The House voted 427-1 this afternoon supporting a motion to compel the Justice Department to release its files on convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) was the only member of congress to vote against the bill.  That legislation moved to the Senate, where by unanimous consent it immediately passed. President Donald Trump has indicated he will sign the bill into law. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson criticized the language of the legislation on grounds of “national security concerns,” saying forced transparency could reveal “sources and methods.” “The discharge requires the AG [attorney general] to release within 30 days ‘classified information to the maximum extent possible’…it is incredibly dangerous that employees of the DOJ [Department of Justice] declassify materials that originated in other intelligence agencies,” Johnson told reporters this afternoon. The sudden bipartisan enthusiasm for disclosure comes after months of pressure from Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Ro Khanna (D-CA) on the Trump administration to release materials it possesses on Jeffrey Epstein.  “We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win. They’re on our side today, so let’s give them some credit as well,” Massie triumphantly declared to Capitol Hill reporters after the vote. In recent weeks, Drop Site News and other independent media have revealed that Jeffrey Epstein served as an international power broker on behalf of Israel and its intelligence agencies. The post Senate and House Overwhelmingly Pass Bill Forcing Release of Epstein Files appeared first on The American Conservative.

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“Well, that went badly,” my friend Tony told me in response to this month’s elections. Based in greater New York, he is a crackerjack biochemist. And as an amateur political scientist, he perfectly distilled the results into just four words. The off-year vote also recalls a line from Rocky Horror Picture Show: “It’s just a jump to the left.” Republicans expected at least a mixed picture among assorted races. Instead, a fortnight after the polls closed, the GOP still aches from an election night that was both rocky and a horror show. America’s most populous metropolis … soon will be governed by a self-styled democratic socialist who sounds more like a Soviet commissar than a Scandinavian central banker. The most menacing development was Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s 50.4 percent majority victory as the next mayor of New York City. America’s most populous metropolis and Earth’s financial, media, and fashion capital soon will be governed by a self-styled democratic socialist who sounds more like a Soviet commissar than a Scandinavian central banker. (RELATED: Comrade With a Condo: The Mamdani Myth Exposed) Mamdani speaks warmly about “seizing the means of production” and “abolition of private property.” If he can promise a freebie, he will. From no-cost childcare to complimentary bus rides to city-owned grocery stores, Mamdani wants average New Yorkers to leave their wallets untouched. Instead, “the top 1 percent” will pay “their fair share” in higher taxes and, thus, finance a perpetual avalanche of gratis goodies. (RELATED: Electing the Image: Mamdani and the Mimetic Turn in Democracy) Yay! Uh-oh: “The Mamdani Effect” confirms that plenty of wealthy New Yorkers want none of this. Like a Billy Joel character named Anthony, they’re movin’ out. A New York Post headline illustrated how Mamdani already is exporting pain beyond Gotham: “Florida locals rush to buy homes over fears New Yorkers fleeing Mamdani will flood the market.” (RELATED: The Faulty Idealism of the Anti-Wealth Brigade) Precisely as I predicted on Fox Business Network’s The Bottom Line, Mamdani’s win would not yield the limited cautionary tale that conservatives like George F. Will idiotically demanded, to remind young people what socialism looks like. (Such folly is coupled with sadism, specifically the disgusting practice of wishing collectivist doom upon fellow Americans.) (RELATED: Mamdani: The Miracle Hair-Growth Salesman Who Claims to Have Found the Master Formula) Rather than drown in his own failures, a triumphant Mamdani soars as his Mini-Mes metastasize across America. Seattle just elected Katie Wilson as mayor. She is a female Mamdani who, if anything, seems more hectoring than the smiling Stalinist bound for Gracie Mansion. Moscow on the Hudson is not just a 1984 film but, God help us, New York City’s near-term destiny. And now, the Politburo on Puget Sound waits in the wings. (RELATED: Mamdani Is NOT a New Phenomenon: He’s the Center of the Democrat Party) “Times Square, with Red Square on the horizon,” image by Deroy Murdock, Chat GPT, Nov. 5, 2025. Things were no better across the Hudson. Late polls showed the energetic, upbeat Republican Jack Ciattarelli in a dead heat for New Jersey governor against Democrat Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill. But the actual ballots gave Ciattarelli just 42.8 percent versus Sherrill’s 56.6 percent — a 13.8 percent Democrat drubbing, 10.6 points worse than his 2021 near-win against incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy. Dems made Ciattarelli’s defeat even more excruciating when they regained their General Assembly supermajority. In Virginia’s gubernatorial face-off, GOP Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears had begun to wane in opinion surveys. But what might have been a 5 percent loss became a 42.4 percent to 57.4 percent, 15-point rout favoring former Democrat Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Mamdani Matriarchy Sets Up Shop In NYC) Most astonishingly, incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-VA) was comfortably ahead in the polls against Democrat Jay “Bang Bang” Jones. As National Review first revealed, the former state delegate notoriously fantasized via text message about plugging “two bullets to the head” of Virginia’s then GOP House Speaker Todd Gilbert. Jones called Todd and Jennifer Gilbert’s two young children “little fascists” and glowingly imagined them dying in their mother’s arms. Jones also looked forward to attending his GOP colleagues’ funerals, so he could “piss on their graves.” Jones was self-burned toast. And then he scorched Miyares 52.9 percent to 46.7 percent — a comfy 6.2 percent win. Democrats also converted 13 state House seats, leaving Republicans at half their strength in 2017. “So what?” some Republicans whistle as they traverse the tombstones. “New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia are Democrat strongholds. Who cares?” First, President Donald J. Trump improved his standing in these three places in November 2024 compared to November 2020. Gotham had back-to-back GOP mayors not so long ago. New Jersey has elected Republican governors within memory. And Glenn Youngkin is Virginia’s Republican governor, right now! If not even a token victory among these locales, Republicans could have lost narrowly. Instead, Democrats kicked their asses. Even worse, Republicans stumbled in increasingly GOP-friendly areas and several solidly conservative bastions. Even worse, Republicans stumbled in increasingly GOP-friendly areas and several solidly conservative bastions. “In Georgia, Democrats flipped two public service commission seats — their first statewide wins since 2006 — and won them by 24 points,” Blaze Media’s Daniel Horowitz lamented. “They broke the GOP supermajority in the Mississippi Senate, flipped a state House seat, and took local races across Pennsylvania.” Mississippi? Are you kidding me? “Democrats have outperformed their 2024 presidential baseline by an average of 15 points in special elections this year, according to Ballotpedia — more than double the overperformance seen during Trump’s first term,” Horowitz ominously continued. “In 45 of 46 key contests, Democrats either held or improved their position.” “It was an electoral blowout,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R – Texas). Amid this conservative carnage, he warned Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “The Left showed up in big numbers last night, and common-sense conservatives did not. If that happens a year from now, we face disaster in the midterms.” In the 50 weeks before Decision 2026, what should GOP candidates, strategists, and activists learn from this mayhem? Republicans mock Democrats for having no message beyond full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s not much of a message. But it’s sufficient to drive turnout among Trump-loathing Democrats and Left-leaning independents. Trump has united Republicans, among whom he enjoyed 91 percent approval in a Gallup survey released October 22, exactly where he stood among GOP respondents in January. But, as Fox News’ Dana Perino astutely observed, Trump also has united Democrats. They differ on plenty but share a hatred of Trump white-hot enough to weld steel. According to Gallup, Trump’s approval among Democrats was a mere 6 percent in October, precisely where that figure was in January, when Trump returned to the White House. Hopped up on the outrage of the October 18 No Kings protests, Democrats decided to “Get Trump” by making life miserable for the “little fascists” on the November 4 ballot. Statistically, Democrats hate Trump 3 percent more than Republicans love him. (Ninety-four percent Democrat disapproval of Trump minus 91 percent GOP approval.) That alone gives Democrats an edge. And that edge swells into a wedge, since hate often motivates more than love. In fact, Republicans seemed so pleased with Trump that too many reckoned he had everything under control and didn’t need their help. These Republicans were so busy savoring the Golden Age that they didn’t bother to vote. For shame! GOP leaders need to rally rank-and-file Republicans to turn out en masse for every election and vote their entire ballots, top to bottom, not just quadrennially to pick a president. Republicans have zero excuse for not turning out universally in every general election, especially given the profusion of mass mail-in ballots, drop boxes, ballot harvesting, early voting, late-arriving ballots, and every other corrupt “temporary” scheme that Democrats imposed during 2020’s COVID-era campaign. Until America gloriously reembraces in-person voting on Election Day, GOP voters may employ all of these balloting techniques. Republican officials, campaign professionals, and sympathetic pundits need to ride GOP voters like jockeys and whip them to the polls, like thoroughbreds toward finish lines. (RELATED: SCOTUS Must Stop Mail-In Voting Madness) YouTube commentator Steve Turley wisely identified another deficiency that hobbled GOP prospects. Right-leaning independents stayed home. It is vital to motivate these citizens, too. According to Gallup, they will need serious prodding. While Trump’s numbers were eerily consistent with Republicans (sky high) and Democrats (dismal), they shifted significantly among independents — and not favorably. Trump’s 46 percent approval among independents in January slid to just 33 percent last month — 28 percent less applause near Halloween than on MLK Day. While some independents leaned Left, others tilted Right. If the latter were ho-hum about voting, they needed to hear compelling reasons to do so. The issues that frosted voters toward Republicans include the still-high cost of living. Year-on-year inflation has stayed perfectly steady under Trump, from 3.0 percent in January to 3.0 percent in September. This is down from 9.1 percent in June 2022, under Biden, but neither lower in eight months nor at the Federal Reserve Board’s 2 percent annual target. Increasing energy supplies should lower manufacturing, transit, and HVAC costs and drag others down with them. Oil remains stuck at roughly $60 per barrel. Drill, baby, drill until that price slides. $50 oil is 16.7 percent cheaper. Yes, please! Trump wisely scrapped tariffs on bananas, coffee, and cocoa, among other grocery products. Good news, but why on Earth did he ever slap tariffs on these goods? It’s one thing to protect a domestic industry, for better or worse. But bananas, of which America grows 8,000 metric tons and imports 9.7 billion metric tons? Infinitesimal Hawaiian output aside, America imports 99.99875 percent of its coffee, according to USAFacts.org. America’s 2023 cocoa bean exports totaled $2.57 million. Imports were 309 times higher: $793 million. Especially given consumers’ price concerns, tariffs should not be self-mutilating. Thinning wallets require lower costs and higher incomes, so consumers have smaller bills and more cash to pay them. The One Big Beautiful Tax Cut should help, as would broader pro-growth policies. Since eight Senate Democrats joined Republicans to end the 43-day Schumer Shutdown, the GOP Congress should clog the Resolute Desk with low-tax, market-friendly legislation for Trump to sign. Additional reconciliation bills would facilitate this effort, as would retiring the filibuster. As Mark Twain said of Richard Wagner’s music, this latter idea “is better than it sounds.” (RELATED: Trump’s Right: Nuke the Filibuster) Republicans swiftly must get dead serious about election integrity. Insisting that citizens show ID to vote is fine. However, this is nearly meaningless while the GOP lets crooked Democrats obliterate the secret ballot via mass-mail voting. Until Americans reinvigorate the centuries-old democratic norm of in-person voting on Election Day, Republicans must disinfect filthy mass-mail-in ballots. “New Jersey and Virginia GOP officials never thought it might make sense to cut the cards — just once — and compare voter rolls with property tax rolls and stop mail-in ballots going to ineligible addresses — like Walmarts or gas stations,” clean-election watchdog and Omega4America founder Jay Valentine wrote via Substack. “Neither state GOP did a thing about the scores of NGOs — funded by international Leftists — working street-level affiliates to harvest ineligible ballots and vote them,” Valentine complained. “The Lefties believed the polls in both states and thought the election was closer than it was. So, they grossly over voted their ineligible ballots — delivering 10–12-point spreads where 2 percent would display better manners.” Republicans need to scrub voter rolls of the ineligible (for starters: disqualified felons and foreign citizens), the relocated, and the deceased. They should require government-issued photo ID of those who vote in person and furnish free ID cards to legitimate voters who lack them. But this is vital: Republicans must compare voter rolls with property rolls and challenge ballots addressed to “voters” registered at bogus locations, including (as the Public Interest Legal Foundation discovered in Nevada) an abandoned yoga studio, the Harry Reid International Airport, casinos, strip clubs, and gravel-filled empty lots in Las Vegas and Reno. Finally, regarding demographics, Republicans need to plant their butts on hard chairs and do this: a) Figure out why the Hispanics who flocked to Trump in the Garden State flew away, as if heading south for the winter. “The three most Latino counties in New Jersey — Passaic, Cumberland, and Hudson — offer key insight,” explained Punchbowl News’ Ally Mutnick. “Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) won Passaic County, which is 43 percent Latino, by a whopping 15 points. In 2024, Trump won it by three points.” “Sherrill won Cumberland County by four points, a seven-point shift from Trump’s three-point win there in 2024,” Mutnick continued. “And in Hudson County, Sherrill pulled a 50-point win, nearly doubling former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 28-point margin.” No bueno. b) Learn how to avoid getting their heads gobbled clean off by praying-mantis-like young-female voters. CNN’s exit polls indicated that women aged 18 through 29 swung Left hard enough to snap GOP candidates’ necks and hand Democrats margins worthy of Warsaw Pact plebiscites. These ladies went 81 percent for Sherrill, 81 percent for Spanberger, 83 percent for California Governor Gavin Newsom’s gerrymandering ploy, and 84 percent for Mamdani. Converting those massive GOP losses into outright victories would require 32 percent to 35 percent Rightward shifts. Unlikely. Curbing this non-enthusiasm to, say, 65 percent pro-Democrat would help. A 55 percent loss among this cohort would merit Prosecco and confetti. How to achieve this? Don’t ask me. I am a 61-year-old man. Republican women under 30 might know how to bring their sisters in from the cold. GOP candidates, strategists, and pollsters should hire them — today! — so they can prevent Republicans from losing their heads on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. READ MORE from Deroy Murdock: Jack Ciattarelli Wraps Run With Raritan Rally Mamdani’s Agenda: Stalinism and Sloth ‘Prosecutor’ Ramin Fatehi: The Chesa Boudin of Chesapeake Bay Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

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“The world needs a new pandemic playbook,” headlined City Journal on Nov. 13, because “the old one failed to cope with Covid and may even have caused it.” The author is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who contends that the old playbook “failed catastrophically,” even though it was “breathtaking, even utopian in its ambition.” (RELATED: Bhattacharya Did Not Follow the COVID Herd) The old playbook charted every existing pathogen and brought biological samples to labs, “often located in city centers like Wuhan, China.” Each pathogen was then tested for its ability to penetrate human cells, “and sometimes even genetically modifying it to make this more likely,” a dangerous practice known as gain-of-function (dGOF) research. (RELATED: The Suppression of the ‘Lab Leak Theory’ Has Collapsed) In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” The playbook then developed “vaccines and therapeutics” to counter the pathogens. “Crucially, this step involves awarding large contracts to pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop and stockpile the countermeasures,” notes Dr. Bhattacharya, and “every step of this agenda is fraught with risk and danger.” (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Three) For example, the collection of pathogens “risks a spillover of a pathogen that might never have occurred otherwise.” In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” As the NIH director notes, “lab leaks are common, and biosafety oversight is not harmonized worldwide, meaning these pathogens are often manipulated in relatively low-security environments.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has problems beyond its location in a city. In a Communist dictatorship like the People’s Republic of China, fidelity to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not scientific experience and expertise, determines who operates the lab. The Wuhan lab received a cargo of deadly pathogens, including Ebola and Nipah virus, from Xiangguo Qiu, a Chinese national who headed the special pathogens program at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg. In 2017-18, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips to China, including one to train scientists at the WIV. In 2019, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded the WIV to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research. Dr. Fauci believed the COVID virus emerged naturally in the wild and branded those who saw evidence of a laboratory origin as “conspiracy theorists.” The NIH also had a problem with Dr. Bhattacharya. The Stanford professor of medicine joined colleagues from Harvard, Oxford, and many other universities in the Great Barrington Declaration, challenging Dr. Fauci’s rigid lockdown regime. Then-NIH director Francis Collins tasked Dr. Fauci to launch “a quick and devastating published takedown” of the “fringe epidemiologists,” most, if not all, more qualified than Collins and Fauci. (RELATED: Never Forget What They Did to Us Five Years Ago) Anthony Fauci earned an MD in 1966, but in 1968 hired on at NIH. His bio showed no advanced degrees in biochemistry or molecular biology, but in 1984, the NIH made him head of NIAID. Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, believed that Dr. Fauci did not understand medicine and “should not be in a position like he’s in.” Dr. Fauci remained in the powerful post, and in the pandemic playbook, he is clearly the quarterback. (RELATED: Dr. Anthony Fauci: What Exactly Did Biden Pardon?) Dr. Bhattacharya earned a PhD in economics, and as the NIH director observes, the old playbook creates “a group of well-funded scientists who benefit from scaring the public beyond what the evidence warrants and at the same time falsely minimizing the risk of lab accidents. These scientists make a living doing research for the traditional pandemic preparedness playbook — an extreme conflict of interest.”’ Call it the green side of white coat supremacy, and there’s more to it. The playbook also “creates an industry of vaccine and drug manufacturers to whom the government awards vast sums of money to produce the pharmaceutical stockpile that, by design, has never been tested in human populations.” As the American population might note, the vaunted COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, which the fully boosted Dr. Fauci verified by testing positive. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Two) Instead of “wasting money on the traditional playbook,” the NIH director believes, we should improve understanding of pathogens “we know cause disease in humans” and “develop better prevention and treatment strategies for these existing pathogens.” There’s also work on the organizational side. Dr. Bhattacharya has already eliminated a huge conflict of interest by removing Christine Grady, Dr. Fauci’s wife, from her post as chief bioethicist of the NIH Clinical Center. In her 1995 The Search for an AIDS Vaccine, Grady touted Dr. Fauci but failed to reveal that she had been married to him for 10 years. The Fauci-Grady axis also went missing when the NIH made Grady bioethics chief in 2012. (RELATED: Fauci Allies Sent Packing) The NIH has also removed Dr. Fauci’s successor, Jeanne Marrazzo, and has proposed folding 27 NIH agencies into eight. Never again must a single person control public health policy and funding for medical research in the style of Dr. Fauci, who in 2021 claimed to represent science. On his last day in the White House, Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci, “for any offense against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.” Maybe Dr. Bhattacharya can track down the exact offense that merits a “full and unconditional pardon.” Meanwhile, as the new NIH playbook proceeds, the struggle of the people against white coat supremacy is the struggle of memory against forgetting. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: China’s New Hongqi Bridge Collapses — Could California’s Chinese Bridge Be Far Behind? World Series University: Life Lessons From the MLB Hike Taxes to Help the Homeless? Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

Congress Should Pass a Discontinuing Resolution

Foreign Affairs A Recent Attack on TAC Falls Flat I was right about Iran, actually. On Iran and the Middle East broadly, The American Conservative gets everything wrong. At least, that’s what pro-Israel neoconservatives would have you believe, notwithstanding much evidence to the contrary. Last week Commentary published a hit job on us with the rather uninspired headline, “Neither American nor Conservative.” According to the subhead, “The flagship paleoconservative publication got everything about Donald Trump’s Middle East policy wrong—and then melted down.” The author, James Kirchick, is a longtime neocon who has supported such America First causes as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, gay rights in Eastern Europe, and slandering antiwar conservatives as “objectively pro-fascist.” As senior editor at TAC, I have a pretty good handle on what we run online and in print and what goes on inside our DC office, and I don’t recall anyone ever “melting down” about the Middle East. But what about the other, sweeping claim, that TAC has gotten “everything” about Trump’s Mideast policy wrong? Au contraire, we have gotten a lot right, and Kirchick, who seems to have scoured our coverage of Iran and tallied the (alleged) misses and none of the hits, surely knows that. Allow me to survey my own recent writings on the subject to refute this claim. After Trump bombed Iran in late June and then announced a ceasefire to end the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, I recalled that in May I had predicted that the U.S. would attack Iran, rather than strike a deal that limits its enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel. While Trump seemed to genuinely want such a deal, I reasoned, Israel would go to great lengths to sabotage diplomacy.  “What I’m imagining is that Israel conducts strikes and then we get dragged into war in support of them,” I said on an episode of TAC Right Now. “They [Israel] can’t take out these underground nuclear reactors on their own; they need bunker busters for that, 30,000-pound bunker-busters that require B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.” The U.S., and not Israel, possesses those bunker-busters and B-2 Spirits, and I expected the U.S. to use them on Israel’s behalf. This weekend, that prediction came to pass. Though America’s intervention now seems like a one-off, and though Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire, the same dynamics that last month made me so pessimistic are still in play. Does this sound to you like the rantings of a Mideast melt-downer who is wrong about “everything”? Compare my prediction from May to arguments then being advanced by pro-Israel conservatives. Back then, figures like Ben Shapiro were confidently proclaiming that Israel could take care of Iran all by itself, and that the U.S. absolutely wouldn’t attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, so the White House shouldn’t restrain Israel out of misplaced fears of getting dragged into the conflict. Moreover, as I had warned would be the case, America’s deep involvement in the conflict went beyond its own offensive military action, despite what the Israel-Firsters would have you believe. Throughout the war, Washington extended its superpower shield over Israel, defending it from Iranian retaliation and, in the process, rapidly depleting American stocks of scarce missile interceptors. Had the U.S. refrained from coming to the rescue, the damage done to Israel would have been even more severe than it was, perhaps catastrophically so. In fairness to Kirchick, he didn’t quote the piece from late June, so maybe he never got around to reading it.  Nor does he refer to my discussion on Iran with Daniel McCarthy, a board member at The American Conservative, though TAC published a transcript in mid-June, after the war kicked off but days before the U.S. bombed Iran. One reason for publishing that transcript was to expose our readers to McCarthy’s argument that, in my words, “some figures on the antiwar right have become mirror images of the neocons: While the latter push for Trump to join Israel’s war with Iran, the former argue he should have prevented it.”  During the conversation, McCarthy warned against assuming a “nightmare scenario” of Iraq War 2.0 and reminded me of the responsibility we have to look at each step of this mess that we have, and to say, you know what, America has a choice every step of the way and can back down or choose not to be involved at any point. That proved excellent advice, which guided my subsequent analysis. The piece constitutes a rather glaring counterexample to one of Kirchick’s central criticisms and generalizations: that TAC routinely insisted that any engagement in Iran would spin out of control. So, which of my pieces did Kirchick highlight? The only quote by me comes from an early July piece. Kirchick writes: Senior editor Andrew Day sourly fumed that Israel “instigated” the war and that “its campaign, though impressive, failed to eliminate the Iranian threat, and probably made it worse in the long run.” Where to begin? First, as my friends know, I’m rarely sour and never fume. Second, as I like to remind the younger writers here at TAC, you can’t magically enhance your argument by stuffing attributions with adverbs or using colorful alternatives to the time-honored “wrote” and “said.” Some questions: Does Kirchick disagree that Israel, by launching a surprise attack on Iran, thereby “instigated” the war? Does he believe that Israel did indeed “eliminate the Iranian threat”? (The Israelis themselves don’t seem to think so.) Lastly, is it patently absurd of me to assess that Israel, by heightening Tehran’s threat perception and spurring its buildup of military forces, worsened the long-term threat posed by Iran? Kirchick evidently thinks that merely quoting this line is sufficient to discredit my analysis, but I’m not sure why. Note also my use of even-handed, probabilistic language when forecasting. No meltdown here. Of course, I didn’t get everything right on Iran. But I was sometimes wrong in a direction opposite the one Kirchick emphasizes. In a piece entitled “Trump Can, and Must, Avoid War with Iran,” published on June 12, I wrote:  Fortunately, the U.S. and Iran still plan to hold nuclear talks this weekend. Israel is not likely to attack before then, meaning Trump has one more shot at salvaging diplomacy. As we now know, Israel attacked Iran the very next day. Evidently, I underestimated Israel’s willingness to sabotage U.S.–Iran diplomacy and overestimated Trump’s abilities to avoid getting dragged into another Mideast conflict. Kirchick would surely reply that I nevertheless assumed the risk for America was getting dragged into a “forever war” in the Middle East, whereas Trump—to his credit—wound up authorizing limited strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and then pushing the two main belligerents to cease fire. Fair enough. But before Trump’s intervention, my published conversation with McCarthy highlighted the possibility of limited U.S. engagement.  Kirchick faults TAC for repeatedly predicting that war with Iran would lead to “World War III,” and he seems to think we’re terribly embarrassed by our failures of prognostication.  In fact, none of the articles mentioned by Kirchick used the term “World War III,” though a speech he cites delivered this September by Curt Mills, our executive director, does reflect on the criticism that so-called isolationists falsely predicted World War III. And one TAC article from June argues that America’s accumulation of security dependents (not just Israel) makes World War III more likely. When I myself have talked about the possibility of world war in recent months, I’ve cautioned against alarmism. For example, when the foreign policy analyst and podcast host Brandon Weichert interviewed me in August and asked whether a renewed war with Iran could widen into a global conflagration involving Russia and China, I answered, “I am not quite concerned about World War III breaking out over that particular issue.” This might be the mildest meltdown in human history. That podcast proves instructive in another respect: As my comments clearly demonstrate, I harbor no hysterical animus toward Israel, and I have often criticized its actions on the basis that I think they are counterproductive to Israel’s own long-term interests. On the podcast, I even emphasized that, in the short term, Israel’s bellicosity toward Iran is comprehensible and rational (though not optimal), given its threat environment. As I made clear, the problem for me is that it’s not in America’s interests to subsidize and enable that bellicosity, and Trump should avoid becoming embroiled in a war on Israel’s behalf. Kirchick, unsurprisingly, also painted TAC as a motley collection of nefarious antisemites. His most confident accusation of Jew hatred was leveled against Harrison Berger, TAC’s newest staff writer, who also happens to be a devout American Jew. I’ve enjoyed hours of conversation with Berger, once involving copious amounts of wine, and have yet to hear him slip up and express bigotry against himself. Perhaps Kirchick wouldn’t deem these facts dispositive, but consider his own evidence: Berger “scornfully referenced the Hebrew word hasbara without translation… a sure sign that the writer is an anti-Semite.” Okay. In recent weeks TAC has been subjected to what feels like a coordinated campaign to delegitimize our magazine and demean us personally. We’ve even weathered a DDoS cyberattack, originating in Israel, that briefly took down our website. Kirchick and others are, of course, free to criticize our ideas—we enjoy rough-and-tumble debate—but so far the most impressive attack was the one against our website.  As the TAC staffer who has written the most on Iran this past year, and who wrote the most articles cited by Kirchick, I don’t consider it cherry-picking to review my own output to refute his critique. Of course, I would welcome a riposte, if Kirchick’s not too busy sourly fuming. The post A Recent Attack on TAC Falls Flat appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The Unraveling of Volodymyr Zelensky The Ukrainian president’s campaign promises of peace and public integrity look wobblier than ever. (Photo by NICK PALEOLOGOS/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images) In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky swept to power in a shocking landslide victory, taking 73 percent of the run-off vote. He won on a platform with two major planks: first, implementing the Minsk Agreements and making peace with Russia, and second, fighting high-level corruption in Ukraine’s government. Both planks are now in splinters. The Minsk Agreements are dead, Ukraine and Russia are almost in their fourth year of hideous war, and the scandal of high-level corruption has crept into Zelensky’s innermost circle. Upon being elected, Zelensky told reporters that he would “reboot” peace talks with separatists in Donbas and that “we will continue in the direction of the Minsk [peace] talks and head towards concluding a ceasefire.” But it was not to be. Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that fulfilling his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector paramilitary organization, threatened that, if Zelensky were to pursue a ceasefire, “he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War. And it is very important that he understand this.” But it is also now known that no one ever intended the Minsk Agreements to work. Each of Putin’s partners in the Minsk process, including then Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President François Hollande and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko have confirmed that the Minsk Accords were a deception designed to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement while actually buying Ukraine the time it needed to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution. Despite his campaign promise, in February 2023, Zelensky reportedly told Der Spiegel that he saw the agreements as a “concession,” and he “surprised” Merkel and Macron by telling them that “as for Minsk as a whole…we cannot implement it like this.” But, even after the collapse of the Minsk process, in the early weeks of the war, before all the loss of life and land, there was still a chance for Zelensky to negotiate peace with the Russian invaders.  In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators arrived at a draft peace treaty. But Zelensky was diverted by his Western partners. Rather than pursue the promise of diplomacy and a peace that would satisfy Ukraine’s goals, Zelensky allowed himself to be pulled by the promise of whatever it takes for as long as it takes onto the path of war. The U.S. and its partners failed to prioritize diplomacy, and Zelensky was seduced by promises of support and victory onto the path of war. Several officials, from several countries, who were involved in the negotiations have confirmed that the West pushed Ukraine off the path of diplomacy. Davyd Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team, has confirmed the December 2022 report in Ukrainska Pravda that on April 9, 2022, Johnson hurried to Kiev to tell Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “they [the West] are not.” Arakhamia says that “when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.” Most recently, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine and a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team for the peace talks in Istanbul, has said that “they did not continue negotiations in Istanbul, didn’t finish their work after Johnson arrived…. I was at the negotiations, we returned from the Istanbul negotiations, and then something happened to Zelensky.” Arestovych added that the peace agreement “had already been completely decided” in early April but that, “Biden and Johnson promised volume military diplomatic assistance, allowing to defeat at least part of the Russian military and take a better negotiating position.” The possibility of peace, consistent with Zelensky’s campaign promises, was still alive. It was Russia that started the war, and the U.S. and NATO share the blame for the causes that brought it about. But Zelensky could have resisted Western seduction and pressure and pursued the promise of peace that was still possible in Istanbul. The promise to end corruption in Ukrainian politics is equally splintered. On November 11, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), in cooperation with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), in “a major anti-corruption operation,” charged multiple high level people, some from Zelensky’s most inner circle, in a $100 million kickback scheme involving energy contracts. The scandal has led to the suspension of Justice Minister German Halushchenko, who served as energy minister from 2021 to July 2025. And it has led to the resignation of Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk. There are reports that other high level former officials have been implicated, including Rustem Umerov, who served as defense minister for much of the war, and the former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, who is accused of receiving at least $1.2 million in the kickback scheme. Chernyshov is a close friend and ally of Zelensky. And he is not the only close associate of Zelensky to get caught up in the investigation. According to NABU, Timur Mindich, “controlled the work of the so-called ‘laundry room,’ where criminally-obtained funds were laundered.” Mindich, the alleged ringleader, is the co-owner of Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 media production company. He is also a close friend of Zelensky who has acquired “broad political influence over Mr. Zelensky” that has grown during the war. Zelensky has called for sanctions on, but not for the arrest of, Mindich. Mindich fled Ukraine hours before investigators raided his house. There are various reports about where he has fled with the latest suggesting Poland.  The corruption scandal has sent shivers through Europe, which has poured billions of dollars into Ukraine’s defense and into Ukraine’s energy sector. It has reawakened anxieties about sending money to Ukraine and about Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in the European Union. Zelensky himself has not been implicated. And he has called for “effective actions against corruption” and “punishment.” But his recent actions have given, at least, the appearance of implicating himself. In July, Zelensky attempted to decapitate the anticorruption agencies as they pursued the case that has now caught his close associates in their net. Zelensky attempted to place the independent agencies under the control of Ukraine’s prosecutor general who is appointed by the president, placing all ability of agencies to investigate government corruption under the control of the government.  But it is not just the continuation of the corruption that has been a part of the Ukrainian government from the beginning, it is the proximity to Zelensky and the specific nature of the corruption.  According to NABU, the “high-level criminal organization” made all energy contractors of the state nuclear agency “pay illegal benefits.” The criminal organization bribed contractors between 10 percent and 15 percent of their contracts’ value. What’s worse is that while Russia is devastating Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and Ukrainians are suffering daily blackouts, the investigation has zeroed in on kickbacks on contracts that were for the construction of defensive fortifications to protect those very energy installations. Tapes obtained by NABU even seem to contain conversations about delaying these fortification projects to obtain maximum profit on kickbacks from more lucrative alternatives. With the collapse of the anticorruption campaign and the collapse of peace talks with Russia, the two major planks upon which Ukrainians voted for Zelensky have collapsed. With the war going increasingly (and apparently irreversibly) badly, the threat to Zelensky’s public trust could not have come at a worse time for Ukraine. The post The Unraveling of Volodymyr Zelensky appeared first on The American Conservative.