When historians look back on this period of war in Ukraine and Iran, they will be deeply puzzled by a simple question: why can’t the leaders of the Western Democracies hear our enemies? There were two examples last week, one from Russia and one from Iran, in which our enemies were extraordinarily clear about their view of things. In both cases, our enemies’ comments were dramatically different from what we have been telling ourselves. We keep hoping for reasonableness, for negotiating to a peaceful conclusion, for finding some common ground to build a better future. Our enemies share none of those goals, and they are very clear about their goals and how different they are from the West’s self-delusion. Consider first the Russian position. While Putin was having a very nice chat with President Donald Trump for over an hour, his senior national security spokesperson was preparing a radically different message. Dmitry Medvedev has been president, prime minister, and now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia. He would never make an aggressive, hostile speech without Putin’s approval. Yet the day after Putin’s call with President Trump, Medvedev gave a speech in which he declared that the United States is Russia’s geopolitical rival and that the conflict with the West is “a question of existence” that will last longer than this generation. He rejected any American mediation between Russia and Ukraine and asserted that victory over Ukraine would solve a lot of Russia’s problems. Medvedev’s speech was a pretty clear statement of long-term conflict. Remember that Putin, in his April 2005 State of the Nation address, said he believed the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Why would we expect a former KGB Colonel who is a fervent Russian nationalist and who wants to reassemble a very strong Russian state to settle for the survival of a Ukraine he is determined to conquer? While the Russians were telling us we were in a very long conflict that would last over a generation, the Iranians were sending us a clear, unambiguous statement about their intentions. As the Institute for the Study of War reported: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared on April 30 that Iran will retain control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and maintain its nuclear and missile capabilities, which supports ISW-CTP’s assessment that the Iranian regime is unlikely to make meaningful concessions in its next proposal to the United States…Mojtaba also underscored that Iran will defend its nuclear, missile, and advanced technological capabilities as resolutely as it defends its territorial borders. A senior Iranian official speaking to the Washington Post on April 30 similarly asserted that Iran’s security establishment rejects compromise on key matters, such as Iran’s ability to enrich uranium. It seems clear that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi now dominates the Iranian dictatorship and represents the hardline position that Iran can withstand American and Israeli attacks and ultimately win the war simply by not giving in. Western analysts, including those who dominate Washington, D.C., simply cannot break out of their rational, Enlightenment model of reasonableness to understand how unreasonable alternative systems can be, and yet, within their own values and their own experiences, they are following a logic train that is easily understandable. This was the key problem Winston Churchill faced after reading “Mein Kampf” in the early 1930s and understanding the logic of Hitler’s insanity. He simply could not get the British establishment to listen to Hitler and rearm accordingly. Consider first the belief system and history that shape General Vahidi. He is part of a religious dictatorship that has been chanting “Death to America” for 47 years. General Vahidi was born in 1958 and joined the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in 1979 at the age of 21. He is sanctioned by the United States, Canada, and the European Union for terrorism and nuclear activities. When we think about the pain our bombing campaign is causing the Iranian government, we have to put it in the context of their experience of the war with Iraq from September 1980 to August 1988. This was a brutal meat grinder in which the Iraqis used chemical weapons. The best estimate is that Iranian casualties were over 1,000,000, with the Iranian death toll somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000. If you consider that General Vahidi’s experience from the age of 22 to 30 was this brutal war, and since then he has waged terrorist campaigns against the West while focusing on building nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach Europe and the United States, you get a different sense of what we are up against. If the religiously inspired (and this is the vital fact which the rational West refuses to consider) dictatorship, when it was barely established, could endure an eight-year war with a million casualties, what is the historic yardstick by which we should expect them to accept terms they would regard as a betrayal of the revolution? This question of pain levels also applies to Putin and the Russian dictatorship. The Soviet Union lost over 20 million dead in World War II. At Stalingrad alone, they lost 40,000 civilians and had about 1,100,000 soldiers killed or wounded. From a Ukrainian perspective, the horror of the Stalin-enforced famine of 1932 and 1933, which killed 3,900,000 (about 13% of the population) through starvation, is a horrifying reminder of why they fight against Moscow so intensely and at such costs. The Ukrainian word for the famine is Holodomor, which combines the Ukrainian words for starvation and to inflict death. It is reasonable to suggest that the Ukrainians will fight to the end rather than accept subjugation to a city that deliberately starved millions of them to death. Our enemies are trying to tell us who they really are. Future historians will puzzle at our inability to hear them. The Chinese and North Korean dictatorships are watching carefully our inability to confront and respond to reality. They will develop their own strategies accordingly, and both will help Russia and Iran survive the inadequate efforts of the United States and its allies. Literally, the future of the world will be decided by the American ability or inability to learn and change when faced with aggressive evil. If we do not change and recognize that our enemies are enemies who think differently from us, we will lose. It is that simple. *** Newt Gingrich was the Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Follow him on X @NewtGingrich.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Just before the Department of Government Efficiency closed its doors, it made a quiet move that may end up its most lasting impact on the federal deficit. DOGE published a massive trove of data in February that, for the first time, lets the public see what companies are billing Medicaid for. For decades, the payouts have been shrouded in secrecy. One of the largest government programs was a black box. I’ve spent the past two months diving into the numbers. What I found was the most blatant waste of federal dollars that I have encountered in my two decades as an investigative reporter. This is the first part of “Medicaid Millionaires,” a Daily Wire series exposing billions of dollars in dubious “personal services” payments where people are paid to spend time with their own family. I set my sights on Ohio, which like Minnesota has been granted waivers to expand Medicaid well beyond its original purpose. Under the guise of health care, Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform “homemaking” and “chores” like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these “personal services” tasks don’t even have to be health care workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient. According to a Daily Wire data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars on home health care in 2024, the last year for which data is available. Since the services are performed inside private residences, there is no way to know whether the workers went at all, or what they’re actually doing in exchange for taxpayer funds. An infinite number of small black boxes inside a black box. Multiple signs said the service provided, and billed to the government, was sometimes just “companionship & conversation.” As people have realized the United States government will pay them to hang out with their own families, northeast Columbus has seen its economy replaced by businesses that bill Medicaid. And Columbus, a city with the second largest Somali population in the country, has become, on the surface, the most unhealthy city on the planet. “Well if the government is going to pay you to do it,” one home health operator told me. “People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it.” The new welfare queens aren’t the recipients whose low incomes qualify them for poverty programs. They’re the companies getting rich off them. A billboard in Columbus / Luke Rosiak Driving down Cleveland Avenue, in less than 40 seconds you come across endless home health companies. Capital Home Health; Continental Home Health; Dynamic Home Healthcare; Ohio Senior Home Healthcare. Walgreens’ familiar logo is still faintly visible on the sign for what is now a dialysis clinic. Entire buildings throughout the city are filled entirely with what appear to be identical businesses. The enormous complex pictured below is 6161 Busch Boulevard. Its lack of windows would be a problem for most office buildings, but there is almost no one in this one. What’s inside is 94 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office, often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company name ending in “Home Health LLC” — and sometimes another piece of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for a break. This building alone billed taxpayers $66 million in the span of a few years, the records show. Luke Rosiak / The Daily Wire Pick the owner of a Columbus home health care company at random and look him up in public records, and you are likely to go down an endless rabbit hole: years of unpaid taxes and debts, sometimes criminal records, and an astonishing number of LLCs created in other industries, as if the millions they make from Medicaid are just a side gig. We went down several of those rabbit holes. In the coming days, you’ll meet: A politician who founded an $11 million home health care company that he appeared to run part-time — without even mentioning it in his political biography — who funded his campaign with donations from other home health care owners. A woman who reinvented her janitorial LLC as a “health” provider, then billed Medicaid nearly $100,000 the first month. A landlord who bought airplanes after renting space to hundreds of home health care companies that billed Medicaid a quarter of a billion dollars. A million-dollar Medicaid business owned by a couple with repeated fraud, violence, and theft convictions. A man who went to prison for Medicaid fraud but told the government he was too broke to pay restitution, while his neighbors and associates preside over a poverty-program empire. An accountant who lost his license for stealing public funds, then opened a $7 million home health company using the address of a convicted money launderer’s teenage son. These are not business geniuses, nor even people with any training or specialty in the health field. They have often failed at a variety of businesses, before suddenly becoming millionaires in home health care. Sometimes a company will have a full roster of clients in its very first month, making one wonder where the clients from. The companies don’t have websites or appear to advertise. They can’t stand out from their thousands of rivals based on price, unless they pay kickbacks, because the government pays the same to everyone. Nearly every owner of home health care companies in Columbus appears to be foreign. They live in a parallel society, where every associate in public records also has a foreign name, and all their business transactions are conducted with other foreigners. When we asked one what home health care companies did, one man threatened: “Journalists? Who cares? Do you guys pay my bills? I’m going to tell everybody you guys are racist.” The government is not, and likely has no ability to, monitor all the people it writes million-dollar checks to in Columbus. They all share combinations of just a few names, like Ahmed Mohamed and Mohamed Ahmed. Documents reviewed by The Daily Wire show individuals will spell their own name multiple different ways within a single document. And many of them list their birthday as January 1, because their birthdates are unknown. The business model is simple: a 40-year old Somali immigrant gets paid for spending time with, and maybe cooking for, his own 65-year-old mother. The middle-man is one of thousands of “home health” firms that have the “NPI” number necessary to bill Medicaid. The 40-year-old becomes an “employee” of that company, but has no clients other than his mother. There is no way to verify whether he actually even provided the “services” — unless his own mother is willing to testify against him. This poverty program is different from things like food stamps, because it has no monetary cap and its extent is decided not by politicians, but by any doctor willing to sign a form saying you could use some help around the house. It only takes one doctor who will say yes to churn out enough forms to bankrupt a state. For years, efforts to rein in waste have nibbled around the edges, shaving off a million here and a million there, while skeptics — and liberals — argued that the cost-cutting exercise was pointless because the lion’s share of federal spending was locked up in “non-discretionary” spending like health care. The implication was there was no waste in that category, and nothing that could be done about it, even as the nation careened towards insolvency. That premise couldn’t be more wrong. This blatant waste happened within miles from the Ohio state capital, where Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, and his appointees run the state. In an age of artificial intelligence, the Medicaid system has seemed disinterested in even the most obvious red flags. Perhaps that’s because it’s largely run by states, but with half or more of the bill being footed by federal taxpayers. The Trump administration is now turning its sights to Medicaid fraud with a task force led by Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Vice President JD Vance. They may want to start with Vance’s home state. Parker Thayer, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, contributed to this report.

A United Airlines plane appeared to hit a bakery truck on Sunday moments before landing at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Dramatic dashcam video shows a delivery driver glancing out the window after hearing a loud, screeching noise — moments before a Boeing 767 crashes into his truck.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in critical condition at a Florida hospital, his spokesman said Sunday evening — and President Donald Trump was quick to wish his friend and longtime ally well. The spokesman, Ted Goodman, said that the former mayor and staunch ally of the president “remains in critical but stable condition.” “Mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently in the hospital, where he remains in critical but stable condition,” the statement said. “Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak.  We do ask that you join us in prayer for America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani.” It is unclear what sent Mr. Giuliani, 81, to the hospital. President Trump issued a statement via Truth Social immediately upon learning that his friend and longtime ally was in the hospital, saying, “Our fabulous Rudy Giuliani, a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR, has been hospitalized, and is in critical condition. What a tragedy that he was treated so badly by the Radical Left Lunatics, Democrats ALL — AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” Giuliani, nicknamed “America’s Mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, was hospitalized recently following a car accident but had reportedly recovered. This is a developing story. Stay with The Daily Wire for updates.

Embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused her reelection opponent, Spencer Pratt, of “exploiting the grief” of the LA wildfire victims. In an interview with left-wing podcast host Katie Phang, Bass criticized Pratt’s outspoken advocacy, claiming that he was capitalizing on the tragedy even though he was among those who lost a home in the Palisades wildfire.  “Well, honestly, before this, I had never heard of Spencer Pratt. But the thing I am concerned about is that I feel like he’s exploiting the grief of people in the Palisades. And I think that’s reprehensible,” Bass said. “I think he’s about his own celebrity; he’s famous now again.” “I think he could benefit by a basic civics course, because I don’t think he understands the basics of how any government works,” she added. LA Mayor Karen Bass: Well, honestly, before this, I had never heard of Spencer Pratt. But the thing I am concerned about is that I feel like he’s exploiting the grief of people in the Palisades. And I think that’s reprehensible. pic.twitter.com/PGbn9UKmkZ — Acyn (@Acyn) May 2, 2026 The attacks come after Pratt, a former reality TV star, posted a viral advertisement blasting Bass and other city leaders. In the campaign video, Pratt films himself outside the mansions belonging to Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman. The scene then cuts to a homeless encampment as Pratt narrates, “They don’t have to live in the mess they created. Where you live,” he says. “This is where I live,” Pratt adds while posing outside a trailer at the site of his burned-down home. “They let my home burn down. I know what the consequences of failed leadership are. That’s why I’m running for mayor. For my sons, and the rest of us Angelenos that want to stop these corrupt politicians from destroying our city. We are gonna get the golden age of Los Angeles back,” he concludes. They not like us pic.twitter.com/78hducHDUE — Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) April 29, 2026 In January 2025, wind-whipped flames tore through homes and devastated entire neighborhoods in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, an upscale community near the Los Angeles County coastline. Firefighters and emergency crews worked for weeks to fully contain the fires, which burned 50,000 acres and destroyed nearly 16,000 homes. The fires, among the deadliest in California’s history, directly resulted in at least 31 deaths, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. A more in-depth analysis by the Boston University School of Public Health, however, estimated that the fires were responsible for 409 excess deaths. “The additional 409 deaths that were excluded from official death records likely resulted from partially attributable factors such as lung or heart conditions due to increased exposure to air pollution from smoke and burning objects, as well as indirect factors such as disruptions in other critical healthcare or mental health emergencies,” the researchers said. Mayor Bass, who was representing the Biden Administration in Africa as Los Angeles communities were reduced to rubble, came under scorching criticism for her handling of the fires. Returning from her overseas trip, Bass was caught flat-footed and literally speechless at Los Angeles International Airport. “Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning, and do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?” Sky News reporter David Blevins asked Bass at the airport. “Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?” he added. Pratt is a first-time candidate facing more than a dozen other contenders in the nonpartisan mayoral primary in June, including Bass, who is seeking re-election. Prediction markets currently favor leftist Nithya Raman. ‘Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent whilst their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the fire department’s budget? @skydavidblevins questions the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, as she faces backlash regarding the California wildfires.https://t.co/Nkz8onjC7V pic.twitter.com/WwRwp6Imqz — Sky News (@SkyNews) January 8, 2025