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Monday, March 24, 2025

NSA Mike Waltz: Seeking "Full Dismantlement" of Iran's nuclear program

In a way “the entire world can see.” From interview on Face the Nation: “It is time for Iran to walk away completely from its desire to have a nuclear weapon, and they will not and cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapons program. That is its weaponization and its strategic missiles program.” Waltz’s comments came after President Trump vowed to hold Iran responsible for any future attacks carried out by the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group, which has carried out strikes on military and commercial ships in the Red Sea since Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza. The effectiveness of their strikes has been mixed but disrupts what the Trump administration considers a critical trade route through the Suez Canal. Both Hamas and the Houthis, designated terrorist organizations by the U.S., are backed by Iran (CBS). Senator Fetterman is one Democrat who agrees: Q: President Trump is now trying to reach a new nuclear deal. This will probably fail because the Iranians don’t even want to talk. A: “I’ve been very clear. I think we need to eliminate what remains of their nuclear facilities.” Q: You mean militarily? A: “Yes, blow it up. I support that,” he responded without hesitation. “And I think there is truly a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do it. After it has been proven that Iran doesn’t have the capabilities to really prevent… I think they mainly have a reputation and no capabilities. And that’s an amazing part of what happened. They (Israel) also eliminated the nuclear weapons laboratory. I don’t think one can really conduct effective negotiations with this regime” (Israel Hayom).

Treasury Secretary Bessent Defends the Pace of DOGE: “Need to move fast”

From an interview on the “All In” podcast : Everyone says, “Well, do you have to do it so fast? You have to do it.” I’ve only been in this business for 7 weeks; I’ve only been in DC for 8 weeks, but the thing I can tell you is, if you don’t move fast, the vested interests will weigh you down, like the quicksand will come up, or the claws . Everybody’s got lobbyists, everybody’s got—I mean, think about it, within a 10-mile radius of here, 25% of the GDP of the US pulsates through here every day, and everybody wants to just skim a little. I said to Elon, we were in a meeting, and I said, “You know, people are mad at you ‘cause you’re moving their cheese.” And he goes, “It’s not their cheese; it’s the American people’s cheese” (Real Clear Politics).

Evaluating Early Days of Trump Administration: “Breathtaking”

From an essay in New Criterion: The administration’s kinetic response to anti-Semitism is but one chapter in its counterrevolution against the pathology of wokeness and political correctness. The alacrity and thoroughness with which it sealed America’s southern border is another. We write about seven weeks into the second Trump administration. Already the southern border, which we had been assured was beyond salvaging, is effectively closed. Illegal crossings are the lowest in decades. The speed and multifront nature of the administration’s activities are breathtaking. The ethos of the military has been transformed almost overnight. Gone are the laments about “white rage,” “systemic racism,” and “transphobia.” In their place are paeans to patriotism and the warrior ethic. Military recruitment, which had plummeted over the last several years, has skyrocketed (New Criterion). Trump Deputy Chief of Staff on the keys to Trump’s early success: He had four years out of office to think about what he wanted to accomplish and how he was going to accomplish it. And he educated the team and his leadership on that over time. And then you had a group of people — Stephen Miller comes to mind — who spent a lot of that time working in hopeful preparation of being back in the White House and being ready to pick up the work that ended when he left office. And he was really well-prepared. Then momentum builds momentum. So once you start to get wins, once you start to get confident and comfortable in what you’re doing and the abilities to succeed, I think the whole administration right now is, in certain ways, positively competing to achieve something (Politico).

J.D. Vance As Chair of RNC Seen as Key to Making Him “Heir Apparent” and 2025 Nominee

Daily Caller: Vice President J.D. Vance is taking over as the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) finance chair, a new role that GOP strategists and pundits say bolsters his position as the clear frontrunner to represent the party as its nominee in the 2028 presidential race…. Scott Jennings, a conservative on-air pundit for CNN, told the DCNF that Vance’s appointment to the key RNC post “recognizes the massive influence J.D. has in the Republican Party as the heir apparent” and gives him a major advantage over any prospective challenger in the 2028 GOP primary (Daily Caller). South Carolina GOP Executive Director Alex Stroman: “I think it is a smart decision for the party, for the president, and for the vice president to have him in this role. For the party, this is a major commitment from the White House to ensure that the party is able to raise the money it needs to win elections. For the President, this further integrates him into the party apparatus and ensures that his agenda can be implemented over the next four years” (Ohio Press Network).

Columbia University Yields to Trump

Wall Street Journal: Columbia University will cede to President Trump’s far-reaching demands in negotiations over $400 million in federal funding he revoked this month, according to a memo from the school to the administration. Columbia agreed to ban masks, empower 36 campus police officers with new powers to arrest students and appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies (Wall Street Journal). Hugh Hewitt: Looks like DOJ may have let Columbia off the hook. Seeking federal supervision of the university as was done in the old days with schools districts that refused to desegregate would be appropriate here and may yet be demanded of Harvard, UCLA, Michigan etc. What we saw last year —and some this year— is a deeply poisoned well. Carving hatred and ideological extremism out of a campus isn’t going to be easy (X).

Massive Protests in Turkey as Erdogan Jails Rival

Erdogan thinks he’s strong enough to get away with it. Wall Street Journal: huge throngs of demonstrators assembled in Istanbul and other cities decrying what they said was an attack on democracy. Police have clashed at times with protesters and arrested dozens of people in connection with the rallies. “Erdogan at the moment still thinks that he’s holding all the cards, and he thinks that this is the right moment for him to get rid of opposition,” said Murat Somer, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Ozyegin University (Wall Street Journal). Video of the protests: (X)

Israel Eliminates Key Hamas Leader Ismail Barhoum

In an attack within Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. Times of Israel: Ismail Barhoum, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, was killed on Sunday evening in a targeted Israeli airstrike on a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. Israel said it had targeted and killed Barhoum at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, referring to him as a “key Hamas terrorist,” as the Palestinian terror group confirmed his death and said he had been undergoing treatment after being injured in a previous strike. Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement hailed the killing of Barhoum, saying he was “the new Hamas prime minister in Gaza, who replaced Issam Da’alis, the previous prime minister who was eliminated a few days ago” (Times of Israel). Jerusalem Post: The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) struck a key Hamas terrorist who was operating within the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza, they announced in a joint statement on Sunday. The strike was conducted following an intelligence-gathering process and with precise munitions, according to the joint statement (Jerusalem Post).

Israel Returns to Complete Military Victory Strategy

With both Hamas and Hezbollah: “keeping Hezbollah crushed.” On Hamas: Israeli troops pressed into the northern Gaza border town of Beit Hanoun on Saturday to lay the groundwork for expanding Israel’s security buffer, a several-hundred-meter-wide zone the military has carved out within Gaza that spans its border with Israel. The military said it is now operating in patches to expand its footprint and uproot Hamas infrastructure across Gaza, from Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the north to the Netzarim Corridor bisecting the enclave’s middle and Rafah on the Egyptian border in the south (Wall Street Journal). On Hezbollah: Israel and the IDF have a new security doctrine in Lebanon: It is called keeping Hezbollah crushed. Not deterred, but crushed. What is actually the smaller piece, if still important, is what just happened over the weekend (Jerusalem Post).

Wave of Judicial Injunctions and Restraining Orders Is Creating a Crisis

John Daniel Davidson: At this point it’s not too much to say that the federal judiciary has plunged us into a constitutional crisis. The fusillade of injunctions and temporary restraining orders issued by district court judges in recent weeks against the Trump administration — on everything from foreign aid to immigration enforcement to Defense Department enlistment policy to climate change grants for Citibank — boggles the mind. More nationwide injunctions and restraining orders have been issued against Trump in the past month that were issued against the Biden administration in four years. On Wednesday alone, four different federal judges ordered Elon Musk to reinstate USAID workers (something he and DOGE have no authority to do), ordered President Trump to disclose sensitive operational details about the deportation flights of alleged terrorists, ordered the Department of Defense to admit individuals suffering from gender dysphoria to the military, and ordered the Department of Education to issue $600 million in DEI grants to schools (Federalist).

10.

China Preparing to Blockade Taiwan

Wall Street Journal: China’s armed forces are more ready than ever to surround the self-ruled island of Taiwan, cut it off from the world and try to squeeze it into submission. A Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be an act of war that sparks a global crisis. It would provoke a military response by Taiwan, force President Trump to decide whether the U.S. military should help defend the island, disrupt global trade and impel European nations to impose punishing sanctions on Beijing…. A blockade is one of Xi’s most powerful military options—short of an invasion, a steep challenge for the not-yet-battle-tested Chinese military—to induce the island to surrender to Beijing’s authority (Wall Street Journal).

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