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by Rod D. Martin
April 3, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Rick Fisher and Don Ma to discuss Iran’s downing of a U.S. F-15E over Khuzestan, the first American jet shot down in over 13,000 sorties since the war began. What does it mean, how goes the search and rescue mission, how will this change U.S. operations over Iran, and where do we go from here?

Also: the USS Ford returns to combat!

It’s twelve minutes of analysis you won’t get anywhere else. Watch, like, and share!

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by Rod D. Martin
April 2, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Cary Dunst to discuss:

• The President’s Iran speech

• The status of the Iran war, and likely outcomes

• Europe’s needless, self-inflicted dependence on Russian and Middle Eastern oil

• And should America terminate NATO

It’s nine minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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by Alexander Muse
April 2, 2026

Canada has now recorded roughly 100,000 deaths under its Medical Assistance in Dying program. That number deserves to be stated plainly because its scale is extraordinary. During World War II, Canadians fought in Europe to defeat Nazi Germany. Yet the Nazi regime killed only half as many Canadians as the Canadian government has now terminated.

What began as a narrowly framed medical policy has grown into one of the largest state‑run euthanasia programs in modern history. 100,000 dead is twice the deaths from the atomic bombing at Nagasaki, in a country with barely more than 10 percent of America’s population. And the death toll is growing fast.

Historians estimate that roughly 200,000 disabled and mentally ill Germans were killed under the Nazi euthanasia system known as Aktion T4 and its successor programs. Canada, having already reached about 100,000 deaths, is now halfway to that grim benchmark as well. Canada is currently killing roughly 50 of its own citizens every day through MAID, and the rate continues to increase as “eligibility” expands.

The program is presented to the public as an act of compassion. It is framed in the language of autonomy, mercy, and relief from suffering. Supporters often imagine a narrow practice reserved for terminal patients facing unavoidable agony. In that limited scenario, the policy appears humane. A patient is dying. Medicine cannot cure the illness. The patient requests release from unbearable pain. Many people instinctively sympathize with that situation.

But public policy must be judged not only by its intentions but by its structure and trajectory. When examined carefully, Canada’s euthanasia regime reveals a pattern that should alarm anyone concerned about the protection of human life. The program increasingly involves people who are not dying. It has created institutional incentives within bureaucracies. And it relies heavily on language that softens the reality of what is occurring. At the end of the process, a physician administers a lethal substance, and a citizen dies.

Aktion T4 began in Germany in the late 1930s. It targeted people with severe disabilities and mental illnesses. The program was administered by physicians and organized through bureaucratic review systems. Paperwork moved through offices. Doctors evaluated patients. Lethal procedures were carried out in medical settings. The killings were justified using the language of mercy and relief from suffering.

The resemblance to Canada’s current system is not superficial. Both programs rely on the medical profession to carry out intentional death. Both systems use administrative procedures to determine who qualifies. Both employ euphemistic language that frames killing as compassion. And in both cases, disability and chronic suffering become central to the eligibility discussion.

Martin Capital is a proud member of the Freedom Chamber. You should be too!

None of this means Canada is Nazi Germany. But the comparison does not depend on identical political systems. It depends on structural similarities. Once a society authorizes physicians to intentionally end lives through bureaucratic processes, certain patterns begin to emerge.

The first pattern is medicalization. Killing becomes a medical treatment. Patients enter a clinical pathway. Physicians evaluate eligibility criteria. Forms are completed. Procedures are performed in hospitals and clinics. The authority of the medical profession gives the act an appearance of legitimacy. The white coat becomes the uniform through which the state exercises power over life and death.

The second pattern is bureaucratic routinization. Decisions about life and death move through administrative systems. Files are reviewed. Eligibility checklists are completed. Institutional protocols determine outcomes. In such environments, morally extraordinary acts can begin to feel routine. A lethal decision becomes simply another form approved by the system.

The third pattern is rhetorical softening. Language changes how the public perceives the act. The Nazi regime spoke of mercy killing and euthanasia. Canada speaks of medical assistance in dying. The phrases differ, but the function is similar. Each term reframes intentional killing as a therapeutic act.

The fourth pattern involves expansion. Systems built around euthanasia rarely remain confined to their original boundaries. Canada’s MAID program illustrates this dynamic clearly. When the policy was introduced, it was largely presented as a measure for patients near death. In 2021, Parliament passed Bill C‑7, dramatically expanding eligibility by creating what is now known as Track 2 MAID.

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Under Track 2, individuals whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable may still qualify for euthanasia if they experience suffering deemed intolerable. The practical effect is that disability, chronic illness, psychological suffering, poverty, and social isolation now appear at the center of many eligibility debates. This shift has transformed MAID from an end‑of‑life measure into a far broader mechanism for state‑facilitated death.

The consequences of that shift are already visible.

Consider the widely discussed case of Sophia. She suffered from chemical sensitivities and spent years attempting to obtain suitable disability housing from the government. The housing never materialized. Eventually, she chose MAID rather than continue waiting. The state faced a choice. It could provide housing, as it does for millions of citizens, or it could approve a lethal injection. In Sophia’s case, death proved cheaper and easier than solving the policy failure.

Another disturbing example involves Alan Nichols. Nichols struggled with seasonal depression. His family routinely intervened during depressive episodes and obtained treatment for him. He was not terminally ill. Yet he was approved for MAID. His family was never informed beforehand and learned of his death only after the procedure had already occurred.

The secrecy surrounding the decision is striking. In Nazi Germany, families were frequently kept in the dark about euthanasia decisions precisely to prevent relatives from intervening to protect vulnerable family members. The Nichols case reveals a similar dynamic. Those most likely to object were excluded from the process.

The state faces an economic decision. It can spend public resources providing housing, medical care, and long‑term assistance, or it can authorize death and remove the burden entirely. When death becomes the cheaper option, the moral structure of the system begins to resemble the logic that underpinned the Nazi euthanasia program. That regime openly described disabled people as economic burdens on society: “useless eaters.”

Economic incentives also appear in the controversy surrounding Canada’s Veterans Affairs system. Veterans who approached the agency seeking help for PTSD were told the condition could be extremely difficult to treat and might persist for years. In that context, some officials began presenting assisted suicide as an option.

The consequences were predictable. Some veterans accepted the offer. Each acceptance meant one fewer patient requiring long‑term treatment and one fewer costly disability case. The program quietly saved money. Eventually, the logic spread. If assisted suicide reduced costs for PTSD cases, why not raise the option with veterans seeking disability assistance more broadly?

The disturbing implication is obvious. Instead of asking how to restore the wounded soldier to health, the institution began asking whether eliminating the patient might be cheaper than treating him.

The case of Roger Foley reveals the same economic logic. Foley recorded hospital administrators discussing the high cost of his care while suggesting MAID as an alternative. He refused and later filed legal action. The recording exposed how quickly financial calculations can enter conversations about assisted death.

Scale intensifies the moral problem. Roughly 50 Canadians now die each day through MAID. If the United States adopted the same per capita rate, the number would exceed 400 deaths per day. When death becomes routine within a healthcare system the moral identity of medicine itself begins to change.

Supporters argue that MAID is grounded in autonomy. Individuals request assistance voluntarily. Physicians confirm eligibility. Oversight mechanisms exist. The goal, they say, is simply to relieve suffering.

Autonomy is an important moral value. But autonomy alone cannot sustain a humane society. Human decisions are shaped by social conditions. Poverty, disability, loneliness, and lack of medical support can push individuals toward despair. In those circumstances, the line between voluntary choice and social abandonment becomes dangerously thin.

Philosophers sometimes call this the architecture of choice. A decision may appear voluntary on paper while the surrounding conditions leave a person with no realistic alternative. If someone chooses death because housing is unavailable or treatment inaccessible, the moral responsibility does not disappear simply because a consent form was signed.

History shows how quickly euthanasia systems can expand. The Nazi euthanasia program began with disabled children. It expanded to adults and later merged into wider killing programs. The comparison does not suggest identical motives. It reveals how bureaucratic systems of medicalized killing tend to evolve once established.

Canada’s MAID program is following a disturbingly similar trajectory. Eligibility has expanded. Deaths are increasing rapidly. Cases increasingly involve people who are not dying but who face social hardship, disability, or psychological pain.

Christian moral philosophy offers a stark warning about this path. Human life possesses intrinsic dignity because every person is created in the image of God. That dignity does not depend on health, productivity, or independence. When a society begins to treat vulnerable lives as problems to be solved through death, it abandons one of the most fundamental moral principles of civilization.

Conservative political philosophy reaches a similar conclusion through a different route. Governments are powerful institutions. Policies designed with humane intentions can drift when combined with bureaucratic incentives and fiscal pressure. Granting the state authority to end the lives of its citizens through medical channels crosses a boundary previous generations treated as morally inviolable.

Canada’s euthanasia regime has now crossed that boundary. The number of deaths continues to grow. The eligibility criteria continue to widen. Economic incentives increasingly intersect with decisions about life and death. The similarities to the logic of twentieth‑century euthanasia systems are becoming impossible to ignore.

A humane society should respond to suffering with care, treatment, and solidarity. It should expand palliative medicine, improve disability support, and ensure that no citizen believes death is the only escape from hardship.

When the state begins offering death instead of help, something has gone profoundly wrong.

— This article originally appeared at AmuseOnX.

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by Rod D. Martin and Tom Del Becarro
April 1, 2026

My latest interview with my friend Tom Del Becarro, acclaimed author and former Chairman of the California Republican Party. Sign up NOW for the Politics in Perspective YouTube channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this wide-ranging episode, we discuss:

• Investing in Trump 2.0

• The market’s overreaction to the Iran war, and why oil prices will be much lower with the Islamist regime taken off the board

• Tariffs, tax cuts, and the nascent economic boom

• Why the 2026 midterms could be good for Republicans

• Racial gerrymandering, rigged census numbers, open borders, and Nicolas Maduro: how we’re attacking Democrats’ corruption of the election process

• AI and employment: why it’s not going the way you think

• Lies Tucker told me

• PLUS: even Malthus knew Malthus was wrong

It’s a free-wheeling 30 minutes you won’t want to miss! Like, share, & subscribe!

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NOTE: Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, addressing whether the 14th Amendment mandates birthright citizenship. I have argued strenuously that it does not, including in a debate last year with a Yale Law professor. This article, originally published shortly after President Trump took office, explains what you need to know about this arcane but contentious issue. I make no predictions as to the outcome, but as you’ll see, constitutionally speaking, Trump should win. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
January 29, 2025

Donald Trump’s executive order banning so-called “birthright citizenship” was immediately (though temporarily) blocked by a Federal judge, who called it “blatantly unconstitutional”.

He’s wrong. Birthright citizenship is not, in fact, required by the 14th Amendment. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why the children of foreign ambassadors or servicemen born here are not U.S. citizens.

Because they aren’t. So why are the children of people who’ve entered the country illegally?

The principle of birthright citizenship, as it is currently interpreted in the courts, poses a significant and growing threat to the nation’s sovereignty, social cohesion, and long-term stability. The idea that mere birth on U.S. soil, regardless of parental allegiance, automatically confers American citizenship is not only a misreading of the 14th Amendment but a dangerous policy that has been exploited for decades.

In reality, this absurd modern interpretation is a historical and legal distortion that undermines the integrity of American citizenship, incentivizes illegal immigration, and facilitates a systematic erosion of national identity.

It is time to restore the original understanding of citizenship, which is based on allegiance and jurisdiction, not mere geography.

The Original Meaning of the 14th Amendment

The current misinterpretation of birthright citizenship stems from a deliberate distortion of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. The amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The key phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” has been twisted over time to mean anyone physically present in the country at birth. But this was never the intent of the amendment.

As constitutional scholar John C. Eastman has argued, “subject to the jurisdiction” was meant to exclude those who owed allegiance to foreign nations. This understanding is reinforced by the historical context in which the amendment was drafted. Its primary purpose was to grant citizenship to freed slaves, who had been wickedly denied it by the slave states, and later nationally under the infamous Dred Scott decision.

The authors of the 14th Amendment wanted to ensure that the freed slaves were granted citizenship, and that the former slave states could not abridge or deny it. But they never intended for the amendment to grant automatic citizenship to the children of foreign nationals, particularly those who enter the country illegally or remain on temporary visas.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website has to say:

A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States is not subject to the jurisdiction of United States law. Therefore, that person cannot be considered a U.S. citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Wait, what?! Did they just say that if you’re not “subject to the jurisdiction of United States law” then the citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to you?

Why yes. Yes they did. And this isn’t a new thing: it’s always been the law.

So what does that tell us about people who are not only foreign citizens, they’re actually here illegally? If someone trespasses in your house, do their children automatically gain partial ownership of it? The very idea is absurd.

Every nation has the right to define its citizenry based on allegiance and legal authority. Moreover, the authors of the 14th Amendment, and the states that ratified it, understood it to uphold that principle. Allowing the children of foreign nationals to claim citizenship simply by birthright, without regard for the parents’ legal status or commitment to American values, erodes this sovereign authority.

It also creates an enormous incentive to abuse the system.

Historical and Legal Precedents

The Supreme Court affirmed this original understanding of the 14th Amendment in its earliest interpretations. In The Slaughterhouse Cases (1872), the Court explicitly stated that the phrase “subject to its jurisdiction” was intended to exclude children of foreign diplomats, consuls, and foreign nationals born on U.S. soil.

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The Court reaffirmed this position in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), where it held that being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant more than mere territorial presence. It required one to be fully and exclusively subject to U.S. political authority, owing “direct and immediate allegiance.” The ruling made clear that jurisdiction, in the constitutional sense, is not a vague or partial obligation but a complete and exclusive bond between the individual and the nation.

In opposition to these cases, proponents of birthright citizenship cite the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark as justification for the modern policy. However, this case is misrepresented. Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. to parents who were legal, permanent residents—not illegal immigrants or foreign tourists seeking to exploit the system.

Rather than establishing precedent for “anchor babies”, the ruling actually reaffirmed citizenship for children of lawful residents who had established long-term ties to the nation, not for those with no legal right to be in the country.

What’s more, no Congress, president, or court has ever explicitly mandated that birthright citizenship applies to children of illegal immigrants. Instead, this has been the product of bureaucratic overreach, judicial activism, and Democrats’ desire to flood the system with illegals. The American people have never had a say in this dramatic redefinition of their nation’s citizenship laws. It was imposed without debate, without consent, and without a proper legal foundation.

The Consequences of Birthright Citizenship

The unchecked application of birthright citizenship has led to a host of serious consequences for the United States. Among the most damaging is the phenomenon of “anchor babies,” where foreign nationals exploit the policy to secure U.S. citizenship for their children, thereby opening the door to chain migration. This practice has created a loophole that undermines the integrity of America’s immigration laws and incentivizes illegal entry.

The numbers are staggering. Each year, tens of thousands of children are born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, immediately granting them citizenship. These children, in turn, become conduits for further immigration, as their parents and extended family members use their status as leverage to obtain legal residency.

This is not at all how the U.S. immigration system was designed to function. Citizenship should be a privilege granted to those who have demonstrated commitment and allegiance to the nation and their descendants, not an accident or, even worse, deliberate fraud.

This anchor baby policy places an enormous burden on American taxpayers. Children of illegal immigrants and birth tourists often take advantage of America’s generous welfare programs, public education, and healthcare services, all funded by the American taxpayer. Hospitals in border states have been especially overwhelmed by the costs associated with providing care for non-citizens who give birth in the U.S. This strain on resources diverts funding away from American citizens who need assistance, and forces taxpayers to subsidize the consequences of criminal activity and fraud.

A Threat to National Identity

Beyond the financial costs, birthright citizenship poses a deeper threat to the very fabric of American identity. Citizenship is more than just a legal status; it is a sacred bond that ties individuals to the principles, traditions, and responsibilities of a nation. When citizenship is reduced to a mere accident of birth, it loses its meaning and value.

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Let’s be clear: anyone can be an American. Anyone who shares a belief in our uniquely special system is welcome. But random people who don’t believe in it, and won’t even respect our laws, are not.

Nations throughout history have understood that citizenship should be based on allegiance, not geography. Even Canada, often cited as a model for leftist immigration policies, has considered revising its birthright citizenship laws due to widespread abuse. European countries have overwhelmingly rejected birthright citizenship, instead requiring at least one parent to be a legal citizen or permanent resident. These nations recognize that a nation’s people must share a common commitment to its laws and values, not merely occupy its territory.

America must reassert this principle. If citizenship is to mean anything, it must be based on genuine ties to the nation. A system that grants citizenship indiscriminately to those who do not pledge allegiance, respect its laws, or intend to integrate undermines and ultimately destroys the very concept of national identity.

Just ask the barbarians who overran Rome.

Restoring the True Meaning of Citizenship

The question now is not whether birthright citizenship should be revisited, but how quickly it can be corrected. The U.S. Constitution does not require this misinterpretation, and a simple act of Congress, or even President Trump’s executive order, could clarify that children born to illegal immigrants or temporary visitors are not automatically citizens.

And while Trump’s EO will likely be taken up by the Supreme Court (perhaps surviving, perhaps not), Congress clearly has the power to legislate on matters of citizenship, and multiple legal scholars have argued that a properly crafted statute could withstand constitutional scrutiny.

But Trump is right. Instead of waiting for another decade of judicial battles, he has now issued clear guidance to federal agencies that the Citizenship Clause does not apply to illegal immigrants. Doing so is almost certainly the necessary first step to a long-overdue national debate, and to a proper resolution.

Conclusion

Birthright citizenship, as it is currently interpreted, is a misreading of the 14th Amendment and a severe threat to American sovereignty. It has fueled illegal immigration, burdened taxpayers, and eroded the fundamental meaning of citizenship.

The United States, like any sovereign nation, has the right to define its citizenry based on allegiance, not geographic happenstance. By restoring the correct interpretation of the 14th Amendment, America can ensure that citizenship remains a privilege tied to loyalty, responsibility, and national unity.

It can also make sure that its system, and its taxpayers, aren’t abused. Citizenship should not be an entitlement granted to those who flout the nation’s laws—it should be reserved for those who respect, contribute to, and uphold the values of the United States. The future of the country depends on it.

So yet again, the pundits are wrong, Donald Trump is right, and the Supreme Court is very likely to uphold him yet again.

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by Rod D. Martin
March 31, 2026

The Biden administration built something in America that should never exist in a free country: a government-backed censorship machine.

Federal officials leaned on Big Tech to suppress lawful speech on COVID, vaccines, election integrity, even the Hunter Biden laptop. They did it openly, arrogantly, and at scale. They wrapped it in the language of “misinformation,” as they always do. They said they were protecting “Our Democracy” while they were actively strangling it.

Democracy is impossible apart from the free exchange of ideas, even (and especially) ideas we disagree with. If government can determine the boundaries of debate, or worse, decide what is and isn’t true, it will always decide in favor of itself. Always.

That’s what the Democrats tried to do, and partially achieved.

And now, after years of litigation, the federal government has agreed to a settlement in Missouri v. Biden that bars key agencies from threatening or coercing social media companies to suppress protected speech. The Surgeon General’s office, the CDC, and CISA are now under a 10-year consent decree.

That is a major victory. It is also an indictment.

The government of the United States has now accepted binding limits on its ability to pressure social-media platforms into silencing Americans. The Justice Department says the settlement implements President Trump’s executive order on restoring free speech and ending federal censorship. Missouri and Louisiana’s lawyers call the result historic. Eric Schmitt, who launched the case as Missouri’s attorney general, calls it “the first real, operational restraint on the federal censorship machine.”

This was not some harmless bureaucratic misunderstanding. It was an abuse of power at the heart of the constitutional order.

The First Amendment is not a suggestion. It cannot be suspended because some would-be tyrants or panicked public-health grandees decide the peasants are saying too many incorrect things online. Unlike Canada or the UK (where Keir Starmer’s Socialist government has arrested ten times more people for free speech “violations” as Putin’s Russia), our federal government is forbidden from abridging speech. Period.

Nor does that government get to outsource censorship to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or anyone else and then pretend its hands are clean. If the state cannot lawfully silence you directly, it cannot lawfully do so through a corporate cutout.

And that is exactly what the Biden Democrats did. Judge Terry Doughty described the evidence in the case as an “almost dystopian scenario” and likened the federal role to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill says the conduct was “Orwellian in nature from the beginning.” She is right. The government pressured private platforms to erase disfavored viewpoints while calling the whole operation “public safety.”

The targets were not random. They were the issues most dangerous to Deep State power and Democrats’ electoral chances.

COVID policy. Vaccine dissent. Election security. That Hunter Biden laptop.

The last one matters enormously, because it strips away every excuse. The laptop story was true. Indeed, the FBI knew it was true because they’d had the laptop for nearly a year when the story broke! Yet federal officials had primed platforms to expect a Russian “hack and leak” operation, and when the New York Post published a story deeply damaging to Joe Biden weeks before the 2020 election, the platforms shut it down, even blocking the New York Post itself (much as they later deplatformed the sitting President of the United States).

This is why “mistakes were made” will not do.

As it had in 2016, the Deep State used its immense power to sway the outcome of a presidential election. In 2020, they succeeded. Then the new (and illegitimate) Biden administration tried to control what Americans were allowed to say, what they were allowed to hear, and thus what they were allowed to think, from elections to public health to the transgender agenda to the legitimacy of the regime itself.

As O’Brien tells us in 1984, 2 + 2 = whatever the Party tells you. Xi Jinping would heartily approve.

The Supreme Court, to its shame, refused to decide the merits when the case arrived there as Murthy v. Missouri, holding that the plaintiffs had not shown standing. The justices ducked a generational free-speech question precisely when the country needed clarity. The result was that the censorship apparatus was not constitutionally disarmed by the Court. It had to be checked later, politically and through settlement, by a different administration.

Even now, the settlement is significant but incomplete.

It protects the plaintiffs and limits the covered agencies for ten years. It still allows government officials to communicate with platforms, so long as they do not again cross the line into threats or coercion. Yet who will enforce this, or even know? The censorship machine has hereby been bloodied, but not permanently destroyed. That is why celebration alone is not enough.

What should happen next?

First, there must be full exposure. Every email. Every meeting note. Every demand sent from every federal office that pressured platforms to suppress lawful speech. The American people deserve a complete map of the censorship regime: who built it, who ran it, who justified it, who lied about it, and who benefited politically from it.

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Second, there should be institutional penalties. Agencies that participated in this conduct should face aggressive oversight, appropriations restrictions, and statutory barriers making future transgressions far more difficult. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in particular became a key organ of the domestic speech police. It doesn’t need better PR. It needs a smaller budget and a tighter leash.

Third, there should be civil consequences for the people harmed. Call it reparations (as my friend Ben Weingarten does at The Federalist), or anything else that fits: damages, compensation, restitution. If Americans lost accounts, revenue, reach, employment, or reputation because federal officials unlawfully pressured platforms to suppress them, why should those victims alone bear the cost? Why should the people who were silenced pay the bill for the people who did the silencing?

The Left loves reparations when it can weaponize grievance in service of its own power. Fine. Here is a category of victim with a clean causal chain and recent, documentable injury: Americans censored by their own government in violation of the First Amendment. Let’s start there.

Fourth, Congress should codify what this settlement begins. No federal official should be allowed, directly or indirectly, to coerce a platform into suppressing protected speech. No wink-and-nod threats. No heavy-handed regulatory intimidation. No backchannel “recommendations” paired with antitrust menaces or public smears. Congress must create a cause of action with real teeth, fee shifting, and, where appropriate, personal accountability. Make censorship expensive again.

Fifth, the press corps and platforms that enabled and enacted all of this should be humiliated, repeatedly and without mercy.

For years, the Enemedia mocked concerns about censorship as paranoid fantasy. Then legal discovery happened. Then congressional investigations happened. Then a federal judge described a dystopian record. Then the government itself agreed to concrete restraints. The same people who spent years policing “disinformation” and “misinformation” turned out to be its chief purveyors. They were not watchdogs against censorship. They were its praetorian guard.

And yes, this goes straight to Biden himself, or at least his handlers and his autopen.

Joe Biden ran as a restorer of “norms.” In reality, his administration didn’t merely tolerate censorship: it operationalized it. Like their Socialist brethren from Britain to Brussels to Beijing, Biden’s people treated inconvenient facts as public-health threats, dissent as extremism, and criticism as a menace to be suppressed by compliant monopolies.

Biden should not be remembered merely as weak, corrupt, senile or incompetent, though he was undoubtedly all four. He should be remembered as the president under whom the federal government most brazenly attempted to fuse state pressure, corporate power, and narrative control into a functioning American censorship regime on the Communist Chinese model.

That is Biden’s legacy. His party has not repented. It’s doubled down.

The Trump administration’s settlement did not solve the entire problem. But it did what the Supreme Court would not do: it imposed a real operational restraint on the censors. The Justice Department explicitly tied the settlements to Trump’s executive order acknowledging that the previous administration had trampled free-speech rights and exerted unlawful coercive pressure on private parties.

But if conservatives stop at much-deserved applause, they will repeat one of their oldest mistakes. We win an argument, expose a scandal, and then we move on while the other side regroups, relabels, and returns under a new banner. “Misinformation” becomes “trust and safety.” “Content moderation” becomes “platform health.” The euphemisms change. The appetite for coercion and control does not.

The Democrat regime must be remembered — which is to say, we must make sure that it is remembered — as a constitutional warning: this is what the American Left does when it holds power.

They censor. Then they lie about the censorship. Then they call their opponents threats to democracy. Then they cancel them at best, imprison them at worst.

Enough.

Missouri v. Biden is an important victory, but it is not the end. It is the opening breach. The wall still stands. The machinery still exists. The habits of censorship are still deeply embedded in the Deep State, the media, the academy, and the political class that built this system in the first place.

What Democrats attempted was not merely an attack on speech, though it was that. It was an attack on self-government. A free people cannot govern themselves if they are forbidden to speak freely, forbidden to hear dissent, and forbidden to challenge lies imposed by those in power.

The censorship machine must be exposed in full. Its victims must be made whole. Its perpetrators must be named. And the system that made it possible must be broken before it is used again.

That deserves more than just a settlement.

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by Rod D. Martin and Eric Metaxas
March 27, 2026

My latest interview on The Eric Metaxas Show. Sign up NOW for the Eric’s YouTube channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• Tariffs: the Supreme Court, the Founding Fathers, and why tariffs are not (legally) a tax.

• Conservatives vs. Libertarians: The realist limits of free markets in geopolitics.

• Trade as a component of national security.

• The Beltway’s obsession with a greatly weakened Russia.

• What’s wrong with Tucker Carlson?

• The Red-Green Alliance in Europe and America.

• The unique danger of Iran’s Islamist regime.

• The threat from Mexico’s cartels is not what you think.

It’s 45 minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch and share!

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by Robert Bryce
March 30, 2026

Back in 2008, while running for the White House, Barack Obama declared that our planet is “in peril” due to climate change. He continued, saying one of the major challenges facing the U.S. is “what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.”

In that address, known as the “New Energy For America” speech, Obama said, “We simply cannot pretend, as Senator McCain does, that we can drill our way out of this problem.” He went on, saying, “Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.”

In June 2013, Obama again mocked the idea of increased oil and gas drilling. During a speech at Georgetown University, Obama introduced what he called a “new national climate action plan” that he claimed would make the U.S. “a leader — a global leader — in the fight against climate change.” In that speech, Obama used the word “climate” two dozen times. He claimed Congress should “end the tax breaks for big oil companies, and invest in the clean-energy companies that will fuel our future.”

The line from that speech that resonates today is this one: “We can’t just drill our way out of the energy and climate challenge that we face. That’s not possible.”

Those speeches haven’t aged well.

Obama’s rhetoric about drilling captured the anti-hydrocarbon/anti-drilling sentiment that prevails among climate activists and, unfortunately, among Europe’s political leaders. As the Battle for Hormuz continues, it’s clear that the global economy has become too dependent on the hydrocarbons and other strategic commodities that flow through that narrow waterway.

Europe’s energy strategy was built on imports and hopium. Both just ran aground in the Strait of Hormuz.

Since February 25, three days before the U.S. and Israel launched the air war against Iran, the price of natural gas delivered to the TTF trading hub in Holland had jumped by about 85%. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been mostly insulated from the energy-price shocks hitting Europe and the rest of the world. Natural gas prices in the U.S. have increased by about 3% over that same time period.

What’s the difference? The answer is simple: The U.S. actively drills for oil and gas. Europe doesn’t.

Here are eight charts that show how Europe’s refusal to drill has made it heavily dependent on imported hydrocarbons and, therefore, left it at the mercy of the energy price spikes now slamming consumers around the world. The charts also show why — like it or not — it’s time for Europe to drill, baby, drill.

Before diving into the numbers and the charts, I will make two rather obvious points. First, Germany and Belgium were foolish to close their nuclear power plants over the past few years. Doing so made them more reliant on natural gas and, thus, more vulnerable to the price swings of imported gas.

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Second, it’s essential to understand why European climate activists were so effective in getting their anti-drilling and anti-hydraulic fracturing policies made into law. In 2010, The Guardian sounded the alarm when it published an article that said that Halliburton had used hydraulic fracturing on a well in Poland. The article was headlined, “Controversial gas ‘fracking’ extraction headed to Europe.” A year later, the process was banned in France.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies helped fund the anti-shale-gas propaganda that led seven European countries to ban fracking.

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by Rod D. Martin
March 28, 2026

I appeared on NTD News with Don Ma to discuss:

• The two Amphibious Ready Groups (plus the 82nd Airborne) deploying to the Gulf: why are they going and what does it mean?

• Who is left in Iran to negotiate with Trump?

• The Iranian army vs. the IRGC

• How Trump made fools of the New York Times and CNN

• Is an exit possible for the mullahs? And what happens if they stay?

It’s ten minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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by Roger Kimball
March 28, 2026

What’s the one thing everyone knows about capitalism? Why, that it started out as a mean, nasty tool of greedy industrialists, of course. “The Industrial Revolution,” we all learned, was a terrible Moloch that devoured children, put profits before people, and, though it made great fortunes (or, perhaps, partly because it made great fortunes), was a wicked development. The Industrial Revolution, we’ve all been taught, was the original sin of capitalism, necessary, perhaps, to prime the engine of economic progress, but lamentable nevertheless.

Ask anyone: the Industrial Revolution is a stigma that no amount of societal amelioration can remove. The “factory system,” an integral part of the Industrial Revolution, was an urban nightmare, a Dickensian melodrama in which rural innocence was mauled and blighted in those horrific, unsanitary “Satanic mills” that William Blake anathematized.

Once upon a time, before the advent of the factory system, workers enjoyed

a passably comfortable existence, leading a righteous and peaceful life and all piety and probity; and their material condition was far better than that of their successors. . . . They did not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet they earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could take part beside in the recreation and games of their neighbours . . . [which] contributed to their physical health and vigour. . . . Their children grew up in fresh country air, and, if they could help their parents at work, it was only occasionally.

Alas, this Eden, as described by Frederick Engels in a fairy tale called The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, was destroyed by the advent of the machine. “The proletariat,” writes Engels, “was called into existence by the introduction of machinery.”

The consequences of improvement in machinery under our present social conditions are, for the working-man, solely injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive. Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering.

That’s the sad story of capitalism we all imbibed with mother’s milk, or formula. No less an authority than Bertrand Russell has assured us that “the Industrial Revolution caused unspeakable misery both in England and in America. I do not think any student of economic history can doubt that the average happiness in England and early nineteenth century was lower than it had been a hundred years earlier.”

As Friedrich von Hayek points out in Capitalism and the Historians, an extraordinary collection of essays he edited and published in 1954, “The widespread emotional aversion to ‘capitalism’ is closely connected with this belief that the undeniable growth of wealth which the competitive order had produced was purchased at the price of depressing the standard of life the weakest elements of society.” This picture of economic depredation, notes Hayek, is “one supreme myth which more than any other has served to discredit the economic system [capitalism] to which we owe our present-day civilization.”

When we move from the realm of myth-making to historical truth, however, we see that the Engels-Russell narrative, the narrative upon which we’ve all been fattened, is a tissue of exaggerations, misrepresentations, and outright lies. A “careful examination of the facts,” which is what Hayek and his colleagues provide in Capitalism and the Historians (or, to give it its full title, Capitalism and the Historians: A Defense of the Early Factory System and its Social and Economic Consequences), has led to a “thorough refutation of this belief.”

The refutation is indeed thorough, and I heartily recommend this short, bracing volume to anyone still laboring under the impression that “early capitalism” was a moral enormity. Zohran Mamdani, for instance, might have spared himself the embarrassment of his mayoral victory speech in New York on November 4 and such sundry juvenile declarations as “Taxation isn’t theft. Capitalism is” had he taken on board some of what Hayek, T.S. Ashton, Louis Hacker, W.H. Hutt, and Bertrand de Jouvenel have to say in this brisk and fog-dispelling volume. Alas, Mamdani is a disciple of Frantz Fanon, author of the revolutionary’s vade mecum The Wretched of the Earth, and, behind him, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Engels, closely following the work of the Rev. Philip Gaskell (a man, says T.S. Ashton, “whose earnestness and honesty are not in doubt, but whose mind has not been confused by any study of history”), contrasts the idyllic world of rural life, living close to the land, with the sooty urban alternative. But the truth is, as Ashton and others show in meticulous detail, that life was indeed “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” in the world of pre-industrial England.

Ashton demonstrates how, by the 1830s, life was being transformed throughout the realm due to the wealth the factory system brought to England. Along the way, he has some tart observations on the nostalgic romanticization of rural life. “The idea that agriculture is the only natural and healthy activity for human beings,” he writes, “has persisted, and indeed spread, as more of us have escaped from the curse of Adam — or, as the tedious phrase goes, ‘become divorced from the soil.’”

It is worth noting that the very phrase “Industrial Revolution” was coined, not by English industrialists, but by French writers “under the spell of their own great political ferment.” “Industrial Revolution,” in other words, is a polemical, not a descriptive term, redolent of Jacobin insinuations. (Ashton also notes the interesting evolution of the phrase laissez-faire, first used by the Marquis d’Argenson in 1755, when it meant “non-interference with industry,” to its use by Alfred Marshall in 1907, when it meant “let the State be up and doing.”)

Louis Hacker, in “The Anticapitalist Bias of American Historians,” his contribution to Capitalism and the Historians, notes how critics of the factory system often took aim at the fact that now, for the first time, man’s ingenuity was able to turn out an abundance of “cheap goods.” The word “cheap,” Hacker notes, is “invested with a sinister connotation,” but what it actually meant was that young women could now buy inexpensive dresses in a variety of patterns instead of having to make their own clothes — a more romantic pastime only if you happen to be rich enough to have escaped the necessity of doing so.

The early nineteenth century, according to the conventional wisdom, was a time of great economic oppression. In fact, it was the debut of an era of progress and wealth creation the likes of which the world had never seen. “The nineteenth century, for the first time,” notes Hacker, “introduced on a broad scale state policies of public health and public education. The nineteenth century, by turning out cheap goods, made possible the amazing climb of real wages and living standards in industrialized economies. The nineteenth century, by permitting the transfer of capital in large amounts, opened up the interiors of backward countries for development and production.”

Was there squalor and misery and poverty in the early nineteenth century? You betcha. And a lot of it was abetted by poor government policy. The window tax, for example, and the high excise on building materials. (You want houses to be made in a sturdy manner? Don’t make it more difficult for builders to build them.) As Hacker notes, “Poor houses and overcrowding in the towns were not evidence of the rejection of moral responsibility on the part of the new industrial class but the result of natural forces of immigration and internal population movements and bad fiscal policy.”

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The truth is that after 1820, for the first time in recorded history, the standard of living for ordinary people was rapidly improving in British society and, as Ashton points out, “the factory played a not inconsiderable role in the improvement.” Even Edwin Chadwick, whose 1843 classic Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain is a major primary source for our knowledge of the subject, noted that “the comforts of the laboring classes have increased with the late increases of population” and that “the means of obtaining the necessaries of life for the whole mass of the laboring community have advanced.”

Capitalism and the Historians is a welcome historical corrective, full of illuminating data and record-correcting observations. For example, anyone who studies the period will soon look into the so-called “Sadler Committee” report, published in 1832, which presented a grim picture of life for children consigned to the factory. It is, as one sympathetic commentator put it, “one of the main sources of our knowledge of the conditions of factory life at the time.”

The problem is, as W. H. Hutt notes in “The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century,” it was a biased partisan report written for overt political ends. As another observer put it, the Sadler report “gave to the world such a mass of ex-parte statements and of gross falsehoods and calumnies . . . as probably never before found their way into any public document.” Even Engels, who was at one with the spirit that informed the report, acknowledged that it was “emphatically partisan, composed by strong enemies of the factory system for party ends.”

The deeper virtue of Capitalism and the Historians, however, transcends its fine trove of historical argument. The writers, unlike so many contemporary sages (and contemporary politicians), understand that capitalism is the greatest engine for the production of wealth that the ingenuity of man has ever devised. And they understand, too, that the activity of capitalism cannot be divorced from the corrective of risk and the spur of competition.

The possibility of failure, in other words, is inseparable from capitalism. As Louis Hacker points out, the failure rate of early telegraph, canal, railroad, mining, and automobile industries in the U.S. was “enormous.” But it was only by providing an environment in which risk, ambition, and entrepreneurship could flourish that real progress could be made.

The prerequisites are a government that guarantees a level playing field for economic activity and that refrains from interfering in the law-abiding entrepreneurial enterprises of individuals: “Sound monetary and credit policy as a public function; risk-taking as a private one — here in epitome is the history of capitalism.” As Hayek put it in his introduction, “Much that has been blamed on the capitalist system is in fact due to remnants or revivals of pre-capitalist features: the monopolistic elements which were either the direct result of ill-conceived state action or the consequence of a failure to understand the smooth-working competitive order required an appropriate legal framework.”

And this brings me to my final point. Not a day goes by without lamentations about the evils or limitations of capitalism emitted by some of capitalism’s most conspicuous beneficiaries. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, is full of such imprecations, as are many, if not most, spokesmen for the Democrat Party these days. Barack Obama set the standard when he derided a “certain crowd in Washington” for believing that “the market will take care of everything.”

Of course, that is a rhetorical overstatement, but we all know what he meant. Do we want big government, high taxes, and intricate regulation? Or do we prefer lean government, low taxes, and the minimum regulation consistent with public safety?

Or consider Does Capitalism Have a Future?, a collection of essays by “a global quintet of distinguished scholars,” published by Oxford University Press in 2014, arguing that the capitalist system is teetering on the brink of collapse, and it’s a good thing, too, because the socialist system that may ensue will be far better. It’s a hysterical (not in the sense of “funny”) volume, full of tired Marxoid clichés about the “internal contradictions” of capitalism and impending ecological crisis, but it is also a thoroughly typical product of the comfy intellectual caste that has enjoyed all the benefits of capitalism without bothering to understand what has made those benefits possible.

Despite this anti-capitalist narrative, however — a narrative we hear repeated by “progressive” politicians and iterated in more barbaric, polysyllabic strains by academics everywhere — the capitalist system has made possible over the last century, and especially in the last several decades, the greatest accumulation of wealth in the history of the world. One data point: in 1982, the Dow Jones Index cratered to about 700. Today, it is north of 50,000. How much wealth does that represent?

In the nineteenth century, England was the crucible of this modern prosperity in part because of the freedom of economic activity that it, unlike the states of continental Europe, enjoyed. And that freedom, in turn — unlike the continent — was underwritten by the limited government England also enjoyed. “The rapid growth of wealth” in England in the early nineteenth century, Hayek observes, “is probably in the first instance an almost accidental byproduct of the limitations which the revolution of the seventeenth century placed on the powers of government.”

We’ve been working diligently in this country to remove those limitations. How far will we have to sink before the people once again rise up and repudiate the elites who wish to fetter them in manacles forged by statist overreach?

Whatever else it portends, the Trump America-First counterrevolution limns a liberating alternative and a return to sanity.

— This article first appeared at American Greatness.

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NOTE: Today (March 27th) is the 257th anniversary of General Joseph Martin’s founding of Martin's Station, the gateway to the West in the early days of the Republic. We are honoring him by republishing my tribute to this most esteemed ancestor. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
March 15, 2014

General Joseph Martin (September 18, 1740 – December 18, 1808), Rod D. Martin's fifth great grandfather, was an American Founding Father, explorer, diplomat, military leader and statesman at the end of the Colonial period and during and after the American Revolution.  With colleague Daniel Boone, Martin opened the West to settlement. Later, his courage and diplomacy made possible America’s victories at Kings Mountain, Cowpens and Yorktown, so much so that President Theodore Roosevelt once said that "If not for Joseph Martin, we may have lost the Revolution." And his statesmanship helped North Carolina ratify the U.S. Constitution, bringing that hold-out state into the union.

Martin’s heritage suggested potential greatness.  On his mother’s side he was a direct descendant of Colonel John Page, one of the founders of the College of William and Mary, and Captain Thomas Graves, an original “Adventurer” (investor) in the Virginia Company who put his money where his mouth was by leaving England and settling at Jamestown in 1608.  Later, Graves was a founding member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the first elected parliament in the entire New World.  Martin’s paternal grandfather, William Martin, became Lord Mayor of Bristol — the British Empire’s second greatest port city in that day — and owned factories, a shipyard, and a shipping company of global reach.  He disinherited Martin’s father for the dire sin of marrying a colonist.

Martin’s father, Joseph Sr., recovered nicely, helping settle Albemarle County (the area around Charlottesville and the future home of the University of Virginia) as one of its original patentees.  He established a large plantation there, presiding over it as the “perfect Englishman” he was:  in his grandson’s words, “in him was depicted…the most complete form of the aristocracy of the British government.”  He raised his children alongside famed explorer and entrepreneur Dr. Thomas Walker, Peter Jefferson and his son Thomas (just three years younger than Joseph Jr.), and the Lewis and Clark clans.

Longing for the next frontier, beyond the one his father had pioneered, Joseph Jr. was not satisfied with the life of a gentry planter.  At 16 he abandoned an apprenticeship to join the army at Fort Pitt, from where he served alongside lifelong friend Thomas Sumter in the French and Indian War.  More than six feet tall and dressed in buckskin, the brawny young trapper, fur trader and Indian fighter was soon engaged by his father’s old friend Dr. Walker, who was in urgent need of a seasoned explorer.

A generation earlier, “Ole Doc Walker” had founded the Loyal Land Company (along with Peter Jefferson, Joshua Fry and John Lewis) not long before the War, and had explored in Kentucky more than 19 years before Daniel Boone set foot there. The Virginia Council had granted the Company 800,000 acres in western Virginia and what would become southeastern Kentucky, which Walker and his friends were expected to explore, survey and turn into the first English colony beyond the Appalachians.  But the War had intervened, and in the interim, Walker had lost a decade, gained some children, and, upon his partner’s death, become legal guardian of the young Thomas Jefferson.

He needed help.  The young Joseph Martin did not disappoint.

While the Thirteen Colonies still consisted of just three million souls huddled along the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian foothills were still the frontier, Martin and Walker entered Kentucky to make peace with the Cherokee, after which they explored the Cumberland Gap region and named it.  Later, in 1769, Walker sent two parties to further survey the area and establish an outpost, one headed by Martin and the other by the still-unknown Daniel Boone, Martin’s fellow veteran and longhunter; Boone arrived at what would soon be named Martin’s Creek to discovery his younger, rowdier friend had beaten him not only to the goal but to the 21,000 acre land grant Walker had offered to the winner.

It was there that he founded Martin’s Station, just east of Cumberland Gap. The Indians burned it. Undaunted, he came back and built again. In the two generations after, 300,000 settlers passed through its gates, 10% of the U.S. population at the outset of the Revolution. Martin’s Station became the 18th Century’s Ellis Island, the gateway to the West.

For the next two decades, Martin spent most of his time there or further west, but he also established his Belle Monte plantation in Henry County, Virginia, near the estate of his close friend Patrick Henry and the city which would later be named Martinsville.  He represented that area in the Virginia legislature for years during and after the Revolution, and in 1777 then-Governor Henry named him Agent and Superintendent for Indian Affairs, a post he would hold until 1789, along with similar appointments from North Carolina and Georgia, making him the young nation’s de facto Secretary of State for all of the Indian nations south of the Ohio River.

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In an age when every tribe was an army, and all of them were allied with hostile foreign powers (primarily the British), this was a position of significantly more importance than it might seem today.  The new states were sparsely populated and largely defended by militia:  if the British could keep the Indians attacking from the west, the Continental Army would have no hope of victory and the young nation would prove indefensible.

Martin’s diplomacy, in combination with occasional warfare, kept this threat at bay for most of the War for Independence, so much so that the British put a price on his head.  But his masterpiece came late in the Revolution.  As the British launched their southern campaign and began rolling up the colonists and their defenses, Martin convinced the tribes to declare themselves neutral, suddenly eliminating the need to defend the frontier. 

Immediately the Southern colonists were able to abandon their frontier defenses and concentrate their troops; indeed, even settlers from west of the Appalachians — “the Overmountain Men” — were able to cross into the Carolinas and join the fight.  The result: the pivotal American victories at Kings Mountain and at Cowpens, which themselves led to Cornwallis’ entrapment and surrender to Washington at Yorktown.

In later years, Martin played a key role in North Carolina’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution and its proposal of what became the Bill of Rights.  He was one of the primary supporters of Madison’s Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and served on the Virginia commission tasked with addressing the Alien and Sedition Acts.  He served in the legislatures of three states – Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia – and was commissioned a General by two of those. 

Of his Indian service, Roosevelt called Martin “a firm friend of the red race, [who] had earnestly striven to secure justice for them.” And both his exploratory and diplomatic efforts did more than any other person’s to secure the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian West.

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by Roger Stone
March 26, 2026

There are chapters in American history that demand to be written not in ink, but in fire.

The Obama administration, cloaked in the sanctimony of intellectualism and the false patina of moral superiority, unleashed a corrosive strain of political malice that did not dissipate with the passage of time. It metastasized. It deepened through the first Trump administration, calcified under the Biden presidency, and even now its vestiges linger like a stubborn contagion within the body politic.

This was not governance. This was something far more insidious; a slow-moving institutional rot. And now, at long last, the day of accountability may be coming.

On March 19, 2026, in a development that has sent tremors through the upper echelons of the intelligence and law enforcement establishment, former FBI Director James Comey received a federal grand jury subpoena from prosecutors in the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Southern District of Florida (SDFL).

The timing, reported since March 3, 2026, is no accident. Nor is the venue incidental. This subpoena seeks documents related to Comey’s role in the drafting and assembling of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), the now infamous report that asserted Russia collusion hoax in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump. Not testimony. Not yet. Documents. Paper trails. The quiet architecture of decisions made behind closed doors.

This is not an isolated inquiry. It is part of a sprawling investigation that has already issued more than 130 subpoenas since 2025. As a nation we must all pause and ask a question that cuts to the marrow: What exactly are prosecutors looking for that requires such breadth and persistence?

The answer is as unsettling as it is unavoidable. They are attempting to reconstruct a mosaic of conduct that may reveal not mere error, but design in the form of improperly modified political prosecutions waged against those associated with President Trump. Was there a seditious conspiracy that began in 2016 and continued through 2024?

Among those already ensnared in this widening net is former CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan received his own subpoena months earlier, reported in late 2025, focusing on his supervisory role in the very same Intelligence Community Assessment. Brennan was not a peripheral figure. He was central. He oversaw the process. He influenced its contours. And, according to a subsequent CIA Tradecraft Review commissioned under CIA Director John Ratcliffe, that process was anything but orthodox.

The review described the ICA’s construction as chaotic and unconventional. Those are not casual descriptors; in the lexicon of intelligence they are damning. Even more troubling are allegations that Brennan advocated for the inclusion of a summary of the now-discredited Steele dossier in an annex to the report despite internal objections. Why include material that had not been verified? Why attach it to an assessment presented as authoritative? Was this prudence or was it something more calculated?

As has been said before by British historian Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has referred both Brennan and Comey to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for potential prosecution. Among the possible avenues under scrutiny are false statements to Congress and perjury. Brennan, for his part, has denied wrongdoing and protested the process. His attorneys have alleged irregularities, including what they characterize as judge shopping and selective leaks. In other words, Brennan’s lawyers claim the current administration is engaging in precisely the tactics that Brennan himself used.

The list of individuals touched by this investigation reads like a roll call of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus. Andrew McCabe. Peter Strzok. Lisa Page. Charles McGonigal. James Clapper. More than 130 subpoenas have reached current and former officials across multiple agencies. This is not some mere sort of pinprick inquiry. It’s a long overdue and very badly needed systemic excavation.

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At the center of this effort lies a singular objective, which is to reexamine the origins and execution of the 2016 to 2017 counterintelligence activities directed at Donald Trump and his campaign. This includes the genesis of Crossfire Hurricane, the composition of the ICA, and the downstream actions that shaped years of investigations, prosecutions, political persecution, corruption, coverups, criminal conspiracy, and media narratives. Prosecutors appear to be exploring whether disparate acts can be woven into a prosecutable conspiracy. Not a political slogan, a legal theory.

Critics have long derided these events as a hoax. Others have defended them as necessary national security measures. But slogans are not evidence. And indignation is not exculpation. The grand jury process exists precisely to pierce through competing narratives and arrive at facts.

The venue itself is as telling as it is promising. The grand jury is impaneled in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, under the supervision of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Proceedings are centered in Fort Pierce, Florida within a courthouse whose jurisdiction has already intersected with high profile matters involving President Trump. The U.S. Attorney (USA) overseeing this effort, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, operates in coordination with Department of Justice leadership in Washington. This is not a peripheral jurisdiction. It is a deliberate locus. In fact, I suggested in October 2025 that the proper venue is SDFL.

Beyond the legal architecture and procedural mechanics, there lies a human dimension that cannot be ignored. The weaponization of government is not an abstraction, it is lived experience for many Americans living in constant fear awaiting the other proverbial shoe to drop. It is the knock at the door that never comes, yet is always anticipated. It is the reputational erosion that unfolds in real time. It is the financial devastation wrought by endless legal entanglements. It is the public humiliation and falsehoods sweeping across social media and gossip columns.

Your very name itself becomes clickbait. You stop being you and your identity has now become “Trump associate…”. It is the psychological toll of being cast as a target for no crime other than proximity to power or truth. And it’s the betrayal from evil people within the government of the country we love which never fails to intrude upon your thoughts, causes illnesses to worsen, leads to sleepless nights, results in paranoia, sometimes justified and sometimes not.

I have seen this machinery up close and witnessed how lawfare operates not as a scalpel, but as an axe that can and will bludgeon you. Families are dragged into the vortex. Livelihoods are imperiled. Health is compromised. And through it all, the architects of these campaigns often remain ensconced behind layers of institutional protection. Is this justice? Or is it the inversion of justice?

Let us be unequivocal because it is of paramount importance that justice is served, this moment is not about vengeance. It is not about settling scores or indulging in political retribution. It is about restoring a principle so fundamental that its absence threatens the very legitimacy of the Republic: equal application of the law.

If the ICA was produced through irregular means, and I believe that it was, then it must be thoroughly examined. If unverified material was deliberately included to shape perception, that must be scrutinized. If officials misled Congress or the public, that must be addressed. These are not partisan concerns. They are constitutional imperatives.

For years, Americans were told to trust the system. To defer to institutions. To accept conclusions handed down from on high. But trust is not a perpetual entitlement; trust is earned through demonstrating loyalty, honesty, and integrity. So when that trust is betrayed by government officials and agencies, it must be destroyed and rebuilt through transparency and accountability.

The subpoenas issued to Comey, Brennan, and the 130 or so others are not the conclusion of this story. They are the beginning of what may prove to be one of the most consequential inquiries of our time. Whether it culminates in indictments, convictions, exonerations, prison sentences, or anything that resembles a semblance of justice remains to be seen, but it’s the process itself that matters because a nation that refuses to examine its own misconduct is a nation that invites its own decline.

The reckoning returns, not as a slogan, but as a test.

— This essay first appeared at Stone Cold Truth.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
March 25, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

Frank and I discuss the irreversible damage being done to New York by its Muslim Marxist mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the financial exodus from Manhattan and Delaware to Florida & Texas.

We also discuss the looming “Lion and Sun Revolution” in Iran: how we do our part, how and when Iranians will rise, why Reza Pahlavi could be today’s Juan Carlos after the death of Franco, ushering in an Iran that’s democratic, free, and First World, and the global consequences thereof.

It’s the in-depth information and analysis you won’t get anywhere else.

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by Rod D. Martin
March 25, 2026

Britain is an island.

An island trading power does not get to treat sea power as optional. It does not get to assume that trade routes, undersea cables, overseas territories, distant bases, and maritime deterrence will somehow take care of themselves. And it certainly does not get to discover, in the middle of an actual crisis, that it has preserved more brass than ships.

Yet that is where Britannia is today. She no longer rules the waves, not even in junior partnership with the United States. She can barely put to sea.

The Royal Navy’s escort fleet is down to just 13 destroyers and frigates, only a handful of which are actually usable at any given time. Britain began the year with only seven frigates in service, one already in deep maintenance, with only around four effectively available.

For shameful perspective, the last official parliamentary count showed 41 admirals across Navy Command, the Ministry of Defence, other government service, and NATO. The Navy’s headquarters culture is robust, the brass is plentiful, and the fighting fleet is vanishing.

That’s not a statistic. It’s an indictment.

Nor is it merely Britain’s problem. Britain is not some modest continental state freeriding quietly under somebody else’s umbrella. It sits astride the North Atlantic approaches. It anchors the GIUK Gap. It is a nuclear power, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a nation with sovereign territories scattered across the globe. It is supposed to be, alongside the United States, the premier maritime power in NATO.

Instead, it has spent decades dismantling the material basis of that role while continuing to speak as if the role still existed.

That is the essence of the British failure, across seven prime ministers beginning with Gordon Brown (poor Liz Truss gets a pass): rhetoric without hulls. Pretension without readiness. “Global Britain” without the fleet required to make the phrase mean anything at all.

If Donald Trump and Scott Bessent are able to threaten the City’s hold on global maritime insurance, this is the biggest reason why.

From Global Sea Power to Managed Decline

The most damning comparison is not with the age of Nelson. It is with 1982.

When Argentina seized the Falklands, Admiral Henry Leach was able to tell Margaret Thatcher that a task force could be assembled in 48 hours. Britain still possessed a real navy then, second or third-best on Earth depending on your point of view, with enough ships to engage, enough depth to sustain the fight, and enough margin to act decisively at a distance.

At the end of the Cold War, Britain still had 51 destroyers and frigates. When David Cameron took power in 2010, it had 24. Today it has 13.

That’s not modernization. That’s liquidation. And notice what did not disappear during that same period: the country’s commitments.

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Britain still depends on maritime trade. It still imports more than half its oil from across the seas. It still has a nuclear deterrent to protect, North Atlantic obligations to meet, interests in the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the South Atlantic, and bases and territories whose security cannot be delegated to press releases.

What vanished was not the UK’s need for sea power. What vanished was political seriousness about it.

That reality was exposed in humiliating fashion this month.

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by Rod D. Martin and Eric Metaxas
March 24, 2026

My latest interview on The Eric Metaxas Show. Sign up NOW for the Eric’s YouTube channel and don’t miss a single episode!

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“Author, investor, and founder of Martin Capital Rod D. Martin joins Eric Metaxas to discuss Iran, Europe’s military weakness, Trump’s global strategy, Tucker Carlson’s attacks, and why America may be rethinking its entire alliance system. Oh, and a quick Cuba update!”

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by Victor Davis Hanson
March 24, 2026

The Traditional Immigrant

I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants. Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation.

The Greek American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film America, America is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia.

The film summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.

An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, American Trojan, by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere.

He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education. What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California — arguably the most successful one in recent memory.

My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.

Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.

Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others.

Gratitude and Ingratitude

But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration — an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.

During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion — even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans.

But now?

While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil?

On campuses today, thousands of Middle Eastern international students, mostly arriving from autocratic, tribal, and failed nations, have staged often violent demonstrations in the years following the October 7, 2023, massacre. They are not shy about cheering on the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians.

These pro-Hamas students have not just damned Israel but also often harassed Jewish Americans. They revile their host America and expect Americans to smile and shrug.

It is hard to determine whether such zealots hate the U.S. more than they love living in America and preserving their student visas and work permits.

Hating or Loving the Great Satan?

Take Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani. She is the daughter of Ali Larijani, one of the late Supreme Leader Khamenei’s murderous henchmen. He sent his daughter Fatemeh to the top schools in the satanic United States. She was eventually even hired as a professor at Emory University — at least until popular outrage at the Larijani family’s hypocrisy prompted her dismissal.

To our enemies in Iran, we may be the “Great Satan.” But Iranian theocrats apparently prefer their children and other relatives to study and get rich in Luciferian America. So, many send their kids to universities in the USA.

Another surreal example is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who arrived on a student visa at Columbia University and soon led the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

When the State Department sought to revoke his temporary visa, the Left made Khalil a veritable martyr. Apparently, his university supporters reasoned that the U.S. had an obligation to invite to its shores those who are active supporters of terrorists like Hamas.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized citizen from Uganda whose parents became public figures and multimillionaires in America, in the past has had little good to say about his adopted country.

His quite public wife, Rama, whose parents were naturalized Syrian citizens, illustrated a book that was rife with antisemitism. It’s no accident that after October 7, she posted “likes” of social media praise of the terrorist Hamas killers, who are sworn enemies of her own country.

Many Somali immigrants of Minneapolis repaid the kindness of Americans in welcoming them from war-torn Somalia by committing the greatest welfare fraud in U.S. history, which may reach $9 billion in theft. Their iconic representative, Ilhan Omar, has voiced antisemitic vitriol, downplayed 9/11, claimed the U.S. has a dictatorship worse than the one she fled, and said the U.S. was turning into one of the worst countries in the world. That is the thanks she returns for entering a hospitable America under controversial circumstances and dubious legality.

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Hating — or Hating to Leave — America?

Stranger still is the attitude of visitors and illegal aliens when they finally face deportation.

Joe Biden allowed 10–12 million foreign nationals to illegally enter the U.S. during his tenure, among them some 500,000 known criminals. In the years since his inauguration, not a day goes by without news that illegal aliens of that era have murdered, assaulted, been arrested for felonious acts, or caused horrific auto accidents.

One of them was Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador, who long ago was ordered to be deported for his unlawful entry and residence.

Instead, he too became an icon to the Left when he was recently and belatedly facing permanent deportation. He had clearly ignored his earlier deportation orders, and was an alleged gang member, an often violent spousal abuser, and a human trafficker.

Ábrego Garcia apparently felt he had a right to enter the U.S. illegally. He successfully made a mockery of our immigration laws. But he presciently expected that soon hundreds of thousands of dollars of free legal help would come his way, ensuring he could stay in the country for which he showed utter contempt.

And in the U.S., one of the most bizarre aspects of recent protests against ICE efforts involved episodes of Mexican nationals waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wished to return, even as they burned the flag of the nation in which they insisted they had an innate right to stay.

Our New Americans Killing Americans

Yet the immigration disaster transcends student visas and illegal aliens, since it extends to many naturalized citizens as well.

Consider the terrorist acts that have transpired in just the last eight days.

On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Senegal, shot up a beer garden in Austin, Texas. He murdered three people and wounded 14 others. Diagne wore a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt, along with an Iranian flag T-shirt.

On March 7, 2026, Emir Balat, the son of a naturalized citizen from Turkey, and Ibrahim Kayumi, the son of naturalized Afghan refugees, threw IEDs toward a conservative protest outside Gracie Mansion, the New York mayor’s residence.

The media sought to cover up their Islamist motives but could not, given that the two terrorists openly boasted of their aims. Indeed, the two bragged that they wanted to achieve something “bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.”

That was a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the murderous Chechen-immigrant brothers. In 2013, they murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon. Their aim too was apparently to further the so-called global “Islamic cause.”

In the same week, on March 12, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, another naturalized U.S. citizen, this time from Sierra Leone, went into an ROTC meeting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Once there, he murdered the instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a decorated combat veteran. Jalloh shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he fired. Jalloh had previously been convicted for attempting to support ISIS but was released before serving his full sentence.

That same March day, Ayman Muhammed Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, whose family in the Middle East currently has strong Hezbollah terrorist ties, drove his car rigged with explosive fireworks into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

Ghazali was killed by security guards before he could carry out his homicidal plan. Hezbollah, remember, in the past, butchered hundreds of Americans in Lebanon.

There is an endless list of illegal aliens and naturalized citizens who have killed countless Americans, both as common criminals and as would-be jihadists.

And not all the killing is intentional. Thousands of driver’s licenses have been issued to both illegal aliens and legal residents from all over the world, including those who do not understand English, cannot pass a commercial driver’s test, and are utterly unqualified to drive. Is it any surprise that we have recently witnessed serial horrific crashes, where incompetent drivers rammed their 80,000-pound semi-trucks into unsuspecting drivers?

What Happened to Immigration?

So what made the U.S. adopt such a suicidal immigration and visitation policy — one that welcomes in millions illegally, hundreds of thousands who are known criminals, tens of thousands of students who despise the U.S., and thousands of terrorists themselves and their sympathizers?

In the mid-1960s, amid the Great Society’s dreams of transforming America, new immigration laws were passed that ended the older quota process. That traditional system tended to favor better-off immigrants from Europe and the former British Empire to reflect somewhat the founding values of the republic.

But the new law junked the prior merit-based system and instead admitted immigrants chiefly on the basis of family ties and the purported need of the host country for inexpensive labor — with most now arriving from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Suddenly, far less important for entry were critical skill sets, English mastery, high school diplomas, proof of self-support, and knowledge of, or familiarity with, the American system.

But in the subsequent 60 years, Democrats went even further beyond the 1965 Hart–Celler Act efforts to change the demography of the U.S. They began welcoming in anyone, legal or not, who simply crashed the border or claimed they wanted to study in the U.S. The old melting pot was banished, replaced by the “salad bowl.”

Immigration was seen by the Left as the answer to why they had never been able to complete their socialist agendas amid a skeptical American public. Supposedly, by welcoming in a “diverse” demographic, poor and without English fluency, they would grow the welfare state, creating a new dependent constituency.

The new immigrants and visitors were envisioned as left-wing voters-to-be who would look to the Democratic Party as their guarantors of open borders, a new entitlement society, and a criminal justice system that saw the perpetrator as a victim — and the real criminal as a supposedly racist America itself.

Diversity, the Immigration Force Multiplier

The new “diversity” ideology peaked under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The subtext of their open-borders nihilism was a new oppressor/oppressed binary.

It dictated that traditional America was still too white, too traditionalist, too Christian, too unfairly successful — and too hostile to the Democratic Socialist agenda of a mandated equality of result achieved through massive coercive government redistributive efforts.

Under this warped view, the criminally minded Ábrego Garcia became a victim of supposed “Gestapo” ICE “goons” (ironic, when patriotic and skilled Mexican American officers disproportionately staff ICE ranks).

The Tsarnaev Boston Marathon killers became “hot” underdog freedom fighters. So the supposedly sexy, photogenic young murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was highlighted on the cover of Rolling Stone.

The more Mahmoud Khalil took on the mantle of an anti-American, pro-Hamas activist, the more the Left rallied to his cause.

When Major Nidal Hasan, the son of naturalized Palestinian immigrants, slaughtered 13 and wounded 32 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, the Pentagon resisted efforts to tie him to the Islamic terrorist cause. That was hard to do, since he screamed “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down his fellow soldiers.

Then Army Chief of Staff George Casey responded to the mass murder with his lamentation on CNN that, “As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” He sought to quash any speculation about Hasan’s Islamic motives, in fear that the ensuing truth might endanger the Army’s diversity efforts.

Then we come to the case of Eileen Gu, the recent American Winter Olympic multi-medalist skier.

She was born in San Francisco to a Chinese immigrant mother and an American father and lived her entire life in the U.S. But Gu chose to compete in the games for Communist China, despite its efforts to isolate, dehumanize, and eventually vastly “reduce” its Uyghur minority population.

Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster

The final irony: Why do so many criminals believe they can enter the U.S. illegally and get away with murder?

Is it because they feel contempt for any nation that opens its borders, requires no background checks, destroys its own immigration laws, and weaponizes its criminal justice system to make the criminal the victim and the state his victimizer?

Why do so many burn the U.S. flag while waving the flag of Mexico, a country they have no intention of returning to?

Is it because they sense they might be praised for “celebrating diversity,” as the popular culture would term such abject cultural schizophrenia?

Why would the Tsarnaev brothers repay the country that took them in by killing innocent Americans?

Would it be because, in their formative years in American schools, their teachers and texts emphasized what was wrong with a supposedly exploitative U.S.?

Why, in the middle of a near-existential war with Iran to stop its efforts to obtain nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. and its allies, would naturalized citizens feel so free to slaughter Americans for the cause of Islam?

Would it be because they sense from left-wing universities and popular culture that it is a virtual open season on Jews? Or that any time an Islamic terrorist commits an act, a Democrat operative will warn America of “Islamophobia” — as if, say, mowing down soldiers at Fort Hood is the lesser crime?

Why would a rich, privileged Eileen Gu feel no discomfort competing for a murderous regime whose agenda is to displace her country from its global preeminence in favor of a communist dictatorship?

Is it because in our relativist modern America, Gu’s “truth” is just as meaningful as any other? And who, after all, is qualified to judge anything or anyone?

Who created our current Frankensteinian monstrosities?

We did.

We are the Dr. Frankensteins who ask nothing of immigrants, in a complete break from our nation’s past. And we got our wish for a new, quite different class of immigrants, who treat the U.S. the very way they were taught to do by the Left: as an evil entity that deserves what it gets.

And we sure have gotten it.

— Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and a scholar of ancient warfare. He is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. This essay originally appeared at American Greatness.

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by Rod D. Martin
March 23, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Don Ma to discuss:

• Whether Trump will really bomb Iranian energy infrastructure

• Why Trump is in less of a hurry to open Hormuz than the pundits think

• The economic impact of a free Iran

• What happens to oil prices in the short-term and the next year, and why markets are overreacting

• Could oil cease to be a global market?

• PLUS the war’s impact on China, and the coming Chinese collapse.

It’s twelve minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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by Rod D. Martin
March 23, 2026

There is a small but vocal strain of “America Only” commentary that endlessly repeats a falsehood: “we get nothing from our aid to Israel.”

Au contraire, mon frère.

The truth is, America’s alliance with Israel is not a favor or a handout. It is a major pillar of American strength. It’s a strategic investment, an extraordinarily inexpensive way for the United States to buy intelligence, military innovation, strategic reach, regional leverage, and a reliable democratic ally in the most dangerous and unstable region on earth.

Even if you strip away every moral, cultural, religious, historical, and civilizational consideration — and there are many — the U.S.-Israeli alliance would make overwhelming sense on the coldest possible national-interest grounds.

Israel is not merely an ally. It is a force multiplier. It makes American power cheaper, smarter, and more effective than it could be otherwise.

And that points to something larger still. Israel is not just a valuable ally. It is the prototype of Trump’s vision for the rest of our alliances. A competent, heavily armed, technologically sophisticated regional partner that can handle the ordinary threats in its own neighborhood without direct American intervention. That allows the United States to support with depth, integration, and intelligence, while retaining the ability to apply decisive power when the threat is too large for any local state, or even several acting together, to handle alone.

This worked in the 12 Day War. Donald Trump wants to make it work in Europe and Asia as well, standing up our allies as partners, not dependents.

That is certainly how NATO should work, but too often has not. That is how Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia should work, and increasingly do. That is what a sane American alliance system looks like: not dependence, but partnership; not protectorates, but pillars. Pillars capable of securing their own regions under normal circumstances, so America doesn’t have to do all the lifting, defend everywhere at once, and spend itself into oblivion.

In a world like that, America becomes dramatically stronger. America can concentrate force. America can choose its moments. America can remain the arsenal, the backstop, the guarantor, and the finisher — without also serving as the “policeman of the world.”

Netanyahu’s Israel is the proof of concept.

Israel Handles Threats Before America Has To

America spends an average of $3.8 billion a year on Israel, or one-fiftieth (1/50) of what we’ve sent Ukraine. Hardly any of that leaves the United States: almost all of it goes to U.S. defense contractors for joint U.S.-Israeli projects. The critics speak as if America is “giving” Israel money. “Partnership” is the correct term, and we’re picking up our share of the bill.

In Washington terms, $3.8 billion is a rounding error, a fraction of our spending on Ukraine and barely more than one-third (1/3) of what we spend on Somali daycare fraud (“Learing Centers”) in Minnesota alone (and wait till you see Gavin Newsom’s California!).

By stark contrast, the money we send Israel actually buys something.

One of the least appreciated benefits is this: Israel often acts quickly where America would otherwise be forced to act later, but at a far higher cost.

When Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program in 1981, the whole world howled. But for America to do the same thing would have risked a global war with the Soviet empire. When Israel destroyed Syria’s reactor in 2007, it did the world a similar favor, as became even more apparent once the country fell into civil war. Israel’s repeated covert and overt actions against Iran’s nuclear program, weapons pipelines, terror networks, and proxy infrastructure have likewise delayed, degraded, or disrupted threats that otherwise would have required war ten to twenty years sooner.

The contribution is not theoretical. Israel kills terrorists. Israel degrades missile programs. Israel disrupts arms transfers. Israel penetrates enemy networks. Israel destroys strategic threats before they mature. And every time it does, America benefits.

The alternative is not some peaceful vacuum. There are no vacuums in geopolitics. There are only spaces one power controls until another power fills them.

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When America retreats, Iran advances. When America hesitates, Russia probes. When America grows confused, China arrives with money, ports, telecom networks, surveillance systems, and diplomatic cover. That is the actual choice-set. The world does not freeze while Washington holds seminars and struggle sessions.

Israel helps prevent that outcome in the Middle East by being the one country in the region both willing and able to confront the West’s enemies on a daily basis. And because Israel does so with its own soldiers rather than ours, the United States spends far less blood and treasure.

This is the point the anti-Israel Right keeps missing. They speak as if support for Israel “drags” America into war. In fact, a strong Israel is essential to keep America out of unnecessary wars. Indeed, in all of history, only in the last year have U.S. and Israeli forces felt the need to fight side by side in any offensive war.

Israel handles threats locally, with local knowledge, local stakes, and local force. It absorbs pressure that would otherwise move outward. It is not a drag on American power or wealth: it costs less than a single U.S. submarine every year. It is a substitute for American power in precisely those contingencies that should be handled regionally if at all possible, and without an American footprint.

That alone is worth the investment.

Israel Is an Irreplaceable Weapons Laboratory

Now add the military-technological side, which is sure to prove even more important in the decade ahead.

America’s defense-industrial base is formidable, but it has too often suffered from sclerosis: bloated procurement, slow acquisition cycles, doctrinal lag, bureaucratic caution, and peacetime assumptions in a wartime age. Trump and Hegseth are making a difference. But it’s a big aircraft carrier to turn.

Israel has the opposite problem. It lives under immediate threat. Missiles actually fall there, as much in peacetime as not. Drone swarms are not hypothetical. Electronic warfare is not a panel discussion. Interception economics are not an abstraction.

That pressure produces innovation. And America benefits immensely.

Iron Beam, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, Trophy, advanced drone warfare, cyber-defense architectures, signals intelligence integration, electronic attack, layered missile defense — these are not merely Israeli assets. They are part of the U.S. strategic ecosystem. Some feed directly into American capabilities. Others offer combat-proven lessons American planners would be fools to ignore.

And — a bit louder for those in the back — all these technologies are joint projects with the United States and essential to U.S. defense.

Iron Beam and related directed-energy systems are revolutionary. The historic problem of missile defense has always been cost asymmetry: the attacker spends little; the defender spends much. Israel is helping crack that equation. Once the cost per intercept falls from hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to $2 or $3, the entire offense-defense balance changes: indeed, every modern missile or drone becomes obsolete. The risk of nuclear war drops to nearly zero.

That is certainly good for Israel. It is even better for the United States, because America has vastly more territory, infrastructure, population centers, and critical nodes to defend than any target set on earth.

For decades I have argued relentlessly for missile defense, and more recently for Golden Dome. America should not be trapped forever in the obscene moral logic of Mutual Assured Destruction, where civilian vulnerability is treated as “sophistication,” and national helplessness as strategic wisdom. Reagan was right to want a shield. Trump is right to revive that vision.

No country on earth has done more than Israel to prove that missile defense can work in the real world. Perhaps not perfectly. But decisively.

Real-world combat data beats theory. A thousand think-tank papers are not equal to one real campaign under actual missile fire. Israel has lived through precisely the sort of layered attack environment America must now prepare for: hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drone swarms, proxy barrages, saturation attacks, electronic warfare, and the brutal economics of interception under sustained stress.

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That experience is priceless. It’s shaping the future of American defense.

Again, notice the alliance model at work. Israel does not merely consume American weapons. It improves them. It does not merely ask for protection. It helps invent the next generation of it. That is what a real ally does. It expands American capacity instead of merely drawing on it.

The Larger Contest with China

The central strategic contest of the first half of the 21st century is with China. And in that contest, America’s greatest structural advantage is not merely its GDP, its navy, or its geography, but its alliance system. China has clients, dependencies, intimidated trading partners, and temporary fellow-travelers. America has allies. Those are not the same thing.

Israel is one of the most capable of those allies.

Some people still speak as if the U.S.–Israel relationship were a narrow Middle Eastern matter. That is obsolete thinking.

Israel has become a world-class technology power, thanks in no small part to the capitalist revolution launched twenty years ago by Benjamin Netanyahu. That is especially true in cybersecurity, sensors, AI-adjacent applications, communications, autonomous systems, semiconductors, and dual-use defense technology.

American firms know this, which is why so many of them have major R&D operations there or have acquired Israeli companies outright.

The same is true in cyber-defense. Israel faces relentless cyberattacks from Iran, Russia, criminal networks, and others. That has produced a defensive ecosystem of extraordinary sophistication. American firms, infrastructure operators, and institutions benefit directly from it. In an age when cyberwar can cripple pipelines, logistics, hospitals, power systems, and finance, that is not peripheral. It is central.

There is also a negative case the critics refuse to consider. If America ever truly abandoned Israel, Israel would not vanish. It would adapt. It would survive. It would innovate. But it would also hedge. States do that. Serious governments do not base their future on sentimental assumptions, no matter how many liberal internationalists and neoconservatives want them to.

No matter how it played out, the beneficiary of that recalculation would be Beijing.

There’s nothing “America First” about that.

Israel Helps Anchor American Influence in the Crossroads of the World

America can’t just stop caring about the Middle East because it feels like it. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Yes, America is vastly stronger because of shale. Yes, we are no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil as we were in the 1970s. But global markets are global. Our allies in Europe and Asia still depend heavily on Middle Eastern energy flows. And it’s not just energy: it’s global trade in general. The Strait of Hormuz still matters. The Red Sea still matters. Suez still matters. The Eastern Mediterranean still matters.

The Middle East sits at the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It remains the cockpit of great-power competition, jihadist ideology, shipping vulnerability, nuclear risk, and proxy warfare. If America loses serious influence there, others gain it. Iran. Russia. China. Turkey. Perhaps all of them at once.

If that sounds paranoid, you clearly didn’t live through the Cold War.

Israel is America’s strongest local anchor against that outcome. Not the only one. But by far the most dependable.

The Middle East is full of regimes that are unstable, duplicitous, weak, hostile, or some combination of all four. Israel is different. Israel is stable. Israel is competent. Israel fights. Israel wins. It does not take our support and then harbor our enemies. It does not play a double game with Beijing or Moscow when pressure rises. That is rare anywhere. In the Middle East it is priceless.

The Abraham Accords underline this point. Sunni Arab states have finally made peace because they recognize the obvious. Israel is not the problem: Iran is, directly and through its funding, arming, and direction of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the Iraqi militias. The de facto military alliance between Israel and the GCC countries against their collective enemy is not just foundational for regional peace but prosperity as well.

This is exactly the sort of regional architecture Trump wants to take global: allies should do more, carry more, risk more, and become stronger because America is allied with them, not weaker because America coddles them. The whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, not merely the burden of one of the parts.

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Such a global reordering creates strategic possibilities for the United States that simply did not exist before.

The Moral Point Matters

Unlike every other country in the region, Israel is a real democracy, with real elections, real courts, real civil society, real dissent, and real rights. That’s true for all who wish to live in peace with it, as its Arab citizens — one-fifth (1/5) of its population — can attest. It is a civilized, productive, innovative society built under extraordinary pressure and constant threat.

Against that, its enemies are terrorists, theocrats, dictators, proxies, and ideological movements that glorify murder, sexual barbarism, hostage-taking, and the extermination of a people whose central offense is existing. The same jihadist currents that target Jews also target Christians, Westerners, dissidents, and any Muslim unwilling to submit. In Iran’s case, the Islamist regime actually executes girls for getting raped.

Moral clarity on this point is good in itself. But we also must be clear that the regimes and movements that hate Israel hate us even more. The same Iranian regime that chants “Death to Israel” chants “Death to America.” It calls Israel “the little Satan”, but America “the Great Satan”.

These civilizational forces attacking Israel are part of the wider assault on the West. The red-green axis that demonizes Israel for its Critical Theory-based “sin” of “settler colonization” seeks to destroy the United States with the same argument. Look no further than Britain, France, Germany, or Columbia University to see their gains.

People who don’t see this aren’t being hard-nosed, or even hard-headed. They are being blind.

The Bottom Line

America does not support Israel out of pity, or because some “Jewish cabal” secretly rules the world. America supports Israel because it’s a force multiplier and a great investment. Doing so yields an astonishing rate of return.

For a relatively tiny annual expenditure, the United States gets a stable ally, a regional anchor, a first-rate intelligence partner, a technology powerhouse, a combat laboratory for the weapons of the future, a barrier to Russian and Chinese encroachment, and a democratic friend that actually pulls its own weight.

That’s not a burden. It’s a bargain. It’s one of the best strategic deals America has ever made.

Indeed, Israel is the prototype for the kind of alliances Trump wants elsewhere: partners strong enough to handle ordinary threats in their own neighborhoods without direct American intervention. From Europe to East Asia, American force should not be needed unless the worst happens. And when the worst does happen, an America that’s no longer overstretched can apply decisive force wherever it will count the most.

That is not isolationism. It’s hegemony. It is also America First.

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by Rod D. Martin
March 20, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Cary Dunst to discuss the latest in the Iran War, the attack on Qatar, NATO’s about-face, and what happens to oil prices in the next month and the next year.

It’s eight minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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by Rod D. Martin
March 20, 2026

The pundit class is certain Trump had “no plan” with regard to Persian Gulf oil. It keeps asking the same question: when will the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz?

That may be the wrong question.

Inertia is the most powerful force in the universe, especially Washington and Brussels. The assumption behind nearly all Enemedia commentary is that Hormuz is an emergency to be solved as quickly as possible, with little regard to other moving parts. Clear the danger. Calm the markets. Get the tankers moving. Restore the status quo. It’s America’s job to clean up the mess, pay the bill, provide the security, and then get lectured by its unhelpful “allies”.

Donald Trump does not think that way.

Trump’s foreign policy is not isolationism. But neither is it some neocon fantasy. It is something much harder, and much more coherent: America protects the system from which America benefits, but not for free, and not on other people’s terms.

We keep sea lanes open because global markets are good for American economic and security interests. We deter predators because chaos is expensive. But we are not Santa Claus. We are not obligated to provide premium security, premium liquidity, premium trade stability, and premium energy insurance to allies who spend their time undercutting our interests and then demanding rescue on command. And we don’t go in for the Bush era “you break it, you buy it” schtick.

So perhaps more newsworthy than the strikes on Iran has been Keir Starmer’s bombing campaign against the U.S. “Special Relationship”: refusing to send frigates or minesweepers, refusing (at first) to allow the U.S. to use its bases (which didn’t stop Iran from targeting them, as far away as Cyprus), and even restricting U.S. access to Diego Garcia, our most important Indian Ocean base, the one Starmer is trying to give away to Mauritius (and indirectly, China).

It was good when he shifted gears. It was telling that we did just fine without him.

It’s even more galling to hear the German Chancellor this week saying “this is not our war”, even though Europe gets vastly more of its energy from the Persian Gulf than we do, and all Donald Trump asked of it was some help with minesweeping and tanker escort. Yesterday, all the intransigents backed off that position, with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan promising in a joint statement to help ensure safe passage through the Strait. Perhaps they read Trump’s tweet. But the delay, and the dismissal, are maddening.

And even worse than the wishy-washyness, it’s more infuriating still to hear the German Defense Minister laugh about how insignificant European navies are compared to “the mighty U.S.” as an excuse for inaction.

Wait, what?! How is it that 31 of 32 countries pay just 29 percent of the bill for NATO? What kind of “partners” contribute next to nothing while getting all the benefit? That sounds more and more like a dysfunctional marriage.

And if protecting the sea lanes through which Europe’s oil flows (not ours) isn’t “your” war, why have you hectored us for years over the European war in Ukraine? Isn’t that your war? (But no, it isn’t, because Europe has sent twice as much money to Putin for energy purchases as to Zelensky in aid. Playing both sides is their primary skill these days.)

Trump wasn’t wrong several weeks ago with regard to the frankly annoying Article 5 discussion when he said “We’ll be there for Europe. I’m not so sure they’ll be there for us.” Turns out they aren’t, at least not without arm-twisting, even to protect their own oil. Partners? No.

That is why Hormuz matters. This is not simply an Iran story. It is not just an oil story. It’s not merely a naval story.

It’s a leverage story. It is a London story. It is a NATO story. And behind all of it sits the administration’s larger strategic aim: boxing in China by constraining the systems that subsidize CCP power, while freeing American forces for the Pacific.

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The question, then, is not how fast America can restore the old arrangement.

The real question is why, and on what terms, Trump should.

Hormuz Didn’t Close Because of Drones

Most readers hear “Strait of Hormuz” and think in military pictures: mines, missiles, drones, fast boats, destroyers. Those things matter. But they are not the key.

The key to maritime commerce is insurance. And Trump understands it better than our allies.

A tanker does not sail because it floats. It sails because somebody will insure it. Without insurance, the ship may still be physically seaworthy, but commercially it’s dead in the water: no financing, no charter, no port entry, and therefore no voyage. This is the key to Trump’s Shadow Fleet strategy: not to seize every tanker, but to seize enough of them to make the rest uninsurable.

The truth is, Iran has not closed the Strait. Lloyd’s of London has. The City of London is globally dominant in marine and war-risk insurance, and Lloyd’s alone controls roughly 45% of the global specialty insurance market.

They won’t like Trump’s solution to the current problem.

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