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It’s becoming increasingly obvious that, despite a 53-47 Republican majority, the U.S. Senate is a graveyard for President Trump’s agenda. This is largely the fault of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who has never been a strong supporter of the President. Nonetheless, most Republicans hoped that Thune would work to advance Trump’s priorities, particularly after his decisive 2024 victory provided the momentum for the GOP to retake the Senate. But Thune’s refusal to get the SAVE America Act passed and his surrender to the Democrats on DHS funding — without additional money for ICE or CPB — dashed any hope that he has the right stuff to be Majority Leader. Rather than facing this basic binary choice, Majority Leader Thune preferred to cobble together a dirty deal in the middle of the night. President Trump and House Republicans have tried to be patient with Thune’s inertia, but that is over with. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has done everything in his power to work with the Majority Leader on the SAVE America Act, sent a clear signal to him during a Fox News interview with Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday: “If you don’t want to fight fires, don’t become a firefighter. If you don’t want to take grueling votes at difficult hours and sometimes have to work longer than you want to, then maybe you shouldn’t become a United States Senator.” Also on Fox News, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) was far more explicit about how Senate Republicans should respond to Thune’s collusion with Senate Democrats on DHS funding: Obviously, the leadership in the Senate — and that’s on both sides of the aisle — has a real disgust for this President and House leadership because they didn’t even have the guts to call speaker Mike Johnson and let him know what happened … The stereotype of Congress is, and it’s well deserved, is that we pass stuff in the dark of night because we don’t have any guts, and that’s clearly what’s shown in the Senate leadership. I think they need to get some new leadership over there, in my opinion. House Speaker Mike Johnson referred the Senate’s partial DHS funding bill in the following terms: “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.” He then read the excerpt of the bill that cuts ICE and CPB funding and emphatically stated, “We’re not doing that! And it is unconscionable to me that the Democrats would force some sort of negotiation at 3 o’clock in the morning and try to foist this on the American people.” It’s understandable that Johnson would be reluctant to attack Thune but it was the Majority Leader who added the disgraceful amendment to the DHS bill according to a report in the New York Times. Yet this is how Thune described the garbage he dumped on the House as he left town on Friday morning: Let’s summarize where we are after a 40+ day Democrat shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. 1) ICE and CBP are funded, thanks to the Working Families Tax Cuts and the foresight of President Trump and Republicans in Congress. 2) After holding DHS and the American people hostage for over 40 days, Dems got ZERO restrictions that would prevent ICE and CBP agents from doing their jobs safely. 3) Due to Dem obstruction of the appropriations process, ICE and CBP will get even more funding through budget reconciliation. 4) Dems have once again established themselves as the “Open Borders, Defund the Police” party heading into an election. 5) Dem leadership has proven once again they can’t be trusted to make a deal. Which begs the question if you’re a Dem senator or one of their left-wing supporters: What was this really all about? This is an attempt by Thune to avoid responsibility for a crisis he and other RINOs created by clinging to the 60-vote cloture rule and refusing to force the Democrats to endure a genuine filibuster. As Sen. Lee wrote Friday, “The Senate GOP has exactly two options if it wants to avoid drifting into irrelevance and a stunning loss in November: (1) Keep the filibuster and 60-vote cloture rule fully intact, but stand ready to overcome Senate Democrats’ unprecedented pattern of obstruction by aggressively enforcing the “talking filibuster,” a move that would require senators to work longer, harder hours and take fewer recesses, but lead to more thoughtful, careful deliberation in the legislative process, OR (2) Nuke the filibuster. Rather than facing this basic binary choice, Majority Leader Thune preferred to cobble together a dirty deal in the middle of the night and go on vacation while honest Republicans attempt to clean up his mess. Thune isn’t preserving the “zombie filibuster” for the sake of the institution. He’s doing it because he’s afraid of change — the same reason he won’t force the Democrats to endure a talking filibuster. The word “Senate” is derived from the Latin word senex, which means “old man.” The framers emulated the Romans when they wrote the Constitution but the Free Republic never gave their Senate the power to pass laws. Why? Because they knew old men dislike change. Thus, Thune likes the cloture rule and hates President Trump. READ MORE from David Catron: Megyn Kelly’s Moronic Iran Maunderings Paxton Makes Thune an Offer He Can’t Refuse The Democrats’ Epic Fury Over Iran Strikes

Here’s a simple truth. The modern Left hates America and loves the Third World. So much so, they want America to be the Third World. And judging by the blue state of Democrat-run cities, they’ve mostly succeeded. Twenty years ago, the thought of children walking past filthy drug-ridden homeless encampments to get to school would have disgusted members of both major parties. Today, it’s a daily routine in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and other once great burgs. Likewise, the idea of people voting without showing IDs — after a Democrat Administration basically invited 21 million illegal aliens into the country — is opposed by 83 percent of Americans, including the majority of minorities. But Dem politicians are ready to die on that hill, to the point of infantilizing blacks and women as too stupid to attain proper identification. “It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” drones soulless Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, contradicting his own position in the saner 1990s: “Everywhere people go, they’re asked for a Social Security card. In fact, one way to prove you’re a bona fide person who can have a job is to ask for a driver’s license and a Social Security card.” Yet blacks and women will overwhelmingly vote for that party, and not the one that treats them as competent adults. Because both groups have succumbed to 65 years of relentless, divisive Marxist propaganda — that whites have it in for blacks and men for women — initially fed by academia and media, then cemented by the government in the service of feminism. Highly paid advertising executives greenlit the same attitudinal commercials putting men in traditional female roles. In the case of black people, LBJ’s Great Society devastated their once strong nuclear family by displacing fatherhood — a feminist dream. But as destructive as this was, it paled before the abomination that was Roe v. Wade, which sanctioned the slaughter of 65 million unborn babies. In fact, of the Left’s three-legged stool — racism, homophobia, feminism — only feminism remains standing, firmly enough to dominate American society in the 21st Century. Racism never took permanent hold for the simple reason it’s a total fabrication. White people don’t hate blacks (there are exceptions for everything). They don’t even think about race. Unlike Democrat leaders riding the chimera of white supremacy. With their zenith being the canonization of degenerate criminal George Floyd, the political imprisonment of policeman Derek Chauvin, and the grift of Black Lives Matter. As for homophobia, liberal gays beclowned themselves by pretending they could just switch sexes, to the point of male pregnancy. But feminism survived, and thrived. It made women crazy — enough to replace maternal fulfillment with ideological fanaticism, like harassing ICE agents in the middle of a dangerous operation to capture criminal illegal aliens, AKA Democratic voters. Their own voting has damaged this country, by electing incompetent losers of both sexes who have made their lives less safe. Just ask Sheridan Gorman. Wait, you can’t. She was murdered earlier this month by an illegal alien scumbag the Biden people caught at the border and released into the country. Chicago Democratic Alderwoman Maria Hadden had a simpler explanation for the horror. “They might have unintentionally startled this person at the end of the pier, unintentionally.” Put aside any doubt you may have about Hadden’s qualification for high government office. She earned the position, according to the feminist rulebook. She’s the first openly queer Black woman elected to the Chicago City Council. Politically, I can do very little about feminism damaging the country, other than vote for sane, intelligent conservative candidates. But culturally, I might make a difference. My field — arts and entertainment — is controlled by hack agenda-driven women, and their beta male sycophants. Together, they have ruined the screen industry and diminished literature. Because their goal in both areas is not storytelling, which they lack the talent for, but brainwashing, for which they also lack the talent. Case in point: two commercials running on Fox News, that I couldn’t pin down for this article. The first one is a laxative ad featuring a nervous man in the bathroom cowering about the solution he must take — until his serene Asian wife explains to him the safety of the product. The other is a wife asking her husband what international cuisine he prefers for dinner, and he shoots down each of her suggestions. I mostly ignore commercials — other than note the steep drop in quality from the Mad Men era — but subconsciously it hit me. Highly paid advertising executives greenlit the same attitudinal commercials putting men in traditional female roles. No real man in the universe would simper to his wife about taking his toilet medicine. And the cliché, “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” no longer applies to women but to indecisive little men. Switch the genders to reflect truth, and you’d have women with sad lives, AKA feminists, wasting theirs on protesting the ads. While normal men and women will do what they always do — not buy the product. They won’t even muster the interest to boycott it as they did Bud Lite. It’s too insignificant, though the feminists who made the commercials were probably proud of themselves for their jabs at manhood. Two bits of science-fiction news back me up. Project Hail Mary, a non-woke sci-fi film featuring a competent straight white male (Ryan Gosling), has made $300 million in two weeks — at the theaters — from a predominantly male audience plus large female audience. While Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, offering nothing but girlbosses and weenie males, got canceled last week. Guess which model Hollywood will follow. We good writers will go the opposite way. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: When the Legends Die — Chuck Norris The Fall of Britain — and the Warning for America Cuba’s Long Night Nears Its End

This column doesn’t make a practice of picking fights with other columnists. But once in a while, as I did with Fox News personality Andy Napolitano about a year ago, someone writes a column that is so off base that I feel compelled to respond. Mr. Napolitano was feted in Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and by Alexander Dugin, Mr. Putin’s philosopher and close adviser. He was taken in by them and believed everything they told him. Which was entirely false. Such is the case with the column written by Mr. Steve Cortes in RealClearPolitics on Saturday. Mr. Cortes paints a picture of President Trump’s burden and opportunity to bring peace to Ukraine. Mr. Cortes recounts how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first investigated and then exiled Gen. Valeri Zaluzhnyi. Mr. Cortes, a pollster, then relies on some of his own polls to conclude that U.S. voters want us to end the “quagmire conflict” in Ukraine. He adverts that the Ukrainian people deserve a new election but that cannot be done, he writes, without Mr. Trump creating a cease-fire or possibly a peace treaty. First, Gen. Zaluzhnyi was “exiled” to serve as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom — a key partner providing much of Ukraine’s weaponry. How is that a demotion? Second, is this a quagmire conflict for the United States? It absolutely isn’t because we have no boots on the ground nor any airpower engaged in the war. Third, Mr. Cortes avoids any discussion of the other party to this war, Russia, which has control of how the war will end. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2005 that the fall of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Mr. Putin wants nothing more than to reassemble the old Soviet empire by force or other means. Mr. Putin is, as I’ve written as many times, a “Duganist,” i.e., a follower of Russian philosopher (and I use the term loosely) Alexander Dugin. Mr. Dugin has written, in his Foundations of Geopolitics, that unless Ukraine is returned to Russian rule, Mr. Putin may as well not bother to try to try to reassemble the rest of the Soviet empire because it will be impossible. Mr. Putin has no desire for peace in Ukraine and he, above any other participant in the war, gets the decisive vote. Mr. Cortés is entitled to his opinions. But he needs to back up those opinions with the facts of the Ukraine war. About ten days ago, Russia hit Ukraine with some 948 drone attacks in a single day, the largest such attack since the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine began in February 2022. (That is according to The Economist magazine which has an abiding dislike for Mr. Trump.) Russia’s economy is on a war footing. Iran has a factory in Russia to manufacture drones. Iran may be diverting some of the drones to its own war. According to several reports, Russia is providing Iran with intelligence to help it attack and kill Americans. Mr. Trump, as he should be, is preoccupied with the war in Iran. His war efforts and his best negotiators are trying to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They won’t succeed unless there is regime change in Iran. How Mr. Trump is supposed to create a peace or even a cease-fire Mr. Cortes doesn’t say. What compromises could Mr. Trump make to end the war in Ukraine? Mr. Putin isn’t interested in compromise. He wants to win the war and is exceptionally unlikely to engage in negotiations that would stop the war unless Ukraine concedes much of its territory and, even then, Russia would have the opportunity to rearm and relaunch its war of conquest in Ukraine. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, “Ukraine is not America’s war — and yet we’ve contributed more to that fight than any other country in the world.” It is a European war and the NATO nations and the European Union are content to let it continue as a stalemate rather than engage their diplomats in trying to end it. They are content to let it go on unless and until Mr. Trump causes a cease-fire or peace deal. Once again, they — and Mr. Cortes — want us to take on a responsibility that isn’t ours. Mr. Cortes is entitled to his opinions. But he needs to back up those opinions with the facts of the Ukraine war. He needs to include in those opinions more than hope that Mr. Trump can make a deal for a cease-fire or any sort of peace. If Mr. Trump could wave a magic wand and create peace in Ukraine he would have done so by now. It’s not within the realm of possibility while Mr. Putin objects to any semblance of peace. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Straits of Uncertainty The Missing Definition of Victory in Iran The First Week of Mission: Iran          

A new movie, The Story of Everything, opens in over 1,000 theaters nationwide April 30.   According to the synopsis posted at the movie web site: The Story of Everything is a cinematic exploration of the cosmos that reveals the hidden hand behind our universe. From the precise laws that govern the stars to the intricate patterns found in every living cell, the film traces evidence of intentional design throughout nature. Whether examining distant star-forming clouds or the spiral structure of DNA, we discover a consistent signature woven into the fabric of existence. The new movie is based on the 2021 best seller, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe,” by Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. The three scientific discoveries of Meyer’s book title are: 1) The Universe Had a Beginning A great deal of evidence indicates that the universe (space, time, matter, and energy) came into existence from nothing about 14 billion years ago.  Since there were no natural causes before nature came into existence, we cannot hope to ever find a “natural” explanation for this “big bang.” Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that a beginning was theoretically possible, and other scientists discovered powerful evidence of such a beginning.  But if it is hard to imagine that the universe had a beginning, it is equally hard to imagine that it did not. For example, if the universe were infinitely old, shouldn’t all stars have burned out long ago, as hydrogen fused into helium and heavier elements?  How long ago — a quadrillion years ago?  Why not long before that? 2) The Laws and Constants of the Universe Are ‘Fine-tuned’ For Life The universe that came into being from nothing is not arbitrary but is exquisitely tuned to allow life to exist and flourish. It is now known that the values of many basic physical constants, such as the strengths of the four fundamental forces, the masses and charges of the basic particles of physics, the speed of light, and Planck’s quantum physics constant, had to be almost exactly what they are in order for any conceivable form of life to exist in our universe. As the late physicist Stephen Hawking wrote, “the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” 3) The Secret of Life Is the Information Within Living Things Perhaps the best way to get an idea of the incredible complexity of every living cell, and what Meyer means by the “information” contained in living things, is to watch this episode “Secrets of the Cell: with Michael Behe. Or watch some or all of videos 3,4,5,6,10 of the video series produced by Michael Kent, a recently retired bio-scientist from Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque. Kent’s videos 1 and 2 deal with the other two discoveries discussed in Meyer’s book, the big bang and the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of our universe, and of the initial conditions at the big bang. In his introductory video Kent says of his “recent discoveries,” which include the three discussed in Meyer’s 2021 book and thus in the new movie: These are discoveries of science that are not controversial. They are findings of science that are very strongly supported. Scientists may disagree about the implications or the conclusions to make from these findings, but there is little or no debate about the discoveries themselves…. At the core of this debate is the question of how much evidence is needed for one to be convinced of design. For some people, those committed to materialism, no amount of evidence could ever be enough.  But I don’t think that’s true for most people. The trailer at the movie web site is designed more to stimulate interest than to inform, but a glance at the cast, which includes Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, James Tour, John Lennox, David Berlinski, and Peter Thiel, makes it clear that this will be a powerful and influential film. Look for it in a theater near you, April 30-May 6. If you don’t have the time or opportunity to see The Story of Everything but can spare seven minutes, I recommend  A Mathematician’s View of Evolution. This short video makes what I believe to be the strongest argument of all for design, by simply looking at what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design. READ MORE from Granville Sewell: What Science Now Knows — and the Public Rarely Hears A Mathematician’s View of Evolution What is the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design?