Hormuz Update. What Is a War Crime? Columnist Praises Trump’s ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ Budget. Mellon Foundation Pours Millions into Trans Ideology. More
With a fragile ceasefire not yet two days old, the Strait of Hormuz continues to be the issue.
While President Trump made opening the Strait a condition for a ceasefire, Iran is claiming that it has closed shipping through the Strait. We don’t really know what’s going on or even the degree to which the Strait is open. The New York Times (I know, I know) posted this report early this morning:
Hundreds of tankers are waiting to return to the Strait of Hormuz so that the waterway can once again become a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas.
But the shaky cease-fire struck between the United States and Iran has not coaxed the tankers back — and even if it holds, other obstacles have to be overcome for shipping traffic to return to normal.
Iran has kept a stranglehold on the strait throughout the war by laying mines and attacking vessels. As part of the cease-fire, Iran’s foreign minister said, the country will allow “safe passage” for ships through the strait, but he added that the vessels would have to coordinate with Iran’s armed forces and that passages would be subject to “technical limitations.”
The New York Times also reports that Israel’s strikes in Lebanon “threaten” the “shaky ceasefire.” Ms. Must can’t help thinking that, if it weren’t Israeli strikes on Lebanon, it would be something else. It’s classic of the way Iran negotiates. (Take a moment to consider the effete Obama Iran negotiator John Kerry up against this crowd!)
Vice President J.D. Vance, known to be the member of the inner circle least persuaded of the need for the war, and who has kept a low profile during the war, will be a chief U.S. negotiator. The negotiations are set to take place in Pakistan. I want to address two other aspects of the situation: war crimes and President Trump’s heated language. John Daniel Davidson argues in the usually reliably Trump-friendly The Federalist that “Trump’s Hyperbolic Annihilationist Rhetoric Comes With a Moral Cost.”
What is a war crime? If you’re listening to the hysteria on outlets such as MS Now, you are likely to think the definition is “blowing up a bridge.” That is incorrect. In “By All Means, Let the War Crimes Trials Begin!” Victor Davis Hanson, classicist and military historian, sheds light on what constitutes a war crime.
The president’s most incendiary threat was that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Brendan O’Neill asks, But what civilization?
Then there was the sheer cant. It was Trump’s ominous yelp that ‘A whole civilisation will die tonight’ that got leftists and liberals frothing. It’s genocidal lunacy, they said. Let’s leave to one side that the target of his digital ire appeared to be the Islamic Republic, not Persia. ‘Forty-seven years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end’, he said. The more striking thing is the industrial-level gall of a cultural elite that is devoted to the dismantling of Israel, puffing itself up in fury over Trump’s hyperbole on Iran.
I agree that ‘A whole civilisation will die tonight’ is a chilling thing to say. That’s why I’m so horrified by the frenzied anti-Zionism of our times. …
We saw the U.S.’s dazzling technological supremacy on display in the Iran conflict. Those weapons and the equipment required to rescue our downed airmen cost money. Kimberley Strassel takes note of President Trump’s 2027 budget in an opinion piece headlined “Trump’s ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ Budget“:
The centerpiece of Donald Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget document, released Friday, is his call to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion. The New York Times moaned that this demand was coupled “with a call for $73 billion in cuts spread across many domestic agencies, including the elimination of key federal health, housing and education programs, some of which serve minority groups and the poor.” That’s one way of putting it.
The better way is to applaud the president for clearly choosing guns over butter—rather than following past presidents in spending a fortune to have both. We live in a dangerous world and need to rebuild our military, even as our federal domestic programs are duplicative, bloated and consumed by waste. Trump’s budget doesn’t eliminate the fat altogether—think of it more as a low-calorie-butter budget.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought is using the request to keep pressure on Congress to decrease overall spending, return more responsibility to states, and reform or kill badly run programs. Given this White House’s willingness to impound dollars and send rescissions back to Congress, this is a document congressional Republicans can’t entirely ignore.
In light of our recent technological triumphs, Ben Shapiro writes:
America is living through a moment difficult to describe without sounding a little unhinged.
But here goes: We are watching the United States do things that only the United States can do.
The horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who had fled the Russian invasion, on a commuter train in Charlotte, N.C., gripped the nation. It was a particularly gruesome death (by stabbing). Decarlos Brown Jr., the suspect, has been found “incapable to proceed” on the state murder charge. Ms. Must admits—don’t get mad at me—that she thought all along that Brown, diagnosed as schizophrenic, should not be tried. This is not the same as saying he should ever be free again.
“I Accidentally Killed my Sister, Gavin Newsom’s Wife Confessed to Inmates” is the stunning headline in the invaluable U.K. Telegraph. What a terrible tragedy, and my heart goes out to Ms. Newsom (on this at least). But her resurfaced remarks to the inmates reflect a particularly hard-left view of crime :
“I told them about my own loss,” she says in the footage, with tears in her eyes.
She said: “I lost my elder sister a few days before my seventh birthday, and I blame myself for her death.”
No, Ms. Newsom, people who are in prison for murder have not “lost” someone. They have murdered someone and should blame themselves, though they probably don’t.
Ms. Newsom is not the only member of the couple who doesn’t seem to grasp culpability and responsibility. I mention (again) “Gavin Newsom’s $30 Billion Fraud Magnet,” an important article by Christopher Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp in City Journal. The article shines a light on an In-Home Supportive Services Program, or IHSS, which costs nearly $30 billion per year. There were red flags, and the state government should have challenged numerous expenditures (which were self-reported). A friend sent me an amazing X post by Rufo. Here is what it features:
Influencers are teaching people how to quit their jobs, sign up for California’s IHSS program, and collect up to $63k/yr to stay home with family members. Experts say the program loses billions per year to fraud.
Another important story at City Journal: “How the Mellon Foundation Funds Trans Ideology.” John D. Sailer reports that the philanthropy is pouring millions into “black trans pleasure” and “trans liberation in an age of fascism”:
Many grantees come off as more than a bit fringe. One Syracuse University project summary declares that self-identified transgender scholars “are born into a diasporic condition—not quite ever grounded in the heterosexual, cisnormative, white-supremacist nuclear family.” The project aims at “hatching trans resistance in response to fascism’s many guises.”
The primary effect of Mellon cash is the creation of more academic jobs. …
The Examiner’s Selena Zito’s story about dozens of illegals scattering when ICE responded to a call and showed up at a Pennsylvania DMV is getting attention. Illegals with no English and commercial licenses are responsible for a number of highway deaths. Also, people here illegally should not be granted the privilege of a license.
Ms. Must is critical of Pope Leo’s pronouncements on the Iran war, but she is this is not going to help the administration’s case: “‘Catholic Church had better take its side’, Pentagon told Vatican, report claims“:
According to the report, Elbridge Colby, serving as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, told the nuncio: “America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
Trying to strong-arm the Vatican is not the way to make friends and influence clerics.
