President Trump announced his decision to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in a letter posted to Truth Social Monday evening The move surprised analysts, despite Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte’s allegations last week that Cook committed mortgage fraud. In the letter addressed to Cook, Trump cited Pulte’s “criminal referral” before accusing the Fed governor of “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter.” In a statement released last week in response to the allegations, Cook said she had “no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”  “The Federal Reserve has tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve member banks,” Trump wrote in his Monday statement. “The American people must have the full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve.” The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to Trump’s decision. Cook’s firing is the latest in a series of flashpoints between Trump and the Federal Reserve. Trump has repeatedly questioned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s leadership during the first eight months of his second administration, and the president’s decision to remove Cook signals his intent to exert influence on the famously independent agency. The post Trump Removes Fed Governor Lisa Cook appeared first on The American Conservative.

Changing up her entire identity. The post How The Muppets made Linda Ronstadt leave rock and roll first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

 “Io sono Giorgia!” “I am Giorgia!” she proclaimed in a now-famous speech. “I am a woman. I am a mother. I am Italian. I am a Christian, and you can’t take that away from me.” And three years after this defiant 2019 appearance on the political stage, Giorgia Meloni added yet another powerful proclamation: “I am the Prime Minister of Italy.” In the three years since, she has become perhaps the most consequential of European leaders, the one who best embodies a forward-looking solution to Europe’s malaise. Palin was hated, above all else, for embodying an alternative vision of feminism, and it’s a vision that still needs an avatar. Instead of the self-absorbed fantasies of France’s Macron, the tedious lawyerisms of the U.K.’s  Starmer, or the constipated whines of Germany’s Merz, we have someone insistently joyous and ready — more than ready — to push for solutions. Has she turned off the spigot of uncontrolled immigration? Not yet, but she’s way out in front of all the others, all the more notable given Italy’s front-line status. Has she led Italy out of the European Union as many hoped? No, but after being initially stigmatized by the Brussels bureaucracy, she’s now become the indispensable woman if Europe is to be revitalized. (RELATED: Meloni’s Italy: A Refreshing Crescendo to Brussels’ Dissonance) At a time when support for Ukraine was deeply unpopular among her own supporters, she stood strong. It’s no accident that, when Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and a cadre of other European leaders gathered with President Trump in the Oval Office, Meloni, the leader of perhaps the weakest of the major European countries, took center stage alongside Trump, quite literally in the seating arrangements of the meeting, and also as, so we’re told, the leader who inserted the notion of a “NATO-lite” security guarantee into the discussion. Some have taken to calling her “the Trump whisperer.” (RELATED: Security Guarantees and Peace in Ukraine) A woman, then, a mother, proudly representative of her nation, outspokenly Christian at a time when most of Europe seems embarrassed by the very notion of Christianity. “Make Italy Great Again?” As she moves from strength to strength, facing down a long-entrenched left-wing establishment, one hopes for her continued success, and if it continues for the next several years, one wonders what worlds she might yet want to conquer. I, for one, wish that she’d been born in the United States, because I would love to see her at the head of the Republican ticket in 2028. (RELATED: Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and the Future of the West) We once had someone, briefly, who offered for one dazzling moment something akin to the speech with which Meloni announced herself on the political stage in 2019. Therein lies a lesson in both what might have been and how such moments can go disastrously wrong. I’m thinking of Sarah Palin and her vice-presidential candidacy. Before Palin became a reality TV cliché, before Donald Trump turned reality TV stardom from a political liability to a political asset, there was Sarah Palin, the political force who threatened to upend every calculation about the 2008 presidential election. When John McCain selected the then-governor of Alaska to be his vice-presidential running mate, the initial response was one of puzzlement, of a sense that there was something almost whimsical in the choice, yet another example of McCain going out of his way to validate himself as a political maverick. Alaska would bring nothing in terms of electoral votes, nor did the governor have a significant record of accomplishment. But all of this changed on the night of September 3, 2008, when Sarah Palin stepped to the podium at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to accept the nomination. Little was expected of her, and much of the country, including many of the Republican convention delegates, wondered just who this woman was, assuming that her speech would offer little more than a low-key apology for assuming such a prominent position on the national political stage. Instead, what they — and the country — got was the political equivalent of a grand slam home run, and more a grand slam by a rookie who only the day before had been called up from the minor leagues, and, by most reckonings, not even AAA ball. Governor of Alaska? The pols had not been impressed, and even less so by her previous service as mayor of Wasilla, population about 6,000 at the time. And no one saw a political rock star in the making. She did it all that night. Her’s was a genuine Meloni “Io sono Sarah” moment. She introduced herself, inviting the world to see her not just as another politician, but as a down-to-earth, genuine person— a wife, a mother, and a patriot. Without wallowing in bathos, she reminded the audience that she and her husband had chosen to have a child with Down syndrome, in what was understood to be a powerful rejection of the Democrats’ burgeoning abortion agenda. Then, in a few choice phrases, she eviscerated Barack Obama’s candidacy. The best came when she spoke of her early political experience, remarking that “a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Given that Obama’s record was notably light on genuine achievement, the remark stung. Again and again, she effectively mocked Obama as an elitist of only slight — and thoroughly unimpressive — experience, someone who looked good, spoke well, but had no substance. The overall effect was transformative, and the mainstream media — not quite as lockstep partisan as it has since become — reacted with a kind of awestruck amazement. The McCain campaign, suddenly struggling to keep up with her overnight supernova status, compiled a list of comments that makes for fascinating reading even today. George Stephanopoulos — yes, the very same man — noted that she was “appealing, she was funny, she was warm at times, very, very tough at times as well.” He gave her an “A.” Tom Brokaw called it an “auspicious debut” on the national stage, saying that she “could not have been more winning or engaging.” Anderson Cooper called her “a force to be reckoned with.” The Financial Times correspondent, Chrystia Freeland, characterized the speech as “absolutely dazzling,” and more than a few commentators resorted to the phrase “a star is born.” The Associated Press compared her communication skills to Ronald Reagan’s. Given the passage of time, given how the moment has since been tarnished, I encourage readers to follow the link to this compilation of morning-after comments. If you were watching that night, as I was, it will remind you of a rare moment from the Republican party of that era, a moment that absolutely crackled with electricity. If you weren’t watching, or are too young to even imagine such an event, the link will give you something of the flavor, notable, above all else, for how positively so many Democrat-leaning commentators reacted. Whatever they thought of how McCain matched up with Obama, Democratic party political operatives awoke to the realization that, with Palin leading the attack on McCain’s behalf, they suddenly had a real fight on their hands. The Palin phenomenon dominated political news in the week following the convention. The Obama campaign reacted accordingly once they recovered from the shock. Virtually traumatized by the sudden media obsession with someone they’d dismissed only days earlier as a nonentity, the Obama campaign pivoted suddenly and sharply. The angry press releases came thick and fast, calling her “a liar,” or “scary,” even, ludicrously, complaining that she was a “moose-shooter,” perhaps because, unlike Democrat candidates then and now (looking at you Tim Walz), she clearly knew which end of a rifle the bullets came out of. She soon became, not once but repeatedly, the object of a snarky jab about putting “lipstick on a pig.” Predictably, the National Organization for Women absolutely hated her for her anti-abortion position, so too did the female reporters who’d swooned for Bill Clinton and were swooning anew for Barack Obama. The “lipstick” comment was telling, as the Obama team reacted to yet another challenge posed by Palin — her sex appeal. Although rarely acknowledged publicly, the Obama team had counted on Obama’s sex appeal as a counter to McCain’s more dour image. But now it was check and mate as the whole country, somewhat breathlessly, acknowledged Palin’s sexiness. One columnist saw her as resembling “one of those naughty librarians in a Cinemax (soft core) movie.” Disgustingly — but unsurprisingly — pornographer Larry Flynt’s Hustler organization commissioned an X-rated movie, “Who’s Naylin Paylin?” The movie dripped with contempt for Palin, but would have been literally unimaginable in the case, say, of Elizabeth Warren. A bathing suit photo from Palin’s youthful participation in a beauty pageant drew some 700,000 likes in almost no time. The attacks accumulated, a litany of hate, vicious attack after vicious attack. Comments taken out of context were used to characterize her as an “airhead,” mocked for somehow not being a combination of Aristotle and Henry Kissinger. Her vice-presidential rival, Joe Biden, was held up as a statesman of great intellect, an absurdity that gave the game away — this woman could not be allowed to succeed. Sadly, the McCain campaign’s efforts on her behalf quickly descended from cluelessness into contemptuous frustration. In a campaign fraught with internal contradictions, Palin became a burden rather than an asset. In fairness, she never quite lived up to that electric moment on the convention stage. But, also in fairness, few American politicians prior to Donald Trump have been so viciously and relentlessly attacked. Palin was hated, above all else, for embodying an alternative vision of feminism, and it’s a vision that still needs an avatar. I detest the very notion of identity politics, and I firmly believe that, all other things being equal, we should always elect the most qualified candidates, without reference to sex, or color, or any other irrelevant quality. I was delighted back in 2016 when Hilary Clinton’s carefully orchestrated “smash the glass ceiling moment” collapsed metaphorically over her head. But we’re not yet clear of the assumption that “black” or “woman” must belong to the left. I live in Virginia, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears has been targeted frequently with the assumption that, as a black woman, she is somehow deeply deficient for not slavishly — I use the term advisedly — accepting her ordained role as a Democrat. So while I know that the likely 2028 candidates are JD Vance, or Marco Rubio, or Ron DeSantis, I can’t help but wish that we might have our own Giorgia Meloni. Someone tough enough to succeed in the face of the hatred that brought Sarah Palin low. Someone utterly and completely competent, but also defiantly herself, a mother, a woman, an American. Someone to put the left’s Hilary Clinton pretensions to rest, someone to make AOC retreat into tending bar, someone to send the Whitmers and the Hochuls into tearful retreat. I don’t see such a candidate on the horizon — but one can hope. READ MORE from James H. McGee: Security Guarantees and Peace in Ukraine Sweeney, Mamdani, and the American Diner Behind the Bolshoi Trump, Putin, and Peace in Ukraine James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk find the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.

Last week, buried under a deluge of reports about President Trump’s upcoming summit in Alaska, something amazing happened. That was the nearly unprecedented un-resignation of Dr. Vinay Prasad, chief medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration. Prasad, a biostatistician of high standing in the medical community and one of the brightest minds behind Trump’s efforts to reform the vaccine approval process, had resigned from his post about a week earlier. At the time, his resignation was notable for its abruptness, for the fact that it happened amid a second Trump administration that has thus far done a good job of limiting turnover, and for the fact that it was totally unnecessary. It’s a great formula for Trump’s backers, and a frustrating one for his foes. The apparent trigger of Prasad’s resignation was a campaign waged on X by conservative influencer Laura Loomer, who exhumed a series of Prasad’s past social media posts in which he described himself as a Bernie Sanders liberal. Even though Prasad’s portfolio in the administration is limited to vaccine and drug approvals, issues on which he is in lockstep with the president and arguably one of the most qualified people to implement his agenda, Loomer argued that those 2021 and 2022 posts disqualified him from working in the administration. Some, including medical journalist Alex Berenson, noted that Loomer’s out-of-the-blue smear campaign seemed to follow suspiciously close on the heels of Prasad’s order that influential pharmaceutical company Sarepta Therapeutics stop shipping its flagship muscular dystrophy drug on grounds of unconvincing clinical results. According to reporting by Politico, Trump asked Prasad to return to work after heavy lobbying from FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Though Prasad’s ordeal was unusual in its drama, it becomes the latest data point in an encouraging trend within the second Trump term — a trend which distinguishes it from all other recent administrations, and most notably, from Trump’s first. That is its near-total rejection of the heckler’s veto. Indeed, there is no recent presidential administration that has delivered so few scalps to a public (and media) so hungry for them. The furor over Trump’s decision not to release further information on financier and convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein is a case in point. Divisive among Trump’s base, the Epstein issue seemed tailor-made to break the Trump presidency apart. Belatedly discovering the Epstein story as a means to sow chaos in the administration, legacy press outlets joined conservative media in accusing Trump — who had previously called for further investigation of Epstein — of hypocrisy. Amplified by outlets such as Newsweek, petitions calling for the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi gained tens of thousands of signatures. Reports circulated claiming that FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino (both Epstein ‘truthers’) were furious with Trump and were considering resigning. The reports seemed almost to dare the president to be so soft as to tolerate such insubordination. In the end, Trump made his decision on who needed to take the fall: nobody. In his judgment, the Epstein story was a distraction, all the officials concerned were doing their jobs well, and it wasn’t worth wasting good staff on an imbroglio caused by his own U-turn. A month later, the clamor over Epstein has abated, and Bondi, Patel, and Bongino are all still employed. Another example of Trump’s new tack of safeguarding his administration’s human capital is his seeming indifference to allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is mismanaging the Pentagon. Two weeks ago, a headline in Politico asked: “Trump 2.0 Doesn’t Like Drama. So Why’s He Swallowing So Many Bad Headlines About Hegseth?” Politico is only confused because the question is framed incorrectly. Trump 2.0’s aversion to drama is internal; indeed, the administration seems willing to weather or ignore just about any media firestorm. The only drama it worries about is that which distracts from the president’s agenda. When it comes to the Pentagon, that agenda seems to be to upset the applecart of military leadership by superannuated armchair generals and replace it with leadership by young men in the field with an “America First” perspective. Is the fractiousness within Hegseth’s Pentagon a distraction from that agenda or evidence that it’s being implemented? In Trump’s view, clearly the latter. And then there’s “Signalgate” — the encrypted chat heard round the world, in which Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz discussed classified Ukraine strike plans in a private chat that included a journalist. Trump, in a measured response to the public clamor, demoted Waltz to U.N. representative, but collected no scalps for the oversight. And that, with the partial exception of Elon Musk’s departure from the Department of Government Efficiency (partial since Musk was a volunteer who was bound to return to his businesses eventually), has been the theme of the second Trump administration. To hire purposefully and fire only when the administration’s agenda is no longer being served, whatever anyone on the outside has to say. It’s a great formula for Trump’s backers, and a frustrating one for his foes. But it’s hard to argue that the elimination of the heckler’s veto from our executive politics is anything other than a long-term boon for our political system. READ MORE: The Age of Trump Trump’s Secret Weapon Deserves a World Record

President Trump’s “comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions,” is raising alarms about censorship, revisionism, and so forth. People may not be aware of the back story, as outlined by Roger Kimball at American Greatness. “In recent years, the Smithsonian has gradually morphed from an institution for the ‘increase & diffusion of knowledge among men’ into a woke repository of progressive, anti-American shibboleths,” explains Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals. “Among other things, the colonoscopy-like review will counter the pervasive assumption that the history of the United States is tantamount to a history of oppression.” That was exactly what this writer discovered way back in the Clinton Era. See “Institution with an Attitude,” in the Washington Post, published on October 13, 1996. Even then, the museums and exhibits gave the impression that history was a chronicle of oppression. As the left has it, that was the case until the arrival of enlightened types such as Karl Marx, whose contribution to economics, as Thomas Sowell explained in Marxism: Philosophy and Economics, was virtually zero. As it happens, Karl Marx was a true believer in quackery such as phrenology, and all that implies. See Karl Marx, Racist by Nathaniel Weyl, the former Communist who shows up in The Man Who Invented Conservatism, Daniel Flynn’s new book on former Communist Frank Meyer. These men regarded Marxist-Leninist states such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as the worst oppressors in history. That record is charted in the Museum of Communism in the Czech Republic, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1968 to quash the “Prague Spring.” See also the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. By contrast, the “1619 Project,” by writers at the New York Times, portrays the USA as oppressive and racist right from the start. By contrast, the “1619 Project,” by writers at the New York Times, portrays the USA as oppressive and racist right from the start. The project got plenty of publicity, but the Times’ record of dealing with history has escaped notice. (RELATED: Celebrating Independence From Anti-American History Propaganda) In the early 1930s, Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine claimed from 4-7 million victims, by some estimates, many more.  The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, proclaimed there was no famine at all. See Stalin’s Apologist: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow, by S.J. Taylor. So the Times, touted as the newspaper of record, is hardly a reliable interpreter of history. As Phillip P. Magness shows in The 1619 Project Myth, the Times’ project is riddled with partisan hysteria, pseudo-scholarship, and blatant errors of fact. An outright assault on American history, the project deploys an anti-capitalist ideological agenda to make the case for tearing down America’s free-market economy. After encountering F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom, Frank Meyer took up the free-market cause: The fact that the capitalist makes goods for an unknown market implies democracy — he must have the democratic vote of the consumer. Under a planned economy the leaders must treat consumers like a father treats his children. People must be directed, must be told what to eat, what to eat, what schools to go to. And if they are not persuaded — and in a traditionally democratic country they cannot be persuaded — they must be coerced. That is totalitarianism. Meyer, who passed away in 1972, would be surprised at the portrayal of U.S. history as a chronicle of oppression, particularly from a taxpayer-supported institution like the Smithsonian. As a matter of course, museums should treat slavery, segregation, and such with full accuracy and detail. On the other hand, they should not deploy history as a political weapon. A report on the Smithsonian, due in 2026, will include “museum-specific assessments, institutional trends, and constructive recommendations for future exhibition strategy.” As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: When Frank Met Friedrich To Harvard and Back with Julie Su COVID Comeback Con Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

In football, nothing frustrates a coach more than watching his team score a touchdown, only to see it erased by a careless penalty. In Washington, the same thing can happen — a big win gets undone by a self-inflicted mistake. That is precisely the risk now facing the White House. Targeted tariffs can and should be part of a broader negotiating strategy, particularly on countries like China that are hostile to our interests. Earlier this year, Congress and the president worked together to pass permanent tax relief for American families and businesses. It was a major policy victory, one that should help drive growth and competitiveness for years to come. But broad tariffs now threaten to take points off the board by offsetting the very gains those tax cuts delivered. (RELATED: Trump Broke the Economic Consensus on Trade — and Won) The “One Big Beautiful Bill” ensures that the average household will keep $2,100 more of its income next year. Small businesses will save $736 billion over the next decade. Lower rates mean more take-home pay for workers, more investment in local communities and more room for businesses to expand and create jobs, victories the White House is touting. (RELATED: Tariffs As the New Tax Base: A Laughable Idea) Yet tariffs are cutting deeply into these benefits. A paper from the Tax Foundation shows the tariffs amount to an average tax increase on U.S. households of $1,304 in 2025 and $1,588 in 2026. Or, seen another way, Howard Lutnick continues to insist that tariff revenues may bring in $700 billion per year. If it is conservatively estimated that 50 percent of these tariffs are paid for by the American consumer, then divided by 340 million Americans, this comes to $1,027 per person — or roughly $4,100 per family of four. The president’s heart may be in the right place when it comes to trade, but the results of his tariff policies are clearly undercutting his promise to deliver a new economic Golden Age. While tariffs can be an effective tool to force trading partners to the negotiating table, they are also a double-edged sword. If applied too broadly or for too long, they risk undermining the very economic gains that tax cuts were designed to achieve. (RELATED: The Gimmicks in Trump’s Trade Deals) There is also a constitutional dimension that must be considered. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress — not the president — the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” James Madison warned in Federalist 51 that the separation of powers is “essential to the preservation of liberty” and that each branch “should have a will of its own.” The Founders designed our system so that changes to the tax code require the consent of the people’s elected representatives in Congress, not just the chief executive. To be clear, Congress should not tie the administration hands in pursuing legitimate trade objectives. Targeted tariffs can and should be part of a broader negotiating strategy, particularly on countries like China that are hostile to our interests and our values. But broad, sustained tariffs that function as a general tax increase belong in the same category as other revenue measures: openly debated, voted up or down by the House and Senate, and subject to public scrutiny and accountability. America’s long-term economic success — as well as the president’s legacy — depends not only on the passage of tax cuts, but on ensuring they are not accidentally eroded by other shortsighted policies. (RELATED: The ‘BBB’: Conservatism but With Caveats) Republicans in Congress and the White House have shown they can work together to deliver major wins for the American people. They should do so again — this time to ensure tax cuts deliver their full benefit, free from the hidden costs of unnecessarily broad tariffs. Otherwise, like a penalty-prone football team, we risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. READ MORE: The American Economic Liberties Project Hurts Small Businesses The Gimmicks in Trump’s Trade Deals To Aid the Economy, Trump Must Restore Confidence in Institutions

WASHINGTON — What did the president know, and when did he know it? That used to be the eventual question for most administrations. When it comes to former President Joe Biden, however, the question is: Did the president know much of anything? The GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been trying to answer that question with a series of behind-closed-doors interviews with former Biden staffers. The transcripts aren’t out yet, but after the interviews, Chairman James Comer has been happy to share his observations with the press corps. (RELATED: Forget the Autopen. The Question Is Forgery.) That was news because Sams was the guy responsible for jumping all over those who questioned Biden’s mental acuity. Ian Sams, the Biden White House press guy who dealt with the sticky stuff, appeared before the committee Thursday. Afterward, Comer told reporters that his big takeaway from Sams’ turn in the hot seat was the revelation that he spoke with Biden face-to-face only twice during the two-plus years he served in the Biden White House. There was also a virtual meeting and a phone call. That was news because Sams was the guy responsible for jumping all over those who questioned Biden’s mental acuity. When former Special Counsel Robert Hur famously opined that Biden’s mishandling of classified material would be difficult to use in court because a jury might hesitate to convict a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Sams slammed the Hur report as “false” and inappropriately personal. That, of course, was before Biden stumbled during the June 27, 2024, Biden–Trump debate so spectacularly that he had to get out of the race and announce that Vice President Kamala Harris would head the ticket. Sams left the White House to work for the Harris campaign. The takeaway from Sams’ testimony, as filtered by Comer, is that a tight cabal of handlers successfully siloed Biden so completely that Biden barely spoke to one of his fiercest defenders. “In fact, Robert Hur spent more time with Joe Biden than Ian Sams,” Comer concluded. Comer also offered that he interacted with Biden more than the former Biden spox. And Sams never even flew on Air Force One with the former president. That’s so wrong. Even Comer flew on AF1 with Biden, he told reporters. Three former Biden White House staffers — senior adviser Annie Tomasini, Jill Biden’s top aide Anthony Bernal, and Physician to the President Kevin O’Connor — invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions. Nothing to see here. Last month, Axios reported that top Biden whisperer Mike Donilon told committee staffers that he had negotiated a $4 million payday for running the Biden 2024 campaign, with the sweetener of a $4 million bonus if Biden won — a revelation that pointed to the greed that greased a Biden candidacy and doomed the Democratic Party. According to Comer, Sams didn’t have much of a recollection of his face time with Biden. Which is strange because usually staffers who finally have a chance to talk with the big guy have a good story to tell about it. It seems a faulty memory is part of the Biden administration experience. READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: How Did a Migrant Who Can’t Speak English Get a License to Drive a Big Rig? Leaking From Anti-Trumpers, It’s as Shocking as Gambling in Casablanca Memo to All Demanding Palestinian Statehood: Hamas Still Has Hostages Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

Well bravo. The United States Ambassador to France, Charles Kushner by name, has made bold to stand up in public — in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal — and call on French President Emmanuel Macron to address what Kushner calls “the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it.” Among other things, the Ambassador notes: On the 81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Paris, which ended the deportation of Jews from French soil, I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it. Antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized. Your own Interior Ministry has reported antisemitic incidents even at preschools. Having recently returned from a Newsmax-sponsored trip to Israel myself, the importance of Kushner’s message to Macron cannot be missed. To recall, I noted in this space here in The American Spectator: “For certain, it is safe to say that most Americans have no idea of the deep and lasting impression the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel has made on the Israeli population. The assault was so brutal and murderous that the only thing comparable to it in America is 9/11. The attack came on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. Over 4,000 rockets were fired into Israel. They targeted military bases and civilians alike in over 20 communities. Over 1,000 Israelis were slaughtered. The toll included women and children along with men. Our tour guides took us to the site of the Nova music festival, where on that day, a concert was ongoing as the terrorists raided the grounds and massacred almost 400 concert attendees. The American Spectator, being a family publication, I will not link to the Wikipedia Entry on the Nova festival as it contains extremely graphic footage of Israeli soldiers arriving after the attack and finding the place strewn with dead bodies. By the time of our visit, the place had been cleaned up, and it was filled with smiling photos and memorabilia associated with the slaughtered concert goers. Also, that day, we saw the place where the terrorist group Hezbollah attacked a soccer field where young Israeli kids were playing soccer. The rockets hit the soccer field directly, instantly killing twelve kids.” To understand all this — and then realize France’s President Macron is, in Kushner’s words — issuing “Public statements haranguing Israel and [making] gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state [that] embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France. In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism — plain and simple.” Bingo. For the unaware, the history of France on this subject is worthy of recall. It isn’t good, either. When Hitler’s Germany occupied France during World War II, the Vichy government was set up in France to run the country. And in the doing, the Vichy government collaborated with the occupiers in deporting large numbers of French Jews to concentration camps. History records that by the end of the war, some 25 percent of France’s Jewish population had perished in the Holocaust. Current records show that “France today has the third largest Jewish population in the world.” Again, history chronicles a long record of French maltreatment of Jews. Whether it was the French King Philip II in 1182 or on through the centuries by later monarchs and rulers, Jews in France have been repeatedly mistreated. Synagogues were targeted, one as recently as 1980, the first since World War II ended. In 2002, there was a series of attacks on various French Jewish targets during Passover. One could go on. But the bottom line here is that United States Ambassador Charles Kushner has publicly called on French President Macron to stand up and act, to quite publicly oppose what Kushner and doubtless others see as the current wave of French anti-semitism. Kushner ends by saying this: Mr. President, I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies. As U.S. ambassador to France, I stand ready to work with you and with leaders across French society to forge a serious plan that addresses the roots of antisemitism and defeats it. Amen Three cheers for America’s Ambassador Charles Kushner. He represents our country well. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Kirk Cameron’s Story House Triumph Newsmax Goes to Israel Texas Democrats Turn on Democracy

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