As we celebrate Thanksgiving, take a moment to remember the many Americans who gave their last full measure 82 years ago in the attack on the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Almost two years after Pearl Harbor, the assault by the 2nd Marine Division on a Japanese-held stronghold started on Nov. 20, 1943, five days before Thanksgiving. In a brutal three-day battle, over 1,000 Americans were killed, and almost 2,300 were wounded. In proportion to the forces engaged, it may have been one of the most costly battles in U.S. military history, with as many casualties suffered in three days as in the six-month campaign on Guadalcanal. Betio Island, the main island of the Tarawa Atoll, was a little over two miles long and no more than half a mile wide. It is about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and was important to the Allied communication lines with Australia and New Zealand. It was part of the outer defense line of the Japanese Empire. Tarawa was the opening campaign of the U.S. drive across the central Pacific. Even though no point on the island was more than nine feet above sea level, the Japanese force of 4,800 soldiers had honeycombed the island with a formidable array of barbed wire, mines, bunkers, pillboxes, log barricades, and gun emplacements with interlocking fields of fire. It was the most fortified atoll the U.S. would invade. The Japanese commander, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, boasted that “a million Americans couldn’t take Tarawa in a hundred years.” When the battle was over, only 17 Japanese were alive, along with 129 forced Korean laborers. The U.S. Navy Task Force supporting the Marines, led by Admiral Harry Hill, included three battleships—two of which, the Tennessee and the Maryland, had been damaged at Pearl Harbor—as well as several light and heavy cruisers and destroyers and three aircraft carriers. A New Challenge Even though the U.S. Marines had a long and storied history, they had relatively little experience in the type of large-scale amphibious assault against a heavily defended island that the Tarawa attack would require. Although the 2nd Marine Division had already fought a bloody campaign on Guadalcanal, alongside the 1st Marine Division, the initial landings there were unopposed. That would not be the case on Tarawa. And on Tarawa, the Marines, for the first time, would be up against Japan’s elite Special Naval Landing Force—the Imperial Marines. The 16- and 14-inch guns of the battleships, along with the guns of the cruisers and destroyers, conducted a massive pre-invasion bombardment. In addition to air attacks launched from the carriers, the warships fired more than 3,000 tons of shells. Unfortunately, as the Navy and the Marines experienced again and again in subsequent island assaults, the sandy soil absorbed much of the high explosives, and most of the Japanese bunkers survived. There were also complaints from the Marines that the shelling was lifted too early, giving the Japanese time to get their men back down to the shoreline defenses before the Marines landed. Even worse was a problem that affected much of the Pacific island-hopping campaign—the lack of precise information on the topography and the tides and currents surrounding these islands. The first three waves of Marines were carried in LVTs or amphtracs, an armored, amphibious tractor that could get over the reef surrounding the island. In fact, Tarawa was the first battle using the LVTs, which had been originally developed for rescue operations in the Florida Everglades. But because there were not enough of them and so many were lost in the initial assault, the following waves of Marines were carried in Higgins boats, which drew three to four feet of water. In a mistake that would end up costing many lives, the battle planners miscalculated the tide, and the Higgins boats were stranded in low water over the coral reef. The Heroism of Marines In what is probably one of the greatest examples of bravery, fortitude, and sheer grit in the history of the Marine Corps, the Marines dismounted from the Higgins boats and waded hundreds of yards through chest-high water under intense enemy fire, loaded down with weapons and packs. Five thousand Marines managed to get ashore on the first day, but the lagoon was filled with the floating bodies of hundreds of dead Marines. In fact, the Marines were pinned down on the beach because of the fanatical Japanese resistance and a seawall that their amphtracs could not get over. They had numerous other problems, from seawater soaked radios to delays in getting their artillery support  ashore to water contaminated from being stored in insufficiently cleaned oil drums. There were countless acts of bravery during the battle by both Marines and sailors. On the second day, two Navy lieutenants on their own initiative rescued 150 wounded Marines who were stranded on the reef, one of them using a commandeered Higgins boat after his own boat was wrecked. That Navy lieutenant even took out a Japanese sniper who had swum out to a wrecked Higgins boat. He received the Navy Cross for his gallantry—and when the war ended, Lt. Eddie Albert resumed his acting career. Four Medals of Honor were awarded, including one for Colonel David Shoup, who had landed with his Marines on the first day and had continued to direct attacks despite being wounded with shrapnel in both legs. The battle to take this tiny island, which was only barely the size of New York’s Central Park, was vicious, with the Marines fighting from one pillbox, bunker, and strongpoint to another. Each one had to be destroyed and every Japanese soldier killed, because none would surrender. The Marines fought off multiple Banzai charges, a foreshadowing of what was to come in other island assaults in the next two years. Marine Corps Gen. Holland “Howlin Mad” Smith, who is known as the father of modern U.S. amphibious warfare, was the commander of the Amphibious Corps, which included the 2nd Marine Division. He compared the Marine assault on Tarawa to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The number of casualties and the photos of dead Marines published in newspapers from that “stinking little island” shocked the American public. But Henry Shaw, the former chief historian of the Marine Corps, said that Tarawa provided the Marines and the Navy with the textbook on how to conduct amphibious landings. The lessons they learned helped save countless American lives in the island assaults that followed in the Pacific Campaign that ultimately led to the Japanese surrender in 1945. So as we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners with our families, all of us should remember and give thanks to the American Marines and sailors who 72 years ago fought for the freedom, liberty, and security we enjoy as Americans. They didn’t experience a peaceful Thanksgiving, but they—and the men and women in our military today—are the reason all of us will be able to enjoy a peaceful holiday with our families. The post This Thanksgiving, Remember the Marines Who Gave Everything at Tarawa appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sorry, Massachusetts, Thanksgiving started here. According to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, “Captain John Woodlief and thirty-seven men sailed from Bristol, England, on the ship Margaret and reached Berkeley Hundred nearly three months later in December 1619. They marked their deliverance from the stormy North Atlantic with a simple service of thanks to God, declaring that the day of their arrival would be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God. This event is recognized as the first Thanksgiving in America, occurring a year before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts.” For Virginians that work for limited government in the face of mounting evidence that mandated equity only creates an unanimity of suffering while the connected class reigns this year’s election results still sting. Yet, we give thanks to the fact that despite the yawls and tosses of the stormy political seas we still hold onto the constitutional railings that Virginia-born Founding Founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison installed. More so, though, we offer thanks to their less well-known contemporaries like George Mason, James Monroe and Patrick Henry (hard to imagine him on the ‘less well-known list’ but ask a school kid in New York City who he is) who insisted that great shield, the Bill of Rights, be included lest they vote down the U.S. Constitution. It’s with those ten God-given rights that business owners were able to battle the woke agenda looking to force servitude and even allow for government-forced business closures. It’s with those rights that the honest kind of debate that was Jefferson’s vision for his University of Virginia is defended against censors on grounds in the courts of Old Dominion. Sure, it’s been a rough year politically speaking, but imagine life in a country without those ten amendments to be thankful for. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post How Virginia Held the First Thanksgiving and Gave Us Freedoms to Be Thankful For appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In today’s Thanksgiving episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler take issue with director Ken Burns’ assertion in his “American Revolution” documentary series that the Founding Fathers based their ideas for democracy on the Iroquois Nations. Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.  Jack Fowler: Victor, my former colleague at National Review, Dan McLaughlin, wrote a long critique and a somewhat harsh critique of Ken Burns’ new documentary on the American Revolution. I’ve not seen it, and maybe I’ll get to it eventually, although I’ve come a long way from being a fan of Ken Burns. His original Civil War series was terrific and everything since is quite woke. But Dan’s headline for his article, I’m not going to read anything from it, is “Ken Burns ‘American Revolution’ woke series overemphasizes Iroquois, the Indians, influence.” I thought that we were about the Founding Fathers and Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. And I guess it was the upstate Iroquois Indians that we have to thank for our democracy. Anyway, Victor, your thoughts on this.  Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I should say that I know Ken Burns. I’ve known him for 10 years. He’s a friend. And I see him each year. And I disagree with him on a lot of things. And I do say, I think I said it to him, the Civil War documentary was a work of genius. I have not seen this [new documentary], so I don’t feel qualified. All I know is I’ve read two or three reviews about it, and there was this one issue that’s dear to my heart, and that is this myth that the Iroquois Six Nations tribes created the democratic model, at least one of the major ones, for the Founding Fathers. That is based on an early line in Benjamin Franklin’s corpus of quotations that he mentions the Six Nations. And I think it’s in the Federalist, I don’t know if it’s [Federalist No.] 8, 9, or 10 or what, but there’s a mention. But here’s the point.  If you collate in the Federalist Papers the work of [Alexander] Hamilton or [John] Adams, and the intellectual pedigree of our Constitution, and you count up the references to this is what Cicero says, this is what the Greeks did, this is what the Roman Republic was like, this is the later influence of the Magna Carta, all of that, the Glorious Revolution, all that stuff, and you compare it to a reference to the Iroquois, it’s about 99 % to one. It really is. And if you look at our Constitution and you compare it with two different alternatives, here’s a bunch of people who have different tribes and the tribes say, “Well, what do you think? Well, what do you think? Well, what do you think?” And you say, “Well, vote on it.” That’s not democracy or constitutional republics. I’m sorry.  I think Plato has a part when he’s talking about democracy in bastardized form, and he says, when people rob a bank and they want to split up the loot, they vote by majority vote. So, five guys, they all rob a bank and they say, “Well, how are we going to split it up? Let’s just split it up in five parts and we’ll vote on it.” Oh, they’re models for the Constitution. No. So, the Iroquois did something that was practical. Not all of them did it, and they should be commended for it, but it had very little, if any, influence on the Founding Fathers. And what were the influential texts? It was not even passages in Thucydides or Plato, especially not Plato, but a little bit in Aristotle, but most of it, almost all of it in the ancient world came from Cicero’s De Legibus and philosophical works and then the Magna Carta, the idea of everybody has particular rights versus the monarchy. But most of all, the French thinkers and the British enlightenment, John Locke, but also people like Montesquieu who really took the ancient idea of checks and balances and said, I’ve got the spirit of laws. There should be a judicial. There should be an executive and there should be a legislative and they should each have equal power so that power cannot be aggrandized. And we took the name Senate from the Latin senatus, the older. And that’s why we said you had to be 30 years old. I don’t know if it was originally 35 or 30, but it was older than the House, which is 25, I think, and you get a longer term. That was modeled after both the earlier Greek, the Gerousia, which in Latin became the Senate, and they had special privileges over the assembly. And then there was an executive, an archon in Greece and two consuls. And then there was a judiciary. There was the ephorate in Sparta and then there were tribal court jurisdictions in, I shouldn’t say tribal, but there were judicial councils and judges, prefects and legates and things like that. My point is that the tripartite system came from the ancient world. It was refined by Montesquieu and the Founders read vociferously in European literature. And that’s where we got our system.  To the extent that people said, “Hey, Native Americans, this isn’t that weird. They kind of vote.” Well, that was just mentioned in passing. But under the DEI aegis, all of a sudden, the exception, the insignificant anecdote became canonized. “We owe Native Americans everything because, you know, they created democracy.” No, it’s not true. We have democracy every day in our lives, you know what I mean? You out on the playground and you say, “Let’s choose teams. Well, let’s vote on how we should choose the team.” That’s not democracy. It’s just a way of settling a dispute. And democracy involves a written constitution and checks and balances and a tripartite government and a constitutional republic, more so. They had none of that.  Anybody who says that that it was a prime influence on Alexander Hamilton or John Adams or James Madison or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson is sorely mistaken.  Fowler: Well, Ken Burns is a man of the left, yes?  Hanson: Yes, well, he gave a talk at Stanford graduation that was pretty fiery. The graduation, not too long ago. And I know him. I mean, I respect his work. I always really respect his work because I think the Civil War that he did was the finest documentary I’ve ever seen produced in America. And that’s pretty high praise.  Fowler: Yeah, I would agree with that. But it’s just that, you know, historians of the Left thinking about our founding.  We’re not going to say America is 1776, it’s 1619 and it’s evil. And in this case—again, I haven’t seen it either—but we are sure as h— not going to take the … PBS, the official government entity, is going to produce something related to America 250. But what we’re going to say is not going to recognize a bunch of old white men. We’re going to talk about some upstate New York Indians.  Hanson: Yes, and they get in very tricky territory, though. And this is what the Left can’t figure out, because I followed this “Iroquois created the founding” for 30 years. It came in during the Bill Bennett, Saul Bellow, University of Chicago, all that fight under [Ronald] Reagan.  Fowler: Excuse me, could you just say what it is, the Iroquois Nations, just so that everybody knows?  HANSON: The Iroquois Nations were Indigenous people in, I guess you’d say, the Atlantic northern states. And there were six versions of them, or tribes, subgroups. And they had a council, a federation, in which they adjudicated common concerns by assembling.  And each of the six nations then were not autocratically told what to do, but each member then weighed in, and they supposedly voted under an executive. And what I’m saying is that that had been known to the Founders. And as I said earlier, and I’m quoting by memory now, but Benjamin Franklin compiled a book years before where he mentioned famous quotes about consensual government and he said then the Indians also had the Iroquois Nations. And then in the Federalist Papers, when they are talking about all the different [consensual governments], what they’re trying to say is what we are doing is the right tradition in history and other people have fought for their liberty.  And here’s what happened in Greece, which they knew, in Rome. And here’s what happened in England. And here were the philosophers. And that’s about 99 % of the reference. And then, I think in two or three places, they said even the Iroquois Nations had a conference where people voted. And somehow that got into, “Wow, that gave them the idea.” No, it didn’t. It did not. It did not. It was just a few passing remarks to find support for this radical idea of constitutional government that they were introducing against a monarch. And the irony is that the Left can’t decide whether the foundation of this country was purely evil or it was wonderful, but it wasn’t a bunch of white men. It was Native Americans who invented our system. Well, if they invented our system, then are you going to continue and say, “Well, Native Americans had slaves and they tortured people. So Guantanamo Bay is a legacy of the Iroquois because they tortured people. And a lot of indigenous people had servile practices and serfs and slaves. So I guess slavery came from the Iroquois, didn’t it?  No, they only pick and choose a certain thing. And I think what they basically said, “This was an evil country, but it could have been good because we had originally a Native American idea of democracy.”  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Fallacy at the Heart of Ken Burns’ ‘American Revolution’ Documentary appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump denounced the shooting of two National Guard members as an “act of terror” in remarks Wednesday night and said the suspect was originally from Afghanistan. Referring to the “monstrous ambush-style attack just steps away from the White House,” Trump said, “This heinous assault was an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror. It was a crime against our entire nation.” He did not name the suspect, but said the suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. Wednesday had come from Afghanistan to the United States in 2021. WATCH IN FULL: President Donald J. Trump addresses the nation following the horrific terror attack on National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/5g6xpAYqVw— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 27, 2025 “I can report tonight that based on the best available information, the Department of Homeland Security is confident that the suspect in custody is a foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on Earth,” the president said, speaking from Palm Beach, Florida. “He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about, nobody knew who was coming in, nobody knew anything about it,” Trump added. .@POTUS: "@DHSgov is confident that the suspect in custody is a foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan… He was flown in by the Biden Administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights… His status was extended under legislation signed by President Biden." pic.twitter.com/rMCQe6CMIo— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 27, 2025 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on social media platform X that “[e]ffective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.” Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols. The protection and safety of our homeland and of the American people remains our singular focus and…— USCIS (@USCIS) November 27, 2025 In a post on social media platform X, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that the suspect “is an Afghan national who was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States under Operation Allies Welcome on September 8, 2021, under the Biden Administration.” According to a 2024 report from the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, about 77,000 Afghans “were granted humanitarian parole into the United States for 2 years” under Operation Allies Welcome. In 2022, a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report raised concerns about the program, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis authored by Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow; Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center; and Steven Bradbury, who was then a distinguished fellow at Heritage. They wrote: The DHS Inspector General reported that the Afghans were not adequately screened, despite Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’s contrary statements to Congress and the American public, and that DHS failed to track Afghans who independently left the U.S. military bases where they were initially housed. The Inspector General further reported that DHS did not attempt to locate all Afghans who left the bases to verify their compliance with parole conditions. In 2023, Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, expressed concerns about the program, saying in a statement, “It is inconceivable that proper vetting procedures were followed during the chaos and disarray of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan and questions remain to the nature of persons enrolled in domestic resettlement programs.” CIA director John Ratcliffe said that the suspect had worked with the CIA. “In the wake of the disastrous Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation,” Ratcliffe told Fox News Digital. Trump said in his Wednesday night remarks that the “attack underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.” “The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world … no country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” the president added. Trump added that the suspect’s “status was extended under legislation signed by President [Joe] Biden, a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country.” “We’re not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country,” Trump continued. .@POTUS: "We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country." pic.twitter.com/jAPGBP5HH2— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 27, 2025 “We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.” “If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” the president said. Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that he recalled “back in 2021 criticizing the Biden policy of opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees.” “Friends sent me messages calling me a racist. It was a clarifying moment,” he added. “They shouldn’t have been in our country.” “We will first bring the shooter to justice, and then we must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country,” the vice president continued. Many of our voters will demand not just words, but action, and this is an entirely appropriate response. We will first bring the shooter to justice, and then we must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country. Already some voices in corporate media…— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 27, 2025 In his remarks Wednesday night, Trump also called on Americans to remember the two National Guard members and their family and friends in prayer on Thanksgiving. “This Thanksgiving I ask every family to say a prayer for the great heroes who were so horribly shot—for their loved ones, please, say a prayer.” The post ‘Act of Terror’: Trump Says National Guard Shooting Suspect Afghan Who Entered US Through Biden Program appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Two National Guard members were shot in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday; a tragedy that immediately spurred a deluge of prominent liberal commentators and activists on social media blaming President Donald Trump. The guardsmen were attacked a block away from the White House shortly before 3 p.m. local time and remained in critical condition as of Wednesday evening. The troops are part of the National Guard surge Trump ordered in August to address rising crime in the nation’s capital after a series of high-profile incidents, including the fatal shooting of a congressional intern. Democrats had long opposed Trump’s deployment of Guard units to the capital and other cities, calling it an overreach of presidential authority. In the hours after the shooting, many revived those criticisms, arguing that the president was to blame. “Trump put them in harm’s way, fash,” former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann posted on X. Trump put them in harm's way, fash— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 26, 2025 Jane Mayer, a writer at The New Yorker, argued that the “poor guardsmen should never have been deployed,” adding that they had “virtually nothing to do but pick up trash.” “It was for political show and at what a cost,” Mayer wrote on X. This is so tragic, so unnecessary, these poor guardsmen should never have been deployed. I live in DC and watched as they had virtually nothing to do but pick up trash. It was for political show and at what a cost. https://t.co/ABkOHNHAvG— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) November 26, 2025 “Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are culpable for endangering the National Guard by putting them in harm’s way,” author and activist John Pavlovitz posted on his BlueSky platform, where he has more than 233,000 followers. Writer Charlotte Clymer similarly told [his] more than 200,000 BlueSky followers that the troops had been “used as political pawns.” “They sign up to serve their country, not needlessly deploy to American cities to pick up garbage,” Clymer wrote. Media personality Keith Edwards also suggested on X that the guardsmen would have been “fine” were it not for “Trump’s illegal deployment of the national guard for a non-emergency.” “History will wonder what we’re all thinking: why did Trump have to put them in harm’s way for a STUNT?” the X account “Call to Activism,” run by political commentator Joe Gallina, posted to its more than 1 million followers. ?BREAKING: Both National Guard members who were shot in Washington, DC, just one block from the White House, have died from their injuries.God bless them and their families.History will wonder what we’re all thinking: why did Trump have to put them in harm’s way for a STUNT? pic.twitter.com/Dx8BCAhaie— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 26, 2025 Many other users echoed similar sentiments, including one post with thousands of likes that called the incident an “orchestrated tragedy by a president hellbent on creating a tinder box environment across the country.” Writer and former senior editor at The New Republic Brian Beutler responded to West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s initial—and later retracted—claim that the guardsmen had died, writing that Morrisey had “sent them to die for a stunt.” They should not have been here. You sent them to die for a stunt.— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) November 26, 2025 Despite the posts downplaying crime in the city, violent crime during the National Guard’s initial one-month surge in the capital fell 39% compared to the same period last year, including a 53% drop in homicides. Opposition to the deployments has been ongoing for months. Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker claimed in August that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into his state was an “attack on the American people” and would be used to “stop the 2026 elections.” While the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that one suspect is in custody, officials have not released details about the individual, a possible motive, or whether others were involved. The president said in a Truth Social post shortly after the incident that the “animals” who shot the guardsmen will “pay a very steep price,” and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that 500 additional troops would be deployed in response. Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Liberals Blame Trump for National Guard Shooting appeared first on The Daily Signal.