Benjamin Franklin, when asked what the Constitution had given us, said: “A republic…if you can keep it.”
The American experiment is never assured. As Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
The most important responsibility of each generation is to carry freedom on to the next.
From my latest episode of Hold These Truths podcast – “Can America Survive Another 250 Years?” – with historian H.W. Brands.
#america250
Great powers win industrial revolutions. Britain won the first. America won the next two. Now China is determined to dominate the fourth.
In hindsight, it was a mistake for America to outsource so much of its industrial capacity over the last three decades. But decline isn’t inevitable. We still possess enormous advantages – from our innovation and capital markets to our alliances and natural resources – and China faces serious structural weaknesses of its own.
I break it all down with @RushDoshi on the latest episode of Hold These Truths.
President Trump is right — the Senate Parliamentarian needs to go.
I said the same thing last year after she struck down my amendment ending taxpayer funding for sex reassignment procedures.
The Parliamentarian’s job is not to decide whether a policy is good or bad. It’s to determine whether a provision complies with the Senate’s budget rules governing reconciliation.
My amendment directly controlled federal spending, thus it was within the budget rules. The Parliamentarian ruled it out of order anyway.
Republicans are always told these decisions are neutral and beyond question. But when the Parliamentarian consistently blocks conservative priorities, while Democrats face no such obstacles, it's fair to ask whether the rules are being applied fairly.
Bottomline: the Parliamentarian serves at the pleasure of the Senate Majority Leader, not for life. If Republicans want to enact the agenda voters sent them to Washington to deliver, they have every right to replace her with someone who will apply the rules consistently.
These radicalized home-grown terrorists are the most difficult to uncover. Great work by FBI.
Federal prosecutors just charged three Americans – including an ex-Navy sailor – in a plot targeting U.S. Special Forces right here in the United States. (side note: there are no Special Forces in San Diego. There are SEALs. The article should have said “Special Operations”. Now you know).
https://t.co/XMt6lJlvkW
82 years ago today – 73,000 young Americans stormed into hell and risked everything.
They were willing to sacrifice everything because they knew their children and grandchildren could never thrive, could never be free, in a world where the Nazi party was the unrivaled superpower.
This was the day that America chose to lead the world. It was the day that good men chose to fight evil, never surrender.
A major blow was just dealt to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). This wasn’t just some crude hole in the ground made by amateurs. It was a sophisticated tunnel system they were counting on to smuggle billions of dollars worth of drugs and weapons.
Smuggling tunnels have been a challenge along the border for decades. Cartels have gotten better at making them, but we’re getting better at hunting them down thanks to enhanced intelligence capabilities and stronger cooperation with Mexico.
Lots of Americans are always looking for some deep explanation for why we have enemies. Usually it involves blaming ourselves for some imagined transgression.
The truth is much simpler than that:
Jihadists choose to be our adversaries. Putin chooses to be our adversary. Xi chooses to be our adversary.
Not because of some specific American policy or mistake. Because our values, interests, and vision for the world are fundamentally incompatible with theirs.
From Hold These Truths Episode 364 with counterterrorism expert Aaron Zelin. @azelin
Conservatives understand that mankind’s recent surge in prosperity is fragile, held up by the enlightenment principles of America’s founding.
Progressives wrongly believe that prosperity is the default setting, able to survive the progressives’ endless tinkering under the moral authority of “social justice” and “equity.”
It always feels nice to shout about compassion. But it’s a farce. True compassion is found in the defense of the foundations upon which prosperity survives.
Remember this as we approach our 250th year.
These therapies save veteran lives.
Huge news and the first milestone crossed after President Trump’s announcement last month that he’s accelerating psychedelic therapies for veterans with PTSD.
My legislation to kickstart psychedelic clinical trials passed Congress a few years ago. I’m proud to see the Administration approaching the issue with scientific curiosity.
Now there’s real momentum again – and a real hope for veterans fighting the invisible wounds of combat.
Remember the ESG craze a few years ago?
Banks were scared to finance oil and gas. Bitcoin mining was supposedly boiling the oceans. Cow farts were destroying the planet.
That same anti-growth mentality has now shifted toward AI data centers.
Yes, they use enormous amounts of electricity. Fine, let’s figure out how to put more power on the grid. That’s what major technological revolutions require. And energy markets are already responding. Many data center companies want to build their own power sources and I have legislation that would streamline permitting to do that.
Yes, they use water for cooling. Mostly water that would otherwise flow out to sea.
In return? Trillions in private infrastructure investment. American jobs. AI leadership over China. Breakthroughs in medicine, engineering, and science.
America became powerful by building things. We shouldn’t start apologizing for it now.
https://t.co/foLqcREUgL
Honored to spend a very special Memorial Day at the American Cemetery in Normandy.
9,389 American soldiers are buried here. Most died during the D-Day landings and the brutal fighting in the days that followed.
Soldiers faced steep cliffs, machine gun nests, artillery fire, underwater obstacles, and hundreds of meters of open beach with almost no cover. Entire units were pinned down in the surf. Some soldiers drowned under the weight of their own gear before even reaching shore.
But they kept moving forward. Their courage and sacrifice put us on a path to victory that led to the downfall of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the salvation of Western civilization.
Never forget their sacrifice.
The Iranian regime would love nothing more than for Congress to tie the President’s hands in the middle of a crisis. That’s exactly what the Iran War Powers Resolution would do.
Iran has spent decades funding terrorist proxies, murdering Americans, attacking our allies, targeting commercial shipping, and openly chanting “Death to America.” Now some in Congress want to advertise to that regime that they must pre-approve every possible military response.
That’s not restraint. That’s strategic stupidity.
No one is calling for another Iraq War. But removing credible deterrence from the Commander in Chief in the middle of an escalating conflict only emboldens the regime in Tehran and the terrorists they bankroll.
Peace through strength still matters. Weakness gets people killed.
Somewhere, Karl Marx is looking up at Tucker Carlson and all the other anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic conspiracists with a proud smile on his face.
The far left and the populist right always meet at the same destination: resentment, conspiracies, and hostility toward the West. The dumb and dumber of political discourse.
From the latest episode of Hold These Truths with @NRO writer @NoahCRothman.
In case you’re wondering about the current state of House Democrats: they just voted against establishing a Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
Their objection? It didn’t include a dedicated wing for trans history.
You almost have to admire the consistency. They managed to turn a women’s museum into an argument about men.
The latest episode of Hold These Truths with @NRO writer @NoahCRothman explores the history and psychology behind the rise in left-wing political violence we’re seeing in America today.
Political violence and radical movements aren’t new to the American story. What’s new is the internet’s ability to romanticize revolutionary politics and reward it in ways we’ve never seen before.
Noah traces the parallels between today’s extremist movements and the waves of political terrorism that gripped America throughout the 20th century – and explains why young people are often drawn to revolutionary causes in the first place.
Two years ago, Congress almost left the county with a huge intelligence gap for no good reason. Lives would have been lost had we not reauthorozed FISA. The violent cartel leader “El Mencho” would still be alive if we had not reauthorized FISA and passed my provision to target cartel affiliates for collection.
Luckily most Republcans have done the research and now support it. All but a few. Somehow many Democrats have unlearned the facts about FISA and are voting against it because orange man bad…or something.
Many get the facts completely wrong about FISA. They say they’re “guardians of civil liberty.” They say their position is “common sense,” that “if you want to spy on Americans just get a warrant.”
That all sounds good. I would agree with their position *if it were true.*
But it’s not true. No one is spying on your inbox without a warrant. You always need a warrant to tap an American phone. You even need a warrant to tap a foreign terrorist’s phone if they are in America. This debate over a warrant is actually about whether we should need a warrant to be able to QUERY the database for American names or places or even just a US phone number. That’s normal law enforcement investigation. Like running a license plate. You stop the FBI from doing that and you stop thwarting terrorist plots on US soil. The Members of Congress who still don’t believe that have been unwilling to learn the facts. I’ve seen it firsthand, Members throwing their hands up and walking out of classified briefings because they didn’t like the facts pushing up against their beliefs. All emotion and no critical thinking.
President Trump is showing incredible leadership by pushing for reauthorization this week. American lives depend on this, even if online trolls believe otherwise.
It’s Tax Day and everyone should be thankful that Democrats weren’t in charge. They argued for your taxes to increase. Full stop. There’s no grey area to this.
SCOOP: California is giving free sex-change procedures to homeless illegal aliens. Our team went into the shelters and discovered that trans migrants are coming into the state for hormones, breast implants, and "bottom surgeries"—all on the taxpayer dime. https://t.co/mDs7ivwjG5