Make no mistake—this is our moment. After decades of disastrous trade deals, supply chain sellouts, and bipartisan cowardice in the face of communist China’s aggression, the Trump administration is doing what should have been done long ago: confronting Beijing head-on.

This isn’t just talk—it’s action. And it’s long overdue. If we don’t follow through now, we may never have a chance to do so again.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller didn’t mince words during his appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” (4/13) with Maria Bartiromo. He made it abundantly clear that the administration understands the stakes. China isn’t just a competitor—it’s a hostile regime engaged in full-spectrum economic warfare against the United States.

“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

This included reinstating the name “Mount McKinley” to the highest peak in North America, Alaska’s Denali.

In 2015, 40 years after the state of Alaska had restored the mountain’s native name, the Department of the Interior did the same. Nobody in Alaska wanted the name restored to McKinley, so why did Trump include this among his first actions?

Short answer: His admiration for McKinley’s Tariff Act of 1890, intended to protect domestic markets and workers by leveraging an average duty increase on imports from 38% to almost 50%.

McKinley would later revise his stance and advocate for more tariff-free international trade, which is not inconsistent with what Trump ultimately seeks — a level playing field.

Thus, as he said he would, Trump ordered tariffs on imported goods from every country that imposes tariffs and/or other trade barriers on U.S. exports — and some that don’t.

The most noticeable impact of those tariffs has been in the equity and bond markets – a barometer for economic outlook.

If you are fortunate enough to have accumulated some investments or retirement assets, the prospect of tariffs has taken a heavy toll on those assets — for the moment anyway.

As of the close yesterday, the Dow was down 11.51% year-to-date, while 10-year Treasury yields were back above 4%.

But that is about to change. Today, and likely for the rest of this week, expect major equity market recoveries because, after firing a loud shot across the bow of those subjected to last night’s global implementation of his tariffs, Trump has proven once again that the strategic “art of the deal” often depends on being unpredictable — the art of “organized chaos.”

When Donald Trump announced his intention to “take back” the Panama Canal from China, I had to chuckle. My old friend Linc, who had died in 2005, was having the last laugh after all.

As editor of the Daily Inter Lake newspaper in Kalispell, Montana, for 18 years, I got to meet hundreds of people whom I would never have come across otherwise when they came to visit me at my office. One of the most memorable was an octogenarian named Linc France.

Linc (short for Lincoln) was an American original. For decades he had run Linc’s Automotive in Columbia Falls. His 2005 obituary noted that “He could fix anything. If he didn’t have the tool, he could make one.”

Despite ending his formal education in the 8th grade to help support his family, Linc was knowledgeable about many topics and was also civic minded, having served on the Columbia Falls City Council and volunteered for various charities such as Meals on Wheels.

When Linc came to visit me in his blue jeans and flannels with a trucker cap above his piercing eyes, I would sit back in my chair and prepare to be both amused and challenged.

Generally, he would be dropping off a hand-written letter to the editor, and he would ask me to give it a once-over. Most of the time, the letter was about the Panama Canal.

President Jimmy Carter had signed the canal over to the nation of Panama for the contractual obligation of a single dollar back in 1977, and Panama took full control on Dec. 31, 1999, but by then most Americans weren’t interested.

On Feb. 28, 2003, Linc wrote a letter we titled “Canal could be sign of worse to come.” It was indeed prophetic:

Sometimes, the military finds ways to give the American taxpayer a bargain.

Precision, for example, can save a few bucks while still allowing the United States military to un-alive bad guys; just ask anyone who is familiar with the careers of Carlos Hathcock or Chris Kyle.

Instead of pouring machine-gun, rifle, and mortar fire down range, they were adept at knocking off bad guys with one .30 caliber round - and the taxpayers saved some money, in addition to which the bad guys became maladjusted at the realization that if they stuck their heads up, the last thing to go through their minds is likely to be 180 grains of America.

Sometimes, we can do it by using lower tech, too.

This brings us to a recent concern expressed by the acting Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Kilby, about how expensive the missiles are that we are using to revoke the birth certificates of Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“New acting Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. James Kilby said he regrets the Navy’s reliance on expensive, high-powered missiles to counter the Houthi threat in the Red Sea and pledged to push for cheaper, more efficient solutions.

 

Speaking to reporters at the Sea Air Space conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Kilby said he was "not concerned" about the Navy’s ability to protect its people – such as the 350 sailors aboard the USS Carney missile destroyer – or its ability to safeguard commercial shipping.

 

He is concerned, however, about "not having better ways to more economically attrit the threat." 

Well, here's a notion:

“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”

Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”

But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.

There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country.

And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.

They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.

The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property.

It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.

Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.

For decades, Americans have been led to believe that our legal system is built on principles of justice, fairness, and the rule of law.

But that’s not the truth. The truth is very ugly.

The judicial system we have today has been hijacked—weaponized against the very people it was meant to protect. And at the core of this corruption?

The American Bar Association (ABA) and the entire legal cartel that controls our courts.

The ABA is not a neutral, apolitical institution.

It is a radicalized, ideologically captured organization that wields enormous influence over judicial nominations, legal education, and the entire practice of law.

Republican senators, including Eric Schmitt, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley, Bernie Moreno, and Mike Lee, have now called for President Trump to remove the ABA from the judicial nomination process entirely.

That’s a step in the right direction—but let’s be honest: removing the ABA from judicial nominations isn’t enough.

The bar itself must be abolished.

The Bar Controls the judiciary—and that’s the problem.

The entire legal profession operates as an exclusive club, one that exists not to protect individual rights, but to maintain power.

Lawyers and judges are trained by the same corrupt institutions, taught the same convoluted statutes, and conditioned to believe they serve “justice” when, in reality, they serve a bloated, bureaucratic system designed to suppress liberty.

It’s not a justice system—it’s a control system.

Before Donald Trump arrived at the White House in January 2017, we were noting various manifestations of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Given the benefit (or detriment) of holding several advanced degrees, including one in psychology, I defined TDS in detail as a form of hysteric cognitive dissonance:

“Thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes resulting in dissociative behavioral and emotive expressions, which render the afflicted incapable of free thought or critical evaluation, and subject to fear and blind hatred of all people and things associated with Trump, to the extent they will abandon normative logic and reason, sever familial and fraternal relationships, and exhibit increasingly angry emotionally incontinent verbal and physical outbursts.”

I would conclude that the escalating frequency and intensity of hysterics associated with TDS are greatly exacerbated by the consumption of the hateful rhetoric spewed 24/7/365 by Leftmedia talking-heads and scribes, and across social media platforms.

Realizing the potential for an endless income stream, therapists adopted a kinder, gentler name for TDS, rebranding it as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” a designer diagnosis for snowflakes and social justice warriors who fear a sociopolitical climate that does not comport with their safe-space value system.

The symptoms generally include a sense of helplessness and lack of control, resulting in anxiety, confusion, and insomnia.

While that may be a nicer diagnostic tag for a revenue annuity, the word “derangement” is a much more accurate description of the behavior of leftists and their Democrat Party socialist influencers.

To be clear, the election of Donald Trump did not create the epidemic of emotional incontinence and resulting hatred — the outbreak of TDS and cognitive dissonance on the Left.

Rather, the election revealed it.

The American president has lost patience with the Russian leader – so have his own people.

The Kremlin is nervous.

On Saturday night, a limousine caught fire north of the headquarters of the Russian security services.

Last week, footage showed servicemen being frisked by special protection officers.

Those same officers were later seen opening up sewer hatches in a hunt for bombs near where the Russian leader was speaking.

To Western intelligence agencies, the situation is becoming clear:  within Russia’s top brass, the knives are out for their leader.

Western analysts are often accused of wishful thinking. Rightly so.

In March 2022, an op-ed in the New York Times described Russia as a “Potemkin superpower,” naively suggesting that just the faintest push would cause the whole regime to suddenly collapse.

Such a projection has not come to pass.

But there is one thing the rising paranoia does certainly reveal:  Putin does think he’s vulnerable.

You can understand why. Let’s first consider the feeling within Russian society at large.

250,000 soldiers have died – grieving mothers are now starting to write to president Putin demanding explanations, with one telling Sky News, “It’s impossible to live like this.”

When Moscow was at war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was the mothers of soldiers that formed the frontline of the anti-war movement.

Then there’s the key demand made by Putin in negotiations with the US…

DC is abuzz with a ton of Trump-hating journalists and politicians all of a sudden learning that national security is a thing about which to be concerned.

The Beltway has been seizing and pouncing on a story that they believe is an opening to attack Donald Trump, or at least slow down his pace of progress in the first couple of months by slinging mud at his cabinet and senior advisors.

The story doesn't interest me in the slightest. It's not hard to see the motivation of those now calling for resignations and firings. They're exploiting a mistake in order to scandal the new administration into a standstill.

What I do find of extraordinary importance is what is taking place on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean that happens to contain a very long 12,000-foot runway.

Diego Garcia Air Force Base is a joint U.S. and U.K. base on the largest of the Chagos Islands.

The Brits have controlled much of the region as part of their British Indian Ocean Territories, but in 2024, they negotiated transfer of the island to Mauritania, with the exception of a 99-year lease for the Air Base, which is now operated and used by both the Brits and the Americans.

It also happens to be due south of Iran.

In the last week, a pretty significant buildup of U.S. aerial assets have been arriving on the archipelago, and the amount of open source information thus far is something that very well might be of great consequence to the greater Middle East very soon.

We’re three days into what the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the mainstream press are trying to turn into a “scandal” — the accidental inclusion of Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg in a chat about the Trump administration’s operations against the Houthis on the texting app Signal.

The more we learn, the more we know that the whole affair is a massive nothingburger with everything on it and a big ol’ side of fake news fries.

Key members of the administration’s intelligence apparatus testified that the Signal messaging thread didn’t divulge any classified information.

And for all the commendation of Goldberg for not spilling too many beans, we have a better idea that there weren’t many beans to spill.

It's hard not to speculate on why the left is so desperate to blow this thing out of proportion and make it more than it should be.

Obviously, the left wants nothing more than to slap the scarlet letter S for “scandal” on this administration because it has been so effective and popular with the American people.

But a White House press release from Tuesday reveals the most plausible reason why the left wants to discredit the administration when it comes to action against the Houthis.

“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops and disrupted one of the most consequential shipping routes in the world. “This is a coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe. The Biden Administration sat back as a band of pirates — with precision-guided, Iran-provided weaponry — exacted a toll in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.”

The Brits are having a field day ridiculing and condemning what’s becoming known as Signalgate.  It’s not just the ridiculous security lapse but the childishly ignorant banter primarily between Vance and Hegseth:

From Full Text of Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

Below is the take of former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, originally published in this morning’s (3/26) London Telegraph.]

Pity poor John Roberts. No, he’s not corrupt or compromised.

He is simply a man who has found himself at a pivotal time and place in a position of great responsibility for which he is utterly unsuited.

He’s not a dumb man. He is, in fact, a very smart man – Hugh Hewitt knew him personally in the Reagan administration and testifies to that. I have no doubt it’s true.

I know many smart people who have similar flaws. As objectively intelligent as John Roberts is, he is unwise, and he is endangering the institution he wants to preserve because he does not understand human nature or the times he finds himself in.

Frankly, I’ll take wisdom over raw intellect any day of the week.

If he had the capacity to lead that he so manifestly lacks, John Roberts could save his institution with decisive and bold action. But that’s not who he is.

Understand what John Roberts wants. He is an institutionalist who has always wanted to protect the judiciary branch.

He wants it to be a fully co-equal branch that is respected by all. But the very actions he has chosen to take – or not to take – in response to the current crisis of out-of-control subordinate courts are guaranteeing that it will fall.

The United States' military isn't often outnumbered by a foreign nation's military power, nut it is when it comes to a naval fleet.

Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has spent 12 years investing in an ambitious military shipbuilding program.

That communist country now has a navy with one-third more combat ships than the U.S.

It's much more than a status thing. A large navy can project a country's power virtually anywhere in the world.

We heard about that in recent days when President Donald Trump ordered the destruction of much of the Houthis' military capabilities in Yemen.

That would be by U.S. naval forces in the region.

Armed by Iran, the world's largest exporter of terrorism, the Houthis have crippled much of the world's maritime trade through the Middle East, forcing ships to travel all around Africa at much greater cost in money and time instead of using the Suez  Canal.

Last weekend, President Trump issued a lengthy statement that said, in part:

“Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.

Joe Biden's response was pathetically weak, so the unrestrained Houthis just kept going. It has been over a year since a U.S. flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden.”

When he took office two months ago, President Trump broke the shackles on our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

He ordered a major nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration, beginning with violent gang members who have been terrorizing American citizens coast to coast.

To expedite the process of removing these vicious gang members, President Trump declared two of the worst illegal alien gangs, Tren de Aragua (TdA) and MS-13, to be terrorist organizations. He then invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which authorizes the president to remove foreign nationals.

More than 260 illegal alien gang members were loaded onto airplanes and deported over the weekend. But some leftists evidently want these violent gang members to stay in the country.

The left went to a well-known leftist judge and he did not disappoint them. He actually ordered President Trump to turn the planes around and bring these thugs back to America. This is part of the ongoing effort to cripple Trump’s presidency.

Thankfully, the judge’s order was issued too late, and these animals are locked up in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

Who is this crazy judge? He is Judge James Boasberg, currently serving on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He is an Obama appointee. And the judge has a history.

“All we really needed was a new president,” Donald Trump wryly noted in his recent address to Congress.

He was talking about closing the border, which he and his team have achieved immense success in doing in short order.

With the faucet turned off, so to speak, now the administration must turn its attention to mopping up the floor.

And oh, what a mess it is.

Yes, America is a welcoming place for immigrants, or at least that’s often citizens’ intent.

Yes, many immigrants come here to work hard and build a better life for themselves and their families.

Yes, the legal process is onerous, arguably prompting millions to circumvent it without further law-breaking intent.

We are, however, a nation of laws.

Enforcing those laws may sometimes be unpleasant, not least because of the number of people involved.

Let’s examine some numbers on that latter front.

JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania — Alex Bambino, 21, is the son of two educators.

He’s busy working, welding a piece of material that will be used on a heavily armored military vehicle when finished.

Despite two college-educated parents, who teach at the local Cambrian County schools, he wanted nothing to do with college following high school.

“I like working with my hands, being part of making something that is important, and I had no interest in starting my adult life in debt,” he said.

So he went to Greater Johnstown Career and Technology Center, and he became so good at what he did that he was recognized at the SkillsUSA championship as a national competitor.

He found work in his hometown at JWF Defense Systems, located in the old Bethlehem Steel plant along the Conemaugh River.

And he became part of something bigger than himself in the machines he helped make.

Bambino is just the kind of young person Mike Rowe has been talking about for the past few years in his tireless effort to inspire young people to consider a different path after high school.

Welcome to your chance to nerd out on the difference between process and merits in legal actions. Our case of interest is AIDS Vaccine Advocacy v. Department of State.

For non-lawyers, this is the case challenging President Trump’s order to freeze all payments from USAID until they can be fully reviewed for compliance with the law and the administration’s policies.

If your claim has merit, it will be paid. If not, pound sand.

And if you think you’re owed money that the government says they won’t pay, you can go to the Court of Federal Claims.

The District Court does not have jurisdiction to hear you. Nor does it have the power to order anyone to pay you.

After Donald Trump was elected, on December 2, 2024, Joe Biden hustled (I think that means he shuffled less slowly…) to appoint Amir Ali, a reliable left-wing lawyer, to a seat in the reliably left-wing District Court for the District of Columbia, a reliably left-wing locale.

Ali had barely gotten his chair adjusted when the USAID case landed on his desk.

Syria’s new head of state, Ahmed al-Sharaa

When Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was thrown from power last December and fled to Russia, Europe's elites, and its Washington swamp allies, rejoiced.

Sure, the new guys in charge, Head of State Ahmed al-Sharaa and an armed rebel group called HTS, had been members of al-Qaida in Iraq. But Assad was the bad guy -- evil, wicked, worst person in the world.

What's more, the rebels had changed. They were now Muslim “moderates” as they told the dancing gullibles at PBS who dutifully took them at their word.

Freedom would flow. They would govern as Jeffersonian democrats now. They were woke and “diversity-friendly,” too, and no, that's not a sarcastic phrase I made up.

All of the favorite things of blue rule were cited.

The Guardian suggested that feminism would flourish. Gays would be okay. Veils would be optional. The ever-diminishing Christian minority, which came to about 2% of the population, from about 20% two decades ago, would be fine.

As a result, European leaders from Germany and France came to court them, and the big EU cash streams flowed, at least $300 million worth. It was as if George Bush was president all over again.

Now the bearded beasts are back to their old form, targeting and slaughtering Christians, Alawites, Druze and Yazidi minorities now, not exactly concerned if anyone knows.

This is what is going on now:

Before the recent election, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability asked then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to turn over all Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) relating to ActBlue — not much happened. An SAR is a document that banks file with the Treasury Department pursuant to potentially fraudulent or illicit financial activity.

Yellen stalled, presumably in the hope that the Democrats would win the House back in November and halt the investigation. That obviously didn’t happen and the new Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, is of course cooperating with the committee.

This may well be what precipitated the sudden departure of seven senior officials from ActBlue in February. The New York Times reports that the exodus included “the associate general counsel — who was the highest-ranking legal officer at ActBlue — the assistant research director, a human resources official, the chief revenue officer and an engineer who had spent 16 years building and maintaining the electronic pipes through which the group’s donations flow.”

These “electronic pipes” are clearly of particular interest to the Chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who included the following forewarning in his letter to erstwhile Treasury Secretary Yellen:

Former Clinton strategist James Carville has reinvented himself at age 80 as a sage Democrat podcaster. His predictions—remember, a victorious Kamala Harris?—are usually wrong.

He enjoys engaging in public duels with celebrities to gain online clicks and media appearances. Yet sometimes he appears judicious in his effort to return his party to the Clinton glory days of 1992-2000, before the takeover of the party by the lunatic left.

That said, he too has become part of the new left nihilism he supposedly despises.

Most recently, Dr. Carville diagnosed Donald Trump as suffering from tertiary syphilis. Carville’s “proof” was his identification of a bruise on Trump’s much-used shaking hand, along with his supposed brain dementia.

As confirmation, Carville described Trump as a “fat f—ing slob” with a “beached whale body.” So, a once top Democratic strategist has gone from his 1992 iconic campaign reminder, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to smearing Trump as a fat slob with syphilis.

Carville’s descent sums up his entire party.

Watching President Trump speak to both Houses of Congress, two colorful Yiddish words kept floating into my mind.

I believe that each captures an aspect of the reality of that unprecedented gathering that the English language fails to convey with the same level of nuance.

As President Trump spoke, I kept thinking that he’s a real shtarker, which is often translated as “tough guy,” but which carries considerable historical context.

At Quora, Wolf Krakowski explains:

“In Europe, studious, myopic Jews who spent their days warming a yeshivah bench were easy pickins for their loutish, violent anti-Semitic neighbors and were often attacked and beaten. Every community had their tough guy (shtarker = strong one) who could be summoned to prevent or mitigate a beating, by showing up….”

In case you have not heard, according to every mainstream media outlet, Donald Trump did NOT give a State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. Once a year, some Leftmedia scribe does a Google search on "state of the union" and then copies and pastes Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 from our Constitution, which defines the information the president is to give Congress. Then, all the other outlets reprint that post.

But according to the American Presidency Project, the fact that it was technically not a State of the Union address makes little difference because the "impact of such a speech on public, media, and congressional perceptions of presidential leadership and power should be the same."

Gosh, I am so glad the MSM spent the 48 hours ahead of Trump's address clearing that up....

The last time Trump did deliver a State of the Union speech was February 4, 2020. It was a remarkable testament to his previous three years, despite being plagued with attacks by deep state conspirators endeavoring to undermine his administration in collaboration with impeachment charades.

Trump began that address by declaring, "I say to the people of our great country and to the members of Congress: The state of our Union is stronger than ever before."

That was all about to change — dramatically.