Update (2035ET): On Tuesday evening Trump revealed he has ordered a “total and complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. This, he said on Truth Social, is based on Venezuela’s leadership having been declared a “foreign terrorist organization”. 

He further boasted of the country having been “completely surrounded” with the “largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”

“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” Trump said. 

He then warned, “It [the blockade] will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Minutes after the announcement:

WTI OIL UP AS MUCH AS 1.6% AS TRUMP RAISES VENEZUELA PRESSURE

This is expected to impact some 800,000-9000,0000 barrels of oil per day, which is forecast to increase prices by some $2-$3 in the short term.

Some initial Congressional reaction and fierce pushback as Washington is on a war-footing:

A naval blockade is unquestionably an act of war.

A war that the Congress never authorized and the American people do not want.

On Thursday, the House will vote on @RepMcGovern, @RepThomasMassie, and my resolution directing the President to end hostilities with Venezuela.… https://t.co/9wp2iiZuYk

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) December 17, 2025

The full Trump message on Truth Social:

The House is set to finally vote on a proposed War Powers resolution related to Venezuela on Thursday.

* * *

Update (1314ET):

By now, readers are well familiar with the Trump administration’s use of gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast. That has ranged from blowing up suspected drug-running boats to seizing one massive shadow fleet tanker tied to sanctioned oil flows.

The strategy is very simple: follow the money. By targeting the maritime arteries that finance the Maduro regime, Trump’s Pentagon is applying direct pressure aimed at regime change in Caracas.

Another artery being clogged is inbound supertankers to Venezuela, with a new Bloomberg report on Tuesday morning specifying that four tankers reversed course following the seizure of the Skipper last week by U.S. special forces.

Here’s more from the media outlet:

The vessels are the Panama-flagged Bella 1, which was sanctioned by the U.S. for its involvement in the illicit transport of Iranian oil, and the tankers Seeker 8, Karina, and Eurovictory, according to data from maritime intelligence firm Kpler.

Ship movements show that the Seeker 8, the Karina, and the Eurovictory all turned around on Dec. 11 — a day after U.S. forces seized a vessel off Venezuela’s coast. The Bella 1 reversed course on Tuesday near the Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda, the data tracked by Bloomberg show.

Related:

• Supertankers Bound For Venezuela Make U-Turns, Fearing US Interdiction, As PDVSA Hit By Cyberattack

If the Trump administration wanted to broaden the foreign policy strategy, the playbook would likely include a mix of maritime, financial, legal, and continued military posturing short of a hot war while steadily ratcheting up pressure on the Maduro regime.

. . . 

President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean, off Venezuela’s coast, has the effect of a maritime blockade, disrupting oil flows to Cuba and to global markets via shadow-fleet tankers. The Trump administration calculates that choking off this oil trade could trigger cascading economic stress, first in Cuba and then in Venezuela, ultimately accelerating the end goal of regime change in Caracas.

The latest report from Axios shows that the Trump administration’s seizure of a shadow-fleet tanker in the Caribbean is only in the early innings, with 18 sanctioned oil-laden ships currently in Venezuelan waters.

Last week, a US Special Forces unit seized the tanker Skipper, which was carrying crude contracted by Cubametales, Cuba’s state-run oil trading firm.

The tanker was part of a dark fleet that shipped crude from Venezuela to Cuba and onward to Asia.

Samir Madani, co-founder of the firm Tanker Trackers, told Axios that of the 18 sanctioned oil-laden ships off the country’s coast, eight are classified as “Very Large Crude Carriers” (VLCCs), such as Skipper, which can carry nearly 2 million barrels of Venezuelan crude. “It’s quite a buffet for the U.S. to choose from,” he said.

Given the unprecedented US naval presence in the Caribbean, mainly offshore of Venezuela in international waters, the Trump administration’s theory of gunboat diplomacy centers on cutting off all support to Cuba. To do that, it follows the money, starting with oil flows via dark tanker fleets. Once those oil flows are disrupted, Venezuela falls, and then Cuba follows.

Related:

• Seized Tanker Reveals Cuba’s Secret Oil Lifeline As Trump Turns To Gunboat Diplomacy

Axios quoted one Trump adviser as saying, “We have to wait for them to move. They’re sitting at the dock. Once they move, we’ll go to court, get a warrant, and then get them,” adding, “But if they make us wait too long, we might get a warrant to get them there,” in Venezuelan waters.

And gunboat diplomacy it is.

Authored by José Niño via The Libertarian Institute

Recent reports indicate the United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus, allegedly to facilitate a security agreement between Syria and Israel. This development represents yet another misguided expansion of American military overreach in a region where Washington has already caused tremendous damage through decades of failed interventionist policies.

The United States currently operates approximately 750 to 877 military installations across roughly eighty countries worldwide. This staggering number represents about 70 to 85% of all foreign military bases globally. To put this in perspective, the next eighteen countries with foreign bases combined maintain only 370 installations total. Russia has just twenty-nine foreign bases, and China operates merely six. The American empire of bases already dwarfs every other nation combined, and the financial burden is crushing. Washington spends approximately $65 billion annually just to build and maintain these overseas installations, with total spending on foreign bases and personnel reaching over $94 billion per year.

These figures are not abstract accounting entries. They translate directly into American lives placed in volatile environments, as demonstrated by the recent insider attack in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, where a purported “ISIS infiltrator” embedded in local government security forces turned his weapon on a joint U.S. Syrian patrol, killing two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian during what was described as a routine field tour. The incident underscores how the sprawling U.S. basing network increasingly exposes American personnel to unpredictable and lethal blowback in unstable theaters far from home.

Syria itself already hosts between 1,500 and 2,000 American troops, primarily concentrated in the northeastern Hasakah province and at the Al Tanf base in the Syrian Desert. The Pentagon recently announced plans to reduce this presence to fewer than 1,000 personnel and consolidated operations from eight installations to just three. Yet now, despite this supposed drawdown, Washington reportedly plans to establish a new presence in Damascus itself, either at Mezzeh Air Base or Al Seen Military Airport. This contradictory expansion reveals the hollow nature of promises to reduce American military commitments abroad.

Since the fall of Bashar al Assad in December 2024, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military and civilian infrastructure while occupying parts of southern Syria including Quneitra and Daraa. Israel has systematically violated the 1974 disengagement agreement and expanded control over buffer zones. These actions align disturbingly well with the Yinon Plan, a 1982 Israeli strategic document by Israeli foreign policy official Oded Yinon that envisions the dissolution of surrounding Arab states into smaller ethnic and religious entities. The plan explicitly calls for fragmenting Syria along its ethnic and religious lines to prevent a strong centralized government that could challenge Israeli interests.

A permanent American military presence in Damascus would effectively serve as a tripwire guaranteeing continued U.S. involvement in securing Israeli strategic objectives in the Levant. Rather than protecting American interests or enhancing national security, such a base would entrench Washington deeper into regional conflicts that have consistently proven disastrous for both American taxpayers and Middle Eastern populations.

The human cost of American intervention in Syria should give any policymaker pause. The Syrian proxy war has resulted in between 617,000 and 656,000 deaths, including civilians, rebels, and government forces. More than 7.4 million people remain internally displaced within Syria, while approximately 6.3 million Syrian refugees live abroad. This catastrophic toll stems partly from Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA covert program that ran from 2012 to 2017 to train and equip Syrian rebel forces.

Timber Sycamore represented a joint effort involving American intelligence services along with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The CIA ran secret training camps in Jordan and Turkey, providing rebels with small arms, ammunition, trucks, and eventually advanced weaponry like BGM 71 TOW anti-tank missiles. Saudi Arabia provided significant funding while the United States supplied training and logistical support.

The program proved to be counterproductive. Jordanian intelligence officers stole and sold millions of dollars worth of weapons intended for rebels on the black market. Even worse, U.S.-supplied weapons regularly fell into the hands of the al Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, and ISIS itself. The program strengthened the very extremists Washington was ostensibly fighting.

The failure of Timber Sycamore illustrates a fundamental problem with American interventionism in Syria. Washington has pursued regime change in Damascus in various forms for decades, yet these efforts have consistently backfired, creating power vacuums filled by jihadist groups and prolonging devastating conflicts. The current enthusiasm for establishing a military presence in Damascus suggests American policymakers have learned absolutely nothing from these failures.

Our entire National Guard family mourns the loss of Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, Iowa, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, Iowa-the Iowa Army National Guard Soldiers who were ambushed and killed in Syria. Their mission was in support of… pic.twitter.com/eXcyCquOwb

— Gen. Steven Nordhaus (@ChiefNGB) December 15, 2025

The figure now leading Syria exemplifies the moral bankruptcy of this entire enterprise. Ahmed al Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al Julani, currently serves as president of Syria’s interim government. This represents a stunning rehabilitation for a man who founded al Nusra Front in 2012 as an al-Qaeda affiliate and later formed Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) by merging various rebel factions. Under the name Abu Mohammad al Julani, he was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States on July 24, 2013, with a $10 million bounty maintained on his head.

Al Sharaa’s terrorist designation stemmed from his leadership of al Nusra Front, which perpetrated numerous war crimes including suicide bombings, forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, and sectarian massacres against Christian, Alawite, Shia, and Druze minorities. He fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq, spent time imprisoned at Camp Bucca between 2006 and 2010, and was dispatched to Syria by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in 2011 with $50,000 to establish al Nusra. His close associates have faced accusations from the United States of overseeing torture, kidnappings, trafficking, ransom schemes, and displacing residents to seize property. The New York Times reported that his group was accused of initially operating under al-Qaeda’s umbrella.

Yet in November 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 2799, removing al Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab from the ISIL and al-Qaeda sanctions list. The U.S. Treasury Department followed suit, delisting him from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist registry. This reversal came after the State Department revoked HTS’s Foreign Terrorist Organization designation in July 2025. Washington essentially decided that a former al-Qaeda commander who oversaw sectarian massacres was now a legitimate partner worthy of American military support. This absurd rehabilitation demonstrates how completely untethered American foreign policy has become from any coherent moral framework or strategic logic.

Critics rightly question whether al Sharaa has truly broken from his extremist roots or merely engaged in calculated political rebranding. The speed with which Washington embraced him as a legitimate leader suggests American policymakers care far more about advancing Israeli interests and maintaining regional influence than about genuine counterterrorism or protecting religious minorities.

The blatant lies and cover-up by U.S. officials after the attack in Syria show one thing clearly: they don’t give a damn about American troops. They’re treated as expendable cannon fodder to further consolidate the al-Qaeda regime in Damascus. https://t.co/kS0xCWPGZk

— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) December 14, 2025

The United States needs to pursue a fundamentally different approach to foreign policy. Rather than establishing yet another military base to advance Israeli strategic objectives in Syria, Washington should implement a comprehensive drawdown of overseas military commitments. The hundreds of foreign bases it maintains abroad represent an unsustainable burden that diverts resources from genuine national security priorities like border security and stability in the Western Hemisphere. American taxpayers deserve better than footing the bill for an empire that consistently fails to advance their interests while enriching defense contractors and serving foreign powers.

Syria offers a perfect case study in the futility of American interventionism. Decades of attempts at regime change through covert programs like Timber Sycamore and direct military presence have produced nothing but chaos, empowered jihadist groups, created millions of refugees, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The rehabilitation of a former al-Qaeda commander into Syria’s president illustrates how divorced American policy has become from any coherent strategy or values.

Rather than doubling down on failed policies, the United States should pursue strategic restraint, scale back its sprawling network of foreign bases, and allow regional powers to sort out their own affairs without American military involvement. That represents the path toward a more sustainable, affordable, and morally defensible foreign policy. The Damascus base proposal deserves to be rejected outright as yet another wasteful expansion of an already overextended military empire.

Top European officials met on Tuesday in The Hague in order to establish an international commission to oversee eventual reparations to compensate Ukraine for Russia’s military invasion. President Volodymyr Zelensky and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas were present for the high level talks in The Netherlands.

The International Claims Commission for Ukraine will assess and decide on claims for reparations, and will determine and discharge any amount to be paid out. This is likely to see hundreds of billions of dollars eventually flow to Ukraine for the sake of rebuilding and keeping the civic services sector afloat after nearly four years of war.

The treaty to establish the commission has been signed by 35 countries at Tuesday’s conference. It also has the involvement of Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which is a 46-nation group protecting human rights on the continent. The new commission is going to be based in The Hague.

Zelensky welcomed the newly established mechanism, declaring that Russia “paying for its crimes” was “exactly where the real path to peace begins.” He added: “This war and Russia’s responsibility for it must become a clear example so that others learn not to choose aggression,” and followed with, “We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.”

Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel agreed, explaining that “Without accountability, a conflict cannot be fully resolved. And part of that accountability is also paying damages that have been done.”

All this comes as EU leadership is trying to push through a scheme not just to permanently freeze Russian assets held chiefly in Belgium, but to use the funds for Ukraine’s long-term defense and reconstruction.

But Russia’s Central Bank has this week filed a lawsuit seeking 18.2 trillion rubles ($229 billion) in damages from Belgium-based Euroclear, which is meant as a loud shot across Brussels’ bow.

The EU’s Kallas has lately admitted that the issue of using Russian frozen assets had become “increasingly difficult” ahead of a summit of European leaders which is set for Thursday. The EU is seeking to bypass obvious objectors such as Hungary, and is seeking legal loopholes which would allow a plan to pass based on simple majority vote among EU members.

NOW – Secretary General of the Council of Europe announces the establishment of the “International Claims Commission” and says that work is underway for a “special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/XlVYKUPtzb

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 16, 2025

The World Bank has estimated the cost of reconstruction due to the war, only figuring in numbers up to December 2024, at $524 billion.

Via Remix News,

In a sign of just how fast the demographic situation is developing in Austria, Vienna has hit a major new milestone, marking the first time that more than half the first-grade population do not understand German.

The news highlights just how dramatic the demographic crisis facing Europe is, which has seen falling educational standards across the continent, in large part due to mass immigration.

“For the first time, more than half of the first-graders in Vienna’s public elementary schools do not understand German,” the Vienna People’s Party reported on Friday.

The data shows that 50.9 percent of first-graders, or 10,931 students, must be classified as special needs students in the current school year.

This already comes after reports from last year that over 75 percent of students in Vienna’s middle school system do not speak German at home, choosing another foreign language instead.

🇦🇹 Great Replacement in Austria’s school system

More than 3 quarters of students in Vienna’s middle schools do not speak German at home, according to new statistics.

According to Statistics Austria’s STATcube, only 8,479 of Vienna’s 26,816 middle school students use German as… pic.twitter.com/4Vf20aaLLt

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 29, 2024

However, it was already clear that it would pass the 50 percent mark last year, when it was listed at the 49.7 percent mark.

Education spokesperson and parliamentary group leader Harald Zierfuß blames the ruling left-liberal government, saying, “Because the SPÖ and NEOS are failing in Vienna, more children than ever before are unable to speak German.”

“Time is running out for our city. The children without German language skills are the welfare recipients of tomorrow in this city,” said Zierfuß, according to Austrian newspaper Heute.

Islam is now the dominant religion for school children in Vienna.

Of those enrolled at elementary, middle, and special schools for the 2024/25 academic year, 41.2% of the 112,600 students were of the Islamic faith, according to new figures from the Austrian Integration Fund… pic.twitter.com/CgpwcIgi4O

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) September 2, 2025

However, his ÖVP party does not propose emigration or any immigration restriction policies. Instead, they propose more language proficiency courses, mandatory kindergarten for all 3-year-olds, and hiring more staff for kindergartens.

Commentary writer for Austrian newspaper Krone, Andreas Mölzer, wrote about the huge number of foreigners in Austria’s school system last month and what this means in terms of future integration.

“This means they grow up in families and closed parallel societies that simply refuse integration. Integration into our social system and our cultural fabric depends primarily on language acquisition,” he writes.

Furthermore, he points out the obvious outcome of this development for the future.

“And all those children with a migration background who only learn German with difficulty and often only at a rudimentary level in school are at risk of entering life without a qualification and with limited career prospects,” writes Mölzer.

Beyond the struggles of these students, they make up such an incredibly large share of students in Vienna that they are sure to drag down the rest of the students in their classes. The obvious outcome is that more and more White Austrians are sending their children to private schools and even protesting against schools with a high proportion of foreigners — all while continuing to vote left.

Many of these native-born ethnic Austrians either already live in wealthier neighborhoods, vote left, and live in districts where the migration percentage of children in the local schools is extremely low, or they send their children to private schools — while creating ample excuses as to why they are taking that route.

Meanwhile, poorer ethnic Austrians are stuck with the problems in the increasingly foreign neighborhoods that make up Vienna. For the wealthier, left-wing Austrians, these people not only do not overly matter, but if they complain, they are smeared as racist and bigoted.

Mölzer is open about this trend.

“Moreover, (students who cannot comprehend German) logically hinder the learning process and instruction for native-born children. No wonder, then, that in Vienna, if you can afford it, you only send your children to private schools,” he wrote.

The trend of private schools is growing across the entire multicultural left, with White parents fleeing the public school system in cities like Paris or Berlin, where private schools are “booming.” More and more parents are turning away from Europe’s formerly successful public schools and sending their children on the private route.

The education situation in Austria, overall, is extremely poor. In 2025, there are 46,385 students nationwide who are unable to follow lessons, which was a slight reduction from the previous school year, when 48,450 students could not follow lessons because they lacked sufficient German. However, the overall trend line has been disastrous over the last 10 years, dating back to when Austria truly opened itself up to mass immigration.

It is not just language issues. As Remix News has long documented, teachers are dropping out of the Austrian school system in droves due to violence, disrespect, and even serious cases of rape. In one case this year, seven foreign students were found guilty of gang raping, blackmailing, and setting their teacher’s apartment on fire.

Read more here…

Authored by David Stewart via RealClearDefense,

Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution has generated much commentary, some supportive and some critical. Across social media, complaints abound that he paid too much, or too little, attention to the traditional Founding Fathers—Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, Jefferson. Critics pillory him for overemphasizing one specific type of history—military, political, economic, or social—while minimizing or ignoring the other types. In nearly every interview, Ken Burns repeatedly asserts that he sought to complicate the traditional narrative about the Revolution, to insert more nuance into the conversation, and these various criticisms from across the ideological spectrum might seem to suggest he has done so.

The major flaw in the documentary, however, is not that he presented the Founders in the wrong light nor that he complicated the traditional story. Rather, in his attempt to invoke a more nuanced narrative, Burns in fact obscured the most important elements of that narrative.

Some conservative commentators object, for example, to the documentary discussing Major-General Horatio Gates’ actions after the Battle of Camden. In August 1780, Gates’ 4.000-man American army suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Lieutenant-General Cornwallis’ 2.000 British in the South Carolina midlands. In the waning moments of the battle, Gates abandoned his army, riding almost 200 miles before stopping near Durham, North Carolina. Does this make Gates look bad? Yes; deservedly so. Is it the whole story, or even the most important element? Not at all.

Congress quickly replaced Gates, appointing Major-General Nathanael Greene to command the Southern Department. He inherited a remnant army of fewer than 2.000 soldiers—isolated, defeated, and out of supply. Over the next several months, Greene doubled the size of his army as he slowly withdrew northward, drawing Cornwallis after him. As they moved north, the Americans fought a series of skirmishes and battles, losing almost every encounter—a process of strategic retreats Greene famously summarized as “we get beat, rise, and fight again.” But in this series of defeats, the Americans drew Cornwallis far beyond his supply lines, leading him to abandon the Carolinas completely and to march on Yorktown.

Notably, Greene had far more men in his army by the Fall of 1781 than he had inherited a year earlier. This strongly suggests some important values drove those American soldiers, that they fought for more than money. They did not endure a year of hard marching, a string of tactical defeats, constant food shortages, chronic undersupply, and hundreds of casualties in the hope that this feeble army or a fragile government would someday reward them with land or cash. Those men believed in some higher cause, fought for principles. This is the story Burns’ documentary should emphasize—the context that frames Gates’ cowardice.

The soldiers at Valley Forge spoke a variety of languages—that’s interesting. But why did they suffer through that winter? Why did men dive repeatedly into a frozen Hudson River in January 1776? Why did soldiers volunteer to lead a forlorn hope at Stony Point? Why did three hundred Maryland riflemen choose to die rather than retreat during as the American army crumbled in the Battle of Brooklyn? We can all easily understand why men lie, embezzle, flee, or compromise their principles. It is heroism and self-sacrifice that demand explanation, and Burns’ documentary deserves criticism for failing to explain the extraordinary.

As a trained military historian, I’ve limited my comments to military history. Other scholars, far more qualified than I, have suggested similar reservations about the documentary’s discussions of Native Americans, Blacks, women, political thought, and economic history.

Ken Burns did not make General Gates look bad—Gates did that himself. My objection is that Burns, rather than nuancing or complicating the story of the Revolution, simply marginalized one set of much-discussed actors and substituted a new set, and thereby missed the real story.

David Stewart is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and a founding faculty member of the college’s Center for Military History and Grand Strategy.

More major Pentagon reshuffling is coming down the line, driven by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, but this time it’s being reported this will involve far more than just staffing and personnel changes – it will impact the entire US global command and headquarters structure.

Washington Post reports this week that the Pentagon is drafting a sweeping overhaul of American military command structures that would downgrade several major headquarters and reshape the balance of influence among senior generals.

The plan is reportedly being driven in large part by Hegseth’s pledge to “break the status quo” and reduce the number of four-star generals across the armed forces, sources quoted in WaPo say. He’s also long been talking about purging the ‘woke agenda’ from within military ranks.

The restructuring would diminish the standing of US Central Command, US European Command, and US Africa Command by bringing these theatres under a newly created entity called US International Command.

Also of note will be the creation of an “Americom,” according to the report. Currently it is US Southern Command and US Northern Command which are responsible for military operations across the Western Hemisphere, but now these will be placed under the US Americas Command.

“To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come, our country needs a coherent, focused strategy for how we interact with the world … The US must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” the strategy says, based on the report. 

According to another interesting note in the WaPo report:

“Pentagon officials also discussed creating a US Arctic Command that would report to Americom, but that idea appears to have been abandoned.”

This comes on the heels of the recently published new National Security Strategy issued by the White House.

Within the 33-page national security document is the laying out of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the document states.

“The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence — from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined,” it adds.

One thing the potential revamping of conventional global command sectors does is to provide a more centralized structure under Pentagon top leadership, and it seems this is what Hegseth is aiming for.

Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClearPolitics,

Catholics have been some of Trump’s most important voters. But right now, 55% of Catholics give Trump a D or F grade on handling inflation. Affordability is the central issue for most Americans, especially swing voters. Patriotic middle-class Catholic families feel the squeeze, so this new populist coalition is being tested.

Back in 2016 Trump won the Catholic vote by 8 points, but in 2020 he split the Catholic vote nationally with Biden. Last November, Trump surged to a 12-point win among the faithful in 2024. That massive shift within the largest denomination in America drove the popular vote victory.

Now, this determinative group of voters watches closely, increasingly disenchanted with the state of the economy. So, we commissioned a survey of 1,483 registered voters in Wisconsin, the consummate swing state and one of the most Catholic states in America.

Overall, the Wisconsin economic outlook is grim. When asked to give a letter grade on Trump and the economy, here is the Badger State breakdown:

A – 10%

B – 18%

C – 17%

D – 19%

F – 33%

On inflation specifically, Midwest women deliver some harsh marks, with only 6% giving an A vs. 45% an F grade. Those grades are notable because women are disproportionately the CFOs and shoppers in households.  

Trump’s job approval in Wisconsin is -11% net: 41% approve vs. 52% disapprove. Trump remains very popular among Republicans, with 82% approval, but sinks to only 28% approval among independents. For Wisconsin Catholics, Trump remains more popular at only -4% net, with 45% job approval vs. 49% disapproval.

So … what can be done?

There are fixes, both in policy and in framing/messaging, beginning with blunt honesty with the American people, from Wisconsin Catholics to California agnostics. Recognize and acknowledge the very real angst out there.

The pain of cumulative inflation for five years takes a material toll on both the psyche and the bank accounts of hard-working Americans. The pain is especially acute for the masses of modest earners who have not enjoyed the benefits of asset inflation via stocks and real estate. Culturally, Catholics embrace a very middle-class mindset, even those who have achieved material financial success. They still identify with the mores and habits of their Irish, Mexican, and Italian grandparents.

So, empathy is crucial. Many on the right routinely – and understandably – mock Bill Clinton for his insincere “I feel your pain” tagline, but guess what? It is effective in politics. People need to believe that their leaders care.

So, here are the three points:

1. Level with people and show authentic concern. Communicate clearly that the present angst is real and justified, after years of economic hardship for regular citizens.
2. Detail the current positive trajectory of some key metrics, backed by data and evidence. President Trump and other Republicans can rightly claim serious early progress, using real world numbers.

–Real Wages jump higher, meaning pay adjusted for inflation.

–Residential rents finally trend lower.

–National gasoline prices dipped below $3/gallon for the first time in four years.

3. Accelerate these wins! How? Continue to negotiate for the best possible trade deals for America. Continue to attract massive flows of foreign capital into America. And keep pushing to get illegal aliens out of America, raising wages for citizens and easing the pressure on the scarce supply of housing.

Taken together, these strategies will work for all Americans, including the crucial Catholic population. Catholics are not locked-in partisans. They are practical and patriotic. Appeal to their common sense and persuade them of the efficacy of the plan, from the businessman leader who created the amazing first Trump Boom during the first term into 2019.

The faithful rallied big to Trump in 2024. They now have valid concerns. Repay their loyalty with honest, clear messaging … confirmed by tangible kitchen-table results. Then, Trump and his allies can once again earn robust Catholic support for the 2026 midterms, and beyond.

Steve Cortes is president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group, and senior political advisor to Catholic Vote. He is a former senior advisor to President Trump and JD Vance, and a former commentator for Fox News and CNN.

Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles said the following as part of the controversial Vanity Fair interview in reference to Venezuela policy: “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then (we’d need) Congress.”

But only last month when President Trump was asked about this issue, he said, “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”

All of this could come to a head if enough Congressional leaders, especially on the Republican side, decide to grow a spine and stand up to the White House’s foreign policy adventurism down south – which polls show is not supported by most Americans.

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution. It aims to halt any potential attack on Venezuela after Trump has threatened that the US military hitting land targets would happen ‘soon’.

Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the bipartisan bill has 31 co-sponsors, including three Republicans: Reps. Thomas Massie (KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Don Bacon (NE).

Massie has of course been at the forefront of Trump criticisms, and he’s again helping lead the charge on Venezuela pushback, amid the huge American presence in the southern Caribbean.

“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” Massie said in a statement upon the bill being introduced. ‘

“Congress has the sole power to declare war against Venezuela. Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.” This viewpoint is precisely what Wiles has voiced in her comments to Vanity Fair.

According to a brief summary of the Trump admin’s rationale: 

A central legal question is whether the administration can treat anti-cartel maritime strikes as a form of armed conflict falling within the President’s independent Article II power or within some existing statutory authorization.

CRS reports the Trump administration has asserted drug trafficking and terrorism “involving or associated with Maduro” threaten U.S. national security, and that it reportedly told Congress U.S. forces are in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels – an assertion that other experts and government lawyers reportedly questioned. This framing signals the administration’s likely legal posture without requiring anyone outside government to guess at classified briefings.

Also, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) is simultaneously seeking to reign in the drone strikes on alleged drug boats with his own war powers legislation. No Republicans have signed on to his initiative.

Recently, the President announced land strikes against Venezuela. No U.S. President is authorized to commit acts of war in a sovereign country without authorization from Congress. I cosponsored this War Powers Resolution to force Congress to vote “for or against” this action. pic.twitter.com/GfIaeQUiny

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 13, 2025

He said: “the Trump Administration has not provided a credible rationale for its 21 unauthorized military strikes on vessels in the Western Hemisphere, which have resulted in the extrajudicial killings of dozens of individuals.”

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

Legally armed civilians, we’re told, pose a major danger. They shoot innocent bystanders, justifiably kill others whenever they personally believe “force is reasonably necessary,” and rely on racist self-defense laws.

At least these concerns are the case in several recent news articles in the Wall Street Journal. On Monday, with the story on the front page of the Journal, reporter Mark Maremont continued his attacks on people legally carrying concealed handguns. His article presents four stories from 2021 to the present where citizens who used a gun in self-defense accidentally shot a bystander.

But with more than 1.6 million defensive gun uses each year, almost 21 million permit holders, and 29 constitutional-carry states where a permit to carry isn’t necessary, four cases over four years offers little perspective.

Even worse, only two of the four cases even involve people who were legally carrying concealed handguns in public (one case each from Massachusetts and Michigan). In the Ohio case, the convenience store employee had the gun at her workplace, so concealed-carry laws didn’t apply. In the California case, the state required a permit, but there is no evidence that the individual had a permit.

The Wall Street Journal article warns about the dangers of constitutional carry (what it calls “permitless carry”) and quotes gun-control advocates claiming that “When untrained or panicked shooters miss their target, it’s children, neighbors and bystanders who pay the price.” Yet, not a single one of the article’s examples involved constitutional carry.

To examine the issue more directly, the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I head, used ChatGPT and Grok to search news reports and compile a list of cases from the past decade in which concealed-carry permit holders accidentally shot an innocent bystander. Since 2016, we have also collected cases where people legally carrying guns in public have used them to stop crimes and we have reviewed those cases. All together there were four cases from 2016 through nearly all of 2025. One listed incident involved a security guard, who arguably should not be counted.

From 2016 to 2025, including the security-guard case, permit holders accidentally shot five bystanders – two killed and three wounded. Excluding the security guard, permit holders shot three bystanders – two killed and one wounded.

But the issue isn’t one of perfection. The question is: What is the alternative?

We then did the same review of police incidents from 2016 to 2025 and found 20 cases in which officers accidentally shot a total of 28 bystanders: six killed and 22 wounded. In one case, an officer wounded six people; in another, three officers wounded three people. Some news stories do not make clear whether the criminal or the police shot the bystander, so these numbers may understate the total number of bystanders shot by police.

Overall, police accidentally wounded 5.6 times as many bystanders as civilians (including the security-guard case), killed three times as many, and wounded seven times as many. Excluding the security guard, police shot seven times more bystanders, killed three times more, and wounded 22 times more. Without the security guard case, bystanders were seven times more likely to be accidentally shot by police than by civilians.

Other research using the FBI’s active-shooter definition confirms this pattern. We looked at cases from 2014 to 2024 – cases where individuals actively attempt to kill people in a public area and excluding shootings tied to other crimes – showing that armed civilians consistently act safely and effectively. They stopped over half of the attacks in places where they could legally carry, more frequently than police.

Police are extremely important in stopping crime, and research shows they are the single most important factor. But their uniforms make them operate at a real tactical disadvantage in stopping these shootings. Attackers can wait for officers to leave, strike elsewhere, or shoot them first. As a result, police were killed at eleven times the rate of intervening civilians and accidentally killed civilians or fellow officers five times – or five times more than civilians accidentally shot bystanders.

Attackers don’t just avoid police officers – they risk encountering far fewer of them than permit holders. In 2020, the U.S. had roughly 671,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers, and typically fewer than 240,000 were on duty at any given time, amounting to less than 0.1% of the population. By contrast, almost 21 million adults held concealed-carry permits, representing about 7.8% of the adult population.

Permit holders are also extremely law-abiding, losing their licenses for firearm-related violations at rates of thousandths or tens of thousandths of 1 percentage point. Police rarely commit crimes, but concealed handgun permit holders are even more law-abiding, facing a conviction rate for firearms offenses that is just 1/12th the rate of police convictions.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the only recent problem with the Wall Street Journal news articles. Another long article co-authored by Maremont at the end of October warns that justifiable homicides increased after Stand Your Ground laws made it easier for people to defend themselves. What the article ignores is that while justifiable self defense killings rose, in the first five years after Stand Your Ground laws are adopted, murder rates fell on average by more than 8%.

The article misstates the legal principal that governs what is justifiable self-defense. It claims that anyone can shoot another person by simply claiming they thought force was “reasonably necessary.” But that isn’t the standard. The law requires that a reasonable third party believe the defendant faced a serious risk of injury or death from the attack.

But the fact that there were fewer murders and more self-defense uses is exactly what the proponents of Stand Your Ground would predict. On top of that, yet another Journal piece attacked these laws as racist because “Nationwide, Black men and boys account for almost two-thirds of the victims in civilian justifiable homicides, according to the Journal analysis of FBI data from 2019 to 2024.” Yet, the Journal ignores past research showing that blacks, who are the most likely victims of violent crime, are also by far the most likely to use Stand Your Ground laws as a legal defense. It is also important to note that about 90% of murders of blacks are committed by other blacks.

The Wall Street Journal alarms readers by focusing on anecdotes, yet it ignores extensive evidence showing that armed civilians pose little risk – and far less risk to bystanders than police. Permit holders regularly stop crimes and active shooters with minimal collateral harm. Stand Your Ground laws are not racist nor do they cause excessive violence; instead, they have reduced murder rates and empowered vulnerable communities – especially black victims – to defend themselves legally. By prioritizing sensational stories over solid data, such news stories ultimately undermine public safety.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.