✪ THE BIG FRIDAY SOOPER THREAD

▶️ VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: LET THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS BEGIN!

⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: LET THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS BEGIN!

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rump’s critics cry “war crimes” while ignoring decades of U.S. precedent; revealing less a legal argument than a reflexive, and deeply selective, political outrage. The Left and some on the Right went crazy over a recent Trump tweet.

He warned that if the Iranian regime did not cease blocking the international Strait of Hormuz, he would hit its dual military-civilian infrastructure. He promised that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

His wording may have been sloppy, but Trump obviously meant that the murderous civilization/culture of radical Iranian theocratic Islam would cease to exist and wouldn’t come back once power plants and transportation systems crucial to the regime’s survival were cut off. Why do we know that?

Because, unlike in most prior American wars, Trump has never targeted dual-use infrastructure; not in bombing ISIS, not in removing the Venezuelan thug Nicolás Maduro, not in the 2025 bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and not in the present war, with the exception of a key bridge central to the regime’s efforts to reposition missile assets to avoid air strikes.

Ever since Trump announced that “help is on the way” to the Iranian people, the entire aim of the five-week war has been to selectively target the regime’s command and control and military assets.

The goal was to diminish its threats abroad, while weakening and humiliating the mullahcracy at home—so that soon the Iranian people might at last be able to overthrow the odious theocracy. Trump’s critics knew all that.

However, they see political advantage in tagging Trump as a Strangelovian madman, no different from the Nazi criminals in the docket at Nuremberg. A few less unhinged people argue that his rhetoric nevertheless comes across as unpresidential. Perhaps.

But it may be no accident that his General Curtis LeMay-like bluster might have pressured the Iranians to reopen negotiations.

On Monday, the Democrat Borg was declaring Trump a savage maniac. By Tuesday, it was blasting him as a TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) for not carrying out what the day before they had dubbed a war crime.

The common denominator was an overarching, deranged hatred of the president, as his critics can never decide whether he is Adolf Hitler or Neville Chamberlain. But since the Left has called for investigations of war crimes, by all means let them begin.

Obviously, Trump’s critics conveniently no longer buy the argument of “dual-use.” It posits that the juice powering an evil enemy is its roads, bridges, fuel, and electricity. To disable them supposedly shortens the war and the killing.

In World War II, we leveled a dozen Japanese cities because the Tokyo junta had outsourced the assembly of weapons to urban neighborhood workshops. We joined the British in leveling Dresden by targeting German transportation.

Perhaps the Left will now remove the iconic names of Democrat Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from our buildings and monuments?

Truman should be a twofer boogeyman. He ordered every bridge and hydroelectric plant in North Korea to be incinerated during the Korean War.

How about the Lyndon Johnson/Richard Nixon bombing of North Vietnam? Their war machine annihilated most of its civilian infrastructure in efforts to force the communists to negotiate.

The 42-day bombing campaign in the First Gulf War targeted power stations, roads, bridges, and dual-use government buildings. Should we go back and Trotskyize its strategic architects—George H. W. Bush and Gen. Colin Powell?

Sen. Mark Kelly is one of Trump’s fiercest critics in pressing the war crimes charge. Perhaps he, too, should be post facto investigated by the International Criminal Court, given the fact that, in 1991, he was a pilot in an air force that frequently hit bridges and other dual-use targets? How about the “noble” NATO effort in Serbia?

According to the logic of current critics, there must be lots of war criminals still to be found who were involved in that merciless 1999 bombing of Belgrade. Bill Clinton’s gambit wrecked all the bridges on the Danube and often left more than a million civilians without power.

Will we indict Barack Obama for ordering more than 500 targeted predator assassination hits on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border without Congressional authorization, strikes that ended up killing four American citizens?

Perhaps we can reinvestigate Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, the architects of the 2011 “unlawful” and Congressionally “unauthorized” seven-month bombing of a mostly inert Libya.

And why not reexamine Obama? He snubbed the 60–90 War Powers Act window, which required him to obtain congressional authority to continue that mindless devastation.

The Libyan wreckage included civilian ships, port facilities, TV buildings, telecommunications, and government office; and left the country an utter mess that continues 15 years later.

The left-wing and paleo Right fury has far exceeded any legitimate critique of strategy and tactics. It has now become not just incoherent but crazed, since it appears that many despise Trump more than they do the murderous Iranian regime.

And now they add the weight of rank hypocrisy to their serial untruths. ✪

▶️ JB SHURK: DEMOCRATS ARE KILLING THE COUNTRY WITH RACISM

⭐️ HelloKitty’sGotAHairTrigger

JB SHURK: DEMOCRATS ARE KILLING THE COUNTRY WITH RACISM

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ayne Allyn Root — businessman and ebullient, unapologetic conservative — wrote something the other day that caught my eye. Over an article about “The Great American National Divorce,” his headline blared: “Escape of the White People.” Describing the exodus of New Yorkers to Florida and Californians to Nevada, Root noted that interstate migration across America is speeding up. Why? Because Americans who are not die-hard leftists “can no longer live with radical, extreme, self-destructive, communist SUICIDE BOMBERS.”

The war on white Americans continues apace. As Root repeatedly points out, Democrat-run states are destroying themselves. By electing “evil, communist madmen like LA Mayor Karen Bass, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” Democrats have ensured that their cities “will soon collapse and drown in a sea of crime and debt.” For decades, Root argues, white Americans have left Democrat-controlled cities primarily to avoid rising crime and crippling taxes. Now they are leaving because Democrats have put targets on their backs.

White Americans, Root writes, are “sick of being the target of Democrats and government; they’re sick of being attacked and demonized; they’re sick of being a piggy bank to pay for everyone else’s bills — in particular, the costs for welfare, food stamps, housing, public schools, healthcare, police, courts, and prison bills for millions of illegal aliens.” They are sick of absurdly high taxes; Democrats’ “woke” culture; and Democrats’ insistence on welcoming and subsidizing “every transgender weirdo, every illegal alien criminal, and every radical Muslim who hates America, Jews, and Christians.” They are sick of Democrats’ overt discrimination against white Americans; the “massive crime wave; defunded and demoralized police; dumbed-down schools that brainwash your children to change their genders; drug dealers on every corner; homeless tents, pee, poo, and drug needles on sidewalks; and cities that look like 3rd-world s-holes.” White Americans, Root concludes, have been pushed too far.

As if to prove Root’s thesis correct with several exclamation points, NYC mayor Mamdani just unveiled a new “racial equity plan to solve decades of neglect and discrimination.” Mamdani claims that his administration must take money from white people and hand it to non-white people in order to make up for “centuries of disinvestment in black and brown New Yorkers.” The mayor’s “Chief Equity Officer” and “Commissioner of the Office of Equity and Racial Justice” — a Ugandan-born, Indian-descent radical socialist named Afua Atta-Mensah — promises “to confront institutional and systemic racism within our city and to begin the work of dismantling it.” So a couple of foreigners have taken over New York City, call it “our city,” and are now robbing white Americans because of the color of their skin. They’re proving Wayne Root right in real time.

Lest any readers mistake Root’s analysis as an intentionally dreary diagnosis permitting him the opportunity to propose a future cure, he has no good news to report. He says the “national divorce” has arrived. White people who don’t enjoy being victimized must escape Democrat-run hellholes before it’s too late. For Democrat states, “the end is near. The collapse will be fast and ugly. Get out now, while you still can.” Root is willing to say out loud what others will only whisper.

For Americans over the age of forty, this racial balkanization within the United States is particularly tragic to witness. Despite stubbornly persistent civil divisions, the post-WWII decades brought white and black Americans steadily together. Even after race-motivated murders repeatedly threatened to tear the country apart, “the better angels of our nature” somehow managed to carry us to better days. Several generations of Americans took Martin Luther King, Jr.’s exhortation to heart, when he dreamed that his “four little children” would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” So many white and black Americans have held those words dear.

Nearly sixty years after MLK’s assassination, though, we’re right back to judging Americans by their skin color. For millions of Americans who have watched old racial wounds steadily heal from one decade to the next, it is heart-wrenching to see Democrat political leaders dividing white, black, and brown people into “equity” pots “deserving” of disparate treatment. Voters who constitute the Democrat Party have preferred to call themselves “progressives” for most of the last century, but there is nothing “progressive” about dragging the country back to a time when skin color mattered more than anything else. It is particularly galling that foreigners such as Mamdani and his “Chief Equity Officer” — who despise America’s rich heritage and history — are in positions of power from which they can ignore America’s great triumphs while exploiting past injuries to divide and conquer Americans today.

We’ve heard the Democrats’ drumbeat of division for so many years now. In the late ’90s, it seemed as if “affirmative action” programs and other unconstitutional race-based preference systems in the United States would finally come to an end. Although white Americans had tolerated these discriminatory programs for several decades as grudging recompense for the perceived harms endured by previous generations or abiding deference to MLK and his “dream,” the discordance of fighting discrimination by embracing discrimination appeared inherently and irrevocably unjust.

Instead of allowing the nation to fully heal by recognizing the election of President Obama as the culmination of centuries of real progress for Americans of every race, the Democrats redefined their brand of “progressivism” to require only more kinds of racial preferences and new kinds of discriminatory quotas. The systemic racism of “affirmative action” programs morphed into the systemic racism of “diversity, inclusion, and equity” programs. As Democrats found overt examples of racism more difficult to identify, they conjured out of thin air the new hobgoblin of “white supremacy.” Democrats refused to discard the discriminatory mindset of judging children by the color of their skin; in the name of “progressivism,” they still insist that a person’s skin color determines everything.

Democrat mayors, governors, and presidential hopefuls now explicitly tell us that they will never stop taking from white people in the name of false “justice.” They will never stop dividing Americans by skin color. They will never just treat all of us as “unhyphenated Americans,” as the late, great Lloyd Marcus used to call himself.

Marcus believed that “we are ALL Americans” and therefore do not need “racial modifiers to define us.” “Is there racism in America?” Lloyd rhetorically asked. “Absolutely, along with every other sin in the heart of man! Is there enough racism to stop anyone from achieving the American Dream? Absolutely not! America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet.” If only the Democrat Party would stand for that!

If only the next generation of Democrats weren’t so committed to defining American children by the color of their skin. If only those foreigners who have been lucky enough to become naturalized American citizens showed more respect for our country, its history, its achievements, and our people’s perseverance. If only Democrats could progress beyond the worst racial impulses of the past. Americans should dream, work, and pray for that. ✪

▶️ DON SURBER: WHO NEEDS EUROPE?

⭐️ Jorline

DON SURBER: WHO NEEDS EUROPE?

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e pay to defend them and absorb $200 billion in annual trade deficits?

In December, the Economist opined:

Never since American troops came to Europe’s rescue eight decades ago have the links between the new and old worlds seemed so frayed. MAGA types in Washington ooze contempt for their transatlantic allies. Forget the old barbs about being an open-air museum: Europe is now derided as a migrant-ridden mausoleum hardly worth defending. Indeed, both sides have lost that loving feeling. European pols (with a few populist exceptions) moan that their erstwhile best geopolitical friend has been taken over by an unstable Dummkopf. Because Europe has for decades relied on America for its security, and since an actual war is raging on the continent, the soured relationship is of more immediate concern in Paris, Warsaw and Berlin than in Washington. But America should be mindful, too. President Donald Trump’s predecessors cultivated the alliance because it amplified American influence. Without European “followership,” American power will be less often welcomed or tolerated and more often resisted.

Their argument is the shepherd needs the sheep. So why are we getting shorn? Part of Europe’s value to America is just business. Though the European Union is stuck in the economic slow lane, its consumers still buy $3.6 trillion-worth of goods and services from American firms every year. Europe is like a second home to American corporate giants who have saturated their domestic market.

I asked Grok if that is true. Grok said, “The $3.6 trillion figure does not match any standard measure of annual European consumer purchases of U.S. goods and services (exports). The actual export flow is in the hundreds of billions, not trillions. The statement appears to conflate trade flows with investment positions, affiliate sales, or two-way totals, inflating the business value dramatically. Europe remains a vital partner for U.S. firms, but the specific claim is inaccurate.” EU enjoys a $200 billion trade surplus annually from the USA.

Hey, Economist, European down my leg and telling me it’s raining.

On top of that, America extends its nuclear umbrella to cover Europe as well as stationing 67,000 troops at key bases in Europe—bases that Britain, Italy and Spain refused to allow us to use in Operation Epic Fury. Under Status of Forces agreements, these mice can roar like that. France kicked us out in 1966 and yet remained a full-fledged member of NATO.

But as Jed Babbin of the Bush Administration said on January 30, 2003, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball, “You know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.”

▶️ 8 Minutes 8 Seconds

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News the USA must reconsider its relationship with NATO. Just three years ago, Rubio and Tim Kaine succeeded in getting Congress to prohibit the President from unilaterally suspending, terminating, denouncing, or withdrawing the U.S. from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.

Trump has a hard enough time getting one-third of the Senate to agree with him, let alone two. But he has a phone and a pen. And he has a growing plurality of Americans who believe NATO’s time ended when the Soviet Union died.

Jay Nordlinger tweeted: “A question for anti-NATO Americans: If NATO is so bad for the United States, why is Putin’s Russia so excited about its downfall?”

Good question. Why? Putin cannot take out Ukraine even with the help of Red China and cannon fodder soldiers imported from North Korea. The Russo-EU War will be a meat grinder between two former empires who learned nothing from the past two world wars.

By the way, while Euroweenies whine that the Iran war is not an Article 5 war—and Trump never made that claim—neither is Ukraine. Despite that, the USA has given $128 billion in aid. That’s more than Germany, France, England and Italy combined.

The collapse of the USSR on December 25, 1991, should have ended NATO. Instead it has doubled in membership to 32. What it lost in mission it made up in volume.

Well, the American Mighty Mouse has had it. We’re not answering the call. This is the time for Europe’s mice to fight the cat. They won’t. Our allies won’t join Operation Epic Fury and some are blocking our military. They claim it is not their fight, but it is. Iran demonstrated that it has long-range missiles that could hit London, Paris and Rome. Still they won’t help defend themselves.

Ari Fleischer tweeted:

When this is over, the western part of NATO will never be the same. Spain, England, France and Italy have sold us out, as they too often have a history of doing. Eastern European nations are the heart of NATO. They spend money on defense, know how to fight and love the U.S.

France particularly deserves fault and blame. From supporting China and Russia at the UN to denying Americans overflight rights, they’re doing what they’ve always done—showing weakness, while cutting deals with terrorists. (The reason the U.S. has a Marine Corps and Navy is unlike France, we refused to pay a ransom to the Barbary Pirates. France is always happy to cut a deal.) Wars have unintended consequences as nations show their true colors. NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause.

Jonah Goldberg, the fatberg of fake conservatism, replied:

I agree with some of this directionally, but my God the refusal to acknowledge that Trump has worked assiduously to poison the alliance and heap all the blame on Europe is just water-carrying hackery. Saying “NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause” is like writing a movie review when you missed the first half of the movie.

Ari Fleischer replied:

Sorry Jonah. I actually sat in the room for the first half of the movie. For 24 polite years, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama diplomatically asked NATO members to increase defense spending. For 24 years, it was one excuse after another, all focused in Western Europe on how they wish they could spend more, but their social welfare spending priorities wouldn’t let them. In other words, you the US will spend on defense and protect us.

Along comes rude Donald Trump. Finally, someone made clear that if Europe kept freeloading the US was done. It took a bull in the china shop to move Europe. Diplomacy failed. Trump prevailed. That’s reality whether you or I like it. NATO self-withered after 75 years. If Spain, England, Italy and France won’t spend what’s necessary to have a real military, it’s time for something new.

Scott Rasmussen weighed in:

NATO was one topic for my very first poll back in the 80s. Even then, voters were upset about NATO countries failure to pay a fair share of the defense burden. Trump didn’t create this frustration, but he certainly has given voice to it.

Trump has done more than give voice to it. Trump has gotten many countries to keep their word and increase their military spending. Still, many countries believe they can wait out Trump and continue slacking until a Democrat is president. Iceland doesn’t even have a military. If you won’t defend yourself, why should I?

Goldberg, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and the rest have discredited themselves at home by abandoning conservatism out of an irrational hatred of President Trump. I don’t think they have a market overseas because the western foreign press already hates Trump.

The British media’s fixation on Trump’s presidency seems odd because the United Kingdom has enough problems of its own without worrying about America. Refugees have overrun the land and its prime minister is hated. Politico reported his approval rate is 22% and his disapproval is at 70%.

I get that money—well at least online clicks—have something to do with this. Britain has 70 million people while the USA has 340 million. Trump haters cannot get enough hate content and the British press is only too happy to oblige. But there is more to the story than that. Like Iran’s evil regime, Britain’s regime cracks down on protests, albeit without executions. So far.

Britain enacted hate speech laws just three years ago. In 2023, the government arrested 12,183 people, mainly for tweets and other social media postings. The courts convicted 10% of them and sent 137 to jail. Since then, it arrests 13,000 people a year for saying things against the Muslim invaders or grooming gangs that attack and rape British children.

Then there is Ofcom, the not-so secret police of online. It levied a £520,000 fine against 4Chan. 4cChan lawyer Preston Byrne’s email response was golden:

Thanks. As has been explained to your agency, ad nauseam, the United Kingdom lost the American Revolutionary War. We are not in the mood to discuss the matter further, and have not been in the mood for 250 years. I note for the record that, last time your agency sent my client a censorship fine, we responded with a hamster joke. Since you have now sent my client a giant fine, a fine so large that Mr. Whiskers’ enclosure is not big enough to contain it, we will need to send the fine to Mr. Whiskers’ giant hamster cousin, Nigel J. Whiskerford.

Unfortunately, Nigel is out of the country this week, touring in Japan. [Attached: AI-generated image of Nigel J. Whiskerford—a giant hamster dressed as Godzilla, holding an equally giant peanut] 4chan Community Support LLC reserves all rights and waives none, including but not limited to the right to sue you again and/or to respond to future correspondence with an even larger rodent, such as a marmot.

Because censors never learn, the world awaits the debut of Sir Marmot Montcrieff, Viscount of the High Meadows.

Iran is now a friendless failed state that takes its frustrations out on the very people the government is supposed to serve. Britain lost its empire and has begun taking its frustrations out on British subjects.

Its gutless news media dares not challenge the government. Instead lashes out at Trump and the people who made him president of the United States of America.

The United Kingdom and the United States of America no longer share the same values. No one in Europe seems to. The Economist berating as an unstable Dummkopf the Commander-in-Chief of the largest military component in NATO says all we need to know about Europeans.

They are losers.✪

▶️ DEMOCRATS PLOT THIRD TRUMP IMPEACHMENT

DEMOCRATS PLOT THIRD TRUMP IMPEACHMENT

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ree Speech For People said in a press release Monday that a new national poll found “a majority of likely 2026 voters nationwide support impeaching President Donald Trump,” which the group called “an extraordinary and unprecedented level of support so early in a presidential term.”

The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners from March 26-30 among 800 likely 2026 general election voters, found that 52 percent support impeaching Trump, while 40 percent oppose it. 46 percent said they strongly support impeachment, compared with 37 percent who strongly oppose it, while 8 percent said they were unsure or had no opinion.

Free Speech For People said that “support for impeachment spans party lines,” pointing to 84 percent support among Democrats, with eight percent opposed. Among independents, 55 percent support impeachment and 34 percent oppose it. Republicans oppose impeachment by an 81 percent to 14 percent margin.

According to the survey, 38 percent said they approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 57 percent said they disapprove. 53 percent said they strongly disapprove.

The memo released by Lake Research Partners notes that the survey was conducted through live telephone and text-to-online interviews and weighted by gender, age, region, race, educational attainment, and partisanship to reflect likely 2026 voters nationwide. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The demographic breakdown of the sample showed 53 percent women and 47 percent men. Thirty percent of respondents were age 65 or older, while 25 percent were between 50 and 64 years old. 39 percent identified as Democrats, 34 percent as Republicans, 19 percent as independents or undecided, and five percent identified with another party.

Before asking whether respondents support or oppose impeaching Trump, the survey told them that “several members of Congress have recently come out in support of impeaching President Donald Trump for violating Americans’ constitutional rights and the law, including actions by ICE in the U.S. and the war he started with Iran.”

▶️ 17 Minutes 12 Seconds

The results were reviewed during a virtual press briefing Monday hosted by Free Speech For People President John Bonifaz and Lake Research Partners pollster David Mermin.

Bonifaz stated that “more than 1 million people across the country have joined us in calling for the impeachment removal of Donald Trump from public office” through Free Speech For People’s campaign at impeachtrumpagain.org. He added that the organization has “documented more than 25 grounds for impeachment.”

As reported in January, Free Speech For People joined Citizens’ Impeachment, the Removal Coalition, Women’s March, and the 50501 Movement in launching an expanded “Free America Walkout” campaign to pressure Congress to impeach Trump and senior administration officials. The coalition urged supporters to visit congressional district offices on January 20 to demand impeachment proceedings. They also pointed to Trump’s military strike on Venezuela, military action involving Iran, ICE operations, and what it called “a larger pattern of unchecked aggression” as the basis for its impeachment push.

Mermin remarked, “I’ve been doing this work for 30 years, and we’ve had the science of modern public opinion polling for about 90 years, and we believe there has never been this early in a presidential term, finding that a majority of American voters are in favor of impeaching the president.”

Mermin contended that the only other periods in which polling showed majority support for impeachment came near the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency and during Trump’s first term; first during his 2019 impeachment proceedings and again in the final weeks after January 6, 2021. He noted that during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, most polling did not show majority support for impeachment. Mermin continued:

“There were a few moments in Trump’s first term when you reached a majority in other public polls, around the time of the January 6 attempted coup attempt, and the weeks following that, the last few weeks of his first term. But certainly not in the first year or first slightly over a year of his term.”

Among independents, Mermin said the findings represented what he called “a high watermark” for opposition to Trump.

“To have a clear, solid majority, 55% of independents saying they want to impeach the president is remarkable and striking, and certainly an important finding here,” he said.

Mermin also said the Republican number stood out. “It is notable that you’ve got about one in seven Republican voters who are now saying, actually, we should impeach the president. They don’t believe he’s fit to remain in office,” he said.

The new polling emerged as Democrat lawmakers and party figures renewed discussion of a third impeachment effort against Trump. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said last week that Trump “should be impeached now” over Iran and argued Democrats will move ahead if they regain control of Congress. Democrat strategist James Carville similarly claimed that Trump “will be impeached in 2027” if Democrats win control of the House. ✪

▶️ THE DEAD SCIENTISTS STORY MUST NOT GO AWAY

THE DEAD SCIENTISTS STORY MUST NOT GO AWAY

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n the geometry of American defense research, three cities form the backbone of the nation’s most classified aerospace programs: Southern California, where the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech’s infrared processing centers anchor NASA’s planetary work. Albuquerque, home to Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Labs; and Dayton, Ohio, where Wright-Patterson has for decades been the nerve center of the Air Force Research Laboratory. Since July 2024, at least nine scientists, engineers, and defense-connected personnel tied to these exact nodes have died under unexplained circumstances, disappeared without a trace, or been found murdered. Congress is alarmed. The FBI is involved. And the institutions that lost these people have, in nearly every case, said as little as possible.

That silence is the first thing that demands explanation. Consider the deaths themselves. Monica Jacinto Reza, a NASA aerospace engineer and co-inventor of Mondaloy; a family of nickel-based superalloys designed to withstand oxygen-rich environments and extreme heat in rocket engines — vanished on June 22, 2025, while hiking with friends in the Angeles National Forest. Despite searches involving helicopters, drones, and canine units, only a beanie and lip balm were recovered. Her body was never found.

Melissa Casias, an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, disappeared just four days later, last seen walking alone on Highway 518 near Talpa, New Mexico.

Carl Grillmair, an astrophysicist at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center who spent nearly thirty years validating data pipelines for detecting Earth-threatening asteroids, was shot dead on the front porch of his home in Llano, California, on February 16, 2026.

Retired Major General William Neil McCasland, who once oversaw $4.4 billion in classified aerospace research and development and served as executive secretary of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee; the body with full purview of every SAP in the Department of Defense, vanished from his Albuquerque home on February 27, 2026, leaving behind his phone and glasses but taking his wallet, boots, and a .38 revolver.

Nuno Loureiro, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a leading researcher in nuclear fusion and nonlinear plasma dynamics, was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 15, 2025.

Jason Thomas, assistant director at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research with active Department of Defense contracts, was reported missing on December 13, 2025, and found dead in a Massachusetts lake on March 17, 2026.

Each case, taken alone, might be explained away. Taken together, they compose something harder to dismiss.

The natural response of a prudent mind is caution. Coincidence exists. Defense researchers live in the same country as everyone else and are not exempt from homicides, accidents, or suicides. Several analysts have noted that available reporting does not establish a verified, coordinated campaign and that coincidence, occupational risk, or unrelated criminal acts could explain parts of the pattern.

That is true… if you believe in coincidences. Some of these deaths have clear explanations but that doesn’t mean they’re not manufactured to look disconnected. The deaths at Wright-Patterson in October 2025 — involving an Air Force acquisition manager, his wife, and a 25-year-old operations analysis officer — appear to have been the result of a murder-suicide, captured on security cameras. The murder of Loureiro has been connected to a suspect with a prior shooting at Brown University.

However, the argument from coincidence weakens considerably once you examine what these individuals actually knew and who they worked for, and once you notice what their institutions chose not to say.

The Sentinel Network, which has traced the professional connections between these individuals through patent filings, congressional testimony, DTIC records, and federal contract databases, argues that this is not a loose collection of people who happened to work in defense — but one documented system, traceable through institutional linkage.

Reza vanished in Los Angeles County. Grillmair was killed in Los Angeles County. Both worked in the shadow of the JPL/Caltech corridor where America’s planetary defense infrastructure is built. McCasland vanished in Albuquerque, home of Kirtland AFB and Sandia. The Wright-Patterson deaths occurred in Dayton. Southern California. New Mexico. Ohio. The precise triangle where AFRL operates.

And at each point on that triangle, the same response from the institutions involved: the minimum possible disclosure. JPL said nothing about Reza. NASA said nothing. Caltech’s statement about Grillmair described him as having “passed away suddenly” without using the word “shot.” Wright-Patterson offered counseling services. Whether this silence reflects the ordinary bureaucratic instinct toward self-protection, genuine sensitivity over classified programs, or something more troubling is precisely what we do not know. But it is a pattern within the pattern, and it deserves to be named as such.

Congress has begun to notice. Representatives Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Eric Burlison of Missouri have both spoken publicly about their concern. Burlison requested FBI involvement in the disappearances, telling Fox News that McCasland’s case — in which a retired general apparently walked out of his home, leaving all his devices, and never returned — is “deeply concerning.” Burchett, who told podcaster Benny Johnson that “something dark is going on,” added: “I know these scientists and researchers. They have testified. We’ve got to get to the bottom of it. It’s just too much, too much is going on right now — and by the way, I’m not suicidal.”

That last remark is not a throwaway line. It is a congressman preemptively distancing himself from the list of the dead.

The question that haunts this story is not whether there is a grand conspiracy, but whether the American government — which has, in the current political moment, shown some appetite for declassifying what it previously concealed — is capable of conducting a genuine inquiry into what is happening to the people who built and sustained its most sensitive programs. The country has, over the past several years, inched toward acknowledging that its defense and intelligence apparatus has been less than fully honest with the public on matters ranging from the origin of certain viruses to the contents of certain programs at certain air bases in Ohio. The same apparatus now finds itself losing, through death or disappearance, an unusual number of the very people who would have known where the bodies, figuratively or otherwise, are buried.

The Book of Numbers records that when men went to scout the land and returned with their report, the question was not whether the giants they described were real, but what should be done in response. The land was real. The giants were real. The question was courage. We are at a similar juncture. The deaths are real. The silence is real. The connections are real enough to demand a serious accounting, not from partisan commentators, but from the institutions entrusted with the nation’s security and with the lives of those who serve it.

Whatever the explanation turns out to be, the American people are owed one. ✪

▶️ ZELENSKYY: IRAN WAR DIVERTING ATTENTION FROM UKRAINE

ZELENSKYY: IRAN WAR DIVERTING ATTENTION FROM UKRAINE

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krainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed concern that a prolonged U.S.-Israeli war on Iran could further erode America’s support for Ukraine as Washington’s global priorities shift and Kyiv braces for reduced deliveries of critically needed Patriot air defense missiles.

Ukraine desperately needs more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems to help it counter Russia’s daily barrages, Zelenskyy said, speaking to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview late Saturday in Istanbul.

Russia´s relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago has killed thousands of civilians. It has also targeted Ukraine’s energy supply to disrupt industrial production of Ukraine’s newly developed drones and missiles, while also denying civilians heat and running water in winter.

“We have to recognize that we are not the priority for today,” Zelenskyy said. “That’s why I am afraid a long (Iran) war will give us less support.”

The latest U.S.-brokered talks between envoys from Moscow and Kyiv ended in February with no sign of a breakthrough. Zelenskyy, who has accused Russia of “trying to drag out negotiations” while it presses on with its invasion, said Ukraine remains in contact with U.S. negotiators about a potential deal to end the war and has continued to press for stronger security guarantees. But, he said, even those discussions reflect a broader loss of focus from Ukraine.

His most immediate concern, Zelenskyy said, are the Patriots – essential for intercepting Russian ballistic missiles – as Ukraine still lacks an effective alternative.

These U.S. systems were never delivered in sufficient quantities to begin with, Zelenskyy said, and if the Iran war doesn’t end soon, “the package – which is not very big for us – I think will be smaller and smaller day by day.”

“That’s why, of course, we are afraid,” he said. Zelenskyy had been counting on European partners to help make the Patriot purchases despite tight supply and limited U.S. production capacity.

However, the Iran war, now in its sixth week, has sent shock waves through the global economy and pulled in much of the wider Middle East region, further straining these already limited resources, diverting stockpiles and leaving Ukrainian cities more exposed to ballistic strikes.

For Kyiv, a key objective is to weaken Moscow’s economy and make the war prohibitively costly. Surging oil prices driven by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz are undermining that strategy by boosting the Kremlin’s oil revenues and strengthening Moscow’s capacity to sustain its war effort.

In his interview with the AP, Zelenskyy said Russia draws economic benefits from the Mideast war, citing the limited easing of American sanctions on Russian oil. “Russia gets additional money because of this, so yes, they have benefits,” he said.

Russian officials said Sunday a fire broke out at a major oil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region after a drone attack, while another drone damaged a pipeline at the Russian Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, home to a major oil export terminal. No casualties were reported.

Russia could reap a windfall from a surge in oil prices and the U.S. temporary waiver on Russian oil sanctions designed to ease supply shortages as the Iran war continues. Russia is one of the world’s main oil exporters, and Asian nations are increasingly competing for Russian crude oil as an energy crisis mounts.

In response, Ukraine has intensified its long-range drone attacks on Russian oil facilities, which have rattled Moscow.

To keep Ukraine on the international agenda, Zelenskyy has offered to share Ukraine’s hard-earned battlefield expertise with the United States and allies to develop effective countermeasures against Iranian attacks.

Ukraine has met Russia’s evolving use of Iranian-made Shahed drones with growing sophistication, technological ingenuity and low cost.

Moscow significantly modified the original Shahed-136, rebranded as the Geran-2, enhancing its ability to evade air defenses and be mass produced. Ukraine responded with quick innovation of its own, including low-cost interceptor drones designed to track and destroy incoming drones.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready to share with Gulf Arab countries targeted by Iran its experience and technology, including interceptor drones and sea drones, which Ukraine produces – more than are used up – with funding from Americans and its European partners. In return, these countries could help Ukraine “with anti-ballistic missiles,” Zelenskyy said.

In late March, as the Iran war escalated, Zelenskyy visited Gulf Arab states to promote Ukraine´s singular experience in countering Iranian-made Shahed drones, leading to new defense cooperation agreements.

Zelenskyy has also positioned Ukraine as a potential partner in safeguarding global trade routes, offering assistance in reopening the Strait of Hormuz by sharing Ukraine’s experiences securing maritime corridors in the Black Sea.

Zelenskyy was in Istanbul for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a day after the Turkish leader spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy said they discussed peace talks and a possible meeting of leaders in Istanbul. He also said there could be new defense deals signed between the two countries soon.

Each year as the weather improves, Russia moves its grinding war of attrition up a notch. However, it has been unable to capture Ukrainian cities and has made only incremental gains across rural areas. Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.

On the roughly 1,250-kilometer front line stretching across eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, short-handed Ukrainian defenders are getting ready for a new offensive by Russia´s larger army.

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian troops have in recent days made simultaneous attempts to break through defense lines in several strategic areas.

One thing Zelenskyy says he has insisted on and will continue to do so – a territorial compromise and giving up land will not be on Ukraine’s agenda.✪

▶️ THE SOUTH RISES AGAIN

THE SOUTH RISES AGAIN

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hile New York and California are losing population, states like South Carolina and Alabama are not only gaining residents at a record rate, but are also experiencing rapid economic growth.

A recent JL Partners poll captures a shift in perception: 36 percent of Americans now expect the South to lead economic growth over the next decade; far ahead of the West Coast (23 percent), Northeast (21 percent), and Midwest (19 percent).

This is quite a transformation. For as long as anyone can remember, the South seemed to be a byword for backwardness. Since the late nineteenth century, American commerce and industry centered on the traditional business hubs of New York, Chicago, and California. Each successive wave of innovation; automobile manufacturing and aerospace, chemicals and consumer goods, financial services and digital startups, seemed to happen outside the South.

Starting in the 1980s, an initial wave of “Sun Belt” states, like Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina, began to prosper. But what you might call the “core” Southern states, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, remained resolutely stuck in the slow lane. Until now.

Over the past decade, economic growth in the South has exceeded the national average; and in states like Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina, significantly so. Real GDP in 2024 rose 4.2% in Mississippi and South Carolina, 3.8% in Alabama and Arkansas, and 3.0% in Tennessee, surpassing the national rate of 2.8%.

Manufacturing jobs might have disappeared in the Rust Belt, but many of those jobs went South, not to China. U.S. industrial output has roughly doubled since the Reagan era, and much of that expansion happened in states like Alabama, which has added over 50,000 auto jobs since 2000 while Michigan lost them. Combined, Alabama and Mississippi now produce more vehicles annually than Italy or the United Kingdom.

The South is not just a manufacturing powerhouse; it’s rapidly emerging as a major financial service center. Think “Y’all Street” rather than Wall Street. Cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, and even Nashville have become financial hubs in ways that once seemed unimaginable. This shift is so pronounced that JPMorgan Chase now employs more people in Texas (around 31,000) than in New York.

So strong has southern growth been that between 2020 and 2024, 78 percent of all US jobs added to the economy have been located in the South.

The population of the South has increased by seven million since 2020. If anything, this shift in population to the South seems to be accelerating. According to the 2026 HireAHelper Moving Migration Report, for every 10,000 residents, in 2025, South Carolina gained 79 more people, Tennessee 47, Alabama 36, and Mississippi 18. New York, by contrast, lost 28, and California lost 25.

Even as America’s college-age population shrinks due to lower birth rates, Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities are bucking the trend with rising applications, especially from out-of-state Northeastern students. Between 2014 and 2023, SEC schools saw a 91-percent surge in undergraduates from out of state. These students aren’t just chasing sunshine and football; many seek a campus culture that is the antithesis of Northeastern or West-Coast woke.

Unsurprisingly, the JL Partners survey found young graduates particularly bullish on the South’s prospects, with nearly four in ten naming it the region most likely to grow fastest in the coming decade.

What explains this Southern success? Southern states are not just more friendly. They are business-friendly.

Taxes tend to be lower. Some southern states have no income tax (such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee), or, like Mississippi and South Carolina, are on the road to income tax elimination. State income taxes are higher elsewhere, with Washington State, for example, about to introduce an income tax for the first time.

Southern states tend to have less red tape. South Carolina recently repealed a lot of the so-called Certificate of Need red tape that held back the health care economy. Contrast that to California, now one of the most stringent regulatory environments in the U.S., with onerous compliance requirements of companies for example on climate disclosure and environmental standards.

Southern states have more flexible labor laws, and most are right-to-work states, meaning workers cannot be required to join unions. Southern states, like Mississippi, have begun to remove restrictive occupational licensing rules, too, making it easier for people to find work.

The South has significantly lower electricity costs on average, largely because the South never really took the Biden-era inducements to renewable energy. Ironically, given that the Sun Belt is where the sunshine is, the South avoids prescriptive renewable mandates while making practical use of solar power. In contrast, the Northeast and California have stringent renewable mandates and face higher prices as a consequence.

The secret of America’s success is having fifty different states trying out different policy solutions side by side. The Southern states seem to have found a winning formula. ✪

▶️ ARTEMIS II: INSPIRING UNITY FOR A DEEPLY DIVIDED NATION

ARTEMIS II: INSPIRING UNITY FOR A DEEPLY DIVIDED NATION

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ational confidence, unfortunately, is in short supply these days. In this season of springtime renewal, Americans would do well to look up; literally. Artemis II, NASA’s first meaningful manned space mission in over half a century, has taken the nation by storm this month. In so doing, it has provided a timely reminder of what a great nation, acting with confidence and clarity of purpose, can still achieve.

Public polling confirms that Americans are a largely pessimistic lot. Our politics are fractured, our institutions mistrusted, and our birth and marriage rates have plummeted. Hope once sprang eternal, but today’s zeitgeist is characterized by an unshakeable malaise. The daring Artemis II mission offers a rebuttal to this debilitating defeatism. Artemis II is a powerful symbol that the United States still possesses the will and the capacity to do big things. It presents a ripe opportunity to rekindle an inspiring national ethos that has been lost; one fostering greatness, rewarding courage and embracing the frontier spirit.

Put simply, a great country is not satisfied with managed decline. A great country thinks boldly and acts boldly.

In this respect, Artemis II is deeply consonant with; indeed, it is an embodiment of the political ethos of President Donald Trump and the broader MAGA Movement. Stripped of caricature and distortion, “Make America Great Again” is, at its core, a call for national renewal; to reject complacency and reassert American leadership and excellence. Whether in trade, foreign policy or space exploration, the premise is the same: America should lead, not follow.

Space exploration has long been one of the clearest arenas in which American leadership manifests itself. At the height of the Cold War, NASA’s Apollo program had a loftier mission than merely beating the Soviets to the moon; the goal was to demonstrate to the world the superiority of American freedom and the American way of life. Now, Artemis II carries forward that legacy in a new geopolitical context; one in which rivals like China are racing to assert dominance on land, air, sea and beyond. If the 21st Century is going to be an American century and not a Chinese century, missions like Artemis II will be crucial.

Yet Artemis II is not just a story about national power. It is also one about individual character. Consider Victor Glover, the mission’s pilot. In an era obsessed with identity politics and the divvying up of individuals into racial, ethnic and sexual categories, Glover has offered a refreshing perspective. When recently asked about becoming the first Black astronaut deployed by NASA on a lunar mission, Glover fundamentally rejected the premise: “It’s about human history. It’s the story of humanity — not Black history, not women’s history — but that it becomes human history.” This is a tremendous and inspiring rebuke of today’s suffocating wokeism.

Equally significant — if not more so — is Glover’s openness about his Christian faith. He has openly spoken about the imperatives of studying God’s Creation from orbit, and he took a personal copy of the Bible with him on the journey. Glover is a throwback to an older, bygone era; one in which the most renowned scientists, such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, understood their endeavors as a means of employing human reason to better understand God’s Creation. This is a much more cogent understanding of the scientific enterprise than the false tension between science and religion that is often peddled today.

Taken together, the Artemis II mission and the individuals who have carried it out offer a powerful counter-narrative to the dour pessimism, censorious wokeism and rampant atheism of our age. This is a mission that embodies the best of America: technological prowess, individual excellence and a willingness to venture into the unknown to do big, bold and beautiful things. It is a story that has united Americans of all political, religious, racial and ethnic stripes.

In short, Artemis II is a feel-good story. And frankly, we could use more of those.

The United States has always been at its best when it chooses outward-looking hope over inward-looking cynicism. Artemis II is a reminder that such a choice is still readily available to us. The question is whether we will choose correctly; and, in turn, help make the 21st Century a distinctly American century. ✪

▶️ LEFTISM FEARS JESUS CHRIST

LEFTISM FEARS JESUS CHRIST

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n Easter, the holiest day of the year, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior, and Treasure. Just saying those words out loud — Lord…Savior…Treasure — it is easy to recognize why modern socialist governments find Christianity so threatening. For if He is the King of Kings, then all of our would-be masters in this world are pale imposters. If He alone is the Way and the Truth and the Life, then the marble halls of Big Government are just false paths leading to false idols that promise false salvation. If He is the only Treasure, then all of the things governments do to make us envious, resentful, and hateful toward one another are tricks and lies meant to blind us from the Truth.

A Canadian writer named Dimpee Brar wrote a beautiful and insightful essay on this subject last month. In that essay, Brar draws attention to the more than eighty churches that have been set on fire across her country. She deftly describes how government-sponsored lies instigated these attacks on Christian houses of worship and argues persuasively that Marxist-globalist governments view Christ, Christians, and Christianity as foremost enemies.

Brar notes that the corporate news media routinely downplay these recurring acts of desecration by undercounting the number of churches set on fire and reporting on the crimes with intentionally vague language that obfuscates the perpetrators’ obvious motives. Canadian journalists report upon the church attacks as if they were “random accidents” happening inside of commercial businesses. She argues that each of these church fires should instead be seen as “episodes in a larger campaign” of a “war being waged against the West.”

Brar points out that all of this destruction is based upon the government-perpetuated lie that mass graves of indigenous children have been found on the grounds of Christian schools. The lie has been exposed, but Canadian politicians continue to defend the actions of arsonists as “understandable.” To the Left…the truth is secondary to the permission it grants. Hatred for Western Civilization is disguised as “justice.” The attacks on Christian churches implicitly instruct the youngest generations that “nothing is sacred.” Canada’s prime ministers elevate grievances over God’s enduring Truth.

Canadian citizens are not spontaneously burning churches to the ground. Canadian schools, cultural institutions, and businesses first taught citizens to despise their civilization. By teaching entire generations that “all ways of life are equal; that any claim to superiority is a disguised will to power; and that distinctions between noble and base, just and unjust, good and bad, and above all, true and false, are instruments of ‘oppression,’” anti-Western radicals replaced Jesus Christ with relativism. The Marxist-globalist orthodoxy that now oppresses us cannot countenance Western Civilization’s proclamation “that our way of life is superior not by race or conquest, but because it is true; therefore, it is good, just, and noble.”

Demonstrating true intellect, Brar recognizes that our civilizational inheritance as Westerners includes “the twin roots of Jerusalem and Athens: biblical revelation and reason.” Although distinct sources of wisdom, both “roots” lead us to Truth by recognizing that there is a “best way” to live and a “standard” which exists “both outside and above us.” The gifts of Western Civilization are therefore lasting impediments to leftism’s need for “tyrannical rule.”

“This is why our churches must burn,” Brar concludes. The “steeples are the most visible symbol of the biblical half of our inheritance….guiding our eyes, and with them our souls, upward to the highest things.” Jesus Christ reveals the left’s moral relativists as false prophets because “when there is God and Truth, then everything is not permissible.”

Here is where Brar’s argument reveals profound personal wisdom. She looks around at all the churches burning across Canada and recognizes that “our enemies pay us great compliments.” The Left’s “hatred” and “resentment” reveal how much they fear us. If those of us committed to defending Western Civilization were truly defeated, Marxist-globalists would treat us with “pity” and “indifference.” Instead, their “rage is proportional to the threat they perceive.” Leftists understand Christianity “remains the greatest obstacle to the tyranny they wish to institute.”

Recognizing leftists have unintentionally revealed what they fear most, Brar rallies Christians to stop hiding or apologizing. Instead, she charges, we must “regain a seriousness equal to that of our opponents. If they judge this way of life dangerous enough to burn, then it is time we judged it once more worthy of living and defending in full.”

Do her words not light a spark within you? Does her call not embolden you to defend your Christian faith? Has she not revealed leftism as nothing more than a magician’s trick or a desert’s mirage? Has she not proved that Christ’s Truth is the Way?

How can we allow ourselves to ever feel defeated if we remain faithful followers of Christ? How could we stand with Him and worry that mortals such as Mark Carney, Barack Obama, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, or Ursula von der Leyen could vanquish Western Civilization with Marxist-globalism’s moral relativism? Power does not rest with godless political leaders. Eternal Truth begins and ends with God. Jesus Christ defeated death. Why would we fear the legacies of politicians, bankers, actors, or musicians who demand to be worshipped in this life?

The war being waged against the West is real. Every church that leftists burn to the ground is a reminder of the stakes. However, a house of God is much more than bricks and stones. Arsonists can demolish walls and steeples. Only we can demolish our faith.

That’s a vital distinction. Leftist governments want to humiliate, demoralize, and enfeeble us. Moral relativists want us to feel weak and defeated. Marxist-globalists wish for us to accept that Western Civilization is lost. What our enemies know; and what we too often forget; is we alone decide whether to submit. We alone decide whether to give in to tyranny or to continue fighting it. We alone decide whether leftists really have the power to vanquish Reason, Truth, and Christ.

On one side stand those who wish to divide, diminish, and destroy. On the other side stands our Lord, Savior, and Treasure, Jesus Christ. Each Easter, we remember His sacrifice. Let us also remember that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. So long as we sustain our faith, Western Civilization will endure. It is leftism — false, resentful, and evil — which will die, wither, and fade away. ✪

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