Trump confirms Iran asks for U.S. intervention to stop Israeli attacks
Absolutely not! Since 1979, Iran has maimed, murdered, and terrorized millions of Israelis, they openly vow to commit genocide against Israel, they fund death squads to murder Israelis on six continents, and they are funding anti-Israel protests across the world. Now that Israel is giving Iran a much deserved ass kicking, Iran’s leaders want the U.S to stop Israel from engaging in further military action. All so that Iran can engage in more fake nuke negotiations. Fuck that! Israel must not stop Operation Rising Lion until Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile arsenal are compleatly destroyed.
U.S. President Trump on Monday confirmed reports that Iran had reached out to the U.S. to stop Israel’s attacks – however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly rejected any chance for negotiations at the moment.
On the fourth day of Israel’s war against the Iranian regime, Trump was asked by reporters whether Iran had indeed reached out through mediators with a request to stop the Israeli strikes.
“Yes… They’d like to talk. But they should have done that before. I had 60 days, and they had 60 days. On the 61st day, I said, We don’t have a deal,” Trump said.
An official in Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ administration is the son of a Chinatown powerbroker and Democratic donor who has praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and works with foreign intelligence agencies, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.
Adam Ma has held multiple positions in Bass’ office, his LinkedIn profile states, and now serves as both the city’s liaison for Asian-Americans and director of commission appointments, according to the Los Angeles government website. Hisfather, who raised tens of thousands of dollars for Bass’ mayoral campaign, previously lauded the Communist Party for creating a “strong China” and is listed as an official by multiple arms of a Chinese government influence and intelligence service called the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
“If China didn’t have the CCP, there’d be no strong China today, overseas Chinese compatriots send the highest praise and admiration to the CCP,” Adam Ma’s father, Ma Shurong, said in July 2021 to commemorate the Party’s 100th anniversary, according to a DCNF translation of a Chinese government announcement.
“The Communist Party’s UFWD has, in fact, penetrated Karen Bass’s office,” Gordon Chang, China expert and author of “Plan Red: China’s Project To Destroy America,” told the DCNF. “There is a high probability that, wittingly or unwittingly, she is implementing Chinese Communist plans to take down our country. She may be a loyal American, but she has almost certainly become a danger to America.”
Bass, Adam Ma and Ma Shurong did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Bass has risen to national prominence as a central figure in the Democratic Party’s resistance to President Donald Trump’s deportation policies as Los Angeles struggles to grapple with a series of riots opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that began in the city on June 6.
Although the Trump administration’s “targeted enforcement operations” in Los Angeles have apprehended illegal aliens previously convicted of homicide, drug trafficking and lewd acts with a minor, Bass called for ICE to “stop the raids” during a June 9 press conference, saying she felt her city was “part of an experiment that we did not ask to be a part of.”
‘Overseas United Front’
Ma Shurong, whose English name is Derek Ma, has extensive ties to high-ranking CCP leaders and has served as an official within multiple UFWD agencies, according to Chinese government reports.
The UFWD’s operations are a “unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations that the [CCP] uses to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the [People’s Republic of China] and to gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.
Among other positions, Ma Shurong is listed as an “overseas committee member” by the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), which is a UFWD agency, according to the Department of Justice. Ma Shurong was one of 20 ACFROC officials who delivered speeches alongside that agency’s chief, Wan Lijun, during the group’s August 2018 conference within Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, according to the UFWD agency.
Over the last 10 years, Ma Shurong has met with leaders from at least 10 regional ACFROC branches including officials from Anji, Foshan, Jiangmen, Kaiping, Shantou, Taishan, Wuyi, Yunfu, Guangzhou and Guangdong, during which he repeatedly promised to strengthen cooperation with ACFROC, a DCNF translation of Chinese government documents found.
In addition to his ACFROC positions, Ma Shurong is also listed as a “director” by the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), which is “an important platform through which the UFWD co-opts and interacts with overseas United Front figures,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a legislative branch commission created by Congress to monitor and investigate the national security implications of the relationships between the U.S. and China.
Ma Shurong has attended COFA conferences in China as well, including in 2019, with Chinese state media footage showing him smiling as General Secretary Xi Jinping greeted the UFWD agency’s top operatives. Four years prior, Ma Shurong was also among a group of select overseas Chinese leaders invited to meet with Xi Jinping when he visited Seattle in September 2015. Ma Shurong clapped for the dictator during his speech, Chinese state media footage shows.
Other UFWD arms have also identified Ma Shurong as a director, including the related China Overseas Exchange Association (COEA), which was an organization operating under the UFWD in its final years until it was subsumed by COFA in 2019, according to the Chinese government. As with ACFROC and COFA, Ma Shurong also attended COEA conferences in China, including one September 2017 meeting in Beijing, Chinese state media footage shows.
Adam Ma and his parents, Ma Shurong and Daisy Ma, all supported Bass’ 2022 mayoral campaign through fundraising and other activities, according to Chinese language news reports.
Ma Shurong and Adam Ma held a press conference endorsing Bass’ mayoral campaign in Los Angeles at the Golden Dragon Restaurant on Sept. 10, 2022, Chinese language news outlet ChineseNewsUSA.com reported. Daisy Ma also attended.
Several Chinese American lawmakers, including California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, endorsed Bass during the event, footage shows. One photo from the event that Bass posted to X shows her standing beside Ma Shurong, Daisy Ma and other supporters.
The next month, Ma Shurong held a fundraiser for Bass at the Golden Dragon Restaurant on Oct. 13, 2022, which netted over $40,000 for her campaign, Chinese language news outlet Huarenone.com reported. Adam Ma and his mother both donated $1,000 to Bass around this time, according to records on the California Secretary of State’s website.
After Bass won the mayoral election, Ma Shurong and his wife attended her inauguration on Dec. 12, 2022, according to a Huarenone.com report. Bass was photographed at the event with both Ma Shurong and his wife, images accompanying the article show.
“From the start we decided to support her and feel happy that she will become the new mayor of Los Angeles,” Ma Shurong told reporters, before adding that he was also happy his son would be joining her team, according to a DCNF translation of the report.
Daisy Ma did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Adam Ma joined Bass’ team in December 2022 as a director of both her transition office and commission appointments, according to his LinkedIn profile.The next month, Bass served as the grand marshal during the Los Angeles Chinese Lunar New Year parade in January 2023, ABC News reported. During the parade, Adam Ma rode with the mayor in the city‘s vehicle, photos Bass included in an X post reveal.
Ma Shurong also participated in the parade, footage from the event shows, and was photographed by Sing Tao in a group photo with Bass, Chu and a former Los Angeles Police Department reserve commander named Chester Chong, who has also held multiple positions within UFWD arms like COFA and COEA, the DCNF previously reported.
As a representative for Bass, Adam Ma also attended another Chinese Lunar New Year banquet in Los Angeles in February 2023 held by the Chinese American Unity Alliance, according to ChineseNewsUSA.com. The Chinese American Unity Alliance is a nonprofit that is run by Ma Shurong and his wife, according to business records filed with the California Secretary of State.
Two officials from the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate also attended that banquet, including An Mingshuan, according to ChineseNewsUSA.com, whom the UFWD identifies as its consul. On behalf of Bass, Adam Ma presented his father and the nonprofit with a framed congratulatory award during the banquet, according to the ChineseNewsUSA.com report and accompanying photos.
Several months later, Adam Ma began working as Bass’ liaison for Asian Americans and the “LGBTQIA+” community in May 2023, his LinkedIn profile states. Adam Ma again rode with the mayor in the city’s vehicle during the June 2024 Los Angeles gay pride parade, footage Bass posted to X shows.
Adam Ma remains active in the Los Angeles mayor’s office and was recently photographed with Bass and others commemorating “Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month” on May 2, 2025.
The City of Los Angeles paid Adam Ma $129,534.10 in 2024, according to the California State Controller’s Office.
“CCP influence campaigns target local elected officials just like our national leaders,” New York Times bestselling author of “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win,” Peter Schweizer, told the DCNF. “In many ways they can be even more effective there. Mayor Bass needs to come clean about her ties to these funders.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2025-06-17 06:00:192025-06-17 12:12:43EXCLUSIVE: How Chinese Intel Infiltrated LA Mayor Karen Bass’ Camp
President Donald Trump explained that he is planning on having his administration target Democratic cities as a part of its latest deportation efforts.
Trump posted a Truth Social on Sunday that he is directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to expand its deportation operations to “America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.” The president added that these cities are the “core of the Democrat Power Center.” Trump explained his Truth Social while at the G7 Summit on Monday, telling reporters that he wants to go after “sanctuary cities” because they have been “overrun by criminals.”
“I want them to focus on the cities, because the cities are where you really have what’s called sanctuary cities, and that’s where the people are. I look at New York. I look at Chicago. I mean, you got a really bad governor in Chicago and a bad mayor, but the governor is probably the worst in the country — Pritzker — but I look at how that city has been overrun by criminals,” Trump said, naming New York and Los Angeles as well.
“Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country. Of that, vast numbers of those people were murderous killers, people from gangs, people from jails, they empty their jails out into the U.S.,” he continued. “Most of those people are in the cities, all blue cities, all Democrat-run cities and they think they’re going to use them to vote. It’s not going to happen.”
The Trump administration has increased its pressure on leaders of sanctuary cities over the last several weeks. Tom Homan told NBC News government officials could face consequences if they obstruct federal agents’ official actions in response to rioting in Los Angeles, California, that resulted from ICE raids. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Democratic Illinois Gov J.B. Pritzker later responded in a House Oversight Committee hearing, daring Homan to come and arrest them.
In May, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a comprehensive list of cities, counties and states that were allegedly refusing to cooperate with ICE. The list was later removed after some city leaders argued they shouldn’t be on the list, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller that the list would soon be reinstated.
“These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!” he added.
Gen. Hussein Yazdanpana is the leader of the Parti Azadi Kurdistan (“Kurdistan Freedom Party,” PAK), one of the major militant groups from Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat, the Kurdistan region under Iran’s rule).[1]
As soon as Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iran started, known as Operation Rising Lion, Gen. Hussein Yazdanpana called on the youth of Kurdistan, both inside and outside Iran, to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Following are some of Gen. Hussein Yazdanpana’s tweets from June 13, 2025:[2]
Yazdanpana: The Time For Uprising And Overthrow Of The Regime Has Come
Yazdanpana tweeted:“[Israel’s Operation Rising Lion] has ushered in a historic moment. Tehran, confronted by a vastly superior power, stands disgraced and politically exposed.”
He wrote: “We firmly support Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against the Islamic Republic. The destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure and war machine will pave the way for the liberation of the people and bring an end to the regime’s aggressive and terrorist activities in the region and across the world.”
“Iran’s military infrastructure will never be rebuilt. The regime’s repressive forces have collapsed. The time has come to seize military bases and government centers, ” he tweeted.
“[The Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei is lying! Residential areas have not been attacked [by Israel]. What has been attacked are military sites and the hideouts of the commanders of the terrorist IRGC,” he said.
“It is time for the armed groups to turn their weapons against the criminal commanders [of the IRGC],” he wrote.
He tweeted: “The time for uprising and overthrow of the regime has come. The regime’s machine of repression has been completely broken.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Middle East Media Research Institutehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMiddle East Media Research Institute2025-06-17 05:17:382025-06-17 05:24:11Hussein Yazdanpana The Kurdish Leader Calls For The Toppling Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran: ‘We Firmly Support Israel’s Operation Rising Lion Against The Islamic Republic’
Did you know the head of the American Federation of Teacher’s Union Randi Weingarten is a childless lesbian and leftist supporter of the “No Kings” movement?
Is there any wonder why the LGBTQ+ agenda has been so prevalent in public education where indoctrination seems more important than education?
At a SB meeting I attended and spoke, Lisa Miller made a statement that people attending SB meetings who have no children in PCPS should not be allowed to speak at SB meetings apparently completely forgetting that many are property owners and pay the taxes that pay for PCPS and her salary as a SB member. She later tried to walk this back. Did you also know that SB member Kay Fields speaking in support of LGBTQ+Pride Proclamation (which Miller also supported) stated that she saw approving this as her “pathway to heaven”. Fortunately, the Proclamation failed. Remember this when they both run for SB again in 2026.
What Miller and Fields should have said is that a childless lesbian woman should not be the head ot the American Federation of Teachers union.
Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, also is saying sayonara to his post at the conflict-consumed DNC.
The Democratic Party is deeply unpopular, at odds with most of the electorate on several key issues, estranged from the working class, and roiled by infighting. It’s becoming increasingly clear from recent personnel changes that hatred for President Donald Trump is not enough to hold the party together.
American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten, the childless leftist who helped undermine the mental and physical health of a generation of kids by fighting to keep them out of the classroom during the pandemic, has announced that she is leaving the Democratic National Committee.
Like David Hogg — the gun-grab activist who announced Wednesday that he was not running again for the DNC vice chair position seemingly stolen from him by Democratic election deniers — Weingarten appears to have an issue with DNC Chairman Ken Martin and the current state of play within the party.
Weeks before her hysterical speech at the No Kings rally in Philadelphia, Weingarten noted in a June 5 letter to Martin obtained by Politico that she is honored to have served as an at-large member of the DNC since 2002, on its rules and bylaws committee for the past 15 years, and as a delegate to each of the Democratic conventions for the past three decades.
[ … ]
“While I am proud to be a Democrat, I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging, and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities,” wrote the lesbian union boss, who collects an annual salary of well over $450,000.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Royal A. Brown IIIhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRoyal A. Brown III2025-06-17 04:58:002025-06-17 05:00:22Did You Know the Head of the American Federation of Teacher’s Union is a Childless Lesbian?
MINNEAPOLIS – Vance Boelter, the suspect accused of shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers, killing one and her husband, was captured on Sunday, multiple law enforcement sources confirmed to Fox News.
Boelter, 57, was captured in Sibley County after a two-day manhunt. He allegedly killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, early Saturday morning at their Brooklyn Park home in Minneapolis. He also allegedly shot State Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in their nearby Champlin home in a related attack.
The Sibley County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News that Boelter “verbally” identified himself to authorities searching for him in the area on Sunday evening.
“The face of evil. After relentless and determined police work, the killer is now in custody,” the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. “Thanks to the dedication of multiple agencies working together along with support from the community, justice is one step closer.”
Speaking at a press conference alongside other law enforcement officers after Boelter’s arrest, Brooklyn Park Police Department Chief Mark Bruley said there were more than 20 different SWAT teams involved in the search. He described it as “the largest manhunt in the state’s history.”
The manhunt included officers from multiple agencies on foot as well as the use of a helicopter.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2025-06-16 15:23:032025-06-16 15:27:34Democrat Assassin Vance Boelter Arrested Alive for Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman and Her Husband’s Murders
As the world processes reports of Israeli airstrikes against the Iranian regime’s military and nuclear weapons program, Christians should think carefully about how to respond. On one hand, we lament the loss of human life that wars bring as we follow our Lord in affirming, “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). On the other hand, we also learn from Jesus that “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6) will characterize this fallen world until he returns.
Recognizing that there sometimes is “a time for war” (Ecclesiastes 3:8), Christian theologians since the fourth century have developed universal principles for Just War — that is, defining the conditions under which war is justified. “Just War Theory actually goes back to [the fourth-century theologian] Augustine… who kind of articulated some of these principles,” said David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview, “and it’s been expanded upon since then.”
In a March interview on “Washington Watch,” Closson outlined six principles of Just War Theory:
First, “There needs to be a just cause. You can’t just go to war for any reason. … This rules out a war of aggression from the start.”
Second, “There has to be right intention. A nation goes to war to end grave injustice or to restore peace. You can’t just go to war because you don’t like your enemy, you don’t like the nation next door. You can’t go simply because of vengeance.”
Third, “A just war needs to be waged by a legitimate authority. This would rule out individual actors or groups.”
Fourth, “War should be a last resort. … Christians should never be the people itching to go to war. You exhaust all options before you think about war.”
Fifth, “There would need to be proportionate objectives — all things considered, in terms of loss of life that might be lost or money that might be lost. … The things that you might lose in a war can outweigh what you’re trying to remedy.”
Sixth, “There needs to be a reasonable chance of success. I would point people to Luke chapter 14.” In describing the cost of discipleship, Jesus uses this metaphor, “Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace” (Luke 14:31-32).
These principles provide a framework for analyzing Israel’s airstrikes against the Iranian regime through a biblical worldview. Because Israel’s strike meets each criterion, these principles also provide six reasons why Israel’s strike against Iran was justified, reordered below:
Just Cause: Self-Defense against Annihilation
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi complained in a letter to the U.N. that Israel’s airstrikes “amount to a declaration of war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
But Israel’s war with Iran did not begin on Friday morning. Israel’s war with Iran began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas — supported by and subservient to Iran — launched a surprise attack against Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, injuring thousands, and capturing more than 200.
Immediately after Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel was thrown into a multi-front war against Iran’s extensive network of terrorist proxies in Gaza (Hamas), Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Yemen (the Houthis), as well as smaller outfits fighting from Judea, Samaria, Syria, and Iraq. On October 1, 2024, Iran itself launched missiles at Israel in response to Israeli forces invading Hezbollah-controlled territory in Lebanon.
While not every front in the war sees constant fighting, they are not random or disconnected. The Iranian regime seeks Israel’s annihilation as a necessary implication of its Islamist ideology, and both Israel and Iran understand this genocidal intent. In recent years, Iran has grown steadily closer to obtaining the weapons it needs to turn its ambition into reality.
“For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have brazenly, openly called for Israel’s destruction,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the airstrikes. “They’ve backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop nuclear weapons.”
Nearly two years ago, Iran and its proxies attacked Israel, with the avowed purpose of destroying the nation. Israel has deftly beaten back the lesser attacks. But, unless the Israeli government wanted Iranian nukes to destroy its cities, it had to strike Iran itself.
Right Intention: Crippling Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program
This points to Israel’s intention to carry out the strikes. Israel’s purpose was not to seize territory, take revenge on enemies, or gain worldly glory. As Netanyahu explained it, Israel carried out “a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival” by destroying its nuclear weapons program.
Thus, Israel did not bomb cities, civilian infrastructure, or ports. They bombed nuclear enrichment facilities, nuclear scientists, and (to further ensure their safety) the generals who would likely mount a counterattack.
Proportionate Objectives: Strikes against Legitimate Military Targets
These actions also fulfill the Just War principle of proportionality. This principle does not envision a sort of eye-for-eye equality in strikes, as the Biden administration often conceived it. Rather, it envisions means that are proportional to the ends. Israel sought to protect itself from a nuclear Holocaust by crippling Iran’s nuclear weapon program (it would obviously like to escape a conventional missile barrage, too). Therefore, Israel struckelements of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, along with related defenses, and the generals who might oversee a retaliatory strike.
Reasonable Chance of Success: Israel Previously Devastated Iran’s Air Defenses
Israel had ample reason to believe its airstrikes would be successful because it carried out preliminary strikes only months earlier. On October 26, 2024 (weeks after Iran’s missile barrage against Israel), the Israeli air force put on a dominant performance in Iranian airspace, demolishing Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses, missile and drone production sites, and other targets. Israeli planes prowled the sky for hours, carrying out 140 sorties across Iran, then returning home with no casualties.
The effect of this previous strike is that it left Iran vulnerable to future air attacks, particularly against its nuclear weapons program (Israel did not attack Iran’s nuclear weapons program in October due to intense pressure from the Biden administration).
“Israel will be able to operate there freely because they don’t have an anti-aircraft shield,” explained Caroline Glick, now a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “If we attack again, will be able to just hover over any city, basically, in Iran that we need to, in order to attack the targets that we need to take out — whether it’s oil infrastructure, whether it’s nuclear infrastructure, or regime targets.”
Legitimate Authority: Netanyahu Is the Legal Head of Israel’s Government
Speaking of Netanyahu, his position automatically fulfills this next principle of just war. The prime minister is the legitimate head of the Israeli government. He leads a coalition government that controls a majority of seats in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, which is popularly elected according to the Israeli constitution. This government, in turn, exercises authority over the Israeli military through the War Cabinet. Thus, the strikes were ordered by Israel’s legitimate authority.
This may seem obvious or overly simplistic, but it serves to highlight the contrast between Israel and most of its enemies. Iran’s terrorist proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis — are not legitimate authorities of nation states. They are terrorist militias that illegally seized territory by force. This is significant because, by definition, lawful authorities have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, making all the attacks of these groups inherently illegal. And all these groups have taken their marching orders from the Iranian regime (which may be the legitimate ruler of its own territory, but not the territory of other nations).
Last Resort: All Diplomatic Efforts Failed to Dissuade Iran from Pursuing a Nuclear Weapon
Israel’s military strike on Iran’s uranium enrichment sites and other elements of its covert nuclear weapons came after all possible diplomatic efforts failed to dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. Even if they could not know precisely how much time was on the clock, Israel knew that time was running out, so they threw this buzzer-beater.
Iran has “taken steps that it has never taken before to weaponize” its rapidly growing stockpile of enriched uranium, said Netanyahu. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time — it could be a year, it could be within a few months. This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival.”
The issue came to a head on Thursday, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officially ruled that Iran had not complied with its treaty requirements to submit to external oversight of its nuclear stockpiles. Such a ruling could reinstate severe U.N. sanctions against Iran. In response to this step — the diplomatic nuclear option, if you will — Iran furiously announced plans to accelerate its uranium enrichment by opening a new facility. It also threatened that, if sanctioned, it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In 55 years, the only country to withdraw from the NPT is North Korea, which did so when it developed its first nuclear weapons.
“Over the past several decades, Western powers have tried to avoid this eventuality through sanctions against Iran, endless diplomacy, Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal, and the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign of Trump’s first term,” wrote the National Review editors. “Multiple acts of sabotage and other covert activities by Israel set back Iran’s program at various points. But ultimately, Iran would not give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and Israelis had no choice but to act.”
This is, perhaps, the most debated point. State Department spokesman Ned Price called Israel’s attack “premature” because “diplomacy had not run its course.” But American diplomatic efforts have also not changed Iran’s position, which is that it has the right to enrich as much uranium as it wants, to levels far beyond what is necessary for civilian nuclear purposes.
On Thursday, Trump wrote that he had given “Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” and he warned the regime to strike a deal now or else there would be “much more to come” from Israel.
Conclusion
The fact that war is an unavoidable feature of our fallen world does not mean Christians should be fond of it. Even just wars, as outlined above, are permissible only under narrow conditions, as a last resort, by the proper authority.
By contrast, Christians are entrusted with “the ministry of reconciliation,” writes Paul, “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
Christians should act and pray for peace, “because God can do what man cannot,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire” (Psalm 46:9). Sometimes, God even destroys not-yet-made nuclear missiles by means of other weapons.
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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2025-06-16 12:47:522025-06-16 15:02:386 Reasons Why Israel’s Strike against Iran Was Justified
“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Most people think that consuming the news makes one an informed citizen who is equipped to form intelligent opinions on social and political issues. In this video, drawing from the Swiss author Rolf Dobelli’s book Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life, we argue that the opposite is true: news consumption fosters ignorance, intolerance, passivity, and chronic stress.
“News organisations want you to believe they’re giving you a competitive advantage. Plenty of people fall for this. In fact, consuming the news is far from a competitive advantage; it actively disadvantages you…There’s no question that the dross we’re spoon-fed every day is not only completely worthless but actively damaging.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
To understand one of the problems with news consumption, we can turn to a well-known set of experiments conducted by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in the 1960s. In these studies, rats were subjected to electric shocks. One group could stop the shocks by turning a wheel; the other group had no means of escape. The first group of rats did not display any adverse effects to the shocks, but the rats that were powerless to stop the shocks developed what Seligman and Maier called learned helplessness — which is a condition marked by passivity, reduced motivation, and anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure.
In many ways, the news functions like these electric shocks. We are continually bombarded with distressing reports that provoke stress, anxiety, fear, and a sense of hopelessness. Yet instead of turning off the news or taking meaningful action on the issues that concern us, we continue – day after day, year after year – to expose ourselves to this steady stream of negativity. In doing so, we place ourselves in a similar position to the helpless rats and we gradually develop a learned helplessness that insidiously seeps into our personal life. Or as Dobelli writes:
“…learned helplessness doesn’t just make us passive about what’s on the news…Learned helplessness spills over into every area of our lives. Once the news has made us passive, we tend to behave passively towards our family and our jobs as well – precisely where we do have room for manoeuvre. British media researcher Jodie Jackson takes a similar view: ‘When we tune into the news, we are constantly confronted with unresolved problems and the narrative does not inspire much hope that they will ever be solved.’ It’s no surprise, then, that we feel depressed when we consume the news, which confronts us with problems that are mostly impossible to solve.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Another major problem with news consumption is that it promotes ignorance. Thomas Jefferson recognized this in 1807 when he wrote that:
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.”
Thomas Jefferson, Memoirs, Correspondence, Private Letters
One of the reasons the news leaves us less informed is because it radically oversimplifies what it reports on. The world is a complex system, and social, political, and environmental issues are not linear phenomena with one or two clear causes. They are chaotic, non-linear processes shaped by hundreds, if not thousands, of interwoven factors – far beyond the capacity of the human mind to fully comprehend. Yet instead of acknowledging this complexity with intellectual humility and grappling with it through in-depth reporting, the news reduces events to simplistic narratives, sound bites, and catchphrases – which it presents as the truth. In doing so, the news distorts the reality of what it claims to explain. Or as Dobelli writes:
“Any journalist who writes ‘The market fell because of X’ or ‘The company went bankrupt because of Y’ is either an idiot or trying to pull the wool over their readers’ eyes. True, X and Y may well have had a causal impact, but this is far from proven – and other influences may well have been much more significant…News has to be extremely short even as it tells a story. This can only be done through a brutal process of simplification…Since the news is so telescoped, it’s necessarily a bullshit explanation…In this way consumers are given the illusion that the world is simpler and more explicable than it actually is, and the quality of their decision-making suffers.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
To make matters worse, these simplified explanations of social and political events are far from unbiased. Rather, they are filtered through the news outlet’s political agenda and shaped by the interests of government agencies and corporate advertisers. The media entrepreneur Clay Johnson admitted that: “For every reporter in the United States, there are more than four public relations specialists working hard to get them to write what their bosses want them to say.” (Clay Johnson, The Information Diet) The 20th century American writer Upton Sinclair asked: “When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda?”(Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check) Or as Dobelli echoes:
“These days it’s much harder to distinguish between truthful, unbiased news items and those with an ulterior motive. There’s a vast industry of lobbying and leverage at work behind the scenes.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
By concealing its political biases, ulterior motives, and manipulative intentions behind reductive narratives and simplistic explanations that make the world seem far more comprehensible than it is, the news cultivates an intellectual hubris in its consumers. Today, many people hold strong opinions on virtually every issue amplified by the media, and with each new trending news topic, public discourse and social media are flooded with self-assured commentary. In effect, the news is cultivating a population of true believers; that is, individuals who are so convinced they know the truth that they are intolerant and even hateful toward those who hold opposing views. Hence, news consumption deepens societal polarization, erodes the possibility of civic discourse, and turns neighbors who might otherwise be friends into ideological enemies.
In an age when, thanks in large part to the news, the average citizen is highly opinionated, profoundly ignorant, and increasingly intolerant, the following wisdom of Marcus Aurelius is sorely needed:
‘You are at liberty not to form opinions about all and sundry, thereby sparing your soul unrest.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Or as Dobelli echoes:
“…it’s a serious mistake to think we need to form an opinion about everything. Ninety per cent of our opinions are superfluous. Yet the news is constantly urging us to form opinions. This robs us of concentration and inner peace…if you unleash a whirlwind of news on the population, it polarises the public…News and comments about the news bring out the worst in humanity…You only have to read the comments underneath any online article. The hatred you find there is alarming…”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Consuming the news also erodes our ability to think deeply and sustain focus. In the past, the amount of news one could consume was limited by the distribution of newspapers or the production of an evening news broadcast. Today, twenty-four-hour news channels, websites, and social media feeds bombard us with a never-ending stream of news headlines that keep our minds in a state of perpetual distraction. According to the Pew Research Center, the average person consumes about 60 news items a day, or 20,000 a year. And as researchers at the University of Tokyo have observed, the greater number of news items one consumes the fewer neurons they have in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain critical for attention, impulse control, and moral reasoning. And as Dobelli writes:
“If you watch a news junkie, you’ll see this in action: their concentration span shrinks and they have trouble controlling their emotions…I always notice that the most passionate consumers of the news – even if they were once also passionate bookworms – no longer have the ability to read longer articles or books. After four or five pages they get tired, their attention dissipates, and they get restless. It’s not because they’re getting older or busier. Rather, the physical structure of their brain has changed.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
The news also feeds the undercurrents of stress and anxiety that plague modern life. Producers of the news exploit our negativity bias, or our predisposition to react more strongly to negative information than positive, with reports of wars, heinous crimes, riots, political gossip and turmoil, economic instability, potential pandemics and climate catastrophes. Graham Davey, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sussex University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, has demonstrated through his research that the more one consumes news the more stress and anxiety one suffers in daily life. And given that stress inhibits the functioning of our immune system and is implicated in a wide range of disease, we can safely say the news is making us sick. Or as Dobelli writes:
“…consuming the news reduces your quality of life. You will be more stressed, more on edge, more susceptible to disease, and you’ll die earlier. That’s an especially sad piece of news – but one that does, at least, deserve your attention.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Because the news is so damaging to individual and societal well-being, Dobelli advocates for radical abstinence – cutting the news out of our lives entirely. For those skeptical about giving it up for good, Dobelli suggests we experiment with abstaining from the news for 30 days. During this period, the psychological and emotional benefits of news abstention become apparent and as Dobelli notes, very few who try this experiment will choose to go back. Or as he writes:
“During the initial stage of abstinence…you’ll have to literally force yourself not to consume any news…So – what should you do if you relapse? The same thing an alcoholic would: simply start again, reinstituting a zero-tolerance policy…For ten years I’ve consistently practised what I preach. The impact on my quality of life and decision-making has been remarkable. Try it. You’ve got nothing to lose. You have so much to gain.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Abstaining from the news does not mean we have to stick our head in the sand and remain ignorant about important social, political, and world events. For we have access to a wide range of informational sources that can help us stay informed without falling prey to the pitfalls of news consumption. Long-form content, such as books, well-researched articles, podcasts, documentaries, textbooks, online courses, and academic journals, offer the depth and nuance needed to do greater justice to the complexity of world events, in a way that the news – with its short-form, oversimplified, biased reporting – cannot.
“Read books and long articles that do justice to the complexity of the world…After a few months, you’ll be rewarded with a clearer understanding of the world…Long-form pieces are the opposite of the news…Much of their content is valuable, providing new insights and background information. But be careful: these formats are far from a guarantee of relevance.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
With a clearer understanding of the world, we are better equipped to act as a genuine force for good in society. Dobelli notes that when he raises the idea of abstaining from the news, many respond with the following concern: If we stop following the news, who will hold the powerful accountable and drive social change? Yet given that the news manipulates public opinion — frequently to the advantage of those in power — and fosters learned helplessness rather than action, it should come as no surprise that “the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, [and] the fall of the Soviet Union… did not need current affairs programmes, news websites or feeds.” (Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News)The most influential figures of these movements informed themselves – and inspired others – through books, pamphlets, public gatherings, speeches, debates, and meaningful conversation. For example, during the American Revolution Thomas Paine’s 47-page pamphlet Common Sense was profoundly influential in sparking revolutionary sentiment in America.
“How did people stay informed? They thought, and they debated…Is political discourse even possible without the news? This question suggests that one can only form a well-founded opinion via the news media. Yet that isn’t true.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
While abstaining from the news can reduce our ignorance and make us more aware of social issues, it also gives us the opportunity to redirect our attention toward what truly matters and what we can influence — our mental and physical health, our relationships, and our work. Two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus opened his Enchiridion with the timeless insight: “Some things are in our control and others are not.” He went on to teach that peace of mind and a flourishing life depend on investing our time and energy on what lies within our power. And as Dobelli continues:
“Nintey-nine point nine per cent of all world events are outside your control…Devote your energies to things you can influence. There are more than enough of those – but an earthquake on the other side of the planet isn’t one of them.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
According to the Pew Research Center, the average American spends between 58 and 96 minutes a day consuming news. Over the course of a year, this amounts to nearly an entire month of news consumption. But given the many harms we have explored, news consumption is more than just an enormous waste of time – it is a kind of mental poison. In choosing to abstain from the news, we cleanse and detoxify our mind and improve our psychological health.
“Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Or as Dobelli concludes:
“The news is mental pollution. Keep your brain clean. It’s your most important organ…Still worried about missing ‘something important’? In my experience, when something truly important happens, you hear about it even if you’re living in a protected news-cocoon…Big news will inevitably leak out and find you…And if somehow you don’t hear about the bus attack, it doesn’t matter. On the contrary, you should be pleased. Worse things may be happening on other planets, and we are comfortable remaining in the dark.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Academy of Ideashttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAcademy of Ideas2025-06-16 06:17:322025-06-16 06:25:57VIDEO: Why the News Promotes Ignorance and Mental Illness
USAID official and three company executives plead guilty in fraud and bribery scheme involving at least 14 contracts worth over $550 million
USAID Official Roderick Watson took bribes, was showered with lavish gifts— including cash, laptops, thousands of dollars in tickets to a suite at an NBA game, a country club wedding, down payments on two residential mortgages, cell phones, and jobs for relatives.
In exchange for the bribe payments, Watson influenced the award of contracts by manipulating the procurement process at USAID.
Watson faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
Three government contractors and a USAID official have pleaded guilty to a scheme involving paying bribes in order to steer more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid contracts, the Department of Justice said Friday.
Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting officer, admitted to steering money to multiple companies in exchange for more than $1 million in bribes.
“Watson exploited his position at USAID to line his pockets with bribes in exchange for more than $550 million in contracts,” Guy Ficco of IRS Criminal Investigation said in a statement. “While he helped three company owners and presidents bypass the fair bidding process, he was showered with cash and lavish gifts.”
The scheme was possible because of the federal government’s racial “set-aside” laws known as 8(a) contracting, which allow contracting officers to give contracts to companies owned by minorities, women, or veterans without the usual competitive process.
Walter Barnes III, the founder of a Baltimore-area company predicated on taking advantage of those laws, admitted to paying bribes, including a country-club wedding, cash, and a trip to Martha’s Vineyard.
Barnes’s company is called Vistant, previously known as PM Consulting Group. It was awarded contracts on the pretense that it was “disadvantaged” because Barnes is black, even as it took in tens of millions of dollars. Barnes used a public defender in his court case, drawing a rebuke from the judge that he presumably had ample resources to pay for his own lawyer.
Also pleading guilty was Darryl Britt, the founder of 8(a) contracting firm Apprio Inc., which is received $271 million in federal contracts since 2004. Both companies also admitted criminal liability.
Beginning in 2013, Britt — a member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Business Board of Advisers — bribed Watson to award contracts to Apprio. When an 8(a) firm becomes too large, it “graduates” from its “disadvantaged” status. But minority contracting laws are notoriously exploited, with minority-owned firms existing simply to win contracts, then subcontracting out the work to other firms. That is often done openly, and above board, with “joint ventures.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2025-06-16 06:00:142025-06-16 06:01:17USAID Official and Three Corporate Executives Plead Guilty $550 Million in Fraud, Bribery Using DEI
Last month, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told an enraged crowd of Islamists that President Trump’s statements weren’t even “worthy of a response.”
As the crowd chanted “Death to America”, Iran’s leader called Trump a liar, and warned that, “America should leave the region, and leave it will.” Then he called for the destruction of the Jewish State while the crowd chanted, “Death to Israel.”
The only question was whether America and Israel would take the regime’s threats seriously.
That question was answered when Israel, after two decades of trying to get the mostly fictitious “international community” to do something about Iran’s nuclear program, finally took action.
The endless negotiations in pursuit of an impossible deal that would somehow allow Iran to have nuclear technology without nuclear weapons were based on refusing to listen to what the Islamist terror regime said, as recently as weeks ago, and refusing to believe that it meant it.
To believe in a nuclear deal, you also had to believe that a terror state that gets its electricity from its abundant natural gas resources for a fraction of the cost of our electricity wanted a civilian nuclear program. To believe in any kind of deal with Iran, you had to believe, as the New York Times insisted to sell Obama’s nuke deal, that Iran “has a complicated relationship with the phrase” and that when it says, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, it doesn’t really mean it.
“The situation between America and Iran is this: When you chant ‘Death to America!’ it is not just a slogan – it is a policy,” Ayatollah Khamenei explained in 2023.
What did that policy look like in practice?
“‘Death to America’ means death to Trump,” Khamenei previously warned.
Last year, an Iranian operative was charged in a plot by the IRGC, Iran’s terror arm, to assassinate Trump before Election Day. The “complicated relationship” wasn’t so complicated and it’s not a metaphor. “Death to Trump” literally meant trying to kill the president. “Death to America” means the destruction of America. And “Death to Israel” means just what it says.
Apologists for the Jihadist regime in Tehran try to pretend that it’s about our foreign policy, but beyond chanting for the destruction of America, Israel and England, the chants at the Khamenei speech included “Death to the hypocrites and infidels” (meaning the deaths of all non-Muslims and insufficiently devout Muslims) and death to those who oppose the supreme power of Sharia Islamic jurisprudence in the form of its Ayatollahs, Mullahs and other theocratic tyrants.
According to Ayatollah Khomeini anyone who did not believe that Mohammed, Islam’s genocidal warlord prophet was a messenger of Allah, is defined as an infidel, and the only thing to do is to convert him, enslave him or kill him. “If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the earth, the infidel’s moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him.”
Opposing the Ayatollahs just made America one of the first ‘infidels’ in line for destruction.
Not as a metaphor or a complicated relationship, but as violently graphic as the Muslim terrorists jumping up and down on the body of Navy diver Robert Stethem and then putting up a microphone to his face to broadcast the screams or removing the skin from the face of Colonel William R. Higgins before castrating, killing him and dumping his body near a mosque.
That’s ‘Death to America’.
The Israelis, who live much closer to Iran than we do, did not decide to escape into the extended Carter administration diplomatic dreamworlds about a deal with Iran. They understood that Iran was serious and they acted. Whatever we do or don’t do about Iran, we would be fools to pretend that the Islamic terrorist regime isn’t serious about wanting us dead.
And bigger fools to act like we can bribe or negotiate our way out of the threat.
Right now, Israel is doing our work for us in fighting Islamic terrorists. It’s doing it even though our elected officials keep sending mixed messages, undermining Israel, calling for restraint and pretending that the Middle East would be more stable if it were dominated by the terrorists.
Obama already tried that with the Arab Spring. It turned out the same way Carter’s Iran tampering and every experiment in nation building and democracy by the Bushes, Clinton and other administrations did. Instead of standing up to Muslim terrorists, we let ourselves be intimidated by them, by their sheer numbers, by their destructiveness and willingness to die.
But Israel, far smaller than us, a country tiny enough that you can walk its width, stood up to an entire region. Iran is 80 times Israel’s size, has 9 times its population and yet Israel did what so many of our administrations feared to do. Why? Because Israel understood what we deny.
Israel knew that the calls for genocide are real and that the alternative to action is death.
Faced with the threat of death, Israel instead brought death to the IRGC leaders of Iran’s death machine, to its commanders and struck at the machinery of its ballistic missile and nuclear program meant to kill millions. Its secret wasn’t just its brilliant strategy, but its grip on reality.
Israel took Iran seriously and acted seriously. It faced down death threats and delivered death to the terrorist enemies of civilization. That is what serious nations do. Unserious ones play word games and take refuge in wishful thinking. As we confront not only Iran, but Islamic terrorists around the world and in our own country, it’s time we get serious too.
If our enemies want to kill us, we have a choice between killing them or letting them kill us.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2025-06-16 05:39:162025-06-16 05:43:41Israel took ‘Death to Israel’ seriously. We should take ‘Death to America’ seriously.
For the past several months at the very least, President Donald Trump has dominated headlines. His populist economic and immigration policies, conflicts with federal courts, and interactions with foreign governments have captured the public’s attention for weeks on end. But despite the Democrat-led outrage against the president’s most controversial agenda items, blue voters are significantly unhappy with their party’s leadership.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, most Americans (70%) disapprove of congressional Democrats’ job performance, while only 21% approve. However, a majority (53%) of Democratic voters themselves disapprove of congressional Democrats’ job performance, compared to only 41% who approve.
In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter explained, “Lately the Democrats have been on the wrong side of many of the so-called 80%-20% issues, but one issue Democratic voters and the American general public agree on is a strong disapproval of how Democrats in Congress are handling themselves.” He continued, “Unfortunately for Democrats in Congress, their base of support and the public at large agree on this point for different reasons.”
“The American people gave Trump a second term, with the first national popular vote win for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, and a Republican Congress, to fix the border, enforce immigration law, tackle the cost-of-living crisis, bring some sanity to college campuses, end the pernicious gender ideology, and halt pro-abortion extremism,” Carpenter recounted. He continued, “The Democratic base is positioned diametrically opposite the Republican president and Congress on this agenda and want their elected representatives to do more to resist this agenda — which is incredibly popular among the average voting American.”
Carpenter concluded, “The Democrats in Congress are in a true catch-22. It would not be surprising to see some of the older Congressional Democrats announce their intentions to retire rather than run for reelection given their predicament.”
An Associated Press/NORC poll last month found that Democrats don’t have high hopes for their party’s future. Only 35% of Democratic voters were “optimistic” about the party going forward, compared to 36% who were “pessimistic.”
Some Democrats are disappointed with their elected representatives for not doing enough to oppose Trump and his agenda, despite Democrats introducing an attempt to impeach the president again and lobbying vociferously against his mass deportation program. But others are disenchanted with their party’s emphasis on policies and issues that, according to voters, are too extreme or too niche. A New York Times/IPSOS survey in February found that the majority of voters, including Democrats, consider the party to be out of touch with the priorities of most of America. Only 13% of Democrats, for example, listed LGBT issues as a top concern, while most voters reported that the emphasis the Democratic Party lays on LGBT issues is disproportionately high.
The Democratic Party was also found to be out of touch on economic issues. The overwhelming majority of Americans listed inflation and the economy as their top concerns, alongside health care and immigration, which aligned more closely with priorities voters ascribed to Republicans, while voters believed the Democrats’ top priorities to be abortion, LGBT issues, and climate change, none of which were issues voters considered important. A prior Gallup poll found that even though Democratic voters were more likely to rank abortion as a top issue than were Republicans or Independent voters, more Democrats cited the economy as a major concern.
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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2025-06-16 05:18:202025-06-16 05:23:16Majority of Dem Voters Disapprove of Congressional Democrats
Former President George W. Bush, at his many annual State of the Union addresses, spoke numerous times about the plight of the Iranian people. He once said, “If the Iranian people stand for themselves, the United States will stand with them.” Throughout his presidency, the Iranians, of all people, hailed Bush as a courageous President and an angel of freedom. While his popularity was surging in Iran, his approval rating at home was going down. Finally, the Iranian people realized the Bush’s love affair was all about Tehran’s nuclear ambition, not their freedom and liberty for the Iranian people. Like his predecessors, he was “all hat, no cattle.”
As time went on, Bush vowed that the Islamic Republic would never be allowed to achieve its goal of developing nuclear bombs on his watch. He kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the nuclear project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s selected president, things started heating up greatly. Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the ‘Great Satan’ and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights.
He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching an endless series of negotiators to meetings with Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time while working around the clock to get to Surge Capacity.
Iran’s desire for peaceful nuclear technology dates to the 1950s, when the Shah of Iran received technical assistance under the U.S. Atoms for Peace program. While this assistance ended with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity.” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.
A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule. In no time at all, the vicious Mullahs gutted the Iranian armed forces and executed many of its most capable officers.
Saddam Hussein watched gleefully as the Iranian military disintegrated, and found the opportunity to carry out his Pan Arabism ambition by attacking Iran. Some eight years of barbaric butchery killed and maimed millions on both sides, gutted the vibrant Iranian economy, and visited misery of all sorts upon the Iranian people. After Khomeini’s demise, another mullah, much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and reactivated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.
Years later, the MEK ‘whistleblower’ revealed Iran was cheating and had a secret nuclear weapons research program. Finally, the world witnessed firsthand proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon.
This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow, these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.
Fast forward:
With Obama at the helm, Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) reached a nuclear deal on July 14, 2015, known as ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’ that intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program and enhanced monitoring in exchange for relief from nuclear sanctions. This appeared to benefit the Islamic Republic while leaving the door open for Iran to secretly continue with its nuclear ambitions.
On May 2018, President Trump, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, and restated a crippling sanction on Iran.
The best predictor of the future is the past. The Mullahs are proven vicious mass killers. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence, and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been in the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, double-talk, double-dealing, and treachery. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs. History will prove that President Trump did the right thing.
This raw, despicable regime represents the inevitable result of Islam, and its calling card of terrorism is now marching from the Iranian focal point to all parts of the globe. For the past forty years, people in the West, especially in the United States, have been on the receiving end of a very sophisticated and convoluted campaign of disinformation and propaganda, dished out by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and its lobbyist organizations in the U.S. MOIS, learned its methodology directly from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamists who supported Khomeini were actually trained in the old Soviet Union.
My advice to the current administration is not to let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency.
Yet, if the mullahs get their hands on the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion, which is their trademark.
In short, the U.S. has, in secular Iranians, its best friends in the entire Islamic world. The U.S. must help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Amil Imanihttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAmil Imani2025-06-16 04:51:072025-06-16 04:52:11The Mullahs and the Nukes
Left-wing protesters on Saturday forced young children to take part in shouting obscenities directed at President Donald Trump during nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations, footage taken by the Daily Caller shows.
The “No Kings” protests took place in several cities across the United States, with some of them turning violent, including one in Portland, Oregon, where rioters stormed a facility used by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Reporters with the Daily Caller in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, California, observed children taking part in those demonstrations against Trump.
WATCH:
🚨 Little kid says “f*ck Trump” during ‘No Kings Day’ rally (mom tries to stop him)
In one video taken by a Daily Caller reporter in Washington, D.C., a young child can be seen using a microphone and saying “Fuck Trump” before his mother could snatch the microphone away. Many in the crowd laughed at the child’s comment.
A second video taken by a Daily Caller reporter in Los Angeles, where officials imposed a curfew after days of anti-ICE riots, showed a young girl beating apart a pinata in the form of Trump with a stick to the cheers of a crowd.
Some Democrats previously issued demands that ICE cease its operations in the Los Angeles area, claiming it was affecting the economy.
WATCH:
Video posted to social media on June 7 showed an individual, who the FBI later identified as Elpido Reyna in a post on X, throwing rocks at the windshields of vehicles containing federal law enforcement personnel with the FBI offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to Reyna’s arrest.
Two attempts on Trump’s life took place during the 2024 presidential campaign, one during a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the other in September 2024 while Trump was playing a round of golf in Florida. Ryan Wesley Routh, who was charged with the September 2024 attempted assassination, declared his intent to end Trump’s death in a letter, according to legal filings.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2025-06-16 04:19:472025-06-16 04:26:25Liberals Force Young Children To Participate In Violent, Vulgar Anti-Trump Protests
1. While RFK Jr struggles to get rid of the astonishing grip big pharma has on the entire set of regulatory bodies of the American medical system, Canada is insulting itself with narratives and dialectics on the issue.
Health and immunization experts are reassuring Canadians that vaccine guidance is independent and based on scientific rigor in Canada after all 17 members of the committee that provides vaccine guidance in the United States were abruptly purged this week.
Article content
U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. dismissed all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), long considered the gold standard of vaccine guidance. Kennedy said the move would restore trust in the medical establishment and vaccines.
In other words, although the US is trying to parse the actual beneficial medications and immunization products from a growing list of untested and often dangerous bunch of injections causing a mass health crisis in the US, Canadians should rest content that they should never feel a need to question the state, the medications, or the orders to take it.
Meanwhile, in Illinois:
Even if the mRNA shots were safe and effective, and even if these first thing after birth, taking a baby away for 10 hours and injecting it with whatever it is but claiming it’;s vitamin K, is, let’s say that calling it ultra-vires by the state is putting it too kindly. There is no excuse for a free nation to ever behave this way. At MOST the state should act as an advisory body suggesting to parents what their neonate might need. But this goes way past even the coercion we saw during Covid. This is taking the baby from the parents for something as trivial as a vitamin shot!
2. I believe this is what we use to define the word, “Dilemma”.
3. These are really very typical examples of contemporary Canadian media. This isn’t even rage bait or a call to action. This is the state of Canadian media as it is. And a large percentage of people believe it. Likely due to the boiling frog method by which it was done, or because people like to belong, or because people tend to elevate the state in their minds in much the same way they do entertainers who are well known. But for whatever reason, this is how a lot of people think. Enough that it makes trying to tell the truth about Iran or the Israeli-Iranian conflict as the evidence has presented itself for 30 years, very difficult.
Part of the difficulty is accepting the controlled opposition in places of tremendous influence. Like Tucker Carlson. And it pains me to say it as he was the only big-microphone during Covid who had people like Dr. Peter McCullough on and many other counter-narrative scientists concerning the vaxx and Covid narratives overall. But his opposition to any hostility towards Iran, who has been overtly fomenting genocidal and existential threats daily to Israel and equipping at least 2 major regional proxy armies, and having taken over at least 3 countries in the Middle East as puppet states. And then Tucker’s odd closeness with Alexander Dugin who may be the most capable of engineering divisiveness among the counter-revolutionaries in North America today, Tucker is worth close scrutiny at this point.
From 2021. What looks a lot like an active measure.
Tucker, as did 60 Minutesand most legacy media also brought on ranking USAF officials to talk about aliens harassing US bases and non-US bases. This was indeed an active measure, and a narrative attack for a global scale problem which of course, requires a global solution. So while Tucker was seemingly opposing the effort to make the world submit to a global health crisis, crashing all individual and national sovereignty, he added several logs to the fire of a unified response to a non-existent alien invasion. Although that narrative did come in handy when the US was testing killer drones for Ukraine to use against Russia more recently. The US media was quite content to let the alien explanation fill in the void for the military drones buzzing around NJ high rises. An obvious dress-rehearsal for this:
Drones similar to ones over NJ hit Russian apartment buildings
4. actually you kinda have to admire the brazen nature of this propaganda. This is right up there with Chemical Ali, for those who remember the first Gulf War and the Iraqi propagandist who claimed the American army was no where near Baghdad and they were winning the war as US tanks drove up right behind him. Mind you, the Trans movement and a great deal of the entirety of the Western belief system is really pretty much operating on the same degree of, oh what the hell, The Orwell Scale.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2025-06-15 14:54:252025-06-15 14:54:53A Few Very Recent Examples of Soviet Level Western Media Propaganda and Active Measures
For decades, the Islamic Republic has crushed the soul of Iran under its iron fist, a tyrannical regime that has bled its people dry, sowing terror, poverty, and despair. This monstrous machine, built on fanaticism and oppression, has choked the life from a proud nation, silencing voices with brutality, imprisoning dreamers, and executing dissenters.
But now, the ground shakes with the fury of a people awakening. The Iranian masses are rising, their rage a wildfire, fueled by years of suffering and ignited by a blazing truth: Israel, led by the indomitable Benjamin Netanyahu, has become their liberator, striking the regime’s heart with unrelenting force. This is no time for whispers or hesitation—this is the hour of thunder, the moment for Iran to seize its freedom and for Israel to repay an ancient debt forged by Cyrus the Great 2,500 years ago.
The Islamic Republic is a cancer, devouring Iran’s spirit and spreading its poison across the Middle East. It has turned a once-vibrant civilization into a prison, where women are beaten for showing their hair, where youth are tortured for daring to dream, and where entire communities are starved to fund the regime’s proxy wars.
The ayatollahs, cloaked in false piety, have looted Iran’s wealth to build missiles and militias, leaving millions in poverty while their Revolutionary Guards crush skulls and break spirits. This is not governance—it is slavery. The regime’s nuclear ambitions, a dagger aimed at the world, have only tightened the noose around Iran’s neck, chaining its people to a future of isolation and fear.
But the chains are breaking. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, a relentless storm of precision strikes, has smashed the regime’s nuclear facilities, obliterated its military command, and gutted its ballistic missile arsenal. Over 200 targets— command centers, enrichment sites, fuel depots—lie in ruins, their ashes a testament to Israel’s resolve.
Netanyahu, a warrior-king in the mold of ancient heroes, has not merely attacked; he has unleashed a reckoning. “We will hit every site, every target of the ayatollah regime,” he declared, his words a clarion call to a people yearning for liberation. The regime’s leaders, from Khamenei to his bloodthirsty generals, are not just shaken; they are packing their bags, their grip on power crumbling as Israel’s jets roar over Tehran.
This is no coincidence but destiny. Over 2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, Persia’s enlightened ruler, freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity, restoring their dignity and homeland. Now, Benjamin Netanyahu repays that ancient debt, not with words but fire and steel.
Israel’s strikes are not just military—they are a beacon, a call to arms for every Iranian who has suffered under the regime’s boot. “The time has come for the Iranian people to unite around your flag and its historic legacy,” Netanyahu thundered, echoing the cry of “Woman, Life, Freedom – Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.” This is not Israel against Iran; this is Israel and Iran’s true sons and daughters against a common enemy—the murderous Islamic Republic that has oppressed both nations.
Iranian people hear this call. The streets pulse with defiance across cities and villages, from Tehran to Tabriz. Social media burns with voices proclaiming what the regime fears most: “The vast majority of us Iranians, 90% or more, support Israel,” one post declares, capturing the sentiment of millions. The 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising showed the world Iran’s courage, as women burned their hijabs and men faced bullets for liberty.
Now, with the regime’s defenses shattered and its commanders dead, the moment is ripe. This is not a protest—it is a revolution. The Iranian people are not begging for scraps; they are ready to tear down the ayatollahs’ empire and reclaim their nation.
The regime’s retaliation—missiles raining on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa—only exposes its desperation. These are the death throes of a beast cornered, lashing out as its power collapses. Over 100 missiles and drones, launched in their so-called “True Promise 3,” have killed innocents, including children, in Israel.
But Israel stands unbroken, intercepting threats with iron resolve, its people united, its military unmatched. The regime’s boasts of “strategic targets” are hollow; their strikes are reckless, their defenses porous. Netanyahu’s warning—“More is on the way”—is no idle threat. Israel’s campaign will not stop until the ayatollahs’ regime is ash, its nuclear dreams buried, and its terror machine dismantled.
This war is Iran’s chance, its only chance, to rise. The regime’s weakness is laid bare: its commanders dead, its nuclear sites in ruins, its economy crippled. The Iranian people must seize this moment, flooding the streets in millions, tearing down the symbols of oppression, and driving the mullahs from power. The opposition, though fragmented, pulses with potential. Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, heir to Iran’s proud monarchy, is the only chance for a free Iran. Israel’s strikes have cleared the path; now the Iranian people must charge through it, armed with courage and the dream of a nation reborn.
Israel’s fight is Iran’s fight. Netanyahu’s vision is not just the destruction of a nuclear threat but the liberation of a people. The ayatollahs have brought Iran to its knees, but Israel has given it a sword. “Your light will defeat the darkness,” Netanyahu told Iranians, and they are answering. The regime’s days are numbered, its lies unraveling, its terror crumbling. This is the hour of reckoning, when Iran’s ancient glory will rise again, hand in hand with Israel, as brothers in freedom. The thunder of rebellion rolls; the Islamic Republic will fall.
