WASHINGTON — The status quo came tumbling down at Harvard after Hamas massacred 1,200 innocents on Oct. 7, 2023. As much of the world was revolted at the gratuitous slaughter, the swells at Harvard were working on a suitable statement. They deleted the word “violent” to describe the attack. President Donald Trump will never forget how academia tried to airbrush over the Left’s antisemitic tendencies. Now he’s using eggheads’ politics as a pretext for taking $3 billion in research grants for Harvard and transferring the money to trade schools. “Harvard’s ongoing inaction in the face of repeated and severe harassment and targeting of its students has at times grounded day-to-day campus operations to a halt, deprived Jewish students of learning and research opportunities to which they are entitled, and profoundly alarmed the general public,” wrote Josh Gruenbaum of the General Services Administration as he instructed federal agencies to seek different vendors. Trump’s right about this: Violent crimes and property crimes on campus that would have put the average American behind bars somehow end with wrist-slapping. The Harvard Law Review even bestowed a $65,000 fellowship on a student who faced criminal charges for assaulting a Jewish student on campus. As the president told reporters Wednesday, “They’re totally antisemitic at Harvard.” And: “I want Harvard to be great again.” Alas, they’re slow learners around the Cambridge quad. On NPR, Harvard President Alan Garber argued against Trump’s moves to withhold federal funds saying, “We shouldn’t be in an echo chamber.” Has no one told Garber that Harvard is an echo chamber? Of course Garber’s heard that. The Harvard Crimson reported in 2023 that 77 percenf of faculty identified as liberal or very liberal, while fewer than 3 percent of faculty identified as conservative. Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is a man in the middle. ACTA has been working to deliver true ideological diversity — not the false diversity that rewards like-minded liberals — by exposing students to the rough-and-tumble of spirited debate. “For years, ACTA has said all of academia needs a course correction,” Poliakoff offered. Still, as Trump rightly challenges the ivory tower, Poliakoff doesn’t want to see the administration adapt the same heavy-handed tactics to impose its values on others. Poliakoff would like to see the president use his leverage to prompt universities to enforce their codes of conduct and prosecute those who destroy college buildings, obstruct student learning, and hurt public safety officials. Which colleges and universities ought to have been doing all along. “Public funding is not an entitlement,” Poliakoff also noted, but he can’t support eliminating research funding that had made America the world leader in innovation, to the benefit of all. That’s the thing about Trump. His instincts are right about how big government and big education have gone too far. But his suggested remedies can also be too much. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: The Fall of Harvard: How America’s Oldest University Became Its Most Expensive Liability Harvard Institutes Remedial Math The post Trump Wants to Make Harvard Great Again appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In May 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a timely report titled “Beijing’s Air, Space, and Maritime Surveillance from Cuba: A Growing Threat to the Homeland.” The report confirmed China’s construction of a new signals intelligence facility near Santiago de Cuba, which is located just 70 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The installation, equipped with a circularly disposed antenna array, is designed to intercept high-frequency communications and signals across vast distances, directly targeting U.S. military and diplomatic operations. This revelation underscores the urgency of what is no longer theoretical: Cuba has become a multi-regime staging ground for surveillance, subversion, and regional disruption. China, Russia, and Iran are not simply building influence in the Caribbean — they are constructing real-time capabilities within reach of the U.S. mainland. Their combined presence suggests a new doctrine of proximity-based deterrence and hybrid warfare emerging just offshore. Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba is once again becoming a frontline concern for U.S. national security — not as a Cold War holdover, but as an active platform for adversaries. China, Russia, and Iran have each embedded themselves in Havana’s infrastructure, intelligence services, and foreign policy, forging a quiet but strategic alignment against the West. China’s presence is the most technologically advanced. Satellite imagery from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) confirms four Chinese signals intelligence facilities in Cuba: Bejucal, Calabazar, El Salao, and Wajay. At Bejucal, a 175-meter-wide circularly disposed antenna array, under construction since 2024, is capable of intercepting high-frequency signals across 8,000 miles. These stations, operated in coordination with the People’s Liberation Army, allow Beijing to monitor U.S. military, satellite, and diplomatic communications across the region. Beyond surveillance, China is wiring Cuba’s digital backbone. Huawei has supplied government-grade 4G+ infrastructure and is reportedly laying the groundwork for future 5G expansion — despite repeated warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA and FBI, which have flagged Huawei as a national security threat due to its close ties with the Chinese Communist Party and potential for data exfiltration. Chinese engineers actively advise on the modernization of Cuban state data centers, which are believed to be integrated with PRC-origin surveillance frameworks. A bilateral cybersecurity cooperation pact was signed in 2023, and a digital sovereignty working group was launched in 2024 to align economic and surveillance standards. This is not symbolic. It is operational. Russia has also reasserted itself. In May 2025, Moscow pledged $1.03 billion under ‘Plan 2030’ to overhaul Cuba’s energy grid, agricultural sector, and transportation infrastructure. The announcement came just days before Russian Navy vessels — including the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov — docked in Havana as part of expanded naval rotations and port access drills. Russia has also revived elements of Cold War–era intelligence sharing, reportedly exploring the partial reactivation of the former Soviet signals intelligence station at Lourdes — a facility that, at its height, was capable of monitoring nearly all U.S. telecommunications in the southeastern United States and served as one of the largest Soviet eavesdropping centers outside its borders. Iran, meanwhile, sees Cuba as a regional proxy for asymmetric warfare — distinct from the more visible military and infrastructure investments of Russia and China. Where Moscow dispatches submarines and Beijing builds surveillance networks, Tehran focuses on covert influence operations, cyber disruption, and ideological subversion. Its approach is guerrilla in form and digital in execution. During President Ebrahim Raisi’s 2023 Latin America tour, Tehran signed 35 bilateral agreements, six of them with Cuba. These included cybersecurity training, port access for Iranian vessels, military coordination, customs integration, and telecommunications collaboration. A 2024 report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed that the IRGC’s cyber units have conducted joint exercises with Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), including malware deployment drills, infrastructure reconnaissance, and encrypted app penetration training. U.S. Southern Command has warned of ’emerging cooperation’ between these two regimes, calling it a ‘high-risk multiplier.’ Together, these powers are embedding infrastructure in Cuba not with missiles but with cables, code, and influence tactics that evade traditional detection and fall below the threshold of military provocation. This is a conflict unfolding in bandwidth, not battlefields. As of mid-2025, China has four known signals intelligence stations on the island. Iran and Cuba have signed at least eight cybersecurity and defense agreements. Russia continues to provide logistical, energy, and naval support. This is not a military buildup. It is a soft siege. And Havana is now a critical node in a hostile intelligence network: intercepting U.S. communications, expanding foreign propaganda, and offering Latin American access points to hostile regimes. Chinese firms are laying the groundwork for future 5G expansion. Russian outlets like RT en Español reach tens of millions in the region, amplified through Cuban platforms. Iranian operatives, meanwhile, have conducted joint cyber exercises with Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence. Cuba, long dependent on foreign sponsors, has found three new ones. Its alignment with authoritarian regimes is nothing new — during the Cold War, Cuba was the Soviet Union’s most entrenched ally in the Western Hemisphere, receiving billions in military and economic aid. From 1960 to 1990, Moscow funneled an estimated $65 billion into Havana’s economy, embedding Cuba deeply within the communist bloc. Yet today, the alignment is broader — and quieter. It spans geographic reach, cyber complexity, and ideological convenience. China is building digital surveillance architecture, Russia is investing in port infrastructure and naval access, and Iran is embedding subversive tools and training. It is a convergence driven not by doctrine, but by shared strategic utility. Not ideology, but opportunity, drives the convergence. China seeks proximity. Russia wants relevance. Iran thrives on chaos. Cuba provides geography. During the Cold War, the U.S. met Soviet missiles in Cuba with the Monroe Doctrine and a red line. Today, a subtler but equally dangerous alignment is underway. It may not involve warheads, but it threatens America’s technological, informational, and regional dominance. To treat Cuba as a relic is to misread the moment. It is not a relic. It is a platform. And it is being used. Cuba doesn’t need weapons. It only needs to offer space. And now it has. READ MORE: Will Sunday Be Romania’s Independence Day? Elections Have Consequences for Canada The post Cuba Now Represents a Major Threat appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “playing with fire” by refusing to accept American negotiations and instead proceeding with aerial assaults on Ukraine. In response to Trump’s denunciation of Russian aggression, the Kremlin refused to proceed with ceasefire talks in Ukraine and insulted America’s president, describing him as going through an “emotional overload” for his attempts to seek peace in a war that has claimed thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives and cost the world billions.  The famed Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once conceded that “the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.” In the case of Russia, its culture is one shaped by a history of murder. Amidst attacks on the Ukrainian people and the American administration, a new debate over a statue in Moscow displays the country’s continual veneration of its communist past, and thus the brutality that remains at the heart of its culture. Days before vituperations were launched against Trump’s peace offerings, a new statue of Joseph Stalin was unveiled by the Russian government at Taganskaya Station, the crown jewel of Moscow’s subway line. The statue depicts the dictator flanked by two young laborers and an adoring crowd offering him bouquets. For any unaware, Joseph Stalin ruled as the totalitarian despot of the Soviet Union for 30 years. From 1924 until his death in 1953, Stalin presided over crimes against humanity including the mass killing of his political opponents and large-scale ethnic cleansing. It was Stalin who began the Cold War, supporting pro-Soviet communists in overthrowing democratic capitalist governments worldwide.  Russian political culture has in recent years moved even closer toward revisionist praise for this blood-soaked Marxist past. The Moscow Times reported in 2021 that 48 percent of Russians favored erecting a statue to honor the Soviet leader. In comparison, just 20 percent opposed the idea, a reversal of results found in a poll taken a decade earlier. All in all, 56 percent of Russians described Stalin as a great leader as of 2021 and 70 percent held a generally positive view of him as of 2017. There has not been a survey on Stalin’s legacy taken since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, although Russian media since has focused on drawing parallels between this conflict and World War II, which in Russia is hailed as the “Great Patriotic War,” with Stalin at the helm.  As always, however, there have been Russians opposed to the glorification of Marxist murder. One bystander interviewed by the New York Times described Stalin as “a bloody tyrant.” He echoes the words of the dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that anti-communist Russians would have been completely crushed under Stalin if only they “didn’t love freedom enough” to survive. Survival remains the issue today to the Ukrainians who fight with memories of Stalin’s repression of their parents and grandparents in mind. READ MORE: Why Trump Is Pissed Off at Putin Putin’s Audacious Murderers The post Trump Down, Stalin Up in Moscow appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

As a kid, one of the most painful cultural shocks is the day you realize your favorite sport, the one everyone in your country loves, is irrelevant elsewhere. I couldn’t fathom that there were kids around the world who weren’t Real Madrid fans. I still don’t get it. It’s like someone saying they don’t like beer. I mean, go see a doctor, a mechanic, or something — maybe you’ve got a flat tire in your foot, or you’re leaking oil, or who knows. Something’s clearly off. Beer and Real Madrid are nonnegotiable loves for anyone with a soul, and I’m not open to debating it. But sports have changed. Globalization has spread all the world’s misery across the globe, but among the garbage, some good stuff has gone global too, if only to purify the phenomenon. One of those is the fluidity of sports fandom. Isn’t it amazing? Before, you only had 90 minutes a week to enjoy your team’s game, but now you can grab a case of beer and spend the whole afternoon on the couch, flipping from soccer to the NBA, then the NFL, baseball, cycling, and end up throwing popcorn at the screen because your favorite sumo wrestler (probably named Wong Chu Hung, Shi Tzu, or something like that) lost a match. Dave Barry dreamed of this. The other night, I woke up on the couch at dawn still watching a chess match. I’d been asleep for three hours, and no moves had been made. Okay, not everything is a sport. I, sitting on the couch, was being more athletic than those guys. Anyway, way more people in Europe are following the NFL now, and the soccer that drives us Europeans wild has spread to every continent. I’m writing this because in two weeks, a new international soccer tournament, the FIFA Club World Cup, kicks off in the United States. It’s an event that aims to be massive, and I can’t think of a better country to host it. A few months ago, FIFA’s president took the trophy to the White House to show it off to the world, and I can’t get Donald Trump’s indifferent expression out of my mind. Infantino’s not exactly a charming guy and has never come across as the most trustworthy. I bet Trump was more worried about him pickpocketing than about the trophy. Plus, the cup was covered with a cloth and unveiled to the press for the first time. Since it’s the inaugural edition, there was some curiosity about whether it’d look nice. The Spanish league trophy is nice, the World Cup trophy is nice, the Champions League trophy is gorgeous. But the Club World Cup trophy? It’s the tackiest, most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. You can’t hand out a trophy that spins and comes apart, leaving you wondering if it’s a prize, Ptolemy’s sphere, or a carrot slicer. Aesthetics aside, I’m really curious to see how my American friends will experience the Club World Cup. I imagine the general vibe will be indifference, and I get it. The good news is that, among a bunch of teams, the greatest club in the world is competing — and as you probably guessed, that’s Real Madrid. Yup, my team. Watching Real Madrid play is the closest thing to poetry in sports, to put it in a way kids can read if they’re still up. The tournament will also mark the farewell of Luka Modric, Real Madrid’s most decorated player, a Croatian of a rare breed: insanely talented at soccer, a great guy, smart, funny, and always putting human values and family first. He’s retiring at the top of his game, and it’ll be a privilege to watch him one last time in Real Madrid’s jersey. He’s not even gone yet, and I’m already missing him! The Club World Cup wraps up on July 13, my birthday. It’d be thrilling to celebrate with Real Madrid lifting the trophy on American soil. If not, I’ll be raising some glasses in Spain. To forget. I admit I’m not the most mature sports fan — more the visceral type. The kind who doesn’t speak for three days when my team loses. In other words, a normal guy. I don’t get people who go to work like nothing happened the day after their team loses a trophy final. A loss-induced sulk is the most justified sick leave in the world, way more than a car accident, the flu, or falling down an elevator shaft. We’re surrounded by weaklings. If you’re unsure who to cheer for, I’m counting on you: root for the white jersey, root for the most decorated badge in the world. A quick anecdote: Real Madrid’s stadium is the Santiago Bernabéu — a must-visit when you come to Spain. It’s named after the club’s most famous president. In the stadium’s locker room tunnel, there’s a wall with his image and his most famous quote: “Real Madrid’s jersey can be stained with blood, sweat, and tears, but never with shame.” That might be all you need to know about Real Madrid and what it means to us. Soccer’s great, sure, but it’s more than that: it’s a damn attitude toward life. The right one. And that’s not up for debate either. READ MORE: The New Diplomacy Doesn’t Care About Old Friendships Men Love a Big Carbon Footprint The post Soccer Comes to the United States appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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