U.S. authorities arrested a Chinese national at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City earlier this month who is accused of traveling to Nebraska and taking pictures of military aircraft near Offutt Air Force Base.
Tianrui Liang also allegedly planned to travel to Oklahoma to photograph more military aircraft at Tinker Air Force Base, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/chinese-national-arrested-jfk-after-allegedly-photographing-us-military-aircraft-nebraska-base?lid=zeskeho3ui7f">reported</a>. The 21-year-old Chinese national is charged with violating U.S. law prohibiting people from photographing or sketching defense installations, according to court documents.
Authorities were first alerted to suspicious activity near Offutt Air Force Base after a person witnessed &#8220;a male holding a camera with a telescopic lens&#8221; near the military installation, according to an FBI affidavit.
Offutt Air Force Base is one of the most sensitive military installations in the United States and is the home of U.S. Strategic Command, which is <a href="https://www.stratcom.mil/About/#:~:text=Air%20Force%20Global%20Strike%20Command,United%20States%20and%20Combatant%20Commanders.">responsible</a> for nuclear defense and global strike operations. The base also hosts some of the U.S. military&#8217;s most powerful reconnaissance aircraft, including the E-4B &#8220;Nightwatch,&#8221; or &#8220;doomsday plane,&#8221; which is designed for military leaders or the president to use in the case of a nuclear war.
Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City is home to the Air Force Sustainment Center, which focuses on maintaining the Air Force&#8217;s &#8220;Weapons System Readiness.&#8221;
Liang was charged in Nebraska on April 3 and was arrested at JFK International Airport four days later. Liang was taken into custody just before he boarded a plane for Frankfurt, Germany, after which he planned to fly to Glasgow, Scotland, according to court documents. The Chinese national was in the United States on a non-immigrant B1/B2 visa, which authorizes temporary travel to America for foreign tourists or people on business trips or visiting family.
Liang told authorities at the airport that he had been previously questioned by law enforcement over the allegations, according to court documents.
Multiple Chinese nationals have been arrested in recent years for taking pictures near U.S. military bases. In August 2023, five Chinese nationals who were former students at the University of Michigan were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-chinese-nationals-accused-of-photographing-michigan-military-facility">caught</a> taking pictures of military equipment during joint training exercises between the National Guard and the Taiwanese military at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan, according to authorities.
Last December, a Chinese national was arrested for taking videos of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. He also took numerous photos of military equipment and the base&#8217;s perimeter fencing, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/chinese-national-charged-unlawfully-photographing-air-force-base-and-vital-military">according</a> to the Justice Department.

Chinese man photography

A Chinese Man Was Just Caught Photographing The U.S. Military’s ‘Doomsday’ Plane

China

Communist China

Crime

Espionage

Nebraska

Oklahoma

U.S.

U.S. Air Force

U.S. Military

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine offered a moving testimonial to the members of the American Navy on Thursday, declaring, “Far and away, the most important thing — important weapon — on board these ships is the American sailor.”
Speaking at a press briefing alongside Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM’s Brad Cooper, Caine began, “I want to talk briefly today about the men and women enforcing the blockade, America&#8217;s sailors and Marines, particularly our destroyer and surface forces. When we talk about an American destroyer, it&#8217;s important that you and the American people understand their capabilities.”
“An Arleigh Burke class destroyer is the backbone of the United States Navy surface fleet,” he continued. “Over 500 feet long, they displace 9,000 tons and it is the sports car of the United States Navy. From the keel to the mast, they stand nearly 10 stories tall, and their four gas turbine engines can drive the ship at 30-plus knots. These ships are armed to the teeth with surface-to-air missiles, land attack cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine rockets, torpedoes, five-inch naval guns, multiple electronic warfare systems. Embarked helicopters extend the reach and capability of each and every one of these destroyers.”
Then he turned to the American warriors: “But far and away, the most important thing — important weapon — on board these ships is the American sailor. Over 300 warfighters are the heart and soul of these warships. At sea sometimes for months, and these ships, out in the CENTCOM AOR, have been out there for months. They operate around the clock in a constant state of readiness delivering for our joint force.”
“It&#8217;s hot in the engine room,” he explained. “The engineering team keeps the lights on and the ship powered and able to respond to the orders from the bridge. On that bridge, our sailors maintain a constant watch, maneuvering the ship tactically and safely through all congested water space — and there is a lot out there. It is like driving a sports car through a supermarket parking lot on a payday weekend with thousands of kids in that parking lot as you attempt to maneuver through there to get to that ship that would attempt to run that blockade.”
“Down in the Combat Information Center, the CIC, the Tactical Warfare Center of the ship, that is where the decisions are made,” he said. “As threats appear, these young sailors are making real-time decisions on how to identify these threats and handle them, and they always deliver. These ships are run by the youngest sailors in our surface warfare Navy. The helmsman, the sailor on the watch at the bridge, is normally just between 18 to 19 years old, and they are trusted to drive this warship through that supermarket parking lot without hitting anything. The conning officer, an equally young commissioned officer who&#8217;s normally just a few years out of college, is the one who is giving that young helmsman the orders on where to take that American warship to execute the mission that the secretary and the president has given us.”
He concluded, “These are incredibly well-trained sailors. They are led by incredible leaders, salty, experienced leaders and trusted with deep responsibility. And I&#8217;m so humbled and proud of America&#8217;s Navy. These sailors choose to take the road less traveled to go into the historic surface navy and they deliver every single day.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WnJPFeOeFG4?si=OpZ2W9T1F8sVJqNh" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

MixCollage-16-Apr-2026-09-47-AM-3705

WATCH: The Curtain Is Pulled Back On Who’s Making Life Or Death Decisions On Front Lines

Dan Caine

Iran

US Navy

World

A Florida mother whose son was killed by an Iranian drone attack last month said she urged President Donald Trump to finish carrying out the military operation against Iran, adding that it is what her son &#8220;signed up for.&#8221;
Donna Burhans, 67, suffered a parent&#8217;s ultimate nightmare when she learned that her son, 35-year-old Cody Khork, was killed on March 1 when an Iranian drone slammed into a command center in Kuwait just hours after Trump launched &#8220;Operation Epic Fury.&#8221; Despite her grief, Burhans told <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mother-son-killed-iran-war-told-trump-go-get-em-cody-khork-rcna267473">NBC News</a> on Thursday that her son&#8217;s death is not on the president&#8217;s hands.
“I wanted him to know that I do not blame him. I do not blame anything that’s happened for my son’s death,&#8221; she said, adding, “I told him to finish it. I said, ‘Go get ’em.’ This is what my son signed up for.”
Khork was killed alongside five of his fellow Army reservists and is one of 13 U.S. servicemembers who have been killed during the Iran war. Six more U.S. troops were killed on March 12 when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq. Another American soldier was killed in an Iranian missile attack on a Saudi air base on March 8.
<div id="attachment_1075871" style="width: 586px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1075871" class="wp-image-1075871 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778-576x576.jpg" alt="" width="576" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778-576x576.jpg 576w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778-300x300.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778-150x150.jpg 150w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778-768x768.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/Untitled-design-2026-04-10T124732.778.jpg 820w" sizes=" (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px" />Cody Khork, Army Reserve</div>
After her tragic loss, Burhans said she spoke with Trump at the dignified transfer ceremony for her son and the five others who were killed in the Iranian attack. When Trump met with the families of the fallen U.S. troops at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on March 7, he was noticeably &#8220;distraught,&#8221; Burhans said.
“He had his head down. And he was just a normal, caring person,&#8221; she said. &#8220;He wasn’t the president when he walked into the room. He was just there to tell us how sorry he was.”
Burhans also told NBC News that she remains confident in Trump for his decision to attack Iran.
“Trump knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s doing everything the way it’s supposed to be done,” she added. “I have my trust in him and God.”
&#8220;It’s a long time coming. It should have been done a long time ago, and Trump is the only one man enough to stand up and do it,&#8221; Burhans said of the war with Iran. &#8220;They hate America.&#8221;
After attending the dignified transfer in Dover, Trump said the families of the fallen troops all told him, &#8220;Make sure you win, sir.&#8221;
&#8220;We will,&#8221; Trump added. &#8220;We&#8217;ve already won in many ways. But we haven&#8217;t won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.&#8221;
Earlier this week, Trump announced that the United States had agreed to a ceasefire with Iran, arguing that the core objectives of the U.S. military operation had been achieved.
Khork was a U.S. Army Reserve captain who enlisted in the National Guard after high school in 2009. He served in deployments to Saudi Arabia, Guantanamo Bay, and Poland before he was deployed to Kuwait.
Army Lt. Col. Scott LaRonde, Khork&#8217;s ROTC commander at Florida Southern College, <a href="https://wusf.org/text/politics-issues/2026-03-05/cody-khork-polk-soldier-killed-iran-war-remembered-empathy-duty">said</a> Khork always looked out for cadets around him who were struggling to fit in.
“He had that knack for reading people and helping them feel more comfortable,” LaRonde said, adding, “You walked away feeling better after five minutes with Cody.”

Donald Trump at dignified transfer

Grieving Mother Shares What She Told Trump After Her Son Was Killed In Iran War

Donald Trump

Global Politics

The federal government is moving to overhaul how young American men enter the military draft system, shifting from individual responsibility to automatic enrollment.
Under a proposed rule from the Selective Service System (SSS), men would no longer need to register themselves within 30 days of turning 18. Instead, the government would automatically add them to the draft pool using existing federal data.
The change, which could take effect as soon as December, was authorized by Congress in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act and is now under regulatory review.
“This statutory change transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS,” the <a href="https://www.sss.gov/about/">agency says</a>, calling it a “streamlined” system that integrates federal data sources.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), who sponsored the provision, framed it as a resource decision. “This will allow us to rededicate resources—basically that means money—towards readiness and towards mobilization,” she told the <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/04/08/automatic-registration-for-us-military-draft-eligible-men-to-begin-in-december/">Military Times</a>, “rather than towards education and advertising campaigns driven to register people.”
For decades, the government has spent millions reminding young men to comply with a requirement that is already mandatory. Nearly all men between 18 and 25 must register under the Military Selective Service Act, and failure to do so can carry serious penalties, including fines up to $250,000, potential jail time, and loss of access to federal student aid and jobs.
Despite that, compliance has slipped falling to roughly 81% in 2024, per official <a href="https://www.sss.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Annual-Report-2024-6-4-25.pdf">SSS reports</a>. Automatic registration is designed to close that gap entirely. The United States has not used conscription since 1973, at the end of the Vietnam War, when widespread public opposition helped usher in the modern all-volunteer military. The draft system itself was later reinstated in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter as a contingency measure during the Cold War.
Today, officials insist the new rule does not signal an imminent return to conscription. “It’s not part of the current plan right now,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about the possibility of a draft. “But the president … wisely keeps his options on the table.”
That caveat is precisely what has fueled concern among some Americans. The idea that registration will now happen automatically, combined with ongoing instability abroad, has led critics to question whether the infrastructure for a draft is being quietly modernized.
Legally, however, a draft remains a high bar. Even with a fully populated registry, the president cannot reinstate conscription unilaterally. Congress would need to pass new legislation authorizing inductions into military service. In practical terms, the policy change does not expand who is eligible, it simply ensures that those already required to register are captured in the system without relying on them to act.
Women remain exempt from the system, despite efforts in Congress to expand draft eligibility in recent years. For now, the shift is framed as administrative, an efficiency measure in a sprawling federal system.
The result is a policy that is, on paper, about saving money and improving compliance, but in practice touches on a far deeper question: how prepared the country is, and how much it expects from its citizens if crisis comes.

Army Chief Of Staff Gen. Casey Swears In New Army Recruits

What A Push To Overhaul The Military Draft Could Mean For Young American Men

Draft

Trump Administration

The FBI has arrested a former Army employee accused of leaking classified information to a journalist.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Wednesday that Courtney Williams, 40, a former employee at Fort Bragg who previously held top security clearance, has been charged with transmitting classified national defense information. 
“FBI and our partners have arrested a former [Special Operations Command] employee, who supported our top-level military warfighters, for allegedly transmitting classified information to a member of the media. Outstanding work by [FBI Charlotte] and the FBI Counterintelligence &amp; Espionage Division &#8211; as well as our [Justice Department] partners,” Patel said. 
“Let this serve as a message to any would-be leakers: we’re working these cases, and we’re making arrests. This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way,” he added. 
In a subsequent <a href="https://x.com/fbidirectorkash/status/2042199396738080809?s=46">post</a>, Patel suggested that more arrests over leaks were “coming.” The arrest follows statements by President Donald Trump threatening jail time for reporters who decline to identify sources in connection with a leak about a downed American aircraft. 
Williams held top security clearance from 2010 to 2016. Authorities say that from 2022 to 2025, she communicated with an investigative journalist through more than 10 hours of phone calls and 180 text messages. She allegedly shared “tactics, techniques and procedures” related to a special operations force. 
While not named in court documents, the journalist appears to be Seth Harp, the author of “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces.” An excerpt from the book appeared in POLITICO under the headline, “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit,” and focused on Williams&#8217; experience in Delta Force. 
In a post on X, Harp <a href="https://x.com/sethharpesq/status/2042037022336934195?s=20">claimed</a> that Williams had done nothing criminal. 
“Trump&#8217;s unhinged DOJ will not even say what ‘classified information’ she allegedly leaked,” he said. “Her arrest and imprisonment is an outrage.”
Harp <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-fort-bragg-employee-charged-leaking-classified-military-information-journalist">told</a> WRAL-TV that &#8220;the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,&#8221; adding, &#8220;This is a vindictive act of retaliation.&#8221;
Text messages cited in court documents suggest Williams was aware of potential legal risk following the publication of Harp’s book. In one message, she allegedly expressed concern about “the amount of classified information being disclosed,” and in a separate message wrote, “I might actually get arrested . . . for disclosing classified information.” 
Another message attributed to Williams said that she knew she was “probably going to jail for life.”
Court documents show that Williams will be appointed counsel from the Eastern District of North Carolina Federal Public Defender’s Office. An attorney has not yet been publicly identified.

FBI Director Patel And Eastern District U.S. Attorney Nocella Holds News Conference On Major Illegal Sports Gambling Schemes

Department Of War Leaker Nabbed In Journalist Tip Case As Kash Patel Signals Next Move

Army

classified documents

kash patel

Ignore those who are preaching doom. America rocks.
America is experiencing a totally exceptional moment.
This country just kicks ass.
We are sending human beings around the moon for the first time in decades.
We are performing some of the most extraordinary military operations in all of human history, killing terrorists, delivering the most targeted strikes from the most sophisticated weaponry ever built.
We are rescuing pilots in Mission: Impossible-style operations.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2402-sub?elementPosition=3&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+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>
On Monday, the Artemis II astronauts made history by traveling farther than any human being has ever gone.
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/artemis-astronauts-are-going-where-no-human-has-gone-before-99962e92">According</a> to The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>Just before 2 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, the astronauts on Artemis II steered their Orion craft into the record books, flying more than 248,655 miles from Earth, which is the furthest that human beings have ever gone.</blockquote>
Human beings are doing unbelievable things because America kicks absolute ass.
President Trump called the Artemis crew to congratulate them.
“Tell me, what is the most unforgettable part of this really historic day?” he asked. “The whole world is watching and listening. Please tell me.”
“Mr. President, this call is certainly special to all of us, and we really have a lot of faith in our administrator, Jared Isaacman, who is with you,”  Commander Reid Wiseman responded. “We appreciate his leadership in NASA and in the international community. We are doing great things and we are proud to be a part of &#8230; I have to tell you, as we came around the near side of the moon, seeing all the sights that we&#8217;ve seen from Earth for all of our lives, but we&#8217;re seeing them from a different perspective, and then we started to get a glimpse of the &#8230;  And we saw sights, oriental sights that no human has ever seen before, not even in Apollo, and that was amazing for us. And then the surprise of the day: We just came out of an eclipse where the sun, moon and the entire dark moon, about that big, right out the window that we were watching, we could see the corona of the sun, and then we could see the planet train line up, and then Mars, and all of us commented how excited we are to watch this nation and this planet become a two-planet species.”
America rocks.
And you know what? It&#8217;s part and parcel of an inspiring vision for the United States. I know we don&#8217;t talk about the United States that way, or haven&#8217;t in recent years, but America is an unbelievably inspiring place.
That&#8217;s the reason why everyone is clamoring to get here, not just because we can put human beings 250,000 miles away going around the moon, but also because when people come here, they are inspired to create and to build and to build better lives for themselves and their families.
It’s because the American system offers them that opportunity, and because America is, in fact, the guarantor of security on planet Earth. It’s because the United States, the same United States that takes humans and puts them 250,000 miles away around the moon, is the same United States that stands up to the thuggish, theocratic tyrants in Iran who want to develop nuclear weapons and develop into intercontinental ballistic missiles, and who wish to spread terrorism all over the region against us and our allies.
We stand up to them.
What President Trump is providing is an inspiring vision of what the United States should be.
And guess what? We are making it happen in real time.
The president has provided the Iranian regime an off-ramp over and over and over and over again. This is the part that everyone seems to just ignore: If Iran did not wish to be in the gun sights of the United States military, all they would have to do is stop developing nuclear weapons, stop developing long-range ballistic missiles, and stop funding terrorism.
That is all they would have to do. That&#8217;s it. And they could have done this at any time for 47 years.
They could have done this at any time. They would have been reintegrated into the world economy. They would have been treated as a member of the family of nations. Their concerns would have been heard.
Instead, they decided that they were going to double down on their theocratic tyranny, that they were going to rush toward a nuclear weapon, that they were going to back every major terrorist group in the region and beyond.
They decided to do that. That was their decision.
The difference now is that this president understands that it is not in the interest of the United States to allow that cancer to fester, that the gangrenous limb that is the Iranian cannot be allowed to poison the entire region and beyond.
That&#8217;s why the president took the stand that he is taking right now.
And guess what? We are kicking the hell out of the Iranian military. We are. There is no standard in military history by which we are not kicking the hell out of them. We have put their entire navy underwater. We have taken their entire air force out of the sky. We have taken their ballistic missile launcher capacity to near zero. We have destroyed their steel factories. We have been hitting specific Basij checkpoints in Tehran. We&#8217;ve been bombing every nuclear facility we can find. 
And still, President Trump is offering them an off-ramp; all they would have to do is open the Strait of Hormuz and give up their nukes.
Do it, and we’re done. The war would be over. That&#8217;s all.
They won&#8217;t do it.
Ask yourself: Why? We would give them a permanent cease-fire if they opened up the Strait of Hormuz and gave up their nukes.
They won&#8217;t do it.
And the reason they won&#8217;t do it is because they must terrorize their people. They must rush toward a nuclear weapon to preserve their tyrannical regime, and they must harass the countries around them to gain power. They have regional ambitions not restricted to Iran in their philosophy.
This notion that radical Islam is restricted to a small portion of the world, that if only we would leave them alone, they would leave us alone, ignores the entire history of radical Islam going back roughly 1300 years.
President Trump was asked if God supports the United States’ actions.
“I do, because God is good, and because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of, God doesn&#8217;t like what&#8217;s happening,” he said of the violence perpetrated by the Iranian regime against their own people. “I don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s happening. Everyone says I enjoy (waging war)? I don&#8217;t enjoy this.”
When the president says that he thinks that God supports the United States as we take out tyrannical dictators, when we kill Ayatollah Khomeini, a mass murderer, when we try to destroy the forward function of terror groups, he is correct.
We are a great and moral nation. Whether it’s going farther than Man has ever gone before or removing evil from the world’s midst, we are a unique force in world history.
And Americans should feel justly proud of that.

President Trump Attends Opening Night Of Chicago At The Kennedy Center

Note To America Haters: Sorry, We’re Busy Kicking Ass

Artemis II

Middle East

NASA

Space

In the days ahead, the direction of Operation Epic Fury will become unmistakable in the targets the United States and Israel choose to strike.
The U.S.-Israeli air campaign has already delivered historic results. Our losses to enemy fire have been dramatically lower than in past major operations — far below the roughly one aircraft per day suffered in the run-up to Desert Storm. Precision strikes combined with air superiority have severely damaged Iran’s missile forces, air defenses, and naval capabilities.
The extraordinary rescue of the downed F-15E pilot and weapons systems officer — the latter extracted on Easter Sunday after going missing on Good Friday — further showcased unmatched special operations skill and real-time intelligence fusion, with operators inserted near Isfahan and a small team sortieing to a 7,000-foot ridge to recover the injured colonel under enemy pressure.
These successes set the stage for the critical phase now unfolding.
President Donald Trump’s remarks on Monday included both talks of negotiations and a threat to hit dual-use infrastructure, but the clearest indicators will be the strikes themselves in the coming hours and days.
For America and its allies, the central goals remain eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile threat, neutralizing its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, and cutting off support for its terror proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. These elements have long formed the regime’s capacity to destabilize the region and threaten global energy security.
<div id="attachment_1059641" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059641" class="size-large wp-image-1059641" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-864x576.jpg" alt="Strait of Hormuz (Photo by Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2242929815.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Strait of Hormuz (Photo by Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025)</div>
Iran’s center of gravity is more existential: the survival of the revolutionary regime itself.
Animated by a messianic death cult ideology that seeks to hasten the end times and the return of the 12th Hidden Imam — the Mahdi — the regime views its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium as vital insurance for that apocalyptic mission.
But preserving custody of that material increasingly forces a confrontation with the regime’s very existence, even if full regime change has not been the publicly stated goal.
Watch the target sets carefully. 
If strikes concentrate on tactical assets around the Strait of Hormuz — anti-ship missiles, coastal batteries, fast-attack craft, and related naval infrastructure — the immediate priority will be reopening vital shipping lanes and safeguarding global oil flows. This approach would focus on restoring freedom of navigation while building on gains already achieved. But, as operations against the Houthis to safeguard the Red Sea showed, it’s not easy.
But targeting dual-use infrastructure, such as bridges, power plants, and logistics nodes, would indicate sustained pressure on the regime’s ability to move forces and maintain domestic control. Such targets squeeze the theocrats’ sustainment without committing to large-scale ground operations, potentially accelerating internal strains on a population long weary of repression.
The most telling sign, however, would be systematic attacks on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia leadership, command nodes, and control networks. If the campaign pivots decisively in this direction, it will mark the abandonment of meaningful negotiation and a clear intent to drive this terror regime toward collapse. Air power that degrades the mullahs’ tools of internal repression — especially amid existing domestic discontent — could burst open the door for rapid regime collapse.
Only the last option — going after the regime — would likely lead to the United States recovering Iran’s enriched uranium.
Ultimately, the regime faces a binary choice: recognize the futility of defiance or cling to its apocalyptic ideology at ever greater cost. The Iranian people, long oppressed by a corrupt theocracy, could prove decisive once the regime’s instruments of control are sufficiently shattered.
Operation Epic Fury has already reshaped the battlefield in America’s favor. The strategic decisions made now — guided by a clear grasp of centers of gravity as Carl von Clausewitz described them, the hub of all power and movement — will determine whether this campaign delivers not just tactical success but lasting victory: a Middle East more secure, global commerce protected, and a dangerous regime consigned to history’s garbage pile.
What unfolds in the coming days will turn on those target choices and the intent behind them.
* * *
Chuck DeVore is the Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-IRAN-WAR-POLITICS-TRUMP

Why What Comes Next In Iran Will Decide Everything

What Comes Next In Operation Epic Fury: By Sea And By Land, Watch The Targets Closely

Operation Epic Fury

Pete Hegseth

Strait of Hormuz

U.S. Navy

President Donald Trump ripped podcast host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday after Carlson accused him of proposing a war crime in his warning to Iran and urged American military members to refuse the president&#8217;s orders.
In an episode posted Monday afternoon, Carlson suggested Trump was considering using a weapon of mass destruction &#8220;on the population of Iran&#8221; and encouraged administration officials and service members to push back. Trump responded by dismissing his former ally in remarks to <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/04/07/us-news/trump-tears-into-tucker-carlson-over-iran-war-claims/">The New York Post</a>.
“Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Trump said. “He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”
Carlson&#8217;s criticism centered on Trump&#8217;s profanity-laced Easter Sunday <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-issues-the-most-blistering-ultimatum-to-iran-in-history">message</a> to Iran, in which the president warned that U.S. forces would destroy Iran&#8217;s bridges and power plants if the regime did not &#8220;open the f*ckin&#8217; Strait [of Hormuz].&#8221;
Calling Trump&#8217;s comments &#8220;vile on every level,&#8221; Carlson argued they amounted to a &#8220;promise to use the U.S. military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country,&#8221; which he claimed would constitute a war crime.
&#8220;If you work in the White House, or in the U.S. military, now is the time to say, &#8216;No, absolutely not.&#8217; And say it directly to the president, &#8216;No,'&#8221; Carlson said. &#8220;In case you&#8217;re thinking about using some weapon of mass destruction against the population of Iran &#8230; those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say, &#8216;No, I&#8217;ll resign. I&#8217;ll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given the order, I&#8217;m not carrying it out. Figure out the codes on the football yourself.'&#8221;
Carlson&#8217;s message mirrors calls made by some Democratic lawmakers late last year for military members to refuse &#8220;illegal orders&#8221; as U.S. forces conducted deadly strikes on alleged narcoterrorists in the Caribbean and Pacific.
The president&#8217;s fiery response to Carlson on Tuesday marks the latest escalation in a growing rift between Trump and Carlson. The two were still meeting as recently as January, but relations have deteriorated following American military action against Iran.
Carlson has since sharply criticized Trump&#8217;s Iran operation, calling it &#8220;absolutely disgusting and evil&#8221; and accusing the president of doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump, for his part, has dismissed Carlson in recent weeks.
“Tucker has lost his way,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News reporter Jon Karl in March. “He’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
On Tuesday morning, ahead of his 8 p.m. ET deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump warned of catastrophic consequences.
&#8220;A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.&#8221;

Donald Trump/Tucker Carlson

Trump Rips Tucker Carlson After He Urges Military To Defy Orders

Tucker Carlson

The United States on Tuesday intensified its campaign against Kharg Island, underscoring its role as a critical center of gravity in the war with Iran.
Kharg Island is not merely a piece of land; it is the &#8220;jugular&#8221; of the Iranian state. Located roughly 21 miles off Iran&#8217;s coast, the island handles an estimated 90% to 96% of the country’s crude oil exports. Its primary value lies in its deep-water access, which allows &#8220;Supertankers&#8221; (VLCCs) to dock — something the shallow mainland coastline cannot accommodate. With storage tanks holding nearly 30 million barrels, Kharg is the source of half of Iran’s government revenue.
For the United States, neutralizing or seizing the island is a &#8220;silver bullet&#8221; strategy: without the hard currency generated there, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) loses the ability to fund its domestic operations, missile programs, and regional proxies.
The focus on Kharg Island mirrors a long-held strategic view expressed by Donald Trump decades before entering politics. In a 1988 interview with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/12/polly-toynbee-1988-interview-donald-trump">The Guardian</a>, Trump criticized the U.S. approach to Iran, stating: &#8220;One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it &#8230; It’d be good for the world to take them on.&#8221;
Decades later, that concept appears to be resurfacing in current strategy. By threatening to &#8220;take&#8221; the island rather than simply destroy it, the United States gains a massive bargaining chip. If the U.S. controls the &#8220;tap&#8221; at Kharg Island, it can dictate Iran’s economic survival without necessarily causing a permanent global environmental catastrophe.
During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi forces repeatedly bombed the island’s oil infrastructure specifically to weaken Iran’s economy, which shows how central it has long been to Iran’s war resilience.
“The U.S. has already struck various targets on the island, including air defenses, a radar site, the airport and a hovercraft base, according to satellite analysis by the Institute for the Study of War and American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project,” Military.com <a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/03/31/seizing-kharg-island-would-risk-us-troops-lives-and-may-not-end-iran-war-experts-say.html#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20reasons%20American,and%20artillery%20could%20be%20fired.">reported</a>. On Tuesday, a U.S. official confirmed a new wave of precision strikes on the island. <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-892327">Described</a> as &#8220;restrikes&#8221; on targets previously hit in March, the operation specifically targeted Kharg’s remaining air defense batteries (S-300/S-400 systems) and radar stations.
These strikes serve two purposes: By stripping away the island&#8217;s &#8220;Anti-Access/Area Denial&#8221; (A2/AD) capabilities, the United States is clearing the path for a potential amphibious assault. Additionally, the strikes occurred just hours before President Trump’s 8:00 PM ET deadline. The president has notably ordered the military to spare the actual oil loading jetties for now, signaling that the United States intends to preserve the infrastructure for a future &#8220;seize and hold&#8221; operation by the 5,000 Marines currently stationed in the Gulf.
Taking Kharg Island would be a &#8220;Joint Forcible Entry&#8221; operation of unprecedented complexity, requiring demining the approaches and conducting a &#8220;vertical envelopment&#8221; via Ospreys and paratroopers.
The logic remains the same as it was in 1988: if Tehran is the body, Kharg Island is the heart. By stopping the heart, the United States aims to end the regime&#8217;s ability to wage a prolonged war before the 8:00 PM deadline expires.

Satellite imagery of Iran

America Just Took Aim At The Source Of Iran’s Power

Kharg Island

President Donald Trump said Monday that a &#8220;sick person&#8221; leaked information about the downed U.S. fighter jet to media outlets and threatened jail time for reporters if they don&#8217;t reveal the leaker&#8217;s identity.
Trump said the U.S. mission to rescue one of the American airmen who went down in Iran was placed &#8220;at great risk&#8221; because of the leak and the ensuing media reports. The Iranian regime placed a bounty on the missing U.S. F-15 fighter weapons systems officer, who was forced to hide in a mountain crevice for nearly two days as armed Iranians searched for the American.
&#8220;We&#8217;re looking very hard to find that leaker,&#8221; Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, adding, &#8220;Whoever it was, we think we&#8217;ll be able to find it out because we&#8217;re going to go to the media company that released it and we&#8217;re going to say, &#8216;National security, give it up or go to jail.'&#8221;
&#8220;Some things you can&#8217;t do because when they did that, all of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;And it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
President Trump vows to hunt down leaker who put rescue mission &#8216;at great risk&#8217; <a href="https://t.co/RyJ7Smlgv2">pic.twitter.com/RyJ7Smlgv2</a>
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyAkiva/status/2041207946856804392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump did not say to which outlet the administration believes the leaker sent the sensitive information. CBS News, The New York Times and CNN were among the first outlets to report that one of the two U.S. pilots was rescued while a search and rescue operation had begun for the missing pilot. CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-fighter-jet-f15e-downed-over-iran/">cited</a> &#8220;two U.S. officials&#8221; in its report on the missing airman. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/04/world/iran-war-trump-news/what-us-military-pilots-are-trained-to-do-when-they-are-shot-down?smid=url-share">cited</a> &#8220;U.S. and Israeli&#8221; officials, and CNN cited three &#8220;U.S. sources&#8221; in its initial <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/03/world/live-news/iran-war-us-trump-oil?post-id=cmnj11n1j00053b6uvve7kv9x">report</a> on the missing pilot.
Journalists who publish sensitive or even classified information are protected in many states and in Washington, D.C., under shield laws, provided they obtained the material without coercion and did not ask anyone to break the law. However, there are no federal protections for publishing classified information.
The Trump administration has sought to crack down on leakers within the federal government and prevent reporters from publishing classified information. The Justice Department was recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-blocks-doj-from-searching-washington-post-reporters-devices-in-classified-docs-probe">blocked</a> by a federal judge from searching the devices of a Washington Post reporter as federal investigators looked into a government contractor who was accused of leaking classified government materials.
The second airman, who was badly injured, was rescued early on Sunday as U.S. forces carried out a dangerous mission inside Iran. Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/live-updates-iranian-protests-intensify-as-citizens-demand-end-to-ayatollah-rule?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Daily+Wire&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=LIVE+COVERAGE%3A+Trump+Speaks+To+Americans+After+Daring+Rescue+Behind+Enemy+Lines">described</a> the rescue mission as a “massive operation” that involved 155 aircraft, including bombers, fighter jets, refueling tankers, and rescue units. After confirming the weapons systems officer&#8217;s location, U.S. troops engaged with enemy forces and extracted the airman.

Furious Trump Threatens Jail For Reporters, Targets ‘Sick Leaker’ Who Risked Rescue

Executive

Leak

Do you consider yourself in a living hell right now?
We are in a war. Everyone in our country is temporarily suffering from somewhat higher gas prices. The other country has no functioning government, and is a terrorist state that shoots people in the streets.
But you can always count on the useful idiots, people who truly hate America. They think America should be less powerful in the world.
I can&#8217;t think of a single military conflict — including military conflicts with which I disagreed — where I hoped America would lose. I might have thought that the involvement was not correct, but the idea that it would be better for America to lose is anti-American.
Period.
Ryan Grim, a favorite on the horseshoe Right — the grievance party which has decided that isolationism is the way — comes from Drop Site News, which is a left-wing misinformation site. He responded to investor Shaun Maguire, who <a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/2040599408094667233">asked</a>, “How did we get to the point where so many Americans are rooting against America?”
“If this is an honest question, I&#8217;d say Americans are rooting against America because we facilitated a genocide,” Grim <a href="https://x.com/Aakar__Patel/status/2040622155894026514">declared</a>.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2401-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=5&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+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>
Presumably, this would be Israel&#8217;s action against Hamas, which was not even remotely close to a genocide.
He continued:
<blockquote>&#8230; and followed it with a surprise attack on a girls elementary school followed by attacks on universities, medical centers, more schools, a world famous pharmaceutical research center, a volley ball team, an unfinished bridge we claimed was transporting weapons and then a nuclear power plant &#8230; we are now promising endless attacks on civilian infrastructure.</blockquote>
Every single thing he states is a lie. We have hit those sites because they are dual-use sites, except for the ones that we hit by accident.
If you truly believe that the American military is so evil that we target girls’ schools for the fun of it, that there are no mistakes made, that we just decided to get up one morning and murder a bunch of schoolgirls, get the hell out of the country.
You hate the country, and you hate the military. There&#8217;s no other way to explain what you are saying. There&#8217;s no other way to explain it.
Do you think Pete Hegseth and President Trump are sitting around drawing up a target list, and they say, “You know what? Just for good measure, let&#8217;s kill a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls”?
Is that what you think? If you think that you despise America.
You can oppose the war. You can oppose the way that the war is being fought. You can have problems with the overall strategy. You can have honest questions about the war.
But that&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re talking about here.
We&#8217;re talking about people openly hoping that America loses because they do not like America, because they think a more powerful America in the world is a bad thing. 
And Iran is counting on these people to undermine support.
This is nothing new. This happened throughout American history. If you go back to the Vietnam War, the Vietcong were counting on university students to claim we were the real bad guys, not the communists who were murdering hundreds of thousands of people. That&#8217;s why you had the students chanting in solidarity with Ho Chi Minh.
We have the same sorts of people now: a large swath of the Left and a significant part of the online Horseshoe Right.
Tucker Carlson put out a tape over the weekend celebrating the end of the American-led world order. He said a bunch of untrue things, which is what he does for a living now, while selling nicotine made in India. He said:
<blockquote>What&#8217;s happening in Iran is the end of American empire as we understand it. And that&#8217;s sad. Boo-hoo. Empire&#8217;s dying, but it&#8217;s not the end of the United States. It&#8217;s not the end of our influence on other nations, hopefully positive influence. It&#8217;s not the end of our economy. It&#8217;s the beginning of a very rough time in our economy, of course, but it&#8217;s hardly the end of it. What we&#8217;ve been doing, for likely your lifetime, if you&#8217;re under 80, is, well, it&#8217;s not working anymore. It hasn&#8217;t actually helped the United States long-term.
Your grandkids at this point don&#8217;t have the promise of a better life than you had. So it&#8217;s not actually a successful experiment. And now it&#8217;s ending because we&#8217;ve reached the limits of our demonstrated power. We can&#8217;t open the Straits of Hormuz. The president of the United States said that last night. Someone else do it. So we&#8217;re done. That&#8217;s okay. It was always going to end. Hopefully you can get out without a nuclear exchange, but now it is ending.</blockquote>
“It was okay. It&#8217;s okay if that happens. And it would probably be good if that happens because you&#8217;ve been lied to for generations.”
He is a liar. He&#8217;s a liar on economics, on military power, all of it. He&#8217;s gotten all of it dead wrong.
Remember this schmuck was telling you last year we were going to be in World War III if the United States struck a nuclear facility with one B-2. Has he been right on a single thing all along the way here? What has he been right on?
Also, why not just say what you really mean? He went even further. 
He called President Trump a <a href="https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040946336657236274">war criminal</a> over the weekend: 
<blockquote>Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, shows up at the White House yesterday to pray over the president so he will have wisdom and restraint? No. To endorse the murder of civilians, which is a war crime. But more important, it&#8217;s a moral crime. You can&#8217;t kill people who have committed no crime, who did nothing wrong. You can&#8217;t murder the innocent.</blockquote>
We should point out that Tucker Carlson is perfectly fine with Vladimir Putin killing people who have committed no crime. He literally said so. He said, “That&#8217;s what leaders do.” Tucker Carlson has been super pro-Russia throughout the entire Russia-Ukraine conflict as Russia targets civilians. He has been extraordinarily pro-Iran throughout this entire conflict, after Iran murdered tens of thousands of people in the streets and has facilitated the murder of civilians all over the Middle East.
As to his generalized argument, which is that somehow the last 80 years of history have been a giant failure for America, do you know how ignorant of American history you have to be to actually argue that? Destroying the Soviet Union, building the single most powerful economy in the history of planet Earth, is somehow a giant loss?
That is a lie. The statistics prove it&#8217;s a lie. A new story from the Wall Street Journal states, “America&#8217;s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scaled the economic ladder into higher earning groups. New research shows the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so.”
This would be the period that Tucker says was terrible.
Meanwhile, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn&#8217;t have two neurons connecting in her brain, put out this <a href="https://x.com/FmrRepMTG/status/2040789438494585175">statement</a> on Easter morning:
<blockquote>Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.</blockquote>
Listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene lecture everyone else on morality is a hell of a thing, knowing her personal history.
She continued, “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit. I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this. The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel.”
Yes, Israel does have nuclear weapons. Do any of our allies feel threatened by Israeli nuclear weapons? If so, I would love to hear how.
These are the people that Iran is counting on to help out.
Candace Owens put out her usual mirage of insanity. She <a href="https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/2040918596239446051">tweeted</a>, “This is a satanic administration. We all realize that satanic Zionists occupy the White House, and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed. All of our lives may depend upon other countries realizing Trump is deeply unwell and surrounded by religious fanatics who have convinced him that he is a messiah.”
What in the world is she even talking about?
Tim Miller of the anti-Trump group The Bulwark echoed her, writing, “The Satanic Zionist Clause undermines an otherwise compelling critique of Trump.”
Selling your soul for a salary at The Bulwark is a hell of a thing to do.
Pod Save America&#8217;s Jon Favreau endorsed the Candace tweet with a retweet.
Here&#8217;s the thing. The president is not listening to them, and he shouldn&#8217;t listen to them. Why would you listen to people who believe that it is a good thing for America to be weaker in the world? Why would you listen to people who believe that the president of the United States is deliberately targeting civilian schoolgirls?
The answer is you shouldn&#8217;t. The answer is you wouldn&#8217;t.
That’s because those people don&#8217;t like America very much. They will say, “I like a different form of America, an America in my head.”
Thankfully, that America doesn&#8217;t exist. The America that does exist is the America that you live in right now. The one where President Trump is the president. The one that ensures the freedom of the seas and the free flow of commerce, the America that fights off terror nations, the America that protects our allies, the America that does not wish to see the world&#8217;s worst people with the world&#8217;s worst weapons.
That&#8217;s the America you live in right now. Do you like that America, or do you hate that America?
When Joe Biden was president, I still loved America because America is awesome. I didn&#8217;t like Joe Biden as president very much, but I still loved America.
I wasn&#8217;t rooting against America.
Real Americans don’t.

Tucker Taylor Owens

The Haters Who Want America To Lose

Ben Shapiro

Candace Owens

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Vietnam

President Donald Trump made the largest military spending request in history on Friday, with a proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year of $1.5 trillion in defense spending, of which $1.1 trillion would be allocated for the Department of War and $350 billion specifically for critical munitions.
The record request was announced in January after former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s capture, but before the United States launched attacks on Iran. To pay for the uptick in defense spending, the White House proposes to reduce non-defense spending by 10%.
The White House says the spending request reflects the current global threat environment and restores the readiness and lethality of the United States military. The money would also include a salary increase for all military personnel, with junior enlisted members receiving the largest salary bump at 7%. Mid-level service members, E-6 to O-3, would receive a 6% pay raise, and higher-ranking officers would receive a 5% raise. The White House predicts the increase will help with service member retention and recruiting efforts.
Funds would also be directed to the construction of the United States’ “Golden Dome,” which would be similar to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. The Golden Dome would track missiles through launch, in midcourse, and on their descent, potentially using space-based technology to intercept missiles. Unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, America’s Golden Dome would aim to stop long-range missiles and potentially hypersonic weapons, which are a growing concern posed by adversaries like China, Russia, and North Korea. 
The budget would also focus on “making shipbuilding great again,” adding 18 battle force ships and 16 non-battle force ships to the United States naval fleet. By ship count, <a href="https://www.usamm.com/blogs/news/ships-us-navy">China</a> currently has the largest navy, with the United States in second place.
Another large category of investment will be in critical mineral stockpiles. Currently, the United States Department of the Interior lists 60 minerals as critical, of which 15 are rare earth elements. The list ranges from aluminum to zinc, and the push reflects a broader strategy Trump employed in global negotiations. The president pushed to bring steel and aluminum production back to the United States while also taking a stake in MP Materials, which is the only fully integrated rare earth producer in America. Rare earth minerals are used in magnets and batteries, as well as defense applications and AI chips, making them a national security priority.
One of the Senate’s most prominent fiscal hawks, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), told The Daily Wire: “With total debt approaching $39 trillion, reduced spending in other areas will be required,” and &#8220;aggressively eliminating the $700 billion to $1 trillion in annual fraud would be the primary target.”
Johnson sees the road to getting the president’s request passed before the fiscal year begins on October 1 as challenging.
“Even though defense of our nation is the top priority of the government, Democrats will not support the president’s request,” said Johnson. The senator sees two paths ahead: Republicans voting to end the filibuster or pursuing a reconciliation appropriation process to get Republican votes.
If Republicans take the nuclear option, they would be able to pass bills with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of 60. The reconciliation appropriation process would also be challenging due to the Byrd Rule, which allows senators to block or remove parts of a reconciliation deal. A provision can be stripped out unless 60 senators vote to keep it, and with Republicans holding 53 seats, the road to 60 would be challenging.
President Trump signaled on Wednesday that defense spending is a top priority. “We’re fighting wars. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare—all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”
The federal government currently runs a deficit of $2 trillion. 
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the initial plan was for him to raise the United States&#8217; revenue by $1 trillion and for Elon Musk to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse by spending $1 trillion to balance the budget. Lutnick and Trump launched tariffs to increase revenue and created the gold card, which charges foreigners <a href="https://www.trumpcard.gov/">$1 million</a> for United States residency on the condition of background check approval. Revenues and spending cuts have fallen short of these expectations, creating tensions around increased military spending amid a runaway budget.

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