The Israeli military said Tuesday that a targeted overnight strike killed Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) referred to Larijani as the “effective” leader of Iran since the war began. Larijani was a close adviser of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed last month. He was responsible for Iran’s military response to the joint U.S.-Israeli operation launched on February 28. The IDF also accused Larijani of overseeing the regime’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests. “Throughout the years, Larijani was considered one of the most veteran and senior figures within the Iranian regime leadership, and was a close associate of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” the IDF said in a social media post. “During the most recent wave of protests against the Iranian terror regime, Larijani personally oversaw the massacre that was carried out against Iranian protestors.” Iran has not commented on the status of Larijani, but a statement honoring Iranian navy “martyrs” was posted to Larijani’s X account shortly before the IDF said he had been killed.  Last week, Larijani threatened President Donald Trump after the president warned Iran he would strike the country harder if it blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.   “The Ashura-loving nation of Iran does not fear your paper threats,” Larijani posted on social media. “ Even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Watch out for yourself—lest you be eliminated!” In January, the Treasury Department sanctioned Larijani over Iran’s response to the anti-government protests.  In a separate strike, the IDF said it killed Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij Resistance Force, a paramilitary unit under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.  “Yesterday, the IDF targeted & eliminated Gholamreza Soleimani, who operated as commander of the Basij unit for the past 6 years,” the IDF said. “Under Soleimani, the Basij unit led the main repression operations in Iran, employing severe violence, widespread arrests, and the use of force against civilian demonstrators.” Soleimani was heavily involved in the crackdown on protesters that killed thousands of Iranians.  An Israeli official told Fox News that the U.S. military was involved in the strikes targeting Soleimani.  “This was a joint U.S. and Israeli effort,” the official said. “A strike in Tehran targeted the Basij commander and around a dozen others, including the most senior figures in the Basij forces—people with a lot of blood on their hands.” The Basij unit has been sanctioned by the State Department for human rights abuses in Iran. The group has also been accused of recruiting child soldiers.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** In a few short weeks, the U.S. will host the World Irish Dance Championships. Absent immediate action, that elite competition will include at least one male competing as a female, in brazen non-compliance with U.S. policy regarding trans-identifying athletes. Saint Patrick may have successfully cast the proverbial snakes out of Ireland once upon a time, but several hundred years later, false doctrine has made its way back into the heart of Irish culture through one of its most cherished traditions. I was four years old the first time that I saw “Riverdance” performed in 1997. As a little girl with a platinum blonde bob, I was enraptured watching ethereal women seemingly floating above the stage, the male dancers dueling with the synthetic thunderclaps with the percussive beats of their shoes. There was nothing to match the infectious energy of over a dozen dancers perfectly in sync with the blazing speed of the fiddle player. From then on, my parents could not stop me from breaking out into my own version of an Irish jig in every grocery store aisle, or from getting involved in the sport of competitive Irish dance. I was not alone. Thanks to “Riverdance,” a generation of young girls traded the more common ballet shoes for a pair of ghillies and hard shoes. Irish dance is no longer a niche cultural tradition but an international sport. Tens of thousands of dancers compete in countries around the world. And each year, the most elite come together at the World Championships in the hopes of claiming the most prestigious title in the sport. But for female Irish dancers, their hopes of achieving their goals have had to be tempered in recent years. In 2023, for the first time in Irish dance history, a trans-identifying boy claimed the title of Southern Regional Champion for the under-14 age group, an event I myself witnessed as a competitor in my own age category at that year’s Regionals. The boy, Alyssa Saltzman, then went on to compete at the North American Nationals and the Worlds, claiming medals at each that otherwise would have gone to girls. That boy is about to compete, once again, at the Worlds, which is set to take place outside of Chicago, March 29 through April 5. Despite outrage within the Irish dance community and Concerned Women for America’s call to change this unfair policy, the sport’s main governing bodies have chosen to sit on their hands. Although there is a U.S.-based governing body of Irish Dance, the Irish Dance Teachers’ Association of North America, it takes its marching orders from the Dublin-based governing body, the Irish Dancing Commission. Both organizations are at fault here. Though the Irish Dancing Commission writes the policy, American dancers provide much of the funding for the sport. The North American association has plenty of leverage to put an end to boys competing as girls if it had the will to do so. There have been petitions, media attention, and even a proposal to introduce a third gender category for other-identifying dancers. But the proposal was tabled by the Irish Dancing Commission, and the issue otherwise ignored. Instead, the message it has sent is that it cares far more about being politically correct and staying in the good graces of a loud but tiny minority than acting to protect its female dancers and the integrity of the sport. The true cherry on top is that the Irish dance world has been embroiled in a years-long cheating scandal so wide-ranging that the BBC even made a documentary about it. So perhaps it should not be a surprise that, when a boy steals medals and titles from female competitors, the rule-makers turn a blind eye. Sadly, many families have chosen to walk away from the sport as a result. On top of being incredibly physically demanding, Irish dance is extraordinarily expensive. There are numerous hours of dance classes, private lessons, thousands of dollars of crystal-covered competition dresses, and travel expenses for competitions not just in other states, but also in other countries. Why would families choose to sink all that money and time only for their daughters to be humiliated by losing to a boy in a dress? The more the spotlight shines on the sport for all of the wrong reasons, the fewer families will choose to get involved in the first place. I have been told that this issue should not matter in something artistic, such as dance, that there are not the same physical ramifications at play in the performing arts as there are in a sport like boxing or swimming. In response, I usually explain how endurance, strength, and speed are all major factors in competitive Irish dance and are why sex-separated categories exist in the first place. Irish dance is, at its core, a dance form that highlights and celebrates sexual difference, with men and women wearing entirely different dance shoes and performing different dances from one another. What I find most offensive, though, is that the powers-that-be are alright with girls being told that they are, in fact, not the best female dancer. That sometimes, the best female dancer at a competition is a boy. They are okay with young girls’ dreams and self-esteem being demolished in the name of playing along with the delusion of gender ideology. They are okay with bullying thousands of young female dancers in order to cater to the feelings of one confused boy. They are fine with indulging this young boy’s choices, which is itself a form of abuse because those are choices he will likely live to regret. Though the Irish and North American governing bodies have chosen to ignore the will of the majority of dancers (and the families who foot the bill), by holding the sport’s most important competition on American soil, they now run the risk of being at odds with official U.S. policy regarding transgender athletes. Many states that host regional competitions have laws preventing boys from competing against girls. No facility that receives federal dollars can violate Title IX, according to President Donald Trump’s executive order; therefore, no such facility should host any of these competitions. If the governing bodies do not care about the opinions of those competing, they should care about scrutiny from law enforcement. Saint Patrick rejected the pagan ideas that had enslaved Ireland for centuries, turning it into a beacon of Christian academics and leadership. But the spineless decisions from the likes of the Irish dance governing bodies to cater to radical gender ideology make a mockery of all that St. Patrick accomplished. The female Irish dance category should be for girls and women only. *** Maggie McKneely is director of government relations for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Twenty-five centuries ago, Thucydides wrote of heroic men that their story, after death, “abides everywhere without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives.” We know them when they are gone by their enduring effect upon us, and upon those who knew them — and upon those whom they never knew, but who live and flourish in the shade of their works. The hero lives beyond his own. That was the late great Coach Lou Holtz in full. After 89 years on the field, he has gone on to his reward — and he also lives on, among us, in the lives he transformed, and in the country he served. He was the greatest of men — a college football hall of famer, a devoted father, and a faithful Christian. He was also one of my best friends. I had the opportunity to reflect upon his friendship, and his example, at his visitation and memorial in South Bend, Indiana this week. Seeing the men and women gathered there — the friends and family, and just as importantly the Americans who he never knew but knew him — it was impossible to miss the simple truth. Lou Holtz was a heroic man. It was a quiet heroism, a modest heroism, and a heroism he would have denied with all sincerity. But his life was one of heroism all the same. Selfless service and a solid personal example, you see, can be heroic in their way. He possessed both in full. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Coach Holtz was a source of inspiration to me ever since we first met 33 years ago at the 1993 Cotton Bowl game, where Texas A&M played Notre Dame, and I was the Cotton Bowl Queen. It was a cold, cold day out, but it turned out to be the beginning of a warm, lifelong friendship. Coach Holtz famously said, “God did not put us on this earth to be ordinary.” And his extraordinary life proves that he lived up to those words better than most. We could point to his many victories on the field, as the only college football coach in history to lead six different programs to bowl games and four different programs to final top 15 rankings. But those victories are just part of the story — the fruits of a lifelong commitment to servant leadership. In addition to serving as an officer in the United States Army Reserve, Coach Holtz was active in national politics for many years. Decades after we first met, we reunited when I was at the helm of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As the years went on, we developed a bond over a shared vision for America that solidified under President Trump. Coach Holtz was an early supporter of the president, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 — an honor that was well deserved. Coach Holtz was a great American, a great coach, a great man. But most important in the eyes of God: he was a good man. He was never content with merely speaking about the Gospel — he was intent on putting it into practice. His decades of charitable work, most recently through the Holtz’s Heroes Foundation, served communities in need and provided scholarships to former student-athletes facing financial, physical, or mental hardships. In 2021, he helped me launch the America First Policy Institute, which he later told me was the most important team he would ever be a part of. Instead of kicking his feet up, he spent his final years coaching America back to greatness and inspired countless Americans along the way — including me. The last time I saw him, he was still working, still laboring, still leading for the causes he held dear — God and America. Whether on the football field, on the civic field, or on the field of faith, Coach Holtz carried the ball and kept the flame of greatness alive. Although he’s no longer with us, his dedication to truth and goodness lives on in the lives of those he impacted. There are so many who will walk in the paths he set forth without knowing it was him who gave them the opening drive. But we who know, we who loved him, we will always remember. Thank you, Coach, for your life, for your example, and for your faith. We won’t let you down. * * * Brooke L. Rollins is the 33rd U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Disclaimer: Brooke Rollins is writing in her personal capacity as a private citizen and the views expressed herein are solely her own.

A multi-billion dollar defense contractor that gets federal work without competition because of the hardships of life as an “Alaskan native” doesn’t just have an apparently Eskimo-free executive suite — it passes through millions to the non-native companies of the CEO’s husband, which don’t even pretend to be indigenous. ASRC Federal’s business model relies on racial preference laws that allow no-bid contracts for firms owned by minorities, with even larger contracts available to those owned by indigenous people. It is named after, and is owned by, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, a for-profit company whose shares are held by 14,000 Inupiaq natives in a remote region of Alaska. There is little indication that the government’s so-called 8(a) program is training disadvantaged indigenous people to do high-skilled work. The company declined to say how many Alaska natives work there. Its CEO is Jennifer Felix, a white woman who lives in a $4.3 million home in Loudoun County, Virginia, as The Daily Wire reported last month. Much of the money awarded to “Alaskan”-owned firms isn’t done by those firms at all. ASRC has subcontracted $3.5 million to the companies of Jennifer Felix’s white husband. Even without her salary from ASRC — which it declined to disclose — that’s nearly enough to pay for their 14,000-square foot home with a guest house and private movie theater. Meanwhile, the largest village in the Inupiaq area has only one rusted-out, closed-down theater. “The 8(a) program wasn’t designed to bankroll Beltway power-couples,” said Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, whose researchers tipped The Daily Wire off to the subcontracts. “This is a corrupt grift and Americans are paying for it.” In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security gave ASRC Federal Data Network Technologies LLC a $16.7 million contract for “networking maintenance and engineering services.” Nearly a fifth of the work — $3 million — was subcontracted out to companies associated with Jennifer Felix’s husband. Ironically, the contract was to help the “acquisition program management office,” which deals with contracting policy — even as the contract is itself a case study in how the intent of the DEI program is blatantly being undermined. Ken Felix was vice president at B&B Consulting Enterprises, a software firm. The company received more than $1.7 million in subcontracts on the ASRC job. According to a lawsuit filed by B&B, the company terminated Ken from his $230,000-a-year job in September 2022. He and another employee created Daurem LLC as a competing company, despite provisions in their contracts, and ASRC then moved the subcontract to Daurem, specifically naming Ken Felix as Program Manager, the suit said. Daurem LLC has received more than $1.2 million on that job. Money subcontracted to the CEO’s husband’s firm means less profit for indigenous shareholders. Yet moves that undermine the goals of the 8(a) program are so common, and have historically faced so little scrutiny, that they aren’t even hidden: ASRC, Daurem LLC, and the TSA won an award for their “partnership.” The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council lauded them for working together to develop “biometric identity verification technology, currently deployed at 10 high-volume international airports.” Agile Decision Sciences has disclosed 103 “teaming partners,” a euphemism used in the 8(a) world that amounts to work being subcontracted out to non-disadvantaged firms, while being open about it with the government because the qualifications of the non-disadvantaged partner help convince the government to give the contract. Even as the Alaska native contracting program was justified by the poverty and low-tech lifestyles of the indigenous people, its proposition rests on the idea that they are now developing America’s most high-tech defense systems. In reality, the work is more often done by highly-paid white people in Virginia, the most common state where “Alaskan” firms operate. Jennifer Felix has showered liberal politicians with tens of thousands of dollars in donations to groups like “Pro-Choice Majority 2024,” “Elect Dems Now,” and the campaigns of Democrat Virginia senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. According to data from HigherGov.com, the vast majority of the husband’s company’s government revenue has come from ASRC subcontracts. Another ASRC subsidiary gave Daurem LLC a $480,000 subcontract on a TSA contract that it got without competition — an eighth of the money paid out on the overall contract. The contract description reads, “This is an 8(a) award to Agile Decision Sciences, LLC for a mobile phone app to do identity verification activities for transportation security officers.” ASRC said in a statement that “Any characterization or suggestion that ASRC Federal has improperly steered contracts to its leadership’s family members is materially false … Leaders including our CEO adhere to a strict corporate code of conduct and a conflict-of-interest policy to ensure proper protocols are followed.” B&B’s lawsuit said that Ken Felix arranged for other employees to leave the company to work directly at ASRC, and also teamed up with a different woman-owned business called Intellect Solutions LLC to bid on work that was, thanks to 8(a), earmarked exclusively for woman-owned contractors. Daurem’s lawyers replied that “employees do not owe fiduciary duties of loyalty post-employment and are therefore free to compete against a former employer.” A judge rejected many of its arguments, and the lawsuit was settled soon after. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said his department is cracking down on the 8(a) program. “In the Pentagon, $100 million sole-source contracts go out the door to these 8(a) firms almost every day without any competition or opportunity for anyone else to bid,” he said. “In many, many instances, these socially disadvantaged businesses don’t even do work. They take a 10%, 20%, sometimes 50% fee off the top, then pass the contract off to a giant consulting firm.” The Small Business Administration, which doles out the 8(a) designation to companies, last week said it has moved to ban 624 firms because “amid the Biden-era DEI agenda, the 8(a) federal contracting program became rife with so-called ‘socially and economically disadvantaged’ firms who abused sole-source and set-aside contracts to enrich themselves with pass-through schemes.” Related: How A Top Pentagon Contractor Enriches DC Insiders Using Law Intended To Help Eskimos

The White House turns green today as Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin arrives for his annual St. Patrick’s Day meeting with the president. Every March, Americans put aside political differences and raise a pint of Guinness to the ballads, jigs and reels, and the rolling hills of their common ancestral homeland. In Chicago, the river turns green. In New York, the city shuts down for the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. And in Boston – well, Boston is Irish all year round. The last time the American media reported on Irishmen in Washington was only last month. Free speech expert Lorcán Price and comedian Graham Linehan testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the mass censorship regime sweeping Europe through its big tech hub in Dublin, Ireland. The American nostalgia of St. Patrick’s Day remembers a wholesome, Christian, culturally rich country that is now close to extinction. Ireland today is a left-wing, globalist hub and it offers a warning about the direction left-wing policies will lead the United States if the American Left regains control in Washington. Ireland’s fall from grace demonstrates how unelected bureaucracies and mass-immigration can reshape a nation. Matt Cardy/Getty Images While Elon Musk’s DOGE made some headway last year in exposing and trimming some of the worst excesses of America’s deep state, Ireland’s deep state is firmly embedded. There are 32,000 NGOs in Ireland — that’s one for every 155 people in the country. Despite the label “non-governmental,” this sector receives $7 billion (€6 billion) every year, not including additional funds from the European Union, USAID, and other governmental bodies around the world. These organizations, for the most part, implement policies created by the European Union — another unelected bureaucracy — that are passed with little-to-no real scrutiny by the Irish parliament. In fact, according to an Irish member of European Parliament, 70% of Ireland’s legislation is created in this way. The American Left would love to see that level of unaccountable NGO rule in the United States. The House DOGE Subcommittee found last year that the Biden-Harris EPA had directed $20 billion to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This provided taxpayer funds to NGOs to implement the Green New Deal. If Republicans lose in 2026, we can expect Democrats to push even larger sums of taxpayer dollars through similar programs with little oversight. In Ireland, the government openly advertises that it reserves special benefits for illegal immigrants who come to its shores. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ireland announced it would take in every Ukrainian refugee that arrived at Dublin Airport, with no upper limit. The government still provides housing and a weekly stipend many times larger than any other European country, but refuses to run any background checks on these alleged refugees. Dr. Eoin Lenihan explains in his book, Vandalising Ireland, that between 2022 and 2023, 8,975 individuals arrived in Ireland to seek asylum with no valid identification. Only one was prosecuted. In 2022, a 23-year-old Irish schoolteacher, Ashling Murphy, was brutally stabbed 11 times in the neck while out for a run. Her murderer, Jozef Puska, was unemployed and receiving funds from a social welfare program. As an EU citizen (Puska moved from Slovakia in 2013), he had an automatic right to live in Ireland, despite being unemployed. Puska was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but he remains in the country without a deportation order. Ashling’s boyfriend, Ryan Casey, was accused of “incitement to hatred” by the BBC for raising concern about the unmitigated immigration regime that led to her murder. To date, the system has not been reformed to prevent similar tragedies. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images The United States has seen similar tragedies as a result of the disastrous Biden-era immigration regime. Young girls like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Kayla Hamilton bore the brunt of this policy. A new Democratic administration will certainly re-open the border and cause more pain and suffering, precisely because open borders — not the safety of young women — has become a defining policy priority of the Left. Ireland’s Christian heritage has been politicized and defeated in a woke crusade. The last decade brought with it a wave of referendums that ripped Ireland’s conservative safeguards out of the constitution. Ireland voted in large numbers to create constitutional rights for same-sex “marriage” and abortion (with no restrictions). In 2024, the ruling parties put forward a vote to remove the word “woman” from the constitution and define “family” as any “durable relationship.” Only in a last-minute polling turnaround that indicated the Irish people are finally waking up to the destruction of their culture, did the government lose the vote. The star of that 2024 campaign, Maria Steen, was unceremoniously blocked from running for President last year. A nation’s politics necessarily impact its culture. The Irish culture Americans celebrate every March is deteriorating rapidly. The Gaelic language is confined to rural villages, and less than 2% of the population speak it on a weekly basis. This year, the government perverted the celebration of the Irish Catholic St. Brigid by casting her as a pagan goddess. In the aftermath of the George Floyd debacle in Minnesota, Ireland eagerly joined the cancellation spree. Trinity College Dublin “denamed” (renamed) its Berkeley Library, previously named after a significant Irish-born philosopher, due to alleged ties to slavery. While the United States has never passed a popular vote to create constitutional rights out of thin air, it repeatedly elects politicians who seek to protect made-up rights, misuse the law, and sell out their Christian faith. The last administration attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. It succeeded in codifying parts of Obergefell v. Hodges with bipartisan support in the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Thirty-four felony convictions nearly blocked Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. In the United States, Christian faith is becoming increasingly politicized. Daily Wire’s Megan Basham has catalogued this bastardization of Christianity in the United States in her book, “Shepherds for Sale.” Renaming libraries and toppling statues has also become common under Democrat governance. Ireland’s transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through bureaucrats, state-funded NGOs, and cultural elites who slowly replaced national identity with global ideology. Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day should remember: the country they toast tonight is not the one that exists today. Ireland shows what happens when elites, bureaucracies, and ideology override national identity. As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, they should reflect on their own national identity as they head to the ballot box this year. After all, Ireland is the future the American Left wants. * * * Roger Berkeley works with mission-driven organizations to develop their political and communications strategies. Now based in Washington, DC, Berkeley has been politically active in his native Ireland since 2016, driving change on free speech and life issues. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.