Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is blocking a push by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to force a Republican vote on authorizing the use of military force against Iran beyond the 60‑day window set by the 1973 War Powers Act. Thune has so far declined to schedule a vote on Murkowski’s proposed authorization for use of military force, even as the conflict polls poorly among voters and concerns mount within the GOP conference about congressional oversight. A recent poll by the League of American Voters found support for the war at just 50% among voters in a key swing state, underscoring the political sensitivities surrounding formal congressional approval. “We’re listening carefully to what the members of our conference are saying,” Thune told reporters before senators departed Washington for a weeklong recess. Asked whether he would allow a vote on Murkowski’s measure, Thune said, “At this point, I don’t see that.” He added, however, that “getting readouts from our military leadership on a somewhat regular basis will be helpful in terms of shaping the views of our members about how comfortable they are with everything that’s happening there and the direction headed forward.” A senior Republican aide confirmed Monday that Thune has not scheduled a vote on Murkowski’s authorization. According to The Hill, sources familiar with the matter said Murkowski is unlikely to get a vote because her resolution is not privileged. To qualify for privileged consideration under the War Powers Act, she would have needed to introduce the resolution within 30 days of the conflict’s onset, guaranteeing floor consideration and passage with a simple majority. Without privileged status, Murkowski would also need Thune’s consent to place the measure on the already crowded Senate calendar. Despite Thune’s resistance, Murkowski has continued pressing colleagues to reassert Congress’ role in authorizing the conflict. Speaking on the Senate floor last week, she said a formal authorization would “establish a framework” requiring President Donald Trump to come to Congress with “clearly defined political and military objectives.” “It would require metrics for success, notice of any changes in objectives, and exit criteria. It would ultimately ensure that Congress is engaged,” Murkowski said. If Murkowski ultimately succeeded in passing such a resolution, it would bring the naval blockade of Iranian ports and any future military strikes into compliance with the War Powers Act. Behind the scenes, Murkowski has been seeking support from Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; John Curtis, R-Utah; Todd Young, R-Ind.; and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., all of whom have warned that Congress must authorize the conflict if it extends beyond 60 days. Tillis told reporters last week that the Trump administration has not yet provided sufficient detail to justify authorization beyond that deadline. “I think that we need details. We need to know what the strategic objectives are. What does success look like? What is the build‑out for the budget request?” Tillis said, noting a “significant increase” in funding tied to the conflict. Curtis has said he will not support additional funding absent formal authorization from Congress. “I have been clear: I will not support continued funding for the use of force without Congress weighing in,” Curtis said in a statement shared with The Hill. Young, speaking last month at the Semafor World Economy conference, said it was “time to wrap” up the war with Iran “as quickly as we can.” He later said the administration should work with Congress on an authorization if a ceasefire collapses and military strikes resume. Still, Murkowski faces an uphill battle within her own party. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have broken with Republican leadership to support war powers resolutions aimed at ending U.S. military involvement in Iran. Paul recently voted for Democrat‑sponsored measures seeking to limit Trump’s authority; all Democrats except Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., supported them. Collins, who had voted five times against similar efforts in the past, reversed course after concluding that the president’s authority under the War Powers Act expired May 1. “The 60‑day trigger is a very important one. At that point, Congress has to authorize the military action to continue,” Collins said two weeks ago. “I will not support extending the hostilities beyond that 60 days except for wind‑down activities.” If three additional Republicans join Collins and Paul, a war powers resolution to end the conflict would pass the Senate, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to the administration. Any such measure would still need to pass the House and be signed by the president to carry the force of law.

So much of the Left’s justification for various social justice programs relies on its ability to erase and rewrite history. In one area, this problem is particularly acute: slavery reparations. A recent story out of the U.K. highlights this problem in the most ironic way. According to GB News, the Green Party’s Global Majority Greens chief “reparations officer”—yes, they have one of those—is not only the child of a billionaire but a direct descendant of prolific slave traders. Antoinette Fernandez, who is originally from Nigeria and is currently running for office, has reportedly campaigned on the idea that British subjects should pay for the injustice of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The far-Left Green Party has been making huge gains in the U.K., so the reparations idea is a bit more “serious” than it used to be. Fernandez wrote in January that politicians who oppose slavery reparations are guilty of “appalling arrogance and inhumane dismissal of human rights.” Fernandez is no run-of-the-mill Nigerian immigrant. She’s the daughter of literal royalty. “The Green Party hopeful is the daughter of the Queen Mother of Lagos, and has been given the title ‘princess’ by the Nigerian press,” GB News reported. That’s not all. Her father was a billionaire, “who is said to have made his money in oil, gas, and mining, and his reported net worth was £6.5 billion when he died in 2015.” According to historians, GB News reported, “one of her ancient relatives owned 1,400 slaves, and a second brought back slaves that had been sent to Brazil to build houses in Lagos.” Think about that. A literal princess and daughter of one of the most fantastically wealthy people in the world—whose family benefitted directly from the slave trade—wants British taxpayers to pay up. Talk about arrogance. This revelation drew a fair bit of commentary on X. Reform UK member Chris Rose wrote that this was the “most Green Party story I’ve ever read.” The most Green Party story I’ve ever read.The Greens reparations officer, Antoinette Fernandez, who supports the idea of Britain paying trillions of pounds in slavery reparations, is descended from a Nigerian royal family that traded slaves.One of them owned 1,400 slaves. pic.twitter.com/K3nfZdW7o5— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) May 5, 2026 And social media sleuths even uncovered an old, deleted post from Fernandez that really completes this story. pic.twitter.com/oB5rF5JbSq— Holly Grayle (@HollyGrayle) May 5, 2026 “My great, great maternal grandfather was the Oba (king) of Lagos in 1861 and was forced -under threat of military bombardment – aka to avoid a massacre of the people – to cede Lagos over to the British. Lest we forget,” she wrote in 2024 How mean, those British bullies! Oh wait, there’s a bit of context here. A community note explained that the reason the British bombarded and annexed Lagos was because of the U.K.’s widespread campaign to suppress the slave trade. Once upon a time, Lagos was a major slave trade hub. The British shut it down almost as fast as Fernandez shut down her X account. It turns out history is a fair bit more complicated—and quite a bit less favorable to simplistic woke narratives—than what the slop produced by modern Hollywood would lead you to believe. The Green Party responded, according to the Daily Mail, that even covering Fernandez’ background is “racist” and a “bad-faith attempt to undermine the case for reparative justice.” Its so-called reparative justice is what’s being peddled in bad faith. This whole story highlights how much of the Left’s modern political project works. Its coalition is essentially various grievance groups (whether their claims be real or imagined) who look to grab power and then extract various benefits from Western societies. Those benefits can be money or a political office or a job or simply a higher status. It works because far too many—typically white—Westerners are conditioned to feel guilty for the world’s problems. The truth is that crimes of history are many, and the West has done far more than rest to rectify them.  In March, I wrote about the absurdity of West African nations like Ghana demanding reparations for slavery at the U.N., given their role in the international slave trade. Those nations never offer to pay anything, even though they are just as or even more guilty of fueling the trans-Atlantic slave trade as those supposedly awful European colonizers. Why is it the responsibility of nations like the U.K. to pay, but African nations that got rich off the slave trade and did their best to keep it going get off the hook? If anything, England deserves a great deal of credit for its instrumental role in extinguishing slavery around the globe. Why aren’t Arab, Middle Eastern nations asked to pay for their ancestors’ engagement in the Mediterranean and trans-Saharan slave trade for centuries? We hear nary a peep about that whole business. The answer to these questions is that the reparations push is mostly a scam. They won’t solve the injustices of history. They won’t make the world a better place. The whole idea is based on shaky history at best and an even worse ideology.

Mehek Cooke, senior national security and legal analyst at The Daily Signal, warned that Iran is betting on fear as the United States escalates military pressure—an approach she says exposes Tehran’s strategic weakness. Appearing on “Fox News @ Night” Monday, Cooke said, “Iran is betting everything on fear because they don’t have a military.” “They don’t have an air force, and they definitely don’t have a navy,” she said. Cooke pointed to recent U.S. military action targeting Iranian vessels, noting that the Strait of Hormuz—once Tehran’s primary economic leverage—no longer holds the same power. “We just saw the United States take out seven of their ships,” she said. “That shows you the Strait of Hormuz is no longer decisive.” On Monday, U.S. forces struck Iranian fast boats in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran reportedly launched missiles and drones against commercial shipping and U.S. naval assets. President Donald Trump said the U.S. would guide commercial vessels through the strait, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints, and said he would not allow Tehran to hold global energy markets hostage. Iran is attempting to push the U.S. to the edge of escalation while avoiding a full confrontation, Cooke said. “They’re trying to operate in a gray zone,” she said. “But we called them out immediately. We stopped them.” Cooke said Trump remains open to negotiations if Iranian leaders, including elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are willing to change course. But she emphasized that continued defiance would come with severe consequences. “He made a threat, and he meant it,” she said, warning that the U.S. can focus on additional pressure points beyond conducting military strikes, including targeting nuclear infrastructure and critical economic hubs such as Kharg Island. Cooke also argued that Gulf states have a stake in confronting Iran’s aggression, noting they too have been targeted and must play a role in demanding change. Later in the program, Cooke discussed what she described as another national crisis receiving far less attention: massive fraud across federal welfare and health care systems. Reacting to revelations of widespread hospice and home health care fraud, Cooke said the problem is systemic and bipartisan, affecting red and blue states alike. Drawing on her experience investigating fraud, she said government complacency has allowed abuse to grow into the billions of dollars. “This isn’t just blue states,” Cooke said. “It’s in states like Ohio.” She pointed to cases involving dozens of home healthcare centers receiving millions of dollars while basic oversight was absent. “You knock on doors, most of the individuals don’t speak English. Many of the individuals aren’t there and many don’t even know how home healthcare works.” Cooke cited examples in which a disproportionate share of Medicaid funding was concentrated in just two zip codes, calling it a red flag that should have triggered immediate scrutiny. Drawing on years of oversight work, she said fraud plagues programs in both red and blue states, including Ohio. “Government is complacent,” Cooke said. “They rubber-stamp fraud because it’s not their money.” Without serious accountability, she warned, taxpayers will continue to bear the cost of systemic neglect.

Carnegie Mellon University is skirting civil rights laws, making the university ripe for investigation. Pennsylvania lawmakers and the U.S. Department of Education should use CMU as an example to demonstrate that private schools are not above the law. CMU, which has had contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense totaling some $2.8 billion since 2008, is a private research university that ranks among the most competitive institutions in the world. The university is at the forefront of research on artificial intelligence and conducts training programs for military officers on effective AI use. Yet the university still operates a diversity, equity, and inclusion office despite a White House executive order prohibiting federal contractors from engaging in discriminatory DEI practices. In February, a federal appeals court allowed this DEI prohibition to stand, along with another order against DEI issued by the Trump administration.  Source: “Understanding Gendered Microaggressions,” March 11, 2026, Ryan Wilpula and Stephanie Shea. CMU promotes DEI materials, and officials feature DEI content across the school’s campus and curriculum. In fact, university staff recently displayed a PowerPoint describing how so-called microaggressions can be “gendered,” an idea that is part of the loosely organized DEI catalogue. The concept of “microaggressions” dates back at least as far as the 1970s, though Columbia University professor Derald Wing Sue is among those who resurrected the notion over the last decade. Microaggressions are a slippery idea because the perpetrators are supposedly unconscious of committing them. Researchers find that even the victims also may not be aware of them and need to have their consciousness raised by learning to recognize minuscule gestures. This creates a paradox: You do not know if you have committed a microaggression, and you do not know that you have received one that should offend you—so did anything really happen? Source: “Understanding Gendered Microaggressions,” March 11, 2026, Ryan Wilpula and Stephanie Shea. According to CMU staff, yes. Even addressing a group of people by saying “Hey guys!” constitutes an insult. You could be guilty of a microassault, microinsult, or a microinvalidation. And the presentation even provides contact information for the university police, indicating students should be prepared to call the authorities over a microaggression. The microaggression is “gendered” when the offender’s actions involve a person of one “gender” offending someone from a different “gender.” But microaggressions can be alleged in the area of race, too. When more than one identity (such as sex or race) is “oppressed” at the same time, DEI advocates call this “intersectionality.” Under critical race theory, radical law professors argue for solidarity among all the “oppressed,” adding economic class to the other categories. For them, life is a constant struggle between workers and capitalists and also between individuals from different races. This is how theorists such as the late Derrick Bell, former Harvard professor, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, who conceived of intersectionality, expanded Marx’s socialist idea that the world is just waiting for the next working-class revolution. Capitalism is inherently racist to these theorists, and, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, American law is systemically oppressive.  Source: “Understanding Gendered Microaggressions,” March 11, 2026, Ryan Wilpula and Stephanie Shea. Intersectionality is now part of many school curricula at the K-12 and postsecondary levels. Educators are teaching students to hunt for different ways in which they can suffer insults, then compound the insults by way of identity politics. The CMU presentation and its applications come notably close to conflicting with civil rights statutes because individuals are encouraged to treat people more severely based on their group identity. It looks like CMU is advocating for disparate treatment on the basis of sex. Depending on how members of the CMU community are expected to treat mere speech and minor gestures, CMU could be breaking the law. CMU is already facing scrutiny from the Pentagon because of the school’s relationship to foreign entities. CMU receives more funding from foreign sources than any college in the country except Harvard. Entities from both China and Russia send money to CMU. CMU’s presentation on gendered microaggressions may or may not be illegal. But the presence of DEI initiatives on campus, the likely applications of the microaggression PowerPoint, and the funding from countries of concern all warrant a closer look by state and federal officials.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on other countries to join the United States in taking action against Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.  “Iran cannot be allowed to normalize this control of the strait,” he said. “It’s completely unlawful, illegal. It’s outrageous, and every country in the world should be joining us in condemning it and doing something about it, but the United States has stepped up.”  Rubio briefed the press on Iran Tuesday in the place of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave. He addressed President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States will come to the aid of ships stuck in the Strait of Hormuz due to security concerns. Trump named the operation “Project Freedom.”  “Right now, you have a country who is unlawfully, criminally and illegally taking possession of an international waterway and blowing up commercial vessels and putting mines in the water,” Rubio said. “I don’t know how people don’t appreciate how outrageous this is, how unacceptable it is that any country would fire and try to sink commercial vessels or put mines in the water.” Iran has placed an unknown number of mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes.  Rubio said the U.S. is appealing to the United Nations.  “All we’re asking to do is to condemn it, to call on Iran to stop blowing ships, to remove these mines and to allow humanitarian relief to come through, because there’s humanitarian aid that’s trapped,” he said. “That’s it, it is a very modest request.”  Someone needs to stop Iran from this criminal activity, Rubio said. “And that’s why the United States military is guiding stranded commercial ships safely through the strait and is working to restore freedom of navigation and putting an end to these efforts to blow to hold the global economy hostage.” After Project Freedom began Monday morning regional time, two U.S. merchant ships have already safely passed through the strait, Rubio said.  “They’re now safely along the way,” he said.