Politics Trump’s Worried About Foreign Election Interference. That’s News to Massie Israel already proved that a foreign country could buy a U.S. election—and with the president’s blessing. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images President Donald Trump delivered a speech last week expressing concern about foreign powers interfering in U.S. elections, specifically in the 2020 presidential election. He singled out China in particular. Time and study will determine the validity of the president’s claims. What we do know for certain is that the most expensive House primary election in U.S. history just happened in May and supporters of a foreign power spent record amounts essentially to buy a seat in the U.S. Congress.  Trump’s latest claims led Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who lost that primary election, to ask, “When’s the speech about Israeli interference in U.S. elections?” Massie lost the Fourth Congressional District Kentucky U.S. House seat, which he has held for 14 years, to challenger Ed Gallrein, a candidate heavily backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and a host of other Israel lobby groups, which reportedly spent over $9 million on the race. The grand total was much higher, with Louisville Public Media reporting last week that “Most of the $37 million spent in the contentious GOP primary between Congressman Thomas Massie and Ed Gallrein was by PACs funded by pro-Trump billionaires, pro-Israel groups, and dark money.” The “pro-Trump billionaires” are also powerful pro-Israel donors: casino mogul Miriam Adelson, hedge fund manager Paul Singer, and investor John Paulson. Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which spent nearly $4 million on the race, boasted at a victory party, Let me say very clearly tonight, That was a fight worth having and a victory worth celebrating. Someone who repeatedly undermines support for Israel, traffics in isolationism at a moment of global danger and refuses to stand with the Jewish state when it matters most—there has to be consequences. Translation: Massie is a consistent opponent of U.S. foreign aid, including to Israel, and he believes American tax dollars should be “spent improving things here at home, not waging war and genocide,” referring to the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and to U.S. funding of Israel’s assault on Gaza. As RJC head Brooks noted, there were consequences for Massie prioritizing America first, compliments of the Israel lobby, which acts on behalf of a foreign country’s interests. So Massie’s original question stands: When is Trump going to give a speech about the foreign interference in this Kentucky primary election? Likely never. In addition to Israel’s American lobby, Gallrein was also endorsed by Trump, who had soured on Massie for a variety of other reasons, among them, the Kentucky congressman’s refusal to support the president’s “Big, Beautiful” spending bill last July and also Massie’s insistence that the Trump administration release the Epstein Files, the classified documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (a promise once made by Trump himself). If there was major foreign election interference in the Kentucky primary in May, and there was, the president had firmly sided with the outside player. Some foreign meddling in U.S. elections is apparently preferable to others. This does raise questions about loyalty—loyalty to whom, or to what? The president obviously wanted Massie defeated because he felt the Republican had been disloyal to him, personally, and to his agenda. That’s pure Trump. But he also effectively sided with Israel and its American supporters. Another Trump critic from the right, podcasting giant Tucker Carlson, is now also the object of criticism from the president for his supposed disloyalty over many of the same issues that animate Massie. In a recent interview, Carlson answered this charge with one of his own: “Trump has been disloyal to the United States—totally disloyal to the United States. He cheated on the United States with a foreign power.” With the Trump administration continuing to fund the unending death in Gaza, starting the Iran war, and even siding with the interests of Israel, first and foremost, even if by default, in a Kentucky election, Carlson may have a point about this president. On the eve of his primary election, a still-hopeful Thomas Massie told a reporter that his primary race was about “whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress. And what they found out is that my seat is really expensive.” It was extremely expensive, but in the end, a foreign country did essentially buy an American election via a powerful lobby that agitates on its behalf. Don’t expect any White House concerns about this anytime soon. The post Trump’s Worried About Foreign Election Interference. That’s News to Massie appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Zelensky’s Military Overhaul Explodes Western Fantasies The Ukrainian leader is no model of democratic leadership during wartime. Photo by Tetiana DZHAFAROVA / AFP via Getty Images Over the past week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has faced his biggest political crisis since this time last year. And just as they did back then, Western analysts and media outlets have concocted a pro-Zelensky narrative that downplays evident political dysfunction and misrepresents the struggles for power that are actually driving events. Last July, Zelensky signed a law that sharply limited the autonomy of Ukraine’s main anticorruption agencies by placing them under the control of the prosecutor general, an official appointed by the president (i.e., handpicked by Zelensky). Protesters flooded the streets, and the European Union reacted harshly, warning the move would complicate Kiev’s pathway to membership. Amid the fallout, which plainly he hadn’t anticipated, Zelensky restored the watchdogs’ political independence. One year later, nearly to the day, Zelensky again angered many of his countrymen by firing the respected minister of defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, just six months into his tenure. Ukrainians protested in the thousands to demand Fedorov’s reinstatement. Now, you might think that Zelensky’s ham-handed effort to crush anticorruption bodies and his decision to sack a promising defense minister during a war would provoke at least some skepticism about his credibility as a leader. You might be wrong. Among Western supporters of Zelensky, both episodes were seen as anomalous missteps and, ultimately, evidence of Ukraine’s democratic resilience as it transforms into a Western-style nation. As protesters marched to support Fedorov, Max Boot of the Washington Post offered a typical reaction: “What Ukraine has shown is that, notwithstanding the power wielded by a president in wartime, there remain checks and balances on Zelensky’s decision-making.” That assessment does contain some truth, and subsequent events seemed to vindicate it. While the Ukrainian leader didn’t reverse Fedorov’s dismissal, he did throw a bone to the protesters, firing the unpopular Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi—with whom Fedorov had been feuding—and replacing him with the younger, more popular Mykhailo Drapatyi (who is particularly well-regarded by Fedorov’s supporters). But Boot didn’t limit himself to expressing admiration for Ukraine’s democratic resilience—he also waxed poetic about Zelensky. “Of the leaders in the world’s nearly 200 countries, there is none that I admire as much as Volodymyr Zelensky,” he wrote. “He has been a profile in courage with few equals since the days of Winston Churchill.” Fedorov’s firing, Boot added, “should not shake anyone’s faith” in Zelensky, who didn’t take the “autocrat’s route” of crushing the protesters. Retweeting Boot’s column, the chess legend Garry Kasparov said Ukraine was reminding the West of its fundamental values. The facts simply cannot sustain this hagiography. No doubt, Zelensky performed admirably during the early weeks of Russia’s invasion, rallying Ukrainians in a time of profound anxiety. But since then, Zelensky has repeatedly shown that his political interests dictate, and sometimes hobble, his wartime leadership, with the dismissal of Fedorov being just the latest example. An upcoming report by the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center—a draft of which was made available to The American Conservative—lays out the driving force of Zelensky’s military overhaul. “The changes reflect a broader political choice in favor of political cohesion over disruptive reform at the nexus of the state: the security sector, which now consumes 60 percent of public expenditure,” writes the author, Balazs Jarabik. The 35-year-old Fedorov had become the face of Ukrainian advances in defense technologies, drone warfare, and deep strikes into Russia. His tenure coincided with a phase of the war in which Ukraine seemed to gain momentum, winning him fans among the Ukrainian people and in European capitals. A web marketing professional and former minister of digital transformation, Fedorov came to symbolize the cooler, reform-minded, and Western-oriented side of Ukraine. Thus, a clear contrast was drawn when reports surfaced that Fedorov was butting heads with Syrskyi, who turns 61 in a few days and cut his teeth in the Soviet Red Army. Nicknamed “the Butcher,” Syrskyi is reputed to favor Soviet-style infantry tactics, tolerating high casualties in pursuit of operational objectives. It’s no wonder most Ukrainian soldiers and their families disliked Syrskyi and put their hopes in Fedorov. So, where did Fedorov go wrong? One possibility is that he did his job too well and ruffled the feathers of other military officials whom he thought should be doing their jobs better. Zelensky’s latest moves, Jarabik writes, “reaffirm his principle that no institution or individual, regardless of popularity or wartime achievements, should be allowed to evolve into an independent centre of political authority.” Arguably, that understates things: Popularity and wartime achievements seem to increase the odds of getting fired in Zelensky’s Ukraine.  In February 2024, Zelensky ousted then-Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who had become an icon after leading the rollback of the Russian invaders early in the war. And in October 2024, Zelensky reportedly sought to dismiss his chief of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, a decorated soldier known for both battlefield glory and bureaucratic competence. As rumors swirled and outrage grew, Zelensky left Budanov alone, but he did give the boot to his top deputies. The three Ukrainian political figures the public trusts more than Zelensky, according to a just-released survey? Zaluzhny, Fedorov, and Budanov. Fedorov’s favorability spiked above the president’s only after he got the sack last week, but it’s hard to escape a disconcerting conclusion: Zelensky works to eliminate political rivals, which in practice has meant turning against some of his most capable men. It’s true that Zelensky’s power remains constrained by public opinion, but that’s been the case for virtually all political leaders throughout history, from medieval monarchs to 21st-century dictators. Of course, firm executive authority is necessary in times of crisis. But the image of Zelensky as a model of liberal, democratic leadership during wartime is hard to square with his efforts to stifle corruption investigations, censor news media, and turn the security state into an instrument of presidential power. The tendency to cast Ukraine as the protagonist in a moral melodrama of Western aspiration obscures these dark complexities and does more harm than good. After all, America’s attempt to pull Ukraine into the Western orbit is what provoked Russia to attack in the first place. And any plausible peace settlement would likely turn Ukraine into a buffer state committed to military nonalignment, an idea resisted by those who fantasize about a Western Ukraine. Culturally, politically, and geographically, Ukraine has never been a fully Western country, and neither wishful thinking nor artfully assembled grand narratives can change that. Western analysts and leaders should treat Zelensky’s latest scandal as an opportunity to take a more balanced view of the country he leads and the way he’s been leading it. The post Zelensky’s Military Overhaul Explodes Western Fantasies appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran Elbridge Colby gives little comfort to war skeptics. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images In a podcast released Thursday, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy and an old friend of The American Conservative, sat down for a tête-à-tête with his old schoolmate, the New York Times’ Ross Douthat.  Colby, for the folks keeping track back home, was the mastermind of the first Trump administration’s China-prioritizing defense policy and the author of The Strategy of Denial, a 2021 book further articulating his strategic vision for prioritizing Chinese containment. One of the pillars of his theory was that the Persian Gulf region is not a major priority for American national interests, and that the Middle Eastern escapades that characterized policy in the early part of this century are not exactly the sort of thing that a prudent administration should continue. Time passed. The Times’ civilizing spectacle of two Harvard men chatting it out took place against the backdrop of the current conflagration in the Persian Gulf. Speaking as a public official rather than a commentator, Colby is now constrained by the administration’s line. It is, I think, fair to say that he put on a game performance, and probably articulated the smartest case that can be made for the current course. It is worth drawing out a few points. On the topic of munitions stockpiles, a point of serious concern for many analysts (including those writing for this magazine), Colby is dismissive: “One, I think that point is exaggerated, and obviously I can’t get into the details here. But the capabilities that are most significant have not really been, are not really in scarce supply. … I can’t give you a specific example, but I can say with confidence — and we are paying a lot of attention to this — that we’re in good shape.” Naturally, by virtue of his position, Colby has more information than the press or the public, but “whom do you believe, me or your lying eyes” does little to allay the fears that arise from, say, temporarily cannibalizing missile systems in the Korean Peninsula to feed the Iranian theater, particularly when the speaker can hardly come out and say that, yes, we are in fact running short on things. If the administration were interested in shoring up the flagging public support for the war, showing a little leg on this issue might go a long way.  Colby also danced around worries about the war’s temporal scope. He objected to Douthat’s characterization of the war as a “stalemate,” but not in the terms you might hope: “In terms of it being a stalemate, I don’t think that’s necessarily true, and I don’t think diplomacy has been ruled out. … I think it remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t regard it as a stalemate. I don’t think that’s a fair assessment.”  “I don’t think that’s necessarily true”? “I think it remains to be seen”? Willikers.  Similarly, Colby insists that the war just needs a little more time—an unspecified amount—to accomplish its goals: “People have to give some time for the strategy to work out, and part of that is military force, which we’re applying effectively. Part of it is the diplomatic international pressure, the economic pressure on Iran, the restoration of sanctions, etc.” Asking the public for more time on a war they weren’t sold and which they do not want to become an open-ended affair is an admirable bit of cheek. Nor does the appeal to sanctions seem promising. Sanctions have not been conspicuously successful in conditioning Iranian behavior. (Indeed, they helped to entrench the IRGC, which controls the financial mechanisms for getting around sanctions.) Granted, matching them with the exertion of hard power is a new condition, but appealing to longstanding policies that have done little to advance the cause as game-changers sounds a little hollow.  Nor would his brief justification for the war satisfy skeptics. “We’re denying Iran a nuclear weapon — that’s something that started with Operation Midnight Hammer, but has continued with this operation — and also substantially degraded Iran’s ability to project military power throughout the region,” Colby said. “We’re talking about drones and missiles. That problem obviously remains. But Iran’s navy and air force — there’s been a very substantial degradation of Iran’s capability as well as significant parts of its defense industrial base.” Here indeed is the crux of the problem that more than one commentator has articulated: Absent a durable diplomatic settlement — which, lest we forget, seemed eminently achievable before the bombs started falling and now seems far less likely after giving Iran the best reasons in the world to make itself a frightening military prospect — these aims set us on the course of “mowing the grass” indefinitely, which is an unstable and politically undesirable upshot. Nor does one draw comfort from Colby’s appeals to self-perpetuating processes, for example, the fact that Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan are “thereby proving the point that [Iran] remains a threat.” The fact that a country can respond militarily to an attack is an almost universally applicable pretext for war. There is much that is stimulating and thoughtful in Colby’s conversation with Douthat, particularly his comments on Europe and the Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s cockamamie middle-powers entente idea. But when it comes to Iran, more time, more pressure, the whole story isn’t out there, and “we’ll see”—these are not encouraging things to hear from the top mind at the Pentagon. Is this the best they can do? The post What the Pentagon’s Top Brain Thinks About Iran appeared first on The American Conservative.

On the final day of the Supreme Court’s 2025 term, the Court delivered a resounding victory for biological reality. In West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the Court allowed West Virginia and Idaho to reserve women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. The majority reached this outcome on two grounds. First, a unanimous Court held that Title IX’s sports regulations authorize separate teams for each sex in competitive and contact sports. Second, the majority held that the state laws complied with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. In all, the Justices produced five separate opinions. Those opinions debated several nuanced legal questions. However, beneath them ran a smaller fight with enormous consequences: the words judges used to describe the transgender litigants. Taken individually, each measure is defended as a small accommodation. Taken together, they are a mandate to affirm what is false. There were three distinct approaches. The majority generally referred to the plaintiff by initials (“B.P.J.”) and described the plaintiff as a “biological male who identifies as female.” In contrast, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent used female pronouns. Finally, Justice Thomas firmly stated that “[m]en and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are.” Thus, the opinions presented a spectrum of responses to the transgender movement: avoidance, affirmation, and rebuke. Ultimately, this split poses a fundamental question: how should federal judges address transgender litigants? The correct answer is Justice Thomas’s approach. Judges should use the litigants’ biological pronouns and reject the semantic games of the transgender movement’s pronoun regime. This is the case for two reasons. First, it upholds the role of judging. Second, it supplies resistance to the transgender movement’s hostile takeover of American institutions. First, the role of a judge is to impartially apply the law to facts. And inviting warped realities into that analysis defeats this purpose. This approach aligns with the Founders’ vision for an independent judiciary and the role of a judge. In Federalist 78, Hamilton explained that an independent judiciary — wielding “neither force nor will, but merely judgment” — is “requisite to guard the Constitution.” The judge is thus an arbiter of legal truth. Accordingly, a court that makes language conform to a litigant’s erroneous identity claim abandons that duty. For a legal justification, Courts have sometimes used preferred pronouns as a courtesy. But courtesy is discretionary. And in this realm of discretion, judges must never subordinate their fundamental obligation to the truth to personal politeness. For a practical example of this principle, the Fifth Circuit reached the same conclusion in United States v. Varner. There, the court denied a request of a litigant to be addressed with female pronouns. Writing for the majority, Judge Kyle Duncan explained that no federal statute or rule required judges, court personnel, or other litigants to use pronouns matching a litigant’s gender identity. Justice Thomas’s approach is therefore a clear application of an existing principle: courtesy may guide a judge’s tone, but it cannot dictate the court’s account of reality. Second, adopting Justice Thomas’s approach supplies resistance to the transgender movement’s hostile takeover of American institutions. The Varner example is the judicial front of this campaign, and the examples behind it show that it has no limiting principle. Consider the progression. The first step begins with the soft language of accommodation. For example, a university pronoun guide lists forms such as “ze” and “xem,” along with similar pronoun inventions. Each measure seems small, yet teaches the institution to treat self-declaration as authoritative. Once that premise is accepted, the vocabulary expands. From there, benign accommodation mutates into enforcement. For example, New York City’s human-rights guidance treats refusal to use a preferred name or pronoun as evidence of discrimination in employment and public accommodations. The EEOC’s 2024 harassment guidance took a similar path by treating repeated intentional pronoun use inconsistent with gender identity as potential workplace harassment before the agency voted to rescind that guidance. The federal government also tried to write gender identity into Title IX policy: the Department of Education’s 2024 Title IX rule defined sex discrimination to include gender identity before a federal court vacated the rule. Taken individually, each measure is defended as a small accommodation. Taken together, they are a mandate to affirm what is false. Thus, pronouns become a low-cost, high-reward instrument of power. The claimant announces a vocabulary; the institution assumes the work of enforcement; and then everyone else bears the cost of dissent. This is deeply troubling for the future of this country. In today’s polarized society, productive debate is very important. However, dialogue cannot materialize when language is distorted. Words like “man” and “woman,” and “boy” and “girl,” assert biological truths. But when those words become meaningless, constructive disagreement dissipates since people cannot even agree on foundational premises. However, other judges, like Justice Thomas and Judge Duncan, can stand in the way. Judges have a duty that ordinary citizens do not always have. In a pronoun dispute, a private person might choose evasive language to avoid conflict at work. However, a court speaks with public authority. Its words settle disputes and create precedent. Thus, if courts cave to the transgender movement, they give the compulsory pronoun regime the prestige of law. But if courts refuse, they mark a clear boundary that other institutions can replicate. Accordingly, courts should firmly reject motions that ask the judges to call a male “she” or a female “he” in the court’s own voice. And they should never force litigants or lawyers to repeat words that contradict biological sex. To be clear, no litigant should be mocked. Indeed, the Court itself in B.P.J. said that litigants should not be “ostracized or vilified.” However, respect does not require affirming blatant fantasies. The law can protect persons from abuse while refusing to conscript others into a lie. In closing, courts exist to say what the law is. That duty begins with saying what is true. READ MORE from Jimmy Murphy: The Destructive Hubris of Anti-Trump Republicans READ MORE: The Courts Finally Let America Enforce Its Own Immigration Laws Religious Liberty Means More Than Mere Toleration

The Democratic Socialists of America are having a moment. In fact, they’re having a season. DSA candidates are winning nationwide in Democratic Party primaries, knocking off incumbents while running on some of the most deformed and deranged platforms in recent political memory. Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic young socialist in Gracie Mansion, is the new leader of the DSA pack. Terrifying as it may be, Zo may be the closest thing the entire activist left has these days to a kingmaker. It couldn’t be clearer what the DSA wants: The democratic socialists want to finish the job, launched by Barack Obama on the precipice of presidential victory in 2008, of “fundamentally transforming” the United States. The DSA’s new policy platform, released earlier this month, says the quiet part out loud: “We are workers fighting to transform society,” to “draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” (RELATED: America’s Socialists Have Already Lost) It would be one thing if these were the words of a starry-eyed freshman pothead, first exposed to Marx and pontificating to dormmates while John Lennon’s dreadful song “Imagine” plays in the background. But people like Hizzoner and the new uptown socialist “it girl,” Darializa Avila Chevalier, are adults. They are serious. And that makes them not just naive but dangerous. (RELATED: Yes, They’re Communists, and Yes, They’re Lying About It. For Now.) Zo has had a complicated relationship with the issue of public safety. Should Americans be comfortable with public officials entertaining the abolition of the twin pillars of public safety, police and prisons? The official DSA platform stops short of calling for full “abolition” of prisons or policing, instead calling to “demilitarize police departments” and “end mass incarceration.” But Avila Chevalier promoted full-on police and prison abolition from a since-deleted Twitter/X account, and Mamdani condemned the “carceral state” when he ran for state assembly in 2020. After Avila Chevalier’s primary victory, Mamdani was pressed during an appearance on ABC News on whether he supports the existence of prisons. “There are prisons,” he simply responded. That’s not exactly reassuring. Just this week, Zo appeared on purported comic Jon Stewart’s podcast and doubled down on prevarication. Stewart asked Hizzoner if he is “comfortable” with calls to abolish prisons. “I’m comfortable with disagreement,” he replied. Noted. But the more important question is: Should Americans be comfortable with public officials entertaining the abolition of the twin pillars of public safety, police and prisons? The answer is obvious: No. Democratic socialists think they’re helping the “little guy” with their anti-cop, anti-prison lunacy. They’re not. According to recent federal data, 62 percent of state prisoners were serving time for a violent offense, such as homicide, rape, or robbery. These people are threats to society and need to be incarcerated. As esteemed criminologist Barry Latzer notes, the average American inmate was arrested a whopping 11 times before getting locked up, and an astonishing 83 percent of released prisoners are ultimately rearrested — about half in the first year after release. Socialists might think they’re helping Blacks amid our post-“1619 Project” racial reckoning, but they fail here too: Nearly 90 percent of Black homicide victims are killed by other Blacks. The biggest danger to law-abiding Blacks in America today is the threat posed by violent Blacks out on the streets and not behind bars. There is only one coherent explanation for the DSA’s anti-cop, anti-prison obsession: naked, raw ideology. And there is a name for that ideology: Third World-ism. It’s a dystopian zeal for barbarism over civilization. And these days, it’s the name of the game for the activist left. We see it everywhere. Third World-ism explains the activist left’s support for the butchers of Hamas over the free people of Israel. Third World-ism explains the activist left’s support for punitive environmental regulations that engender economic degrowth. Third World-ism explains why the activist left wants us to have fewer children. Third World-ism explains why the activist left speculates that maybe America actually deserved 9/11. Third World-ism explains why the activist left wants the anarchy of open borders, not the ordered liberty of the nation-state. Third World-ism explains why the activist left sides with illegal aliens and not victims of illegal alien crime. And Third World-ism explains why the activist left sides with criminals, in general, and not victims of crime. (RELATED: When the ‘World-City’ Votes Socialist) The problem with ideology, as the philosophers recognized millennia ago, is that it is stubborn. It is usually impervious to logic, reason, or empiricism. The remedy for bad ideology, therefore, cannot simply be facts and statistics. We also need good ideology: a moral argument that public safety is a public good, and government exists to secure the public good. Whether there is anyone willing to make that argument in earnest remains to be seen. READ MORE from Josh Hammer: As AG, Todd Blanche Will Finally Seek Justice for Dems’ Dirty Lawfare The Return of Socialism and the GOP’s Golden Opportunity Congress Can Still Ban Birthright Citizenship. Here’s How. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. 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