, there were between 330,000 and 350,000 Haitian TPS holders. And remember, all these people have kids, and those kids are natural-born citizens of the United States.
So the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not the president can label Syria and Haiti non-dangerous for purposes of deportation. So Justice Alito wrote, “In these cases, we consider whether respondents who challenge the termination of temporary protected status for aliens from Syria and Haiti are entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation. We hold they are not. The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims and allows ‘no judicial review’ of any determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation.”
You might not like how the Trump administration is using the law, but the law says what the law says.
If Congress wishes to designate Haiti as a country covered by TPS in law, it can do so. They can define how long people can stay; they can define how people are deported.
But that&#8217;s not what they did. In this law, Justice Thomas said that Congress barred all judicial review of TPS termination decisions, including constitutional claims. Courts are obliged to simply give effect to the ordinary meaning of the law.
Democrats are going to call Republicans cruel. Republicans are going to say, “We should not be taking in hundreds of thousands of people illegally and then backfilling that with a TPS designation.”
The Court isn&#8217;t the problem here. If you don&#8217;t like the law, change the law.
Attacking the Court for simply interpreting the law as written is ugly stuff.

donkeyelephanttugofwar

The Rule Democrats Loved … Until Now

Ben Shapiro

Biden Administration

Immigration

Immigration law

Open borders

Opinion

Supreme Court

Yesterday, the Republican-majority Senate joined the Republican-majority House in passing a symbolic rebuke of Republican President Trump’s Iran War. This rebuke was not spurred by the launching of a war without congressional authorization (the first bombs dropped almost four months ago). It was not spurred by President Trump threatening to escalate the conflict dramatically by putting American boots on the ground in Iran.
No, the catalyst that pushed congressional anger over the top appears to be the diplomatic breakthrough of the signing of a recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Iran. Which begs the question — has everyone lost their damn minds?
A sane soul would greet news of an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with guarded optimism, but sane souls are in short supply. In their place, a cavalcade of Cassandras pounced with delight, reading their darkest fears into 14 bullet points. Iran War supporters screeched that Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Opponents seized upon the agreement as further proof that the war was misbegotten from the jump. In confusing a narrow interim agreement with an ultimate settlement, both groups committed the same category error.
For what it’s worth, I was hardly eager to go to war with Iran. Had President Trump asked my thoughts, I would have urged restraint out of fear that the risks of war outweighed potential gains. I don&#8217;t feel that way anymore: the potential upside remains immensely consequential, and the downside has been milder than any analyst anticipated. But I also won’t pretend a positive outcome is guaranteed. The enemy gets a vote, and the Iranian regime has ably leveraged its relative strengths. What I am confident of is narrower and more durable: that the unrelenting gloom is wholly unwarranted.
I offer no promise that my read will be borne out, but it is considerably more presumptuous to insist that the future will be a straight-line continuation of the present. This has been, and remains, a multi-turn process; conflict resolution is achieved by building trust in small increments, under the credible threat of a return to violence. What the MOU laid out is about the smallest increment possible to remove the most pressing constraint on the West, while surrendering none of our optionality.
Remember, a memorandum of understanding is an opening position, not a last will and testament. Substantively, the MOU amounts to little more than &#8220;Hormuz-for-Hormuz&#8221;: Iran ceases its attacks on commercial shipping in the strait, and the United States lifts its naval blockade. Considering that closing the Strait — and the resulting roiling of global energy markets — was the strongest arrow in Tehran&#8217;s quiver, this is an Iranian concession hiding under a triumphant cloak. The false triumph is both useful and telling — the more regime thugs beat their chests and proclaim victory, the more convinced I become that they’re steeling for the bitter pills hardliners must swallow on the way to a productive peace.
The reality is that a window of relief is a net loss for Iran. Every day that passes is a day where global crude and LNG reserves recover and storage gets topped up, a day of progress on pipelines bypassing Hormuz, a day that lowers prices at the pump and relieves domestic political pressures — in short, a day where Iran’s ability to slam the strait shut loses its menace. In exchange, a reprieve or relief of sanctions at this stage will give Iran, at best, a penny on the dollar for what they’ve lost in this war.
As we go forward, could the Iranian regime violate, renege, or backslide on commitments? Absolutely. In fact, assume it as your base case; the critics are absolutely right to distrust the Iranian side. Where those parsing the verbiage of the MOU go wrong is in their second, unstated assumption: that Donald Trump, of all people, will cling to the letter of any agreement the moment it stops suiting him.
That blind spot about Trump’s nature sits atop a deeper one about the war itself. The frustration among the war&#8217;s supporters rests on a flattering fiction: that the Revolutionary Guard was moments away from collapse, and simply doing more of the same would produce total victory. (This was a plausible scenario at the outset, but not proven out.) The mirror-image conviction animating the war&#8217;s opponents — that we&#8217;ve merely clawed our way back to a worse version of the prewar status quo — is no better supported. Categorical claims rooted in a single moment frozen in time are almost always wrong, and they are especially wrong with a president whose only constants are Diet Coke and long red ties.
That&#8217;s the part the doomsayers keep tripping over: they&#8217;ve misread the main actor. Trump is a fluid operator with a pragmatic, iterative style. He has no compunction about turning on a dime when a tactic isn&#8217;t working, and that very habit is what fuels critics’ suspicion that he pivoted to peace because the war was failing. That reading misses the whole trick: on a core conviction, Trump keeps the destination fixed even as he swaps his vehicle. He didn&#8217;t abandon tariffs when the Supreme Court struck down one of his tools for imposing them; he believes in tariffs, so he simply found another route. Mistaking a change of tactics for a change of strategy is the original sin of nearly every pundit predicting what Trump will do next.
Which brings us to the actual strategy. Some behavior can be coerced, and at the outset there was a Venezuela-like possibility that just sticks would do the trick. Yet the first months of the conflict made clear that reaching an acceptable end state cannot be achieved by coercion alone. The next logical turn is to the carrots, while keeping the sticks close at hand — silver, in other words, with the lead never far from reach. Critics are right that this is where Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) comparisons are most apt: both the MOU and the JCPOA contained sanctions relief and a firm commitment by Iran to neither procure nor pursue nuclear weapons. The JCPOA also held an implicit wager that drawing Iran into deeper economic integration would moderate the regime over time. October 7th showed the failure of that approach.
What’s different now is the destruction of Iran’s economy and evisceration of its industrial base to the tune of anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion in losses. Combining this damage with the magnitude of the potential upside, alongside a motivated Gulf committed to seeing it through, and a real change in regime direction is not just possible but a logical path for Iran to pursue.
Paradoxically, the extent to which the Iranians have removed all doubt as to their willingness to burn the region down has heightened the incentive of their neighbors to do everything possible to forestall such a future. The potential $300 billion pot of reconstruction gold at the end of the rainbow is burden-sharing by those most at risk if the strategy fails. At the risk of mixing metallurgical metaphors, that’s a hell of a lot of silver for the Iranians to consider — enough to drive a durable wedge between the true believers and those responsive to earthly incentives.
The MOU may be a narrow solution to a narrow problem, but it is a narrow solution that pries open a far wider, far grander, and strategically seismic possibility: turning Iran off its present course and speed as the foremost multiplier of malevolence in a region that remains vital to the global economy. The ultimate consequence of a malign Iran extends far beyond chaos in the Middle East: with Venezuela out and Cuba teetering, Iran is the last misfit state outside the Pacific that China could use to horizontally escalate a violent great-power conflict with the U.S. Trump and his team understand this; Iran was never just about Iran, but the axis Tehran anchors in the Gulf.
The severe domestic political consequences of this war are self-evident in polling and approval ratings; Trump acknowledged not only knowing the risks but also expecting far worse when he made the decision to go to war. There was always going to be a maturity mismatch between the short-term political cost to the Trump administration and the long-term potential strategic reward of knocking Iran off a violent course and forestalling a Great Power catastrophe. In normal times, a leader who sets out on a path he believes is right, fully aware of the electoral backlash it will bring, would be admired for their political courage.
But we don’t live in normal times, and none of this guarantees the ending. Tehran may renege; the talks may collapse; the doomsayers may yet be vindicated. But that is precisely the point — it is an ending no one has reached. Politicians bowing to cynical interests to call the war a defeat is forcing a conclusion we have yet to reach, a bewildering move while our adversary is lowering their only weapon of consequence.
***
Peter Meijer served as the U.S. representative for Michigan&#8217;s 3rd congressional district from 2021 to 2023.

Trump Signs Order Directing Customs Crackdown Amid Trade Gaps

Peter Meijer: Relax, Trump is Handling Iran

Foreign Policy

Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran war

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

Middle East

The Trump administration is looking to breed a new class of pro-America refugees with the help of a new patriotic curriculum, The Daily Wire has learned.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has partnered with PragerU to provide newly arrived Afrikaner refugees escaping racial persecution in South Africa with videos and literature on American history and values as part of a new &#8220;patriotic welcome package.&#8221; President Donald Trump has prioritized the admission of Afrikaners, members of South Africa’s persecuted white minority, and recently increased the annual refugee cap to roughly 17,500 to bring more of them to the United States.
Several Afrikaner refugees brought to the United States by Trump recently told The Daily Wire that up until now, federally funded resettlement agencies have provided videos as part of their cultural orientation to American life that taught them how to shower, use a toilet, and brush their teeth. The refugees, who largely speak English and are accustomed to such cultural norms, were shocked by the material.
The content is provided to refugee aid nonprofits through the International Rescue Committee&#8217;s SettleIn initiative and is funded by HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as previously reported.
Adriaan, an Afrikaner refugee who arrived in December, said he and his peers &#8220;laughed at a lot of these videos and made comedic remarks because they pointed out the obvious regarding not going to the bathroom outside and how to use a microwave oven.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_1120347" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1120347" class="size-medium wp-image-1120347" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_0535-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_0535-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_0535-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_0535.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />Courtesy of HHS</div>
The new welcome packets include a copy of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and The White House&#8217;s 1776 Report on America&#8217;s founding, according to HHS.
“On the 250th anniversary of our great nation, it is my honor to welcome Afrikaner refugees to the land of freedom and opportunity,” HHS Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex J. Adams said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire.
“America has long been strengthened by individuals and families who come here seeking safety, stability, and the chance to build a better future. The Trump administration is proud to now connect refugees with resources that will support their transition to American life and help them learn of the freedoms, responsibilities, and opportunities that make this nation great,&#8221; Adams added.
PragerU&#8217;s vice president of kids programming Dzana Homan, who came to the United States as a refugee from communist Yugoslavia, is behind the program&#8217;s launch. She said the hope is &#8220;to tell&#8221; refugees &#8220;this color blind America values story about how did this country begin and what is it that makes it so special.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing right now that is provided frankly and when you look at what has happened thus far with America&#8217;s immigration, including myself, it is very hard to find information, especially for this day and age that is succinct, that is truthful &#8230; and then also celebration of America, I think that&#8217;s the important part,&#8221; Homan said.
&#8220;You want new immigrants to see America in the right light,&#8221; she said.
HHS will give each newly arrived refugee family a tablet with the PragerU app installed with all the pro-America content, Homan said. Each family will also receive &#8220;The Honest Book of America&#8217;s Founders,&#8221; which tells the story of America&#8217;s founding.
PragerU also launched &#8220;Welcome to America,&#8221; a landing page for refugees to watch 25 short videos including &#8220;A Moral Case for Capitalism&#8221; hosted by former European Parliament member Daniel Hannan, &#8220;The Government Doesn&#8217;t Make Money — You Do&#8221; hosted by business advisor Carol Roth, and &#8220;Do You Understand the Electoral College?&#8221; hosted by expert Tara Ross. The playlist also features videos hosted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager, and retired Navy SEAL officer Jocko Willink.
&#8220;Welcome to America. You’ve arrived to a nation built by people who came searching for freedom, opportunity, and a fresh start — just like you,&#8221; the website reads.
&#8220;These short videos will introduce you to America’s history, values, and how this country works, so you can feel confident, informed, and ready to build the life you came here for. With content for every age, your whole family can learn together,&#8221; it adds.
The website also features children&#8217;s content from kindergarten to sixth grade &#8220;and up&#8221; discussing the themes of Independence Day, Thanksgiving, the Bill of Rights, and George Washington.
&#8220;PragerU is already the go-to source for millions of Americans seeking inspiring and educational content about our nation&#8217;s history and values,&#8221; PragerU CEO Marissa Streit said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire. &#8220;Now, we are proud to help new Americans learn about and appreciate our great country.&#8221;
PragerU provided all the content for the program free of charge, Homan said. ORR will distribute the new materials to refugees starting Wednesday.
Editor&#8217;s Note: This story has been updated after HHS clarified that they&#8217;ve since removed the book &#8220;Lwazi&#8217;s Hard Lesson,&#8221; the story of a black South African boy living through racial tensions in the post-apartheid era, from the welcome packages.

Untitled design – 2026-06-22T093109.429

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Recruits PragerU To Breed New Class Of Pro-America Refugees

Department of Health and Human Services

PragerU

Refugees

South Africa

President Trump&#8217;s America First is about America being strong at home and abroad.
President Trump remains America First. He spent his weekend warning Iran not to screw with the United States or our allies, or there would be consequences. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent his weekend working the phones to help destroy the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance spent the weekend looking weak in front of the Qataris, the Pakistanis, and most of all, the Iranians. I&#8217;ve never seen a weaker look from a Republican politician. It is not peace through strength. It is war through weakness.
Get the amateurs back on the bench and the professionals back in the game.
President Trump spent the weekend trying to reestablish U.S. deterrence: &#8220;Peace through strength,&#8221; which he&#8217;s been pushing for literally decades. Rubio spent the weekend trying to end the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah over in Lebanon, because that&#8217;s part of peace through strength. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-ben-shapiro-show-episode-2450?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
I want the war in Iran to end. I&#8217;ve said for months that it is not worth waging war if you don&#8217;t win it. The ends were spelled out by the administration from the outset: No nuclear enrichment, no ballistic missiles, no support of terrorism, and the Strait of Hormuz open.
Those were the goals. Those are still the goals. Even if we pretend those are not the goals, those are still the goals.
The administration wants oil prices to go down because of the economic impact of high prices heading into the midterms. The only way to keep the Strait of Hormuz durably open is through strength, because otherwise the Iranians will jerk us around, as they have been doing for 50 years.
Over the weekend, President Trump appeared to know that.
Vance, not so much.
For America’s sake, I would love for the vice president to do well abroad. I would love the whole administration to do well. I would love every administration and every politician in every administration to do well by representing American power with peace through strength.
But the lack of American strength in the room in Switzerland over the weekend was devastating. When America has the most dominant military on the entire globe, there is simply no excuse for American weakness.
Over the weekend, the president became highly annoyed with the Iranians. Why? Because they keep threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz, and because they keep activating their friends in the terrorist group Hezbollah to attack Israeli troops.
As I have said, the goal for Iran — sensing weakness in the United States — is to ratchet up conflict in Lebanon by activating its terror group, Hezbollah, to attack the Israelis in the hope that the Israelis would then retaliate. And then Iran would say they&#8217;re shutting the Strait of Hormuz, and it&#8217;s all the Israelis&#8217; fault. They would hope that President Trump would then yell at the Israelis.
That&#8217;s a win-win for the Iranians, because either they end up with Israel taking casualties in Lebanon and in Israel, or they end up with the administration pressuring the Israelis, the Israelis refusing, and then alienation between the United States and Israel, which is what Iran wants. That is the entire game for them.
It&#8217;s not a complex game. It&#8217;s a very simple game. But the president had had enough of it over the weekend. On Sunday, according to Fox News, President Trump said in an interview that he had spoken with Iranian officials on Saturday night and warned them not to close the strait. “You close it and you won&#8217;t have a country,” he warned. “You won&#8217;t even make it back to your f*cking country if you close the Strait.”
The president wrote on Truth Social, “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don&#8217;t, we&#8217;ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder.”
This is a Trumpian foreign policy. If you screw with us, if you screw with our allies, you get hit. If you interfere with American interests in the Strait of Hormuz, you get hit. We&#8217;re not going to just hand you things.
Marco Rubio has been very quiet. I think he&#8217;s been quiet about the memorandum of understanding because it is poorly written and because the vice president did a bad job of negotiating it. Rubio is actively managing the situation in Lebanon, attempting to put together a coalition against Hezbollah between Israel and the Lebanese, while not including Syria. Rubio is a pro.
But there is one member of the administration who did something that was pretty humiliating for the United States over the weekend. And that was the vice president.
Quick hypothetical coming up in a moment.
Let me be clear: I don&#8217;t care about the names in these situations. I just care about the policy. I want America to be strong. I want America to show greater interest in the Middle East. I want an open Strait of Hormuz. I want Iran defenestrated as an actual military threat to the United States.
So I don&#8217;t care who the person is who&#8217;s doing the dumb thing. If they&#8217;re doing a dumb thing, they should be called out for doing a dumb and weak thing.
Here&#8217;s the hypothetical: I&#8217;m just going to switch the names. Vice President Kamala Harris heads over to Switzerland for negotiations with Iran. There, she says that she loves Pakistan.
She then takes a picture, being given orders by an Iranian cutout. Then she emerges from negotiations with a deconfliction agreement that actually doesn&#8217;t de-escalate anything and doesn&#8217;t include any of the parties to the actual conflict.
But hey, at least she also got stiffed on camera by a bunch of foreign politicians.
Okay, so that didn&#8217;t happen to Kamala Harris. (Although it wouldn&#8217;t be surprising if it did.)
It did happen, but to Vice President JD Vance, which makes it like a thousand times worse. Why? Because it would not be surprising if Kamala Harris were weak. It would not be surprising if Kamala Harris looked as though she were being given the runaround by America&#8217;s enemies.
But I would not expect this from Donald Trump&#8217;s vice president.
You would also expect this kind of weakness from Democrats desperate to avoid any sort of conflict with the Iranians. But we just spent months destroying Iran&#8217;s air force, navy, ballistic missile facilities, nuclear facilities, and army.
This is like going to a meeting with the Japanese and bowing before them between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We already clocked the hell out of them. What are we doing here?
Vance spent the weekend getting dunked on.
First of all, the Iranian delegation refused a joint photo with the United States team. We should have refused a joint photo with them. They are murderers. But it was the United States that apparently wanted a joint photo.
Normally, when it comes to protocol, the people who want it more show up early. The people who are the big dogs show up late. The United States was there waiting around. The vice president was waiting around for the Iranians to show up, and they stiffed him on a photo op.
And then they showed up late.
The negotiators from Qatar walked right by Vance, but they greeted their Pakistani friends.
It got worse. Qatar is a cutout for Iran and works hand-in-glove with it; they share oil fields with Iran. Thus, they feel indebted to the Iranians and are constantly doing their work. That is the reason why Hamas was stationed in Qatar for literally a decade.
Qatar is one party. Pakistan is another party, an Islamist state with nuclear weapons, allied with the Chinese government. You had a Chinese cutout, an Iranian cutout, and the Iranians there, and the vice president holding a press conference in which he bragged about how Pakistan was awesome.
If the Democrats had done this, there would be screaming. Not a single word Vance said for the entire weekend would have been foreign coming out of the mouth of Barack Obama.
Peace through strength is what President Trump stands for.
And he didn’t get it.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Replace Vance With Kamala And Read It Again

China

Iran

JD Vance

Pakistan

Peace negotiations

Qatar

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/trump-thanks-chinas-xi-russias-putin-being-neutral-iran-war-2026-06-17/">thanked China</a> for remaining neutral in the Iran war. This drew pushback <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6398750706112">from China watchers,</a> and it’s easy to see why.
China has outwardly stayed on the sidelines of the Iran conflict, but behind the scenes, it’s been working to help the regime survive. They’ve <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/international-relations/china-widens-oil-purchases-to-extend-influence-from-us-to-iran">continued to purchase</a> Iranian oil and reportedly even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/politics/china-iran-weapons-trump-xi.html">sent Tehran military equipment</a>.
But the president’s graciousness toward China was prudent geopolitics. It was also evidence that Trump knows he’s been successful at blunting the country’s once unstoppable ascendance.
No doubt China remains a serious threat, and there’s much work to be done. But in important ways, Trump’s policy has had an impact.
Take the Chinese economy, where, behind the scenes, red lights are flashing. Chinese consumer demand has lagged for years, slowing the country’s vaunted retail sector. Last month, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/business/china-retail-sales.html">Chinese retail sales fell year over year</a> for the first time since the COVID pandemic.
This belt-tightening was triggered by the popping of China’s immense real estate bubble, which erased trillions in household wealth, as well as a <a href="https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-weak-job-market-stirs-032154183.html">persistently weak job market</a>. It’s so serious as to be reflected in the upper ranks. Lavish wines and expensive banquets among the Communist Party elite have <a href="https://www.mundoamerica.com/news/2026/06/18/6a33bfe8e4d4d844598b45a7.html">been banned</a>, an austere show of solidarity with suffering Chinese.
If Chinese consumers aren’t spending as they used to, Beijing will need to rely on foreigners to buy its exports. This is where they’ve run headlong into the Trump playbook. As <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-pulling-ladder-behind-it">Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian note,</a> U.S. “tariffs, bans, and national security restrictions have blunted Chinese import competition by fiat.”
The United States is the most lucrative consumer market in the world, and that market is far more walled off to China than it used to be. It’s also not just the Americans. European Union top diplomat Kaja Kallas recently <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/us-china-and-russia-prefer-a-divided-europe-kallas-warns/">called European dependence</a> on China a “disease,” signaling a drawback from the EU’s historically softer China policy.
Decades of Chinese economic coercion are finally catching up with Beijing. Take rare earth metals, <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-processing-technology-exports-means">90% of which are refined in China</a>, an undeniable advantage in a crucial resource. Not only has the U.S. been bolstering its own rare earths industry — <a href="https://miningdigital.com/news/pentagon-backs-us-1bn-rare-earth-processing-push">backed by extensive government funding</a> — but the EU <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/can-europe-recycle-rare-earths-to-cut-china-reliance/video-77584766">is starting</a> to do the same.
The snowball effect of all this — lagging consumer demand, a toxic real estate sector, U.S. and European resistance — has been to take the shine off China’s reputation as a global boomtown. Foreign investment in China, once the lifeblood of the country’s economy, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/20/economy/china-fdi-jan-decline-intl-hnk">plummeted by 27% last year</a> to its lowest level since 2016.
President Trump’s plan to leverage trade fairness measures against China was once laughed at. Yet almost a decade later, it looks like the Trump strategy is working.
Of course, China still brings other powerful advantages to the table. The country has a formidable tech sector, and many believe it is currently winning the AI race.
America needs to ensure that AI is developing responsibly and in ways that strengthen human flourishing, protect workers, and uphold human dignity. Achieving these goals becomes far harder if the future of artificial intelligence is shaped in Beijing rather than Washington, D.C.
But the United States is pushing back here, too. When President Trump <a href="https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2025/06/hpe-and-juniper-networks-reach-settlement-with-us-department-of-justice.html">greenlit a merger</a> between U.S. tech companies Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Juniper Networks, he <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/07/30/merger-hpe-juniper-networks-national-security">reportedly had China</a> at the front of his mind. Specifically, he was thinking of Huawei — the Chinese conglomerate that is banned in the U.S. for national security reasons and dominates China&#8217;s domestic AI chip market — a rival America now has the scale to compete against.
The administration has also moved aggressively to accelerate AI infrastructure at home, streamlining approvals for new data centers and the energy projects needed to power them. It’s telling that China has reportedly <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/10/openai-china-ai-data-centers-report-00957612">launched influence campaigns</a> to try to stop data center construction in the United States. Unfortunately, many on the Left and Right have been duped by these misinformation campaigns, which clearly demand the administration’s attention before they get out of control.
While China continues to rely on state-directed industrial policy, the United States is leveraging its private-sector strengths to expand the computing capacity that will help determine the future of artificial intelligence.
The United States remains the globe’s undisputed heavyweight in tech. It leads the way in innovation, attracts the most highly educated talent, and has the strongest venture capital base.
All of which leaves China at a systemic disadvantage. A slowing domestic economy can’t support a wannabe superpower. An increasingly shunned export market can’t make up the difference.
There’s no point in being naïve about China’s role in the Iran war. But given the United States’ fortunes on China lately, it can perhaps be excused.
***
Rick Santorum is co-chair of Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Paid Family Leave. He served as a United States senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007.

TOPSHOT-CHINA-EXPO2010

Rick Santorum: China Remains a Threat But the Cracks Are Showing

Communist China

Energy Policy

Oil policy

Since the moment President Donald Trump decided to name Tulsi Gabbard as his Director of National Intelligence, it was clear she was going to enter the job under fire.
The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/classified-whistleblower-complaint-about-tulsi-gabbard-stalls-within-her-agency-027f5331">Wall Street Journal</a> has targeted her. National Review has targeted her. The Washington Post and the New York Times and — let&#8217;s just say a veritable host of legacy media outlets and gossip rags have all run attacks on her. On X, she is a frequent target of internet gadflies who want her out of the job.
And now, just as she’s leaving office, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/06/21/tulsi-gabbard-her-guru-mysterious-messages-that-helped-shape-her-political-career/">The Washington Post</a> lobs an “exposé” about her personal life and religious practices. Meanwhile, the so-called “journalists” have painfully little to say about her releasing the Fauci files — how he “provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research” — and ties to communist China. Keep focusing on the “real” scandals, journos; the rest of us have real work to do, and Tulsi Gabbard was a leader all the way to the end.
<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/OKLV6D3fxRxAlwwXLXSPCk02024uX02TgFN?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=52d2b23e-5f4c-4cd0-93e6-f31765c576ce&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-06-19%20Tulsi%20Releases%20The%20Fauci%20Files&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F61d7b551-138a-4879-a448-fe7f6679a78d.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
I know what leadership looks like. There are certain principles that define leaders — leaders who have the opportunity to shape the lives of countless people by the principles they embrace and how they apply them in times of friction. The unwavering pursuit of the truth, uncompromised moral clarity, steadfast honesty, and a disciplined yet passionate loyalty to the people they’re entrusted to lead — these are the high standards we should demand of our leaders.
Unfortunately, not everyone understands these principles or upholds such standards, and this reflects the mentality and motivation of her critics, who see her leadership and the principles she embodies as a threat to their narrative and institutional power, even as she leaves office under the most honorable of circumstances.
This is nothing new in the arena of politics, but for me, it’s personal.
The world may know her as Director, Representative, Lt. Colonel, or presidential candidate Gabbard, but to my daughters and me, she’s Tulsi. There is no one on this planet I trust more. She is also the first person I call when I need a real answer. Not a filtered one, not a safe one, not one designed to protect an image or position. She carries this mentality through every facet of her life and will continue to do so as she walks this next journey beside her husband.
Knowing Tulsi Gabbard is to know her answers are grounded in what is right, filtered through one standard: the Constitution. Nothing else factors into it. Not her own best interest, not what puts her in the safest position, not what is easy or comfortable, and certainly not what someone wants to hear.
In the political world, the cynic would assume this is how things operate: When someone speaks the truth, when they refuse to bend, play along, or say what is convenient, they should expect coordinated attacks. There are no facts or accountability involved. There are only carefully timed headlines and smear campaigns designed to sow seeds of doubt with the intent to bring that person’s character into question.
That is not journalism; it’s a playbook. And we should demand better — not only because Tulsi Gabbard deserves it, but because she holds herself to higher standards in everything she does. These are very large shoes to fill for the next DNI, and we should expect nothing less than the standard she set and her unwavering pursuit of the truth, despite attacks even from within her political sphere.
The attacks on Tulsi Gabbard weren’t just about her; they’re about what happens to anyone who refuses to compromise their principles for politics and power. So when outlets like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal published pieces aimed at discrediting her, I do not see journalism in the traditional sense. I see a familiar pattern: discredit the person so you don’t have to engage with what they are actually saying and doing. Create enough noise so people stop asking real questions. Turn truth into controversy so it becomes easier to dismiss. And allege, without basis, anything you want to claim based on the need to remove someone who doesn’t share your maximalist ideology.
That approach may work on people who do not know Tulsi. For those of us who have actually sat across from her, spoken with her, and understand how she thinks and operates, the narrative does not hold; it collapses under the weight of reality.
That Tulsi Gabbard was — and continues to be — a target is not a sign of a flawed leader; it’s often the clearest indicator of an unflinching, purposeful one. In life, you have to choose between being liked and being trusted. One is easy and more popular; the other actually matters when it counts. In today’s environment, Tulsi’s choices put her in the crosshairs of an establishment that looks suspiciously at those who choose truth over narrative and heartfelt belief over talking points.
When she decided to leave the Democratic Party, it was not because it was easy. It surely was not popular, and it wasn’t because it put her in a better position. She did it because she believed it was right. It harkens back to a line I like to recall from Theodore Roosevelt: “It behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”
Tulsi Gabbard is a leader who sets a high standard. We are a better country for it and a better people for demanding and trusting such leadership. At some point, we have to decide what type of leaders we want — leaders who say what is convenient or leaders who say what is true? Do we want people who protect their position or people who protect the principles they swore to uphold? You will never get both.
What makes Tulsi Gabbard a trusted, principled leader — and a target — is not her title or position; it’s that she could not be easily influenced, redirected, or controlled by the systems that so many others learn to operate within. She did not shift with pressure. She did not abandon her values based on headlines. She never prioritized perception over principle. Until her last day, she continued to operate from a fixed point: the Constitution and the service of the American people.
That is exactly what this country claims to want. And when someone actually lives it, it’s interesting who they scare. So, thank you, Tulsi, for your commitment to service, for standing your ground in the face of your enemies, and for your decision to live by a high standard of principles, even in leaving office. A grateful nation, and a friend, bids you fair winds and following seas.
***
Dakota Meyer is a United States Marine. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Ganjgal on September 8, 2009, in Kunar province, Afghanistan. He is also a NYT bestselling author and the owner of DASH Hydrate.

US-POLITICS-INTELLIGENCE-GABBARD

Dakota Meyer: Tulsi Gabbard Always Fights For America First

Anthony Fauci

Director of National Intelligence

Media Bias

Tulsi Gabbard

Meme lovers throughout the Trump administration just posted a series of artificial intelligence remixes based on Grand Theft Auto VI, drawing on the viral internet craze behind the game. 
After months of radio silence from Rockstar Games, the makers of the GTA series, the long-anticipated cover art for the new game finally <a href="https://rockstarintel.com/new-gta-6-cover-art-wallpapers-logo-released/">dropped</a> on Thursday — immediately taking the internet by storm. 
The White House, the Department of Labor, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection quickly capitalized on the craze, posting some of their own takes on the cover art. The Department of Health even came out with a short video.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We really saved America before GTA 6 <a href="https://t.co/W0ZRsLsVCj">pic.twitter.com/W0ZRsLsVCj</a>
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href="https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2067649794705625135?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We flipped the food pyramid before we got GTA 6. <a href="https://t.co/UT1bSASfCk">pic.twitter.com/UT1bSASfCk</a>
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) <a href="https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/2067681064915517629?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We really secured the border before GTA 6.
Read more here: <a href="https://t.co/vrNPsYfD0X">https://t.co/vrNPsYfD0X</a> <a href="https://t.co/prUvONQiLV">pic.twitter.com/prUvONQiLV</a>
— CBP (@CBP) <a href="https://x.com/CBP/status/2067710579842646399?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We’re Making America Skilled Again before GTA 6 🇺🇸 <a href="https://t.co/EFyI9yjKK7">pic.twitter.com/EFyI9yjKK7</a>
— U.S. Department of Labor (@USDOL) <a href="https://x.com/USDOL/status/2067981022587736424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Grand Theft Auto is the fifth best-selling video game series of all time, even outselling Minecraft, according to the <a href="https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Best-selling_game_franchises">Video Game Sales</a>. GTA V has sold a staggering 230 million copies, the WorldoMeter&#8217;s population review <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/">states</a>, which is more than one copy for each person in Japan, the UK, and Poland combined. 
Since GTA VI has been in development for 12 to 13 years, the internet’s favorite running joke is to track new inventions and events by saying, “We got this before GTA VI.” The posts from the administration play on the meme with comments such as “We really saved America before GTA 6.”
But not everyone is thrilled. Some critics have pointed out that the Grand Theft Auto series glorifies violence and sexual promiscuity — a far cry from “conservative family values.” Additionally, the main antagonist of the series is the Federal Investigation Bureau, which those on the Left have compared to ICE. Some have also said that government entities should not be allowed to have fair use of private IPs for “propaganda.”

Screenshot 2026-06-19 at 3.18.41 PM

The Trump Team Just Went Full Grand Theft Auto

Internet

Memes

Social Media

Video Games

These are unprecedented times in politics, and they include unprecedented decisions on the part of political leaders – none more so than what J.D. Vance decided to do this week, in the midst of a book tour where no one talked about his book.
The vice president of the United States, the odds-on favorite to be the next presidential nominee of the Republican Party, decided to unequivocally bet his reputation and his future electoral prospects on an extremely vague and uncertain deal with Iran — one which if it comes to fruition (a doubtful matter itself) would result in tens and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to the regime of the new Ayatollah.
From the perspective of Washington Republicans, this is a move by a vice president who wants a political win. Having felt his skeptical views about the Iran conflict and other foreign policy actions largely ignored by President Trump, here was an opportunity for narrative success: a potential “forever war”, unpopular particularly with working-class Independent and younger Republican voters, brought to an end in a sweeping act of diplomatic acumen by the young veteran of past conflict.
The story is a compelling one. Instead of his potential presidential competitor, Marco Rubio, solving this problem, it would be Vance who stepped in to lower energy prices, relieve the pain on American working families, and also bail out nervous Republicans on Capitol Hill fighting to keep their jobs and their majority. And if you disagree, you favor — as he put it to Megyn Kelly — &#8220;[E]ndless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.&#8221;
There is not enough straw in the world to build a man this size. But as for the deal, the devil is in the details, and they are not minor details: Immediate ability for the Iranians to move oil and profit from it; a vaporware rebuilding fund, sure to be filled with corrupt interests and repurposed for the usual items on the Ayatollah’s grocery list; unenforceable demands that rely on a pinkie swear — sorry, “gentleman’s agreement” — from the religious zealots who rule the country.
On Thursday, the vice president answered a question from The Daily Wire in the White House briefing room with a casual list of things that could bring resumed military action against Iran for violations of the memorandum of understanding:
<blockquote>
It&#8217;s just going to be a holistic approach where we look at their behavior. Are they funding terrorism? Are they leading attacks on other people? Are they trying to get centrifuges to redevelop their nuclear weapons program? There are all these questions that we&#8217;re going to ask about whether they&#8217;ve actually changed their behavior. Do they allow the inspectors in, as they have said they would do, or do they refuse to allow those inspectors in? A whole host of things we&#8217;re going to see, working towards a very successful resolution of this process. But again, it takes two to tango. And what the President is just saying is that we maintain economic, diplomatic, and military leverage that nobody else in the world has. So if the Iranians want to change, great — we&#8217;re going to help them. If they don&#8217;t change, we still got all the cards.
</blockquote>
The problems with this answer are obvious and numerous. If you have all the cards, why the capitulation? The Iranian regime has never, including during the latest operations, stopped funding terrorism through its proxies. Leading attacks on other people is part of their daily routine. The situation in Lebanon is impossible to guarantee. And as for future commitments to inspectors and changed behavior, the Ayatollah has no term limit — he can just wait a year or two and return to the regime’s behavior — and what then? Would a future President Gavin Newsom resume military action? Would a President J.D. Vance?
As an advocate for this new Iran deal, the vice president deployed his usual Yale Law skill: turn the situation into a false choice between boots on the ground, American casualties, and forever war, or this deal. What is the alternative? You may recognize the same rhetorical tics from an equally eloquent and unlikely Oval Office decisionmaker. At least this one has the virtue of coming after a near-decimation of the Iranian ballistic missile arsenal — but if that’s all this was about, why do they stand to reap all the financial benefits?
Vance clearly believes in this deal. His former Senate colleagues who supported Operation Epic Fury don’t understand the nature of it and resent the lack of any read-in on the details. Behind the scenes, several admit they view the deal and the follow-on negotiation as laughable, a punt that is unlikely to actually come to fruition, scoffing at the idea of a $300 billion fund and assuming that bombs will be falling again in months.
One Senator confided that they believed Vance was nuking his future political prospects by tying himself so closely to a major foreign policy endeavor that looks, for all appearances, like a doomed effort at “trust, but only verify if we have to.” It is a perspective echoed by others — but of course, they are making assumptions based on facts not yet in evidence, and for some, it’s a silver lining to a bad resolution.
Most vice presidents don’t have to stake their future political prospects on a major decision. But Vance’s political career was so brief prior to joining the 2024 ticket that this essentially amounts to the biggest thing he’s ever owned. How this deal turns out could end up being one of the biggest questions for him on the debate stage in two years’ time. That places an enormous amount of faith in the Iranians.
The vice president is clear about where he’s placed his trust. We’ll see how much that’s worth.

Vice President  Vance Holds News Conference At White House

JD Vance’s Big Iran Gamble

2026 midterm

The Trump administration will probe whether Major League Baseball is discriminating against Christian players who pushed back against “Pride” month messaging.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will investigate the league for religious discrimination. The notification came after the league warned several players who wrote Bible verses on the “Pride” caps they were issued for a game. 
“The Civil Rights Act prohibits MLB and its franchises from unreasonably burdening the rights of players with religious objections to serving as the League&#8217;s vehicle for pro-Pride messages,” Dhillon <a href="https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/2067709644185759938">wrote</a> in a letter to Manfred.
Dhillon suggested that she did not buy the MLB’s claims that they only warned the players because of a policy against writing on uniform equipment.  
“Yet, MLB has allowed players to wear uniform patches reading ‘Black Lives Matter.’ This double standard — under which players may not inscribe Bible verses on hats for one game only but may wear ‘Black Lives Matter’ patches for one game only — calls MLB&#8217;s true motives into question and raises serious concerns about MLB&#8217;s compliance with Title VII,” Dhillon wrote. 
“The Trump Administration is committed to combatting religious discrimination,” Dhillon added. “The Department of Justice will use all available means to hold employers accountable for violating the religious rights of their employees.”
The controversy started last week when San Francisco Giants starting pitcher <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/giants-pitcher-refuses-to-hide-christian-faith-during-pride-night">Landen Roupp</a> wrote a Bible passage found in Genesis onto his cap, right next to the LGBT-themed rainbow logo he was directed to wear. Fellow players JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker also added Bible verses to their caps. 
MLB’s Chief Communications Officer Pat Courtney told The Athletic on Monday that these players have been “warned” about “future violations.” He said that writing on the team’s baseball caps “violates our rules.”
Those warnings spurred backlash from elected officials who argued the MLB was targeting Christians. 
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to Manfred asking him to provide further detail about the league’s policies. 
“The freedom to live out one’s faith does not end at the ballpark gate. Americans of every creed are entitled to confidence that the institutions of our national pastime will not single out religious expression for punishment while celebrating messages of the league’s own choosing,” he said. 
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said that the MLB should expect to be hearing from his office “soon.”

Los Angeles Dodgers v. San Francisco Giants

Trump Admin Takes On MLB Over ‘Pride’ Hat Controversy

Christianity

Department of Justice

Harmeet Dhillon

Religious Liberty

Sports

President Donald Trump and White House officials are bidding farewell to the Boeing 747-200, known as Air Force One, which has transported U.S. presidents across the nation and around the world for more than three decades.
On Thursday, two White House officials said goodbye to the Air Force One jet after President Trump returned from the G7 summit in Europe. The farewell comes as the first of three aircraft being modified for the presidential role is expected to be delivered soon.
“The last ride,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung <a href="https://x.com/StevenCheung47/status/2067514778684162330?s=20">said on X</a>. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
“THANK YOU,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino said, <a href="https://x.com/Scavino47/status/2067523503817977868?s=20">posting a video</a> of the aircraft, saying he has “been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5 1/2 years — of the 35 years it has been serving U.S. presidents.” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I have been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5 1/2 years — of the 35 years it has been serving U.S. Presidents…
THANK YOU…
AIR FORCE ONE 2900🫡🇺🇸🦅 <a href="https://t.co/tnh8xYtZDU">pic.twitter.com/tnh8xYtZDU</a>
— Dan Scavino (@Scavino47) <a href="https://x.com/Scavino47/status/2067523503817977868?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
Air Force One is expected to be replaced by three Boeing 747-8s, including a luxury jet donated by the Qatari government that sparked a political firestorm. The so-called “flying palace” is estimated to be worth $400 million, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-defends-400-million-flying-palace-offered-as-gift-from-qatar">The Daily Wire</a> previously reported. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/18/politics/white-house-staff-bids-farewell-to-planes-used-as-air-force-one-for-more-than-35-years">CNN reported</a> that the Qatari jet received significant modifications for its new role as Air Force One, including a major overhaul to equip it with the secure communications and security systems required for presidential travel.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The VC-25B Bridge aircraft has officially arrived at Joint Base Andrews!
More info: <a href="https://t.co/xhurcI0mjL">https://t.co/xhurcI0mjL</a> <a href="https://t.co/zyUpB99jqm">pic.twitter.com/zyUpB99jqm</a>
— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) <a href="https://x.com/usairforce/status/2068038435114262809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2026</a></blockquote>
An <a href="https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4474728/vc-25b-bridge-program-completes-flight-testing-prepares-for-summer-rollout/">Air Force release</a> in May said the plane had officially completed modifications and was “on schedule to roll out in a new red, white, and blue livery this summer.”
The controversy erupted in May 2025 after multiple reports revealed that the Trump administration was in talks to accept a luxury jet from Qatar, a proposal that sparked bipartisan criticism.
Critics pounced on the president, arguing that gifts from Qatar — a nation that spends heavily to build influence in the United States — rarely come without strings attached.
Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer <a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1921615017138618439">urged</a> Trump not to accept the plane, saying, “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true.”
At the time, the White House <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-defends-400-million-flying-palace-offered-as-gift-from-qatar">said</a>: “Any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.” 
Still, the president took to social media to blast the critics. 
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA,” <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114492082555622686">Trump said.</a>
The first VC-25A, tail number 28000, flew as Air Force One for the first time on September 6, 1990, carrying President George H.W. Bush to Kansas, Florida, and back to Washington, D.C., <a href="https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104588/vc-25-air-force-one/">according to the Air Force</a>. A second VC-25A, tail number 29000, later carried multiple presidents on historic missions, including trips to Israel for the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and became especially notable on September 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush was rushed to the jet after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
It remains unclear exactly when the Qatari jet being converted into a new Air Force One will arrive in Washington and enter service.

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