President Trump on Tuesday threatened to escalate U.S. attacks on Iran if it has put mines in the Strait of Hormuz amid reporting that it has done so.

President Donald Trump has said if Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continues to threaten commercial shipping in the Hormuz Strait with missiles and drones, or by laying mines in the key waterway, the United States' air and naval forces will intensify their Operation Epic Fury assaults.

"God, it was just dumb..." The post “I don’t really care”: the albums Grace Slick said she should have never made first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Back in the 1990s, Democrats tried to feed the American public a whopper. Liberals excitedly presented a new wonder couple: William Jefferson Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. This magazine wasn’t fooled. The Clintons were known to us by various names bestowed by our venerable founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.: “Boy Clinton,” the “Arkansas marvel,” the “Virgin President,” and his “lovely wife Bruno.” The American Spectator made history with scintillating investigative journalism exposing Bill exposing himself, whether at nightclubs around Little Rock or under desks at the Oval Office, where he made history with his intern-girlfriend Monica. The women connected to Clinton were many. Paula and Gennifer and Kathleen and Dolly and Elizabeth and Juanita, among others. To be sure, some of those poor gals were victims rather than eager participants of the blue-dress sort. What this magazine reported actually led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by the end of the decade. (READ: Paul Kengor, The Clintons vs. The American Spectator) This magazine thereby rendered a noble if not indispensable public service. The liberals had billed their Bill as “The Man from Hope,” the name of the Arkansas backwater of his birth. He was destined to bring us “hope” even before the blessed Barack Obama could heap it upon us. It was pure buncombe. And the liberals might have gotten away with it if not for the fearless, riveting reporting of The American Spectator. What this magazine revealed is that Bill was not the man from Hope. Rather, he hailed from Hot Springs. Born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope in December 1946, he soon moved with his mom and stepfather and brother to Hot Springs, where he was raised. In the words of Roger Morris, biographer of the Clintons, Hot Springs was “pervasively corrupt … a fount of vice and official venality, gambling and prostitution, protection rackets and other graft that constituted a backroom criminal economy.” Al Capone was said to have a “permanent lease” on Suite 443 in the old Arlington Hotel. A place of gangsters, slot machines, call girls, booze, brothels, nightclubs, spas, baths. It was a place of hot tubs rather than hope. From hot tubs he was raised, and to hot tubs he was destined to return. Bill Clinton hailed from the hot tubs. Ultimately, he seemed to embody the seedy environment. He would turn the governor’s mansion in Little Rock into his own version of Hot Springs. From hot tubs he was raised, and to hot tubs he was destined to return. I share this now not merely for a fun albeit sordid romp down memory lane. I note it because, as reported by our Ellie Gardey Holmes, Bill Clinton apparently hasn’t changed his stripes (or swim suits) from his days in Arkansas or inside the Oval Office closet. It looks like he continued his hot tubbing, all the way to the sinister Epstein Island. (RELATED: Bill Clinton Has Much to Answer for on Epstein) We learned some of the tawdry details from a deposition that Clinton gave on Feb. 28 regarding his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. To quote Ellie’s summary: “Clinton had a decade-long relationship with Epstein that extended to the point that he flew on the disgraced financier’s private plane 24 times and appears in the Epstein files in photographs with multiple young women.” We’ve learned that the FBI investigated claims against Clinton. Federal investigators even questioned Epstein himself on the relationship. Epstein pleaded the Fifth. Such shamed silence was not an uncommon response among people who showed up in the life of Bill Clinton. Also not uncommon are the women. And this time, there are images. Ellie’s piece includes photos. She notes one particularly disturbing photo published by the Daily Mail, in which Clinton is shown in 2002 receiving a “shoulder massage” from a girl named Chauntae Davies — a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. “At the time the photo was taken,” notes Ellie, “Davies was 22 years old. She later accused Epstein of having repeatedly raped her for four years from 2001 until 2005, when she was able to escape. She has said that massaging the former president was consensual.” Still more pictures: Ellie notes that two other photos from the Epstein files show Clinton posing with unidentified young women whose faces are redacted. In each, the sly devil has his arm around the girl’s shoulder, sporting that infamous, impish Bill grin. A Department of Justice photo shows bad-boy Clinton with another unidentified woman, and yet another captures him in a pool or hot tub with Epstein “co-conspirator” Ghislaine Maxwell and an unidentified young woman whose face is blacked out. The many sleezy, slimy, creepy, and sometimes bizarre images of Bill Clinton released from the Epstein files are plainly remarkable, even by Clintonian standards. Of course, I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked. Not here at The American Spectator. Asked specifically about the hot tub photo, Clinton said: “He [Epstein] invited me to stay there and he said, ‘I want you to stay at this hotel and I hope you’ll use the pool.’ I swam around. I sat in the hot tub for five minutes or whatever it was, and I got up and went to bed.” Clinton did not say if he “went to bed” alone, or if perhaps he took care of business right there in the water. With the master of the parsed word, who creatively redefined words like “sexual relations,” you never know. In August 1998, the bad boy told a grand jury during his Monica Lewinsky testimony: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” They didn’t call him “Slick Willie” for nothing. The day before his deposition last Friday, Bill’s wife was asked about her husband’s antics at Epstein Island, and specifically the photos of him frolicking in hot tubs. Hillary provided an answer she has no doubt given a thousand times: “You’ll have to ask my husband.” Indeed, Hillary. “The number of times that she said, ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my husband,’ was more than a dozen,” House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) observed to reporters after Hillary’s deposition. A well-rehearsed response. Looking at the photos in Ellie’s story, one marvels at the Arkansas marvel’s stamina and, candidly, sex drive at that point in his life. For the last 20 years or so, Bill has looked so frail that you could push him over with a toothpick. You would have thought his days frolicking in pools with some nubile young lass would be far gone. You would be wrong! Quite the spectacle — there was Bill, bouncing aside gals much younger than him in swimsuits, with that frat-boy smile that The American Spectator caricatured so well in the 1990s by artists such as our John Springs. In essence, what we see here is the same problem we saw with Bill in the 1990s once he became president. To wit: he didn’t stop the playboy lifestyle. Say what you want about Donald Trump’s previous lifestyle, but at least he kept his zipper up once he became president. William Jefferson Clinton, however, never seemed to learn nor desire that self-control, even after presidential duties and Father Time should have provided him with some nature-given constraints. The photos of Bill at Epstein’s estate leave us astounded yet again. They leave his spouse astounded — nay, screaming — yet again. And yes, she screamed a lot. I’m reminded of what the Arkansas state troopers who served as Governor Clinton’s security detail told us at The American Spectator in the 1990s. “I remember one time when Bill had been quoted in the morning paper saying something she [Hillary] didn’t like,” said one of the troopers, Larry Patterson. “I came into the mansion and he was standing at the top of the stairs and she was standing at the bottom screaming. She has a garbage mouth on her, and she was calling him motherf—er, c—sucker, and everything else. I went into the kitchen, and the cook, Miss Emma, turned to me and said, ‘The devil’s in that woman.’” That account of Hillary chewing out the mild Virgin (“Living with the Clintons,” The American Spectator, January 1994) and pretty much anyone else who crossed her ice-strewn path was not atypical. One of our reporters in 1993 spent over 30 hours interviewing four state troopers, two of whom, Larry Patterson and Roger Perry, courageously went on the record with breathtaking candor. These Arkansas troopers were not a bunch of bumpkins who had just rolled off the turnip truck. They were the cream of the Arkansas crop, among the state’s highest-ranking police officers, with decades of veteran experience. And yet, said Patterson, “We lied for him [Bill] and helped him cheat on his wife, and he treated us like dogs.” Actually, he treated them like pimps. As one of our articles reported: “The troopers said their ‘official’ duties included facilitating Clinton’s cheating on his wife. This meant that, on the state payroll and using state time, vehicles, and resources, they were instructed by Clinton on a regular basis to approach women and to solicit their telephone numbers for the governor; to drive him in state vehicles to rendezvous points and guard him during sexual encounters; to secure hotel rooms and other meeting places for sex; to lend Clinton their state cars so he could slip away and visit women unnoticed; to deliver gifts from Clinton to various women; and to help Clinton cover up his activities by keeping tabs on Hillary’s whereabouts and lying to Hillary about her husband’s whereabouts.” And so, when Hillary today says she has no idea what Bill was doing on Epstein Island, well, things apparently haven’t changed much. Though she no doubt had a general idea. We all did. It looks like we may soon learn more. As for us at The American Spectator, we’ll be sure to keep you posted, as we did decades ago when we first exposed hot tub Bill from Hot Springs. READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Pope Leo: Rely on Your Brain Rather Than AI Remembering Bill Mazeroski and Baseball’s Biggest Home Run The Best and Worst Presidents — the PragerU Survey

It was September 2021. When I served on the Milford Board of Education in my Connecticut hometown, the superintendent presented an instructional slideshow highlighting over-the-summer teacher-student exercises to reinforce the implementation of curriculum, new methods, and professional development. One assignment had students name “heroes and villains,” and then fill them in a Venn Diagram. Batman, Superman, and even police officers were among the former; Darth Vader, Thanos, and Adolf Hitler, the latter. But in the middle circle — marked Neutral — was one person that strikingly concerned me: George Washington. Washington, once called the “greatest man in the world” even by adversaries, is anything but a neutral character in history. Frankly, he should reside in children’s minds as a hero — “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” as eulogized by Henry Lee. Indeed, if Washington … can be treated indifferently or viewed with skepticism, that reasoning inevitably extends into the nation he founded and its institutions. At best, the moment reflects a lack of historical understanding about Washington. No doubt, his neutrality was based on the fact that he owned slaves, whom he ultimately freed in his will, hoping others would follow his lead. At worst, however, it signals a troubling bellwether for the forthcoming generation’s diminishing sense of national pride. (RELATED: A Nation That Can’t Explain 1776 Urgently Needs a Civic Education Revival) Indeed, if Washington — the father of the country — can be treated indifferently or viewed with skepticism, that reasoning inevitably extends into the nation he founded and its institutions. In turn, ignorance, apathy, or in some cases hostility toward America’s founding — which reared its insidious head during the 2020 riots — can produce a bevy of consequences transforming America’s character, and not for the better. (RELATED: A Republic, If We Can Keep It) The landscape is primed for such a revolution: though not of arms but of the heart, and within the next decade. In a recent Fox News poll, a “record 38 percent think it would be a good thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and in the direction of socialism.” This favorability is an increase from 32 percent in 2022 and 18 percent in 2010. Likewise, last June, a Gallup survey found “clear generational differences in American pride” with 41 percent of Gen Z and 58 percent of millennials being “extremely or very proud to be an American.” Older generations, meanwhile, polled more than 70 percent when asked the same question. For older Americans, such trends may evoke fears of a Jacobin or Bolshevik upheaval — that Guillotines or gulags are being assembled to terrorize political adversaries. Yet today’s ideological shift differs from the Cold War paradigm of the 20th century. As David Azerrad — assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College — once wrote in 2016, the “red dawn is not really upon us,” adding, “There is almost no support in America for the Marxist-Leninist variety of socialism, which was discredited after we won the Cold War.” Instead, rather than tearing down the system outright, as Marxism advocates, the New Left’s process has been to exploit the tools of bureaucracy, governments, the economy, Silicon Valley, and the educational system as cudgels for submission to the “tyrannical wokeness,” as Daniel Mahoney, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, observed in The American Mind. (RELATED: Democratic Socialists Are Trying to Trounce Democrats in the Primaries) The Obama and Biden administrations laid the groundwork in recent decades: Louis Lerner used the IRS to audit conservative organizations. The FBI investigated traditional Catholics. The Justice Department labeled concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.” Social media companies buried the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Schools and the U.S. military were forced to implement DEI curriculum and standards. And employees were fired for not receiving the COVID vaccine. When individual liberties and limited government erode, both principles that fueled the American Revolution, a void opens. In that vacuum, cynicism and moral relativism have seeped into the collective consciousness; so much so that reveling in political violence towards one’s opponents — as seen after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — is not reprehensible, but acceptable. Moreover, it leads to intellectual lapses, such as Antifa groups aligning with the Iranian theocracy — which is fascist — just to spite Americanism. A resentment among millennials and Gen Z has metastasized toward the previous generation, and with it, an animus toward the ideals of free market capitalism. As such, the populist Left is embracing the “warmth of collectivism,” as spearheaded by socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose administration has proposed “tax the rich” schemes and is filled with advocates for seizing private property. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who is a poster-child for modern progressives — has called Western Civilization “thin,” that culture “has been a fluid, evolving thing.” (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York) Long gone is humanity’s capacity to recognize self-evident truths, as emphasized in the Declaration of Independence, among the populist Left. As Bishop Robert Barron correctly identified, the irony in Rep. Oscaio-Cortez’s “dismissal” demonstrates a sheer lack of appreciation for the civilization that “produced the university system, affirmed the rights and prerogatives of the individual, and gave rise to democratic rule of law.” But how can one claim to be stewards of Americanism, yet loathe the civilization, ideals, and even persons that were foundational to the nation? Yet this lapse in historicity matters in a political arena poised to devolve into the Newtonian Third Law of politics — where every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. Indeed, not if, but when the populist Left assumes the federal levers of power, one might suspect political persecutions through lawfare, particularly those in the Trump administration. In the end, the Left will justify its actions by claiming to be the protectors of “true American values,” while ridding the country of “fascism” like defunding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But how can one claim to be stewards of Americanism, yet loathe the civilization, ideals, and even persons that were foundational to the nation? A house divided cannot stand — nor one unloved. That September 2021 school-board meeting and Washington’s neutrality have since lingered in my mind and heart. He sacrificed his life, fortune, and sacred honor to found a nation based on the ideal that “all men are created equal,” and though imperfect in that pursuit, nevertheless, the nation borne from 1776 has done incalculable good to those here and those seeking freedom in the centuries since. If the next generation views the nation’s founding figures with indifference or even contempt, the greater danger is not simply historical ignorance but civic detachment, and jettisoning the spirit of liberty enshrined in the Declaration and U.S. Constitution. Yet there is hope. America’s semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding — presents a rare opportunity to renew civic education and patriotic appreciation among the leaders of tomorrow. Indeed, this moment is a turning point. If we fail to cultivate a deeper understanding of the nation’s history and ideals, a new American revolution may indeed come — not with muskets and militias, but with a generation untethered from the principles that once defined the republic. READ MORE from Andrew Fowler: What Doctor Zhivago Teaches Us About New York City’s Housing Debate

On Saturday, a man yelled “Allahu Akbar” and threw bombs into a crowd of anti-Islamic protesters who were protesting against what they described as the “Islamic takeover of New York City.” Thankfully, the bomb did not go off. The response of New York’s elected leaders and media left a lot to be desired. NBC New York posted a tweet that said the devices were “found” outside Mayor Mamdani’s home. The article they posted did not report on the counter-protesters that were there or the man who yelled “Allahu Akbar” throwing the bomb. Through its omission, the article led readers to believe that the anti-Muslim protesters planted the explosives to target Mayor Mamdani. After receiving significant pushback online, NBC New York rewrote their tweet and made significant revisions to their article, without issuing a correction. X added a community note to the post indicating that the bombs were thrown at the anti-Muslim protesters and not by them, “as this post and the story would lead you to believe.” The community note also emphasized that the attackers yelled “allahu akbar” as they threw the bombs at the protesters. NBC New York was not alone. TMZ tweeted, “‘Suspicious Devices Found Outside Zohran Mamdani’s Residence.” It doesn’t get more Orwellian. The devices weren’t found outside Mamdani’s residence; they were thrown in broad daylight by a man who yelled “Allahu Akbar.” The TMZ post also makes it seem like the anti-Muslim protesters placed the bombs there. Their misuse of language is apparent. “Found” implies the bombs were planted at Mamdani’s residence to target him. That is not what occurred, and the media’s framing is deceptive. X added a similar community note to that post. New York’s elected leaders and candidates were no better. Gov. Kathy Hochul tweeted, “I’ve been briefed on today’s incident outside Gracie’s Mansion. I’m grateful there are no reported injuries. New York respects the right to peaceful protest, but we have zero tolerance for hate or violence [emphasis added].” As the Supreme Court ruled in Skokie, people in America do have the right to peacefully protest, even if they are espousing hate speech. Hochul equates the political speech of the victims with their attackers’ attempt to murder them, while framing her tweet in a way that makes it sound like the victims committed the violence. It took her 24 hours to put out a more forceful condemnation of the attempted bombing. State Sen. Liz Krueger tweeted, “New York is no place for anti-Muslim hate or any kind of prejudice. We don’t need out-of-state provocateurs sowing fear, division, and violence in our city.” Sen. Krueger did not condemn the bomb in her statement; she condemned the protesters. As of this writing, New York Attorney Letitia James has said nothing. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has also said nothing. Mayor Mamdani waited 24 hours to tweet and, thankfully, did condemn the attempted mass murder as “even more disturbing” than the protest. However, he led with condemning the protest itself for being “white supremacist,” while saying nothing about the ideology of the person who yelled “allahu akbar” while throwing a bomb. The bombs weren’t targeting Mamdani; they were thrown at the people who were protesting against him. New York City Council candidate Lindsey Boylan, who backed Mamdani in the NYC mayor’s race, tweeted, “I am very glad to hear that the mayor and his wife are safe. While there is a lot we do not know, we can be certain that the escalating anti-Muslim rhetoric enabled by many of our leaders is making all of us less safe.” This is Orwellian. The bombs weren’t targeting Mamdani; they were thrown at the people who were protesting against him. The statements from Hochul and the above-mentioned local politicians demonstrate that those politicians view speech as worse than violent murder. Their initial reactions tell us everything we need to know. News just broke that Mayor Mamdani’s wife liked a post that described the October 7 terrorist attack as a “mass liberation.” Now this. On top of that, Mamdani himself has previously praised the Holy Land 5, a group that was convicted of financing Islamic terror abroad. What happened to New York? This reminds me of the systematic rape of girls that was covered up by “conservative” and leftist politicians alike in the U.K., who were afraid that confronting the rapes being committed by migrant gangs would make them be labeled as racist. Here, our politicians’ hierarchy of values is also warped. Their first instinct was to condemn racism instead of condemning the attempted terrorist attack. This is similar to some on the Left’s response to the slaying of Charlie Kirk. They thought he was racist and, hence, justified and celebrated the violence against him. If the reaction to speech is violence, we will not live in a democracy for very long. Imagine the reporting if a man yelled “Am Yisrael Chai” and threw a bomb into a crowd of pro-Palestine protesters that were chanting “Intifada.” There would be no equivocating in the condemnation of that (nor should there be). But here, because a man yelled “Allahu Akbar,” the media refuses to cover it. The press has spent years talking about “Christian Nationalism,” often using the phrase to target Christians who are Trump supporters, but ran cover for this Islamic attack. Thankfully, the bombs did not go off, although the NYPD has confirmed that they were real. People could have been killed. But the media reported on it in a biased way because the truth conflicted with their worldview. Some in the media may even think the attempted bomb attack was justified. It’s not a stretch, considering that the Mayor’s wife liked posts justifying October 7, that his father said we shouldn’t “stigmatize” suicide bombers, and that college students across America celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This is where we are. Mamdani picked the lawyer who defended Al Qaeda and Mahmoud Khalil, a student who helped organize the Columbia University campus takeover in support of Palestine, to be his chief legal counsel. The fact that these are our political leaders and institutional press is a reflection of how far America has fallen. America’s immigration policy over the last 30 years (and of course, more recently) has led to a lot of this, and people feel like they can’t even talk about it. Mamdani did not win among American-born New Yorkers; Andrew Cuomo did. Given that, and Mamdani and his wife’s sympathies, rhetoric, and associations, we should question whether America’s current immigration policy is in the American interest. Mamdani himself is an immigrant, and he’s used his power to hire officials who said they hope to “impoverish the white middle class” and that “it’s important that white people feel defeated.” He’s accused the police of being murderers and called for fewer police. He’s acted on that pledge by cancelling the hiring of 5,000 new police officers. He’s pledged to close down Rikers Island, irrespective of whether the other prisons are ready to house its inmates in time. His policies are dangerous, and his views are radical. Hopefully, the bomb attack in New York and our politicians’ and media’s response to it will be a wake-up call for New Yorkers and Americans more broadly that things have to change. READ MORE from Joe Silverstein: Why Conservatives Should Not Abandon Free Speech New York City’s Sanctuary Laws Are Worse Than You Think Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, has been receiving backlash for liking posts on Instagram that supported Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7. (WATCH: The Spectacle Ep. 322: Commie Trouble: King Mamdani’s Kingdom Rubbled in Snow)  https://x.com/nypost/status/2030346815560618015?s=46 The Spectator P.M. Podcast hosts Ellie Gardey Holmes and Lyrah Margo point out Duwaji’s status as a public figure, contrary to Mamdani’s claims that his wife is a “private person.” They also discuss Mamdani’s decision this week to host anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil for dinner. Ellie and Lyrah also discuss the recent attempted terrorist attack in front of Gracie Mansion by two ISIS-inspired teenagers. (RELATED: Mamdani Appoints ‘Black Liberation’ Activist Afua Atta-Mensah After Accusations of Black Exclusion)  Tune in to hear their podcast! Read Ellie and Lyrah’s writing here and here. Listen to the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Spotify. Watch the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Rumble.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Michael R. Strain has written a thought-provoking article placing in print what is on the mind of every right-of-center intellectual today. He titled it: The Battle for the Right’s Post-Trump Future Has Begun. And it deserves a respectful but critical analysis to understand the forthcoming ideological battle. Strain’s general game-plan is well thought through. What are conservatives to do? First, recognize that those of us who prioritize individual liberty, limited government, free markets, personal responsibility, economic opportunity, America’s “credal identity” and U.S. global leadership are a faction on the political right, and not the whole of the right. Second, conservatives must push the broader political right to enforce ideological borders against extremism. Third, conservatives must resist the ascendant effort to redefine American identity as blood-and-soil nationalism. To be clear, the broad political right should be a big tent featuring substantial internal disagreement. His tent would include different economic and social conservative factions, and, he adds, the tent should even “defend the rights of the racists, bigots, sexists and antisemites to hold and express their appalling and dangerous views.” The tent should “engage with” them but “not enter into a coalition with them.” That would violate the credal “inherent dignity of each and every human being,” which Strain then traces back to the broad rights stated in the Declaration of Independence. “Conservatives have long viewed the centrality of the American creed as one of the most important things we seek to conserve.” Yet in building his future conservative coalition, Strain argues that Progressives have also “ground their views in the aspirations of the Declaration,” as self-evident truths, although they do differ “over which parts of the broad American creed to emphasize” But, still, those common values — presumably on the nature of equality — should be “where the debate over the conservative future must begin,” welcoming progressives in as part of the discussion. The common adversary of both is said to be the “ascendant movement on the political right” that “now seeks to push that creed aside by defining American identity through race and lineage” rather than rights. Strain identifies that common enemy with Vice President JD Vance, who teaches that “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.” This, Strain argues, may be “defensible in a vacuum,” but those beliefs can be interpreted as prejudicial against minorities and immigrants, and so such beliefs must be placed beyond the pale. So, Strain’s plan is to bring pro-Declaration progressives into a new post-Trump conservative coalition and exclude that long-time Right faction that has operated under titles such as populism and nationalism. So, Strain’s plan is to bring pro-Declaration progressives into a new post-Trump conservative coalition and exclude that long-time Right faction that has operated under titles such as populism and nationalism. And the fact is that that faction has won the contest among the wider Right for the Republican party presidential nomination now three times in a row. And its faction leader, Donald Trump, has three more years to set policy as president. But what has that faction produced that would require creating a coalition with Left Progressives? (RELATED: Has President Trump Ended or Extended the Conservative Era?) While there is much that one can disagree with in a number of Trump’s policies, the balance of them has actually leaned toward the traditional Right. Economically, he has radically turned U.S. energy policy from obstructive to actually acting as a free market institution with its enormous DOE deregulation. The Environmental Protection Agency, too, has implemented similar degrees of reform, drawing back from decades of excessive and harmful climate regulation. (RELATED: EPA Retires Its Crystal Ball, Lets America Exhale (Carbon Included)) On social policy, the Department of Education just issued a regulation titled “Concrete Steps to Return Education to the States and Empower Parents in Their Child’s Education,” which an opponent explained as “an executive order to dismantle the Department.” At the Department of Labor, excessive wage and hour penalties have decreased by 94 percent. Workplace health and safety penalties have dropped 45 percent. Government Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and related “woke” regulations have been reduced substantially in almost every domestic department, with all government agencies averaging 10 government regulations cut for every new one added. On the other hand, Trump’s trade policy has not met market ideals or even Supreme Court standards. Even so, the pre-court results have turned out significantly better than the initially extraordinarily high tariff rates, thanks to cabinet and conservative pressure. Net tariffs worldwide have probably been lowered, and Trump has even suggested new tariffs could replace the income tax. Immigration policy, too, has been less than ideal, with local deportation enforcement often excessive, but illegal border crossings have been reduced basically to zero, a position conservatives long encouraged. (RELATED: Tariffs at Work: Historic Gains Amid Media Skepticism) In my personnel management area of specialization, Trump has actually essentially returned to the political control of the bureaucracy management model implemented by Ronald Reagan. There is more to disagree with in areas like what is now called “lawfare,” which clearly has been politicized. But given how lawfare was first so abused by the Department of Justice, the intelligence bureaucracies, and media against Trump in his first term and under President Joe Biden, one cannot be too surprised by tit-for-tat. Foreign and defense policy has been complex, but the president promised he would “clean house” to reform the bureaucratized military and procurement processes, which were confirmed in massively reducing the schedule for weapons deliveries, and in Iran and Venezuela, although it is too early to evaluate Iran. Greenland first appeared as overreach, but turned out to be merely a classical Trump “Art of the Deal” first bid. (RELATED: From Outrage to Agreement: Trump’s Greenland Gambit) There has been much discussion on the Right that Trump has upset the constitutional balance between the executive branch and the Supreme Court and Congress. But, in fact, conservatives have long held that the last half-century has been dominated by an active judiciary rather than the president or Congress. Balancing power for the executive branch was overdue. True, Trump clearly has not been able to challenge the most serious internal threats to the nation — like entitlements and uncontrollable debt, the dangers of a fiat money system, or too much remaining governmental centralization. Nor has he been able to fix a social order in decline. But these fundamental reforms require a legislative, judicial, and popular support that does not exist. Of course, for many or most critics, it is not really Trump’s policies. It is his personal attributes. But after a year of his policymaking, centrist Joseph Epstein says it is time to face the fact that Trump is not pure evil but merely a “slick and aggressive salesman.” And when one accepts that reality, he says, it “clears away, at least for me, any remaining aspects of Trump derangement syndrome.” So, does the Trump record require excluding MAGA populism from the Right coalition — a factional difference Strain himself concedes is defensible, if only in a vacuum? And his alternative coalition would require accepting a Progressivism where equality becomes the end rather than the means to good government. Indeed, that Progressive position has long been the unifier for the whole Left coalition and is more likely to subsume any newly added Right faction rather than vice versa. Strain’s basic argument that no single political faction can rule by itself is sound. But as the Civitas Institute’s Richard Reinsch argued, “What the conservative movement could never afford is a sectarian impulse that insists on rigid orthodoxy and isolates the different groups. Such a spirit would be divisive, bigoted, exclusivist, and dismissive.” Instead, a successful modern conservative coalition must be open to decent “broad church” MAGA supporters. As important as the Declaration is in the conservative hierarchy of principles, it is not sufficient. As Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law professor  Bruce P. Frohnen noted in a recent Law&Liberty review of a book with a similar singular dependence upon the Declaration, conservatism requires more than the high values of the Declaration. It must also include synthesizing those ideals with the real-world social reality that is the U.S. Constitution. Old-time Ronald Reagan Center-Right fusionist-conservativism has long argued that both Declaration ideals and a Constitutional separation-of-powers institutionalized freedom were both essential. Indeed, this earliest vision of modern conservatism under Reagan has been the only really successful Right political coalition in modern times. Any future political success will require all the old-Right factions to be on board, including those factions that are not our own. READ MORE from Donald Devine: Has President Trump Ended or Extended the Conservative Era? Stop Blaming Reagan Bad Presidents or Bad Government? Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of 11 books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles, and is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. Image licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic.

On Tuesday, March 10, 2026, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed the press on developments with the war with Iran and reaffirmed the Trump administration’s support for the SAVE Act. According to Leavitt, American airstrikes have dealt severe damage to Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities, with attacks by them being down 90 percent and 85 percent, respectively, since the start of the war, codenamed Operation Epic Fury. Leavitt stated that the Iranian navy had lost over 50 combat vessels and was now assessed as “combat ineffective.” The press secretary also responded to the disruption the conflict had caused global oil markets due to its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping bottleneck. Leavitt said that such disruptions were temporary, and any attempt to interfere with commerce in the strait would result in the Iranian regime being hit “20 times harder than they have been hit thus far.” Leavitt also said that while the spike in oil prices would be temporary, the U.S. would attempt to mitigate the damage by easing other oil-related sanctions, offering risk insurance to tankers operating in the area, as well as offering U.S. Navy escorts. She did not address rumors that Iran had mined the strait; in a post on Truth Social on March 9, President Donald Trump warned that, if the strait were to be mined, “we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again.” (RELATED: Shipping Interruption in Persian Gulf Is Yet Another Reminder of the Risks of Offshoring) Responding to reports that the U.S. might have been responsible for a strike on an Iranian school that killed over 165, Leavitt noted that the Department of War was conducting an investigation and declined to comment further. Leavitt also reaffirmed the administration’s support for the SAVE America Act, which she called “one of the most critical pieces of legislation in our nation’s history.” The act would require ID and proof of citizenship to vote, end no-excuse mail-in ballots, codify the president’s executive order banning biological males from women’s sports, and forbid transgender surgeries for minors. (RELATED: Paxton Makes Thune an Offer He Can’t Refuse) Responding to a question about criticisms from Democrats that the SAVE Act would prevent married women from voting, Leavitt countered that such claims had “zero validity.” She added that “married women who have changed their name, if they’re already registered to vote, they’re entirely unaffected by the Save Act.” And for those who aren’t? “[T]hey can still register to vote. Of course, they just have to go through their state processes to update that documentation… I think it’s frankly insulting that the Democrats are saying that there are certain groups of people in this country who aren’t smart enough to update their documentation to allow them to vote.” (RELATED: From Insult to Farce, Democrat Anti-SAVE Act Crusade Is Beyond Pathetic) Responding to a question about Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s comments that he did not have the votes to either abolish the filibuster or begin a “talking filibuster,” Leavitt stated that Trump “wants all options on the table and he wants the Senate to move as quickly as possible.” This afternoon, Thune told David Sivak of The Washington Examiner that while he planned to bring the SAVE act to the Senate floor next week, the “manner and process” by which it would do so remained under discussion. READ MORE from Stephan Kapustka: Crash by Illegal Immigrant in Indiana Draws National Outrage Business as Usual on Pennsylvania Ave A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Is as Conservative as Game of Thrones Gets

A vindicated Alex Jones breaks down all the latest developments/facts!