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May 2025

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

President Trump: How You Can Be the Greatest Leader of the 21st Century by Majid Rafizadeh

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21587/trump-nuclear-iran

If Iran can enrich a little uranium, it can at any time enrich a lot.

Iran’s latest diktat to the United States openly states that the regime has no interest in compromise, no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons program, and no fear of impotent threats from a US president.

The Iranian regime at least deserves credit for honesty. The mullahs want to preserve its uranium enrichment program: it gives the regime a loaded gun pointed at the world.

This cat-and-mouse game has been Iran’s playbook for nearly 20 years. The regime pretends to comply with some dismissible Westerner, dial back enrichment slightly to satisfy desperate Western politicians who want to score short-term diplomatic victories, and in return, they extract billions of dollars in sanctions relief, economic benefits and especially political legitimacy.

One thing is certain: the minute it is clear that Iran has acquired nuclear weapons, every country in the Middle East, except for Israel, will submit to it rather than risk being bombed.

Mr. President, you have a choice. You can leave behind a legacy as the great, historic global leader who had the courage to save the entire free world from the Iranian nuclear threat. Or you can seek a meaningless political victory by signing a deal that will just paper over the crisis for twenty minutes. If you negotiate a weak agreement, history will remember you not as a success, but as a gigantic “loser” – and regard you with the same derision as Chamberlain. Chamberlain never got a Nobel Peace Prize and neither will you. But if you save the world from a nuclear Iran, you will go down in history as a second Winston Churchill.

Continuing to negotiate with an Iran that has bluntly stated that it will never give up its claimed “right to enrich uranium” is not diplomacy, it is surrender. Any agreement that allows even limited enrichment is a betrayal of everything the West stands for. We must not walk down that path again.

Mr. President, act now, decisively, and ensure that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are buried forever — and most of all that your legacy as the greatest leader of the 21st Century is enshrined forever.

Iran’s true intentions could not have been made any clearer: Last week, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi flatly declared the issue of uranium enrichment is “non-negotiable.”

Iran has called President Donald J. Trump’s bluff about bombing the country if the regime does not voluntarily dismantle its uranium enrichment centrifuges, ballistic missiles and the rest of its nuclear program. Trump immediately folded. Now the president seems to be backing down and trying to dodge: “I think we can make a deal without the attack.”

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HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The (Communist) Truth About VE-Day Diana West

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://dianawest.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

Did you know that we celebrate V-E Day on May 8 due strictly to Stalin’s wishes and Truman and Churchill’s fear of “offending the Russians”? This fear was the frequent driver, sometimes fueled by bona fide agents of Stalin’s influence, of much US and British policy and strategy.

The war in Europe ended on May 7, 1945.

Here is the real story, from Chapter 12 of American Betrayal:

An even cruder, emptier example of this manipulation was the embargo placed at the behest of the Allied leaders, Stalin, Truman, and Churchill (dragging his heels), on the news of the surrender of Nazi Germany in France on May 7, 1945, until the Russians could rig up their own surrender ceremony in Berlin on May 8, 1945. This stupendous act of appeasement, blanked out of national memory, was thankfully circumvented by a wise and bold AP reporter named Edward Kennedy, who believed the news of Germany’s surrender “belonged to the Allied peoples,” as he later wrote, and not to the Soviet propaganda department.

Kennedy created a giant controversy for refusing to go along with this blatant political censorship. On learning that Allied military headquarters (SHAEF) had already authorized German radio to broadcast the news of the May 7 surrender, Kennedy filed his story regardless of the embargo, regardless of the Soviet plan. As Kennedy explained his decision (which cost him his job with the AP) in an Atlantic Monthly essay in 1948, “Truman and Churchill—the latter reluctantly and only on pressure from Washington—agreed to hold up the news, which belonged to the Allied peoples, until the time of the Berlin meeting . . . The Russian action was quite in line with the Soviet conception of the press for propaganda, and nothing to get excited about; the fault was ours for falling for it” (emphasis added).

Of course, according to this new way of looking at our history, we fell for it because we were pushed, both from the outside and, more important, from the inside. As a result, Americans at large were left to try to make half-sense of the partial truths doled out by our leaders. Later, as Kent Cooper notes in his book The Right to Know, a smaller, book-reading audience would sort through the many war memoirs written by military and political figures, Churchill’s most famous among them, containing “laments” over their authors’ having been “pushed around by the insatiable Russians.” Cooper—the newspaper executive who coined the phrase “the right to know”— comments acerbically:

“Not one of them, however, has expressed any realization of how different it all might have been had they disclosed what they later so dolefully put in their memoirs to excuse their actions. The fact that they so needlessly conducted all political matters in secret and kept them so under protection of war censorship should be the basis of remonstrance from a democratic people.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

KELLYANNE CONWAY: The Democrats’ disastrous first 100 days *******

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.aol.com/kellyanne-conway-democrats-disastrous-first-090052727.html

As pundits, pollsters, and op-ed writers turn to their assessment of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days — an “artificial metric,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles once said — it seems fitting to examine what the Democrats have done (and failed to do) over the same period.

The Democratic Party is in complete disarray. With only 27% saying they view their own party positively, the Democrats are suffering their lowest positive rating in NBC tracking in 35 years. They continue to openly blame, name and shame each other for lying to the nation about Joe Biden’s ability to function as a successful president (and frankly, Kamala Harris’ ability, too), for not stopping Donald J. Trump from winning a second term, and for being a rudderless, leaderless, visionless mess since.

With GOP control of the House, Senate and the White House, Democrats are the party out of power. Yet they are also the party out of touch with most Americans, out of excuses as to why they lost last fall, out of reasons why core Democratic constituencies that went for President Trump in 2024 should give Democrats another look, and often out of their minds in the hateful rhetoric they use.

Lately, the causes and characters they champion include hulking men in girls’ sports and a Salvadorean national “Maryland man” with gang affiliations, whose wife filed abuse charges against him. Because nothing says “we care about women” quite like stuntman and sometime Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who has dishonored the memory of constituent Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was raped and murdered in his state by an illegal immigrant, but hightailed it to El Salvador to whine about “due process” for someone whose wife detailed multiple violent assaults.

Van Hollen has been awkward, but not alone. Congressional Democrats like Ayanna Pressley, who have done nothing to prevent or punish anti-Semitism on college campuses, have glorified antisemitic protesters, visited them in ICE detention centers, and referred to them as “political prisoners.”

Same with Teslas. Democrats want to force us all to drive electric vehicles, “EVs,” but not if Elon Musk’s company produced it. Those can be destroyed by arsonists.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

We Don’t Need an Executive Order to Bar Illegals from Social Security—We Need a Government That Obeys the Law If it takes an executive order to enforce laws that already bar illegal immigrants from Social Security, the problem isn’t policy—it’s a government that’s given up on enforcement. By Maureen Steele

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/02/we-dont-need-an-executive-order-to-bar-illegals-from-social-security-we-need-a-government-that-obeys-the-law/

In what universe does it make sense that the President of the United States has to sign an executive order to stop illegal aliens from receiving Social Security benefits? That’s not just an absurd headline—it’s a tragic indictment of how far this nation has strayed from the rule of law, common sense, and constitutional integrity.

Let’s get one thing straight: illegal immigrants are already barred from receiving Social Security benefits. Full stop. It’s enshrined in federal law, constitutional precedent, and the very fabric of what it means to be a sovereign nation. Yet here we are, once again watching a president step in with a pen to “reaffirm” what is already carved into stone.

Under Section 1611 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. § 1382c), individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States are categorically ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) explicitly excludes most non-citizens from federal means-tested public benefits. And let’s not forget 8 U.S.C. § 1611, which states unequivocally, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law…an alien who is not a qualified alien…is not eligible for any Federal public benefit.”

Translation: They’re already prohibited.

So why does Trump need to sign an executive order? Because we are no longer a nation governed by laws—we are a nation governed by selective enforcement, political cowardice, and bureaucratic betrayal.

While illegals exploit the system through loopholes crafted by activist judges and globalist legislators, hardworking Americans who’ve paid into Social Security their entire lives are being told the well is running dry. They’re mocked with headlines about “entitlement reform” and threatened with benefit cuts, while watching their tax dollars fund services for people who have no legal right to be here.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

President Trump Must Reverse John Kerry’s Worst Concession to Iran Trump was right to ditch the Iran deal—Kerry’s uranium concession let Tehran sprint toward the bomb under cover of diplomacy. By Fred Fleitz

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/02/president-trump-must-reverse-john-kerrys-worst-concession-to-iran/

On May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from what he called “the worst deal ever”—the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, known as the JCPOA.

For many reasons, President Trump was exactly right. The most crucial reason was an unforgivable concession made to Iran by then-Senator John Kerry in 2011: conceding to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium.

The JCPOA was a bad deal for several reasons, including provisions that allowed Iran to do nuclear weapons-related work while the agreement was in effect, a weak inspection regime that Iran cheated on, and secret side deals that helped Iran evade IAEA inspections. The agreement also wasn’t permanent—it had “sunset provisions” that limited its duration.

In addition, the JCPOA gave Iran $150 billion in sanctions relief. This included $1.7 billion in “pallets of cash” that the U.S. secretly flew to Iran in small planes as ransom to release five innocent Americans being held hostage in Iranian prisons.

But the worst U.S. concession in the JCPOA was the Obama administration’s decision to concede to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium.

Uranium enrichment is the process of concentrating the rare uranium isotope uranium-235 (U-235) so it can be used for either nuclear reactor fuel (3 to 5% U-235) or nuclear weapons fuel (90% U-235).

Prior to the Obama administration, Republican and Democratic administrations were concerned that the spread of uranium enrichment would lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons because it is very easy for a nation to use uranium enrichment centrifuges initially constructed for peaceful purposes to produce nuclear bomb fuel.

The U.S. was also especially opposed before 2009 to letting Iran enrich uranium because of clear and convincing evidence it had engaged in a broad, covert program to produce nuclear weapons that violated Tehran’s treaty obligations.

John Kerry believed differently. As a senator, he argued in 2009 that he agreed with Iranian officials that because Iran had the right to peaceful nuclear technology under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it had a right to enrich uranium. While he was still in the Senate in 2011, Kerry informed Iran (through Oman) on behalf of the Obama administration that the United States would acknowledge Iran’s right to enrich uranium at the start of new nuclear talks.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Neetu Arnold How Houston Is Holding Teachers Accountable The school district’s merit-pay program will attract top talent, benefiting students.

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/houston-schools-merit-pay-teachers-salaries-students

In early April, the Houston Independent School District announced the details of its merit-pay system, which will launch during the 2026–2027 school year. Spearheaded by reform-minded superintendent Mike Miles, the new compensation scheme sets teachers’ salaries based on several performance-based criteria, including quality of instruction, student academic outcomes, professionalism, and school-wide achievement.

With this new program, Houston will become one of the few districts in the nation fully to tie teacher salaries to performance, rather than simply adding incentives or bonuses to a standard seniority-based pay structure. The plan will require significant administrative effort: the district will conduct up to 20 classroom evaluations per teacher, assess student progress on various exams—including the state’s annual standardized test—and rank teachers across six proficiency levels. Those with unsatisfactory scores may be fired

Initiatives like Houston’s almost always face pushback, particularly from teachers’ unions and some education advocates. While supporters argue that these plans reward effective instruction, critics contend that they impose arbitrary evaluation standards and encourage “teaching to the test.” Yet research shows that, when properly implemented, merit pay is supported by teachers, improves workforce quality, and ultimately benefits students.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Illegal Land-Grab: Part II by Karys Rhea

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21491/europe-illegal-land-grab-part-ii

[T]he IDF tends to be… focused on immediate, critical threats from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran.

[Many in Israel] demand a zero-tolerance policy towards illegal construction, regardless of EU funding and lawsuits, and have called on the Israeli government to initiate a long-overdue diplomatic effort that will make it clear to the EU that it has established red lines that will be enforced.

It may even be that right-wingers such as [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and others have risen to power precisely because of growing Israeli frustration over fundamental threats such as this one having long gone ignored.

In 1967, Israel fought a monumental six-day war against neighboring Egypt, Syria and Jordan, who attacked the small country with the declared goal of wiping the Jewish state off the map. To the amazement of the international community, Israel unexpectedly emerged victorious, gaining control over multiple territories, including the West Bank. Historically known as “Judea and Samaria,” and before 1948 home to a thriving Jewish population, the West Bank was illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan without international recognition from 1948 to 1967. In that time, Jordan ethnically cleansed the Jewish residents and destroyed dozens of synagogues. It re-named the region the “West Bank,” meaning “west of the Jordan River,” to sever any Jewish connection to the land in an attempt to legitimize its occupation of territory that was never part of its internationally recognized borders.

When Israel wrested control of the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, it refrained from annexing the territory, immediately offering to exchange land for peace. This unprecedented overture was met with the resounding “Three No’s” at the infamous 1967 Arab League Summit in Khartoum: “No peace with Israel. No negotiation with Israel. No recognition of Israel.” Consequently, the West Bank came under Israeli military rule.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II Espionage and the importance of humanities scholars.by Danusha V. Goska

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/book-and-dagger-how-scholars-and-librarians-became-the-unlikely-spies-of-world-war-ii/

Ecco, a subdivision of Harper Collins, released Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham on September 24, 2024. The book has 376 pages, inclusive of footnotes, endnotes, and an index. It is not illustrated. Graham received her PhD from Yale; she currently teaches English at Stony Brook.

The Washington Post raved about Book and Dagger. “Graham’s account is well-researched and scrupulously footnoted, but she also writes with a pulpy panache that turns the book into a well-paced thriller.” The Wall Street Journal praised “an almost breathless sense of wartime romance and drama. It makes for entertaining, atmospheric reading.” Publisher’s Weekly enjoyed “Graham’s exuberant prose … a colorful salute to some of WWII’s more bookish heroes.”

I liked this book, but did not love it. I would, though, recommend it to anyone intrigued by the title. More on my reaction to the book, below, after a somewhat choppy summary of a somewhat choppy book.

In the summer of 1941, President Roosevelt told his former Columbia classmate and World War I military hero William J. Donovan that “We have no intelligence service.” Other nations had established spy agencies with centuries of continuous experience. In 1929, Secretary of State Henry Stimson had closed the Cable and Telegraph Section, a spy service created during World War I, declaring, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” In 1941, World War II loomed. America needed nationally coordinated intelligence gathering. Donovan left his law practice to become the first director of a new agency, the Office of Strategic Services or OSS. It would eventually become the CIA. A statue of Donovan stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard students are graduating ‘without finishing a book’ by David Millward

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://www.yahoo.com/news/harvard-students-graduating-without-finishing-212516959.html

They may be the intellectual elite, but Harvard students could graduate without reading a work of fiction during their time at America’s oldest university.

Chastising her fellow 25,000 students at the college dating back to 1636, Claire Miller has claimed that the university should require them to at least pick up a book.

Writing in The Harvard Crimson, the college newspaper, Ms Miller has called for the university to make an English course compulsory for students, who pay more than $56,000 (£44,350) a year for their tuition.

Posing a question to her peers, she asked: “When was the last time you read a book cover to cover?

“For me, a prospective English concentrator, it was last week. But ask my peers in other concentrations and you’re more likely to get a shrug.

“Harvard students complain about readings constantly.

“They lament any assignments requiring they conquer more than 25 pages as tedious or overwhelming (if they aren’t passing the work off to ChatGPT). It’s far too rare that we’re assigned a full book to read and rarer still that we actually finish them.”

‘Blame rests with Harvard’

It was a withering condemnation of students at a university which in recent years has become better known for political activism than rigorous study.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Despite What You’ve Heard, Trump’s Budget Doesn’t ‘Slash’ Spending — It Barely Trims It

By on May 3rd, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/03/despite-what-youve-heard-trumps-budget-doesnt-slash-sending-it-barely-trims-it/

President Donald Trump did something extremely rare in Washington on Friday. He offered a budget plan that proposes actual, honest-to-goodness cuts in spending next year. Which helps explain the hysterical reaction from the usual suspects.

Normally, White House budget proposals claim to be cutting spending when all they are doing is slowing the growth in spending. Or they promise spending cuts far down the road while boosting outlays in the short term.

But the budget outline Trump released Friday does none of that. In sticking with Trump’s “revolution of common sense,” when it says it cuts spending, it cuts spending – meaning spending less next year than this year.

Trump wants to reduce spending on domestic programs by $163 billion next year – which would be almost 23% less than the federal government will spend this year on things such as education, the environment, energy, transportation, foreign aid.

So, it’s not surprising to see headlines that scream that Trump’s is a “scorched earth” plan that “slashes spending,” makes “drastic cuts,” and – our favorite headline from the New York Times – proposes “Slashing Domestic Spending to the Lowest Level of the Modern Era.”

Right now, reporters are scouring the country for examples they can trot out – or invent – of how these spending cuts will harm children, gut scientific research and throw people on the streets.

But, while we commend Trump for proposing deep cuts this year – and for laying out in plain English what he wants to cut and why – let’s not get carried away. What he’s proposing is far from “drastic.”

If Trump got his way – which is doubtful considering how weak-kneed Republicans in Congress are when it comes to spending cuts – his plan would simply remove the massive increase in spending that happened during and after COVID.

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