Our Friends (and Hamas’s Friends) the Qataris By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/our-friends-and-hamass-friends-the-qataris/

I am with Phil and Jim on the Israeli strike against Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood’s (now former) safe haven. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch.

The importance of this development cannot be overstated, especially if reports are true that the Israelis gave notice to the Trump administration, which alerted the Qatari government but did not thwart the attack.

Qatar has long been a principal aider and abettor of Sunni Islamic jihadists and an ally of the Shiite jihadist regime in Iran. It is the home of al-Jazeera, which propagates the sharia supremacist worldview. It was the longtime home of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who was, until his death at 96 in 2022, the most influential Sunni sharia jurisprudent in the world — the inspirational beacon of Hamas and the host of a weekly al-Jazeera program, Sharia and Life, that routinely drew an audience of millions.

Hamas is not the only jihadist terrorist organization to enjoy Qatari hospitality. The Obama administration encouraged the Afghan Taliban to open a political office in Qatar to facilitate negotiations, even as the Taliban waged jihad against the American-backed government in Kabul (which the Taliban ultimately ousted in 2021, as the U.S., under Biden, haphazardly withdrew).

The United States maintains a military base — the Al Udeid Air Base — in southwest Qatar, serving as U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters. (Al Udeid is the base that Iran ineffectually targeted in face-saving strikes after American forces bombed its nuclear program earlier this year.) The Biden administration designated Qatar a “major non-NATO ally,” notwithstanding its open and notorious material support to Hamas, which has been a designated foreign terrorist organization for nearly 30 years (since the designation process began). It is a serious felony offense under U.S. counterterrorism law to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization.

President Trump has visited Qatar, enthusiastically lauded its regime, and in May accepted the regime’s gift of a $400 million plane (known as the “palace in the sky”), which is slated to become the new Air Force One.

The curious American ties to Doha have, to put it mildly, complicated Israel’s ability to target Hamas leadership, even after it celebrated the October 7 atrocities there. After Monday’s mass murder attack, in which jihadists opened fire on Israeli civilians in Jerusalem, killing at least six, and in light of Hamas’s continuing intransigence as the Trump administration has pushed for a cease-fire, it appears things have changed. While the Netanyahu government took full responsibility for the strike against Hamas in Doha, describing it as “a wholly independent Israeli operation,” unidentified Israeli officials told the Jerusalem Post that U.S. officials knew about and did not object to the attack.

Poland accuses Moscow of ‘unprecedented’ aggression after downing Russian drones The prime minister said he was in “constant communication” with NATO leaders.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/poland-airspace-repeatedly-violated-drone-type-objects-amid/story?id=125422386

NEW YORK and LONDON — Polish airspace was violated by a “huge number” of Russian drones overnight, the country’s prime minister said, a torrent of activity that triggered a response from the NATO country’s air force, which scrambled and downed several of the drones.

“Those drones that posed a direct threat were shot down,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said early on Wednesday on social media. “I am in constant communication with the Secretary-General of NATO and our allies.”

Polish and allied aircraft — including Dutch F-35 fighter jets — were airborne overnight to “help ensure safety in Polish skies,” the military said. Those operations ended early on Wednesday, Warsaw said, adding that the search continued for downed drones and potential impact sites.

The country’s military command described the violations as “unprecedented,” saying they amounted to “an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our citizens.”

Polish authorities did not report any casualties related to the drone incursion.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was “consulting closely with Poland,” Allison Hart, a spokesperson for the bloc, said on social media. She confirmed “numerous” drones had entered Poland and said that NATO defenses had been activated.

NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe said in a statement to social media that German Patriot surface-to-air missile systems based in Poland were placed on alert and that an Italian airborne early warning aircraft was deployed. A NATO aerial refueling aircraft was also launched.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the incident as “simply unacceptable.” He in a post to X, “I call on Russia to put an end to this reckless escalation. I reiterate to the Polish people and their government our full solidarity.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in post to X, “Europe is in a fight. A fight for our liberty and our ability to determine our destiny for ourselves.”

“Today, we have seen a reckless and unprecedented violation of Poland and Europe’s [airspace] by more than 10 Russian Shahed drones,” von der Leyen added. “Europe stands in full solidarity with Poland.”

The French government fails By Thomas Kolbe

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/09/the_french_government_fails.html

After only nine months in office, President Emmanuel Macron’s fourth government has collapsed. Prime Minister François Bayrou lost Monday evening’s confidence vote on his austerity budget by 364 to 194 votes. Bayrou announced his resignation for Tuesday. While markets largely remained calm, this does not mean France’s debt crisis has been postponed.

Bayrou Acknowledged the Severity of the Situation

Bayrou took responsibility for the dire state of French public finances and attempted to impose a fiscal consolidation program. With public debt at 114% of GDP and a net borrowing forecast of 5.4% for this year, the plan included €44 billion in spending cuts, frozen pensions, and the reduction of two public holidays — measures intended as a lifeline for the struggling economy.

Both the parliamentary majority and broad segments of French society fundamentally opposed the reform program. Another general strike is already looming.

With Bayrou’s resignation, the wavering Emmanuel Macron faces the task of appointing a fifth prime minister in two years. Until the upcoming elections in April 2027, any government, regardless of composition, will confront the same problems. Any form of fiscal consolidation will be torpedoed by entrenched political factions. France is stuck in a political deadlock, making debt consolidation seem impossible.

The Road to Disaster

This bizarre situation reveals that France’s political elite — and increasingly across all EU states under debt pressure — can no longer put economic necessity above ideological divides. The lost confidence vote is another nail in the EU’s coffin and will soon manifest in markets as a problem for the Eurozone, as investors realize France’s political impotence.

In recent days, Bayrou openly criticized the French lifestyle, identifying the welfare state as a core problem. He now experiences firsthand that anyone challenging the numerous privileges of the sprawling welfare system is ruthlessly punished. France defends its transfer society as a national sacred cow, even though this stance leads straight into fiscal catastrophe.

Europe’s Contagion Risk

For financial markets, the events in Paris are not good news. France’s “OATs” — Treasury bonds — showed little immediate reaction to the government’s collapse. Yet they had been under increasing pressure in recent weeks amid the brewing sovereign crisis. Yields rose, and the spread to German Bunds — Europe’s benchmark — widened to as much as 90 basis points, signaling risk.

French government bonds are now trading with a significant risk premium, much like UK debt. Contagion risk looms for the Eurozone if markets turn to other high-debt nations such as Spain, Italy, or Greece, potentially triggering a chain reaction reminiscent of the prior sovereign debt crisis.

Fact-Checking Newsom’s ‘Clean Energy’ Claims Newsom touts “clean energy” as California’s growth engine, but fact-checks reveal costly mandates, false claims, and heavy reliance on gas, oil, and nuclear to keep the lights on. By Edward Ring

https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/10/fact-checking-newsoms-clean-energy-claims/

In a recent guest op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, California Governor Newsom claimed that “Clean Energy Powers California’s Economic Growth,” a claim that is transparently false. Aggressive “clean energy” mandates, paired with perpetually escalating restrictions on conventional energy sources, are the reasons Californians pay the highest prices in America for gasoline and electricity, and nearly the highest prices of any major state for natural gas.

Along with ignoring the fact that affordable energy is fundamental to economic growth and California has the least affordable energy in America, Newsom makes grossly incorrect statements. In the subhead of his op-ed, he writes, “More than two-thirds of the state’s electricity is from sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal.” This isn’t even close to accurate.

The California Energy Commission reports in-state electricity production by source. The most recent data is for 2023, and in that year, wind, solar, and geothermal energy accounted for a mere 31 percent of California’s total in-state electricity production. Even when adding nuclear and hydroelectric power, California’s total “clean” energy only accounted for 54 percent of the electricity generated in the state.

Newsom goes on to write that “climate change has made our summers hotter,” and that 2024 was the warmest on record. He boasts that “rapid deployment of clean energy and battery storage” got Californians through the summer of 2024 without blackouts. This is a half-truth at best. As reported in CalMatters, a left-leaning site that covers California politics, in 2023, in order to “shore up California’s straining power grid,” Newsom delayed the planned closures of three natural gas-powered generating plants that together contribute 2.2 gigawatts to California’s electricity grid. In 2022, Newsom delayed the planned 2025 closure of California’s last major nuclear-powered generating plant, Diablo Canyon, preserving another 2.2 gigawatts of baseload electricity.

Furthermore, no fact check of Newsom’s WSJ op-ed would be complete without questioning his claim that 2024 was “the warmest on record.” This is something we hear all the time. It is a statement meant to foment fear and discourage dissenting opinions. But is it true? Los Angeles County, a place where an estimated 27 percent of all Californians live, has kept temperature records since 1878. If you plot the average annual temperature, you will see a trend suggesting that overall, in Los Angeles County, it is not quite three degrees Fahrenheit hotter in the 2020s than it was in the 1880s. The trend isn’t smooth. In the 1930s, average temperatures were comparable and in some years hotter than in the 2020s. But there’s a major factor that politicians and biased activists conveniently ignore: the urban heat island effect.

Sudan’s Hidden War: Muslim Brotherhood’s Grip on Army Threatens Regional Stability, Global Trade by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21897/sudan-war-muslim-brotherhood

Sudan’s brutal civil war… is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is a calculated power grab by the Muslim Brotherhood, which appears to be using the SAF as a Trojan horse to dominate northeast Africa and the Red Sea, a critical artery for global commerce.

The Muslim Brotherhood, sponsored by Qatar, appears to be hijacking the SAF to stage a takeover, recycling old alliances under new guises. Despite recent concessions to the United States and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s grip in Sudan — backed by Qatar and Iran — threatens regional and global stability, potentially including freedom of passage in the Red Sea.

[T]he Muslim Brotherhood — known in Sudan as the Islamic Movement — has entrenched itself in the SAF, and turned it into a tool for their regional ambitions to take control of northeast Africa and the Red Sea.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not just allied with the SAF; individuals in it seem to be steering the SAF to take total control of Sudan in order to make it the Muslim Brotherhood’s stronghold in Africa and the Middle East.

The SAF is infiltrated by jihadist factions such as the Al-Bara Bin Malik Brigade (the Muslim Brotherhood’s local military arm), the Bunyan Al-Marsous Brigade, and Justice and Equality Movement rebels led by Finance Minister Jibril Ibrahim. These groups, tied to Bashir’s ruthless National Intelligence and Security Service, frame their fight as a “jihad” against the RSF, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates and Sudan’s secular civil society.

Ali Ahmed Karti, the U.S.-sanctioned Islamic Movement leader, is, as reported by Arab media outlets, a key orchestrator of the SAF-Muslim Brotherhood alliance. Since his student days, Karti has organized Brotherhood loyalists in the army, and later packed the SAF with jihadists.

One analyst suggested that the five generals were dismissed after Burhan met with U.S. Special Envoy Mossad Boulos in Switzerland, on August 11, 2025. Researcher Mujahid Ahmed, however, warns that the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence persists, extending into civilian institutions, especially the foreign affairs and justice ministries. According to the Ayin Network, Al-Burhan apparently still relies on Karti and Bashir’s loyalist, Ahmed Haroun, for battlefield support, indicating a tactical, not total, break.

Iran has been supplying the Muslim Brotherhood-SAF axis with arms, including Ababil-3 and Mohajer-6 drones, which were delivered to Port Sudan in March and June 2024. Satellite imagery viewed by the BBC confirms their presence at a military site near Khartoum. Iran’s support of this Muslim Brotherhood-SAF axis, tied to its ambitions to have a presence in the Red Sea, coincides with the Brotherhood’s goals: namely, threatening U.S. allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Burhan’s “cosmetic” purge of Islamist generals shows that indeed he can be influenced by Egypt and by the United States, but his reliance on the Muslim Brotherhood’s financial and military support limits his ability to implement any real reforms.

Sudan is evidently very much a part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global agenda. Ignoring events there will only allow a hostile stronghold to emerge in a region strategically vital for the interests of the West.

Sudan’s brutal civil war, often overshadowed by global headlines, is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is a calculated power grab by the Muslim Brotherhood, which appears to be using the SAF as a Trojan horse to dominate northeast Africa and the Red Sea, a critical artery for global commerce.

What the Hell Is Going on in Poland? Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/09/10/russia-testing-nato-with-reported-drone-strikes-within-polish-territory-n2663034

What is going on in Poland? Is Russia insane? Moscow seemed to be testing NATO last night, launching reported suicide drone attacks on Poland. These aerial devices breached Polish airspace, which Warsaw described as an act of aggression. As of now, we have no reports of casualties, but fighter jets were scrambled in response to the threat. The Polish government issued a shelter-in-place order for nearly 10 million Poles (via NYT):

BREAKING: The Polish government is warning 8.5 million Poles to “STAY HOME” after the Polish military shot down alleged Russian drones which invaded their airspace “The operation is still ongoing,” the Polish military says.

Gaza and the Collapse of Truth-Seeking The Gaza aid-site controversy and a crisis of journalism. Gary Geipel

https://quillette.com/2025/09/10/gaza-and-the-collapse-of-truth-seeking-united-nations/

One of the biggest stories of the year sits on a shelf, unreported and unremarked upon in serious ways. For those willing to look closely, this omission indicates a larger and increasingly dangerous breakdown of truth-seeking in public life.

On 31 July 2025, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a press release in which it announced that “at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food” since 27 May. “Most of these killings,” the statement added, “were committed by the Israeli military.” Subsequent UN “situation updates” during early September have increased that number to 2,146. If the UN is telling the truth, this would constitute the largest military atrocity committed by a liberal democracy in at least half a century, by a wide margin. For context, according to official tallies, US troops murdered between 347 and 504 civilians during the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. There are, however, good reasons to believe that the UN’s figures are wrong.

The exquisite precision of “1,373” and “2,146” notwithstanding, the OHCHR has dispensed entirely with evidence and sources for its Gaza claims. Instead, it hung its entire late-July press release on the word “reportedly,” and offered no external attribution whatsoever in its subsequent updates. That was deemed sufficient by far too many people in today’s information environment, especially after the claims are laundered through credulous “news media.” Not only clickbait sites and wire services but also legacy media such as the BBC and the New York Times promoted the UN’s precise numbers this summer. Other news sources hedged with “more than 1,000” killed, while influencers on social media simply printed the bumper stickers.

This is the kind of information and these are the supposedly reliable sources from which AI chatbots collect their internet scrapings when they are asked, “How many Gazans have been killed by Israel trying to get to food aid sites since May?” Try it yourself.

Missing from any of these information sources, however, are photographs or videos of the killings, documentary records of any kind, or any independent confirmation of the UN’s claims besides a handful of (unverified) first-person anecdotes. In a typical example, USA Today and its local-news affiliates linked a “gallery” of 22 photographs to a 4 August wire story about aid-site killings in Gaza, not one of which includes a dead person, let alone evidence of a larger atrocity. The slide-show makes clear that cameras do exist in Gaza, but we are invited to believe that not a single phone or other image-recording device documented even one of 1,400 killings that by then had allegedly taken place near crowded food-delivery locations and access routes over the course of more than two months. 

School Choice Battles Are Widespread Parental freedom expands – and teachers’ unions resort to litigation. by Larry Sand L

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/school-choice-battles-are-widespread/

On June 11, New Hampshire became the 19th state to implement a universal private school choice program when Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed Senate Bill 295. The law eliminates the income threshold from the state’s Education Freedom Account Program, making it accessible to all students.

Parental freedom is spreading rapidly across the nation. In the summer of 2024, the number of students participating in school choice programs exceeded one million for the first time, with an estimated 1,038,500 opting in. By July 2025, that number had grown to approximately 1,300,900, a 25% rise.

The surge in parents leaving government-run schools isn’t surprising, given the latest PDK poll results released on August 19. The survey showed that Americans’ confidence in public schools is at an all-time low, with only 13% giving them an A or B, down from 19% in 2019 and 26% in 2004. Nearly 60% of parents nationwide say they would choose a private or religious school for their child if offered public funds.

The expansion of parental freedom has created an interesting political scenario. Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, states, “For too long, the political Left has allowed the debate over school choice to be defined and dominated by conservatives. In doing so, we’ve neglected the most dynamic lever for equity and innovation in American education while alienating the Black, Latino, and working-class families we claim to represent. It’s time for progressives to come to the school choice table—not to dismantle public education, but to reinvent it for a new era.”

Elorza adds, “To reassert leadership on education, progressives must do more than say ‘no’ to choice plans. Instead, we need to lay out a vision of choice. That starts by breaking the monopoly of the traditional, top-down system and making room for bottom-up, community-driven innovation. We must empower communities to create new and different school models that can meet the unique educational needs of each child.”

Elorza’s words are especially timely because on July 4, President Trump approved legislation allowing the federal tax scholarship program to proceed. The Educational Choice for Children Act offers a tax credit that individuals can use to reduce their tax bills by donating money for private school expenses for students. ECCA is set to begin in 2027.

But the law’s final version allows states to opt out of participating, meaning no students in those states would be eligible for the program, which could have political consequences. It might be advantageous for Republicans because, clearly, Democrats are divided on the issue.

Additionally, the teachers’ unions are taking note. Open Secrets reports that in the 2024 election cycle, over 98% of the National Education Association’s political spending went to Democrats. While all teacher union leaders and some white progressives strongly oppose public funding for private schools, school choice remains popular among Black and Hispanic communities. In a recent poll, 63% of Hispanics and 68% of Blacks—typically Democrats—voiced support for a private option.

Jenny Holland Why the media ignored the North Carolina train murder 10th September 2025 A toxic empathy with miscreants and ‘victim’ groups has wrecked liberals’ moral compass. Jenny Holland

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/10/why-the-media-ignored-the-north-carolina-train-murder/

A brutal murder on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina has shocked social-media users – but only, it seems, those on the right. And that is because, despite the horrific video of the attack on a defenceless young woman going viral, much of the mainstream American media did not deign to cover the story.

Why? I submit it is because the perpetrator – a homeless, mentally ill, African American man with a history of repeat offending – belongs to one of the liberal media’s victim-identity groups. He is therefore beyond criticism – or, at the very least, an awkward case to discuss, given he may well have been roaming the streets because of the witless, soft-on-crime policies of today’s liberals. Indeed, in January, a North Carolina magistrate judge allowed Brown to remain free ‘on a written promise’ that he would return for his next court appearance, according to the Daily Mail.

The footage recorded on 22 August shows Iryna Zarutska boarding a train in Charlotte, after finishing a shift at the pizzeria where she worked. She takes a seat in front of a man identified as Decarlos Brown Jr. Moments later, he takes out a knife, stands up behind her and raises his arm to attack, as she sits with her back to him, completely unaware. After he stabs her, Brown is then shown walking down the aisle of the train, leaving a trail of blood as he goes. Zarutska died at the scene. She was 23 years old, and had fled Ukraine for safety in the US after the Russian invasion in 2022.

Zarutska’s terrible and senseless murder has further revealed just how divided the US is. Liberal progressives and conservative right-wingers are now not just politically alienated from one another – they also live in two separate realities, with worldviews that are fed by two entirely different news ecosystems. As many, including Elon Musk, have commented on X, the lack of coverage in the national papers stood in stark contrast to their feverish reporting on similar incidents in which the victim was black.

After days of social-media commentary, some mainstream outlets did decide to cover the reaction to the event – but not the event itself. They effectively dismissed the actual murder as a crime story of local interest only.

Christopher F. Rufo The Conservative Movement at a Crossroads A shift from dissident to establishment has opportunities—and pitfalls.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/conservatives-trump-anti-semitism-conspiracism-racialism

There is a moment in the life of every political movement when aspirations become reality, when the dissidents become the establishment.

For the Right, that moment is now. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, the Right functioned mostly as a dissident movement. It rallied opposition to coronavirus lockdowns, the radicalization of our institutions, and corruption in the federal government. With Donald Trump’s victory last year, however, this opposition movement earned an opportunity to become the new establishment.

I watched the process unfold behind the scenes. During the transition period, the incoming Trump administration’s best thinkers finalized their plans and, in many cases, announced them on Inauguration Day. Many of the ideas formed during the Right’s dissident period—including some of my own—suddenly became policy: abolishing the DEI bureaucracy, rescinding Lyndon Johnson’s executive order on affirmative action, dismantling the Department of Education. In the early months of this year, the feeling was triumphant.

The administration continues to do good work, but I’ve noticed a growing concern—more discussed in private than in public—about elements of the Right that have failed to make the transition. Since Inauguration Day, we’ve seen a splintering, especially in the media and intellectual worlds. Some have assumed the responsibilities that come with victory, while others prefer to remain as dissidents and, unfortunately, have fallen into various ideological rabbit holes.

Sometimes it’s a question of temperament. There will always be gadflies and pot-stirrers who fixate on criticism and grant trust only sparingly. My concern, however, is with a larger section of the Right that has proved vulnerable to three ideological trends: racialism, anti-Semitism, and conspiracism.