▶️ VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: OUR NEW UNGRATEFUL IMMIGRANTS
⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: OUR NEW UNGRATEFUL IMMIGRANTS
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he Traditional Immigrant: The contrast between the grateful immigrants who once embraced America and the resentful newcomers who scorn it reveals how radically; and dangerously, the nation’s immigration ethos has changed.
Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others.
The Greek American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film America, America is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia.
The film summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.
An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, American Trojan, by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere.
He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education. What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California; arguably the most successful one in recent memory.
I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants. Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation.
My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.
Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.
✪ Gratitude & Ingratitude
However, recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration; an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.
During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion; even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans.
And now? While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil?
On campuses today, thousands of Middle Eastern international students, mostly arriving from autocratic, tribal, and failed nations, have staged often violent demonstrations in the years following the October 7, 2023, massacre. They are not shy about cheering on the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians.
These pro-Hamas students have not just damned Israel but also often harassed Jewish Americans. They revile their host America and expect Americans to smile and shrug.
It is hard to determine whether such zealots hate the U.S. more than they love living in America and preserving their student visas and work permits.
✪ Hating Or Loving The Great Satan?
Take Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani. She is the daughter of Ali Larijani, one of the late Supreme Leader Khamenei’s murderous henchmen. He sent his daughter Fatemeh to the top schools in the satanic United States. She was eventually even hired as a professor at Emory University; at least until popular outrage at the Larijani family’s hypocrisy prompted her dismissal.
To our enemies in Iran, we may be the “Great Satan;” but Iranian theocrats apparently prefer their children and other relatives to study and get rich in Luciferian America. So, many send their kids to universities in the USA.
Another surreal example is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who arrived on a student visa at Columbia University and soon led the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
When the State Department sought to revoke his temporary visa, the Left made Khalil a veritable martyr. Apparently, his university supporters reasoned that the U.S. had an obligation to invite to its shores those who are active supporters of terrorists like Hamas.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized citizen from Uganda whose parents became public figures and multimillionaires in America, in the past has had little good to say about his adopted country.
His quite public wife, Rama, whose parents were naturalized Syrian citizens, illustrated a book that was rife with antisemitism. It’s no accident that after October 7, she posted “likes” of social media praise of the terrorist Hamas killers, who are sworn enemies of her own country.
Many Somali immigrants of Minneapolis repaid the kindness of Americans in welcoming them from war-torn Somalia by committing the greatest welfare fraud in U.S. history, which may reach $9 billion in theft. Their iconic representative, Ilhan Omar, has voiced antisemitic vitriol, downplayed 9/11, claimed the U.S. has a dictatorship worse than the one she fled, and said the U.S. was turning into one of the worst countries in the world. That is the thanks she returns for entering a hospitable America under controversial circumstances and dubious legality.
✪ Hating Or Hating To Leave America?
Stranger still is the attitude of visitors and illegal aliens when they finally face deportation. Joe Biden allowed 10–12 million foreign nationals to illegally enter the U.S. during his tenure, among them some 500,000 known criminals. In the years since his inauguration, not a day goes by without news that illegal aliens of that era have murdered, assaulted, been arrested for felonious acts, or caused horrific auto accidents.
One of them was Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador, who long ago was ordered to be deported for his unlawful entry and residence.
Instead, he too became an icon to the Left when he was recently and belatedly facing permanent deportation. He had clearly ignored his earlier deportation orders, and was an alleged gang member, an often violent spousal abuser, and a human trafficker.
Ábrego Garcia apparently felt he had a right to enter the U.S. illegally. He successfully made a mockery of our immigration laws. But he presciently expected that soon hundreds of thousands of dollars of free legal help would come his way, ensuring he could stay in the country for which he showed utter contempt.
And in the U.S., one of the most bizarre aspects of recent protests against ICE efforts involved episodes of Mexican nationals waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wished to return, even as they burned the flag of the nation in which they insisted they had an innate right to stay.
✪ Our New Americans Killing Americans
Yet the immigration disaster transcends student visas and illegal aliens, since it extends to many naturalized citizens as well. Consider the terrorist acts that have transpired in just the last eight days.
On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Senegal, shot up a beer garden in Austin, Texas. He murdered three people and wounded 14 others. Diagne wore a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt, along with an Iranian flag T-shirt.
On March 7, 2026, Emir Balat, the son of a naturalized citizen from Turkey, and Ibrahim Kayumi, the son of naturalized Afghan refugees, threw IEDs toward a conservative protest outside Gracie Mansion, the New York mayor’s residence.
The media sought to cover up their Islamist motives but could not, given that the two terrorists openly boasted of their aims. Indeed, the two bragged that they wanted to achieve something “bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.”
That was a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the murderous Chechen-immigrant brothers. In 2013, they murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon. Their aim too was apparently to further the so-called global “Islamic cause.”
This same week, on March 12, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, another naturalized U.S. citizen, this time from Sierra Leone, went into an ROTC meeting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Once there, he murdered the instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a decorated combat veteran. Jalloh shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he fired. Jalloh had previously been convicted for attempting to support ISIS but was released before serving his full sentence.
That same March day, Ayman Muhammed Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, whose family in the Middle East currently has strong Hezbollah terrorist ties, drove his car rigged with explosive fireworks into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Ghazali was killed by security guards before he could carry out his homicidal plan. Hezbollah, remember, in the past, butchered hundreds of Americans in Lebanon.
There is an endless list of illegal aliens and naturalized citizens who have killed hundreds of Americans, both as common criminals and as would-be jihadists.
And not all the killing is intentional. Thousands of driver’s licenses have been issued to both illegal aliens and legal residents from all over the world, including those who do not understand English, cannot pass a commercial driver’s test, and are utterly unqualified to drive. Is it any surprise that we have recently witnessed serial horrific crashes, where incompetent drivers rammed their 80,000-pound semi-trucks into unsuspecting drivers?
✪ What Has Happened To Immigration?
So what made the U.S. adopt such a suicidal immigration and visitation policy; one that welcomes in millions illegally, hundreds of thousands who are known criminals, tens of thousands of students who despise the U.S., and thousands of terrorists themselves and their sympathizers?
In the mid-1960s, amid the Great Society’s dreams of transforming America, new immigration laws were passed that ended the older quota process. That traditional system tended to favor better-off immigrants from Europe and the former British Empire to reflect somewhat the founding demographics of the republic.
But the new law junked the prior merit-based system and instead admitted immigrants chiefly on the basis of family ties and the purported need of the host country for inexpensive labor; with most now arriving from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Suddenly, far less important for entry were critical skill sets, English mastery, high school diplomas, proof of self-support, and knowledge of, or familiarity with, the American system.
However, in the subsequent 60 years, Democrats went even further beyond the 1965 Hart–Celler Act efforts to change the demography of the U.S. They began welcoming in anyone, legal or not, who simply crashed the border or claimed they wanted to study in the U.S. The old melting pot was banished, replaced by the “salad bowl.”
Immigration was seen by the Left as the answer to why they had never been able to complete their socialist agendas amid a skeptical American public. Supposedly, by welcoming in a “diverse” demographic, poor and without English fluency, they would grow the welfare state, creating a new dependent constituency.
The new immigrants and visitors were envisioned as left-wing voters-to-be who would look to the Democrat Party as their guarantors of open borders, a new entitlement society, and a criminal justice system that saw the perpetrator as a victim—and the real criminal as a racist America itself.
✪ Diversity: The Immigration Force Multiplier
The new “diversity” ideology peaked under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The subtext of their open-borders nihilism was a new oppressor/oppressed binary.
It dictated that traditional America was still too white, too traditionalist, too Christian, too unfairly successful; and too hostile to the Democrat-socialist agenda of a mandated equality of result achieved through massive coercive government redistributive efforts.
Under this warped view, the criminally minded Ábrego Garcia became a victim of supposed “Gestapo” ICE “goons” (ironic, when patriotic and skilled Mexican American officers disproportionately staff ICE ranks).
The Tsarnaev Boston Marathon killers became “hot” underdog freedom fighters. So the supposedly sexy, photogenic young murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was highlighted on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The more Mahmoud Khalil took on the mantle of an anti-American, pro-Hamas activist, the more the Left rallied to his cause.
When Major Nidal Hasan, the son of naturalized Palestinian immigrants, slaughtered 13 and wounded 32 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, the Pentagon resisted efforts to tie him to the Islamic terrorist cause. That was hard to do, since he screamed “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down his fellow soldiers.
Then Army Chief of Staff George Casey responded to the mass murder with his lamentation on CNN that, “As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” He sought to quash any speculation about Hasan’s Islamic motives, in fear that the ensuing truth might endanger the Army’s diversity efforts.
Then we come to the case of Eileen Gu, the recent American Winter Olympic multi-medalist skier. She was born in San Francisco to a Chinese immigrant mother and an American father and lived her entire life in the U.S. But Gu chose to compete in the games for communist China, despite its efforts to isolate, dehumanize, and eventually vastly “reduce” its Uyghur minority population.
✪ Dr. Frankenstein & His Monster
The final irony: Why do so many criminals believe they can enter the U.S. illegally and get away with murder?
Is it because they feel contempt for any nation that opens its borders, requires no background checks, destroys its own immigration laws, and weaponizes its criminal justice system to make the criminal the victim and the state his victimizer?
Why do so many burn the U.S. flag while waving the flag of Mexico, a country they have no intention of returning to? Is it because they sense they might be praised for “celebrating diversity,” as the popular culture would term such abject cultural schizophrenia?
Why would the Tsarnaev brothers repay the country that took them in by killing innocent Americans?
Would it be because, in their formative years in American schools, their teachers and texts emphasized what was wrong with a supposedly exploitative U.S.?
Why, in the middle of a near-existential war with Iran to stop its efforts to obtain nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. and its allies, would naturalized citizens feel so free to slaughter Americans for the cause of Islam?
Would it be because they sense from left-wing universities and popular culture that it is a virtual open season on Jews?
Or that any time an Islamic terrorist commits an act, a Democratic operative will warn America of “Islamophobia”—as if, say, mowing down soldiers at Fort Hood is the lesser crime?
Why would a rich, privileged Eileen Gu feel no discomfort competing for a murderous regime whose agenda is to displace her country from its global preeminence in favor of a communist dictatorship?
Is it because in our relativist modern America, Gu’s “truth” is just as meaningful as any other? And who, after all, is qualified to judge anything or anyone? Who created our current Frankensteinian monstrosities? We did.
We are the Dr. Frankensteins who asked nothing of immigrants, in a complete break from our nation’s past. And we got our wish for a new, quite different class of immigrants, who treated the U.S. the very way they were taught to do by the Left: as an evil entity that deserved what it got.
And we sure have gotten it. ✪
▶️ JB SHURK: LEFTISM, NOT MASCULINITY IS TOXIC
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JB SHURK: LEFTISM, NOT MASCULINITY IS TOXIC
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or fifteen years now, we have witnessed a social event that has never before occurred in human history: an outright attack on masculinity. As someone who sees human history repeating various cycles (some longer or more complex than others) — and not steadily “progressing” or “evolving” in a straight, predictable line — I find the uniqueness of this war on men a troubling indictment of our current age.
Masculinity is not synonymous with violence. To be sure, violent men are an indispensable component of every emerging civilization. Before the poets have time to speak of virtue and before a class of politicians exists to speak of civic duty, men who are capable of violence must vanquish enemies, intimidate competitors, and move the heavy stones that form every civilization’s foundations.
For civilizations to flourish, however, the majority of men must lay down their axes and swords and sublimate any violent instincts into the construction of permanent settlements. When tribes of warriors become guilds of workers, amazing things happen. Men build walls to keep out enemies. They construct freshwater wells and sewer systems to reduce the spread of disease and promote general sanitation. Over time, they become experts with wood, stone, marble, and steel. They build homes, factories, cathedrals, and skyscrapers. They channel their masculinity into strenuous, and usually dangerous, work that transforms small encampments into towns, cities, and metropolises.
Just as men put their weapons aside to build permanent settlements, they put their proclivity for violence aside to build societies. Honor codes and customs restrain violent impulses. Over time, those codes and customs become agreed-upon rules and laws. Those laws form the foundations of institutions that provide a peaceful recourse for otherwise violent disagreements. Men who were, by necessity, forced to defend their own lives (and those of their families) and strike down other men who posed threats to their safety agree to surrender vengeance in exchange for a reliable system of shared laws. Swords are exchanged for writs. Lawsuits replace duels. Whereas once every man was “judge, jury, and executioner” within his domain, societies emerge when men trade those responsibilities for the prospect of general peace.
Masculinity is a great thing. Without it, none of what we have today could exist. To be a man is to know that something dangerous must be done and to do it. To be a man is to fight (even though you may die), to defend (even though it may not be your life that you’re defending), and to build (even when blood and calluses are your only rewards). To be a man is to have enough force of will to keep aggression in check and to have enough courage to be aggressive when violence is necessary. A good man must work all his life to remain so.
For at least fifteen years, though, the Left has been in a rhetorical war against what Marx’s disciples call “toxic masculinity.” As with everything the left does, this is a linguistic sleight of hand. It is meant to define masculinity as a “pollutant” or “disease.” Leftists pulled the same trick by calling hydrocarbon energies “fossil fuels” and carbon dioxide (the molecule we humans exhale with each breath) a “pollutant.” The Left attaches pejoratives to people, things, and ideas that it dislikes and uses repetition to program society into believing falsehoods. When an impressionable mind hears the words “toxic masculinity” enough times, there is a subliminal effect: The listener equates masculinity with something poisonous, unwanted, and deadly.
When Delta Force operators infiltrated Venezuela’s most fortified compound to extract narco-terrorist dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, were they exhibiting “toxic masculinity?” When a fireman exits an explosive structure fire with a mother in his arms and a child hanging around his neck, is that “toxic masculinity?” When work crews endure excruciating heat to pave roads, mine for critical resources, and build new homes, is their masculinity “toxic?” When the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey squad smiled broadly (with plenty of missing teeth) at the State of the Union after upsetting the Canadians, were they suffering from “toxic masculinity?” When a minister stands before his congregation and leads the faithful down the path toward salvation, is his calling just another form of “toxic masculinity?” Of course not. To endure, societies require authentic masculinity.
Masculinity is not the problem. The problem is whether men choose to use their natures in virtuous ways. Some men capable of violence use physical strength to rape and murder. Others use their strength to put those monsters behind bars. Some men intimidate and harass those who are weaker than they. Others intervene and put themselves in harm’s way for strangers. Some men can’t be bothered to hold open a door, give up a seat, walk next to the street, or offer an extra pair of hands. Others do it before being asked. As with all things we humans do, strength of moral character is the quality that shapes and defines our actions. Masculinity is not “toxic.” It is an instrument for virtue or a weapon for wickedness.
Leftists are incapable of honestly describing masculinity because they are incapable of honestly differentiating between virtue and sin. They have chosen to construct a gray world in which evil acts are sometimes justified.
For example, Leftists want open borders. They believe that every foreigner is entitled to enter the United States. To accomplish this objective, they are willing to ignore, if not condone, acts of horrific violence. They say nothing when illegal aliens abduct, rape, and murder young girls. They block ICE agents from arresting known pedophiles. They turn human-traffickers into heroes and treat terrorist sympathizers as celebrities. They are incapable of condemning foreign men who murder Americans with drugs. They are unwilling to admit that foreign truck drivers are dangerous to everyone else on the road. For leftists, the issue of open borders is more important than saving American lives. Protecting illegal immigrants supersedes what is right or wrong. The ends always justify the means.
In such a world, leftists cannot condemn vice. Everything is relative. Morality is negotiable. Virtue is meaningless unless it can be used to advance “the cause.” They blame guns, not murderers. They blame Islamophobia, not Islamic terrorists. They blame toxic masculinity, not sin. Leftists paint with broad brushes because they lack (or ignore their capacity for) moral discernment. It is much easier to condemn all men as “bad” than to consider what qualities make some men heroes and others villains.
What makes the left’s war on men particularly destructive, then, is that it not only demonizes masculinity, but also ignores moral character. Society needs both. It depends upon masculine men to do what is needed, even when doing so is difficult, dangerous, and deadly. It also depends upon men to channel their masculinity in virtuous ways, so that the structures and institutions of civilization are built and preserved — not abandoned and carelessly destroyed.
Being a man is a good thing. Being masculine is a good thing. It is leftism that is irredeemably toxic. ✪
▶️ DON SURBER: FRIENDS IN NEED & NOT NATO
⭐️ Jorline
DON SURBER: FRIENDS IN NEED & NOT NATO
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apanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi visited the White House on Thursday. A Japanese reporter asked Trump, “Why didn’t you tell U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, like Japan, about the war before attacking Iran?” Trump:
“One thing you don’t want to signal too much. You know when we go in we went in very hard and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay. Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Fact-check: He did tell the only allies that mattered; Israel and Saudi Arabia. How do I know he contacted Crown Prince MBS?
Well, Trump later said the decision was made at 3:38 PM Eastern on February 27 but the bombing did not occur until more than 10 hours later. Trump has a phone and he knows how to use it.
While our NATO allies are flitting about trying to find a way to appease their Muslim invaders while not pissing Trump off, the Saudis are supporting us—albeit without acknowledging Israel.
In response to the assassination of the ayatollah and his top generals, Iran foolishly threw missiles at Gulf nations. The Saudis wasted no time condemning Iran, denouncing denouncing Iran’s missile and drone strikes on Saudi territory as “blatant aggression” and violations of sovereignty. They expressed full solidarity with affected Gulf States (UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait) and warned of “grave consequences” from continued attacks.
▶️ 2 Minutes 19 Seconds
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said:
“I do not understand how they claim to defend Islamic causes while attacking Islamic countries. They are not attacking just one nation—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Türkiye, all are Islamic countries, and all have been targeted. Even before this war, what was Iran’s contribution to the Islamic world?”
Saudi Arabia has provided basing and logistics support. Prince Sultan Air Base hosted U.S. forces. U.S. officials praised Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners for “stepping up” in the campaign.
Contrast and compare that support with Keir Starmer stopping B-2s from flying from Diego Garcia to Iran. We have better allies under Trump. The Saudi defense ministry a few days ago showing off its Boeing F-15SA Strike Eagles and Eurofighter Typhoons.
At $78 billion last year, the Saudis spent more money on defense than all but two of our NATO allies: Germany ($107 billion) and England ($90 billion). Both countries have twice the population of Saudi Arabia.
More than 7% of Saudi Arabia’s GDP goes to defense. We would have to nearly double the Pentagon’s budget to achieve that 7%.
As for Trump’s joust with reporters attending his meeting with Takaichi, the usual suspects in the press clutched their Pearl Harbors.
The New York Times wailed:
“Trump Jokes About Pearl Harbor in Meeting With Japan’s Leader. Breaking a taboo, President Trump needled Japan’s prime minister about the World War II attack, as she widened her eyes and appeared to take a deep breath in the Oval Office.”
The New York Post echoed: “Trump draws gasps with shocking Pearl Harbor quip in front of Japanese PM over Iran ‘surprise attack. Does anybody remember “Remember Pearl Harbor?”
Besides, it is not like Trump threw up in her lap, is it?
▶️ 1 Minute 1 Second
The press also acted confused about the visit with Politico reporting, “Trump lauds Japan’s promise, however vague, to help with Iran.”
The story said, “It’s unclear how much material support Takaichi can provide to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to safe transit of the more than 1,000 civilian cargo vessels—particularly oil and liquid natural gas carriers—stranded in the Persian Gulf since the Iran conflict began nearly three weeks ago.”
There is plenty Japan can do. The strait apparently is festooned with mines. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force currently operates 19 mine countermeasure vessels, which include dedicated minesweepers. The USA has 4. South Korea has 14. If they won’t help in the Strait of Hormuz, who needs them? My gut tells me, our true allies will come through. We shall see which ones they are.
▶️ 1 Minute 7 Seconds
The Prime Minister was so butt-hurt by the Pearl Harbor joke she said:
“I firmly believe that it is only you, Donald, who can achieve peace across the world! And to do so, I am ready to reach out to many of the partners in the international community to achieve our objective together! So today, I came here at the White House to directly convey this message to you.”
Peace through strength, superior firepower, speed, stealth and surprise. ✪
▶️ WHY ARE SENATE DEMOCRATS MAKING AIR TRAVEL WORSE?
WHY ARE SENATE DEMOCRATS MAKING AIR TRAVEL WORSE?
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he next time your flight’s delayed or canceled, or you’re stuck in an endless TSA line, thank a congressional Democrat. Senate Democrats have decided to make a show of their support for lawless immigration & illegal aliens by inflicting pain on American travelers.
They’ve blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration, even though this stunt doesn’t affect the budget of the agency Democrats really want to hurt, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE already has the funding it needs — but TSA doesn’t, which means airport security workers aren’t getting paid, so many aren’t showing up, or they’re quitting to find jobs Chuck Schumer can’t hold hostage.
It’s bad enough congressional Democrats are taking their anger at immigration enforcement out on American travelers; what’s yet worse is they’re doing it during wartime. Do we actually want less airport security — or unhappy, unpaid agents — at a moment when terrorist attacks are more likely?
Sen. Schumer shouldn’t wait till someone blows a plane out of the sky before rethinking his tactics. There is no good-faith reason for Democrats to turn their outrage at ICE into a shutdown of other DHS divisions.
They’re playing a legislative game with other people’s livelihoods, travel plans and very lives. DHS says more than 300 TSA agents have already quit during the partial shutdown. Who can blame them — do Democrats expect them to work for free?
This isn’t a shutdown forced on Congress by difficult decisions about the debt ceiling; this one’s gratuitous, motivated by pure partisan angling.
Schumer and company are keen to use ICE as a midterm campaign issue, not only because they hope the deaths of two left-wing activists during anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis this winter will scare independents into opposing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, but also because Democrats need to appease progressives in the party’s base who actually want more illegal immigration.
The Democrats keep trying to have it both ways — presenting themselves as willing to countenance some restrictions on immigration, while pandering to a hard core of activists who demand immigration be limitless, even if that means it’s also lawless.
The Joe Biden Administration didn’t fail to enforce the nation’s immigration laws; it chose to ignore them, to the maximum extent it could get away with. His party hasn’t changed its ways since voters rebuked it two years ago by sending Trump back to the White House.
Senate Democrat antics are proof: they’re happy to make life harder for American travelers and government employees if it makes life easier for illegal aliens. Their policy puts Americans last.
Voters should be mindful of that in the run-up to the midterms. This November’s elections are almost inevitably going to be a referendum on Donald Trump’s first two years back in office.
Whatever voters are dissatisfied with, they’ll chalk up to Trump and hold Republicans accountable for. But Schumer’s DHS extortion scheme is so brazen it just might backfire.
Presidents and CEOs of 10 major airlines and related industries and advocacy groups have put their names to an open letter calling on Congress to put a stop to this nonsense.
“TSA officers just received $0 paychecks. That is simply unacceptable. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put food on the table, put gas in the car and pay rent when you are not getting paid,” the letter notes.
“With spring break travel in full swing, FIFA World Cup 2026 right around the corner and celebrations for America’s 250th birthday throughout the year,” the industry expects “171 million passengers this spring season,” many of whom are already “having to wait in extraordinarily long — and painfully slow — lines at checkpoints.”
The letter warns of queues so long they take up to four hours to get through. There’s no reason for that, other than the will of Schumer and his Democrat colleagues.
The industry heads want a set of new laws to make sure airlines and cargo companies like FedEx and UPS can’t be treated like a “political football amid another government shutdown” every time — legislation that would ensure the funding of air-traffic controllers, TSA screeners and other critical personnel in the event of future shutdowns.
However, ending this partial shutdown doesn’t have to wait on passing any new laws: Schumer can end it today. If he chooses not to, keep Schumer and his colleague in mind next time you’re waiting for hours in a TSA line.
The Senate Democrats did that to you because they wanted to make a point. Come this November 3rd, you can make one, too. ✪
▶️ THE A10 THUNDERBOLT II SURVIVES AGAINST ALL ODDS
THE A10 THUNDERBOLT II SURVIVES AGAINST ALL ODDS
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he A-10 Thunderbolt II, AKA Warthog, is one of the most iconic, and politician-hated aircraft ever built. It’s also loved by its pilots and worshipped by ground pounders whose days are made immeasurably better, and whose lives are saved by the appearance of A-10s over the battlefield.
First fielded in 1975, it’s the first plane built since WWI specifically designed for close air support. Named for the WWII P47 Thunderbolt, it shares its namesake’s toughness and fearsome close air support abilities. Its pilot sits in an armored titanium “bathtub” and it features multiple redundant control systems, which have saved the lives of many A-10 pilots, among them, Colonel Kim “Killer Chick” Campbell.
In 2003, Campbell was flying a combat mission in Operation Iraqi Freedom, flying over downtown Baghdad. After flying multiple passes at enemies imperiling our ground troops, Campell’s A-10 was hit, leaving hundreds of holes in her fuselage, tail and wings. Both the primary and secondary hydraulic systems were disabled, leaving Campbell only the manual reversion system: cables and pulleys requiring enormous strength.
Rather than bailing out, which would have been entirely justifiable, Campbell piloted her A-10 for about another hour and made a perfect landing:
“I was impressed,” said Lt. Col. Mike Millen, chief of the 355th Fighter Wing Commander’s Action Group and also an A-10 pilot. “Kim landed that jet with no hydraulics better than I land the A-10 every day with all systems operational.”
Campbell, who flew 375 career combat flying hours, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Her A-10 was so badly shot up it never flew again, though Campbell was back in combat in another A-10 the next day.
The A-10 is the first aircraft designed around a cannon, the enormous GAU-8/A Gatling gun which fires up to 3900 30mm rounds per minute. It’s mounted on the centerline of the aircraft, making it necessary to mount the front landing gear to one side. When fired, it actually slightly slows the aircraft. It can kill anything up to and including main battle tanks. Its multiple pylons can carry all manner of bombs, rockets, Maverick Missiles, jammer pods, Aim-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and other ordinance and electronics.
By jet fighter standards, it’s slow, but can loiter—low and slow—for hours, supporting ground troops, and as Colonel Campbell can attest, can sustain an enormous amount of battle damage and keep flying.
Why would politicians, both civilian and military want to do away with such an obvious asset when there is no close support plane in the inventory or planned to replace it? It’s old technology, and not fighter sexy. The last A-10 was built in 1984 and is at the end of its service life. Some have already been sent to the Boneyard. Only 162 remain in service, and they’re all scheduled to be retired by 2028, though the Air Force may do it in 2026.
The A-10 continues to fly because of its unique abilities. There’s no doubt it couldn’t survive in a war where we didn’t have at least air superiority, but even then it would be useful supporting special operations troops, and as we just discovered, hunting and sinking Iranian fast boats harassing shipping and laying mines:
Despite being repeatedly slated for the Boneyard, the A-10 may continue to survive. No current or planned aircraft has its unique capabilities or survivability.
While it isn’t suited to modern air combat, the A-10 will live on for a short time, probably supporting Special Operations Forces in Third World hotspots.
▶️ 9 Minutes 12 Seconds
And it will live on as a drone hunter. TWZ reported last October that A-10s had been modified to carry Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System II (APKWS II), but kill markings reveal it has successfully shot down drones.
ARKWS IIs are cheap 2.75-inch (70mm) Hydra rockets transformed into drone and cruise missile killers. These offer the Air Force major advantages over their more advanced air-to-air missile counterparts.
The rockets enable the aircraft to engage large numbers of enemy drones and other aerial threats cost-effectively. The Air Force has a large inventory of 2.75-inch rockets.
I’m sure “Killer Chick” Campbell would be happy to see it in the air again, just as Iranian Islamists aren’t happy to see it diving—very briefly–on their fast boats. A single burst & they join the rest of the Iranian Navy on the bottom. ✪
▶️ A DEFIANT IRAN DECLARES THE ENTIRE WORLD IS NOW A TARGET
A DEFIANT IRAN DECLARES THE ENTIRE WORLD IS NOW A TARGET
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ecreational and tourist sites worldwide will now become targets for Iranian aggression and whatever remains of the Islamic state’s leadership which announced on Friday it is still building missiles.
Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighboring Gulf Arab states as many in the region marked one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar. Iranians were also celebrating the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz, a normally festive holiday that is more subdued this year.
Iran has stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field earlier in the week.
Two waves of Iranian drones attacked a Kuwaiti oil refinery early Friday, sparking a fire. The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, which can process some 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East. It was damaged Thursday in another Iranian attack.
Bahrain said a fire broke out after shrapnel from an intercepted projectile landed on a warehouse, and Saudi Arabia reported shooting down multiple drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province.
Heavy explosions shook Dubai as air defenses intercepted incoming fire over the city, where many were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
The latest show of defiance singling out non-combatant civilian targets anywhere on the globe comes three weeks into U.S.-Israeli strikes which have eliminated a slew of Tehran’s top leaders and hammered its weapons and energy industries, AP reports:
Iran’s top military spokesman warned Friday that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide won’t be safe for Tehran’s enemies. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi made the threat as Iran continues to be hit by American and Israeli airstrikes. It renewed concerns that Iran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic in the war.
U.S. and Israeli leaders maintain weeks of strikes have decimated Iran’s military. Airstrikes have also eliminated its Supreme Leader, the head of its Supreme National Security Council and a host of other top-ranking military and political leaders:
Iran’s key military and economic sites have also taken a similar battering from combined Israeli and U.S. attacks during Operation Epic Fury.
Even so, Tehran’s arrogant defiance knows no bounds. “We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” spokesman General Ali Mohammad Naeini was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-run IRAN newspaper.
Naeini added Iran had no intention of seeking a quick end to the war. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” he said. A short time after the statement was released, Iranian state television said Naeini was killed in an airstrike. ✪
▶️ YOU JUST MIGHT BE A DEMOCRAT: VOLUME FIVE
YOU JUST MIGHT BE A DEMOCRAT: VOLUME FIVE
ddd
he Democrats are at it again, providing conservatives with more material with which to identify them with certainty. So here we go again with another installment of You Just Might Be A Democrat, Volume FIVE:
*If you believe that most workers should be paid more … and also believe that many things should be free, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you think that women are oppressed in America … and are also strongly against the deportation of convicted illegal alien rapists and Muslim men, as well as President Trump’s mission to liberate Iran, you just might be a Democrat. (Or a RINO.)
*If you would — literally — stand up for criminals but not for American citizens, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you actually did kneel in the name of George Floyd and BLM but refused to stand for the parents of a young female Ukrainian refugee who was senselessly murdered on a train by a black repeat offender, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you are greatly troubled by the plight of the spotted owl but are a fanatical proponent of unfettered abortion, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you performatively “celebrate diversity” but cannot tolerate conservative political opinions, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you talk of “how bad” something is “in this country,” but have no idea of the historical horrors in most others, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you purport to be a feminist, own a dog, and enjoy a glass of wine now and then … and are an avid supporter of Islam — and Muslim men immigrating to the U.S. — you just might be a Democrat.
*If you think that abortion is “women’s health care” and that lopping off the body parts of young children is “gender affirming care,” you just might be a Democrat.
*If you are adamantly for Ukraine in the fourth year of war, but are disgusted with the United States entering the third week of its war with Iran, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you think words can be “violence,” but rioters looting and burning down stores are “mostly peaceful,” you just might be a Democrat.
*If you believe white people are inherently racist because of the color of their skin, and also believe that it is impossible for people of color to be racist, you just might be a Democrat.
*If you think “Christian nationalism” is an existential danger to society, and that Islamophobia is too, you very well may be a Democrat.
*If you think that MAGA and ICE are Nazis, and also that Antifa and BLM are fighting for “our democracy,” you just might be a Democrat. ✪
▶️ FINISH THE JOB, MR PRESIDENT
FINISH THE JOB, MR PRESIDENT
nnn
eventeen days into Operation Epic Fury, the most consequential American military campaign in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq, the Trump Administration has yet to say what victory will actually look like. The President has variously toggled between declaring Iran has “practically nothing left,” indicating that ending the conflict could be right around the corner, and telling Kentucky rally-goers that we need to “finish the job” so that we don’t have to go back and do this all over again later down the road.
The campaign is succeeding, but that will ultimately make little difference if we stop before the job is completely done. That might be a general rule of thumb, but it is especially the case given the makeup & nature of the Islamic Republic.
The logic behind any early exit appears to rest on the assumption the scale of destruction has been so overwhelming Tehran will eventually accept some form of de-escalation rather than continue absorbing punishment it cannot answer. That may sound reasonable in the abstract, but it fundamentally misreads how Iran works.
Mojtaba Khamenei was already among the most dangerous figures in the Islamic Republic long before the war began; he backed the brutal crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement, spent years running the Basij militia’s economic and intelligence operations, and has pushed for actual nuclear weaponization far more aggressively than his father ever did. Analysts have long regarded him as the elder Khamenei’s hardline version on steroids.
The opening strikes twhich killed his father also killed his wife and at least one of his sons. He himself was pulled from the rubble with injuries serious enough that he has not appeared publicly since; operating instead from an undisclosed location with limited communications. This is not a man weighing a cost-benefit analysis; he is somebody running a war of survival with nothing left to lose personally.
And even if Mojtaba were removed tomorrow, Iran’s Supreme Leader is chosen by a body of senior clerics drawn exclusively from within the revolutionary establishment; a system that by design cannot produce a moderate successor. There is no Iranian equivalent of a post-Maduro transition, where a personalist dictator was removed and replaced by figures who, whatever their flaws, were at least less ideologically committed to confrontation with Washington.
Which brings us to the single most dangerous consequence of departing this campaign unfinished. The strikes have stripped Iran of much of its conventional arsenal it’s spent decades building—from ballistic missiles to its navy to its proxy leverage from Beirut to Sanaa—and in doing so has proven beyond any doubt that none of it was sufficient to protect the regime from the air.
Every surviving regime official in Tehran is drawing the obvious conclusion from this: The only deterrent which would have actually prevented all of this is a nuclear weapon. Walking away now—after demonstrating beyond any doubt that Iran’s conventional forces cannot protect the regime from the air—hands the most compelling argument for a nuclear sprint to the very people least inclined to be talked out of it. If enrichment infrastructure and reconstitution capacity aren’t completely destroyed before the victory laps begin, the United States will have spent billions proving to Iran that it needs a bomb and then left it with the means to build one.
To be clear, the argument for seeing this through is not a sunk cost fallacy. The United States and Israel are winning this campaign decisively and historically. The concern is not that we are losing and need to justify the cost, but that we are on the verge of the most significant strategic victory in the Middle East in a generation and are now at serious risk of throwing it away because oil hit $100 a barrel and the midterms are 7 months out.
What makes this moment so critical is that the campaign has reached the phase where its most strategically consequential work is being done.
In the last day or two, strikes have turned toward the regime’s internal repression machinery; many Basij paramilitary bases in Tehran have been hit, alongside police headquarters and intelligence buildings. An Israeli official told the Times of Israel “when we said that we’re trying to create the conditions for regime change, these are the kinds of things that we’re referring to.” The regime clearly knows what’s at risk from losing control internally, too—the Islamic Republic’s police chief warned on state television that anyone acting “at the will of the enemy” would be met with “fingers on the triggers.”
With Nowruz—the Persian New Year, a massive national celebration that has historically served as a flashpoint for anti-regime unrest—approaching on March 20, degrading these forces creates precisely the opening that decades of regime control have denied the Iranian people. Stopping now leaves the regime’s domestic grip intact while having radicalized a wounded successor with every reason to sprint for a nuclear weapon. That is not an off-ramp.
The decision to launch this operation was the right one, but walking away before it’s finished risks the worst of all outcomes: a regime that now knows that its conventional deterrent is worthless and has every incentive to pursue the one weapon that would have prevented this war in the first place. ✪
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