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NOTE: We are republishing my Juneteenth essay. People don’t know these things. But they really, really need to. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
June 19, 2025

One hundred sixty years ago today, slaves in Texas received word for the first time that they’d been emancipated. They called that day Juneteenth. It is certainly worthy of celebration.

But the same Democrat Party that enslaved black Americans, who fought a war to keep them slaves, and failing that spent the next century terrorising and degrading them and their grandchildren, doesn’t celebrate this holiday so much as it uses it as a club, to stoke division among people who had nothing to do with any of that.

One means by which they do this is the lie that “the wealth of America was built on the backs of slaves.” The irony is, the Democrat South lost precisely because it was not, and that same Democrat South remained an impoverished backwater for the next century because Democrats never learned the lesson.

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

This was precisely the issue on which the Republican Party was founded — and I’m pleased to note that not only did my party free the slaves and give them the vote, it also never had a member who owned a slave, and never had its own terror wing like the KKK, the Weather Underground, BLM or Antifa.

The party that within one election of its founding elected Lincoln was launched on a platform of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”. The details of the then-current political debate in 1856 and 1860 are worthy of discussion, but the idea is simple:

• Slavery is inherently wrong

• Free men create and innovate, while slaves (and their masters) do not

• Over time the masters become a de facto feudal aristocracy and thereby a threat to the Republic and the Constitution.

Lincoln believed that slavery would eventually destroy the Republic. If you understand Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” you know why. You also know why leftists from Howard Zinn to David Hogg loathe Turner. But they hate Hayek for the same reason.

By the time Lincoln won the Presidency, the free North had pulled mightily ahead of the slave South by virtually every measure, but certainly in terms of factories, railroads, shipping, and everything needed to create a modern economy…or fight a continental war.

The result? By failing to avert war (by stupidly attacking Fort Sumter at a moment at which there was almost zero political support for Lincoln attacking the South), and then failing to knock out the North early (say, in the follow-up to a needed victory at Antietam), the South found itself in a war of attrition it could never win, simply by the weight of Northern economic might. And that might had come into being — almost ex nihilo — by the tireless labors and brilliant entrepreneurship of free men.

And then the North destroyed what little the South had.

Marxist historians claim that slave-based crops like cotton, and the finished goods that came from them, created American wealth. But economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.” Worse still, although cotton exports comprised a large share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s GDP.

So unless Standard Oil, and Edison Electric, and the Union Pacific, and Carneigie Steel were all built by slaves no one knew about, the wealth of America was built by free men. And a great many former slaves participated in the creation.

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The case for envy is laughable. Slavery held the South back. It built manors little different from those of medieval lords and with roughly that rate of advancement. Meanwhile, the real action was to the north and west, where creative free peoples transformed the Earth.

More Slavery Means Less Prosperity, Even A Century Later

But it’s not just in America. Slavery is a disaster for all who employ it. In fact, Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that throughout the New World, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000.

Of course, nowhere is poorer than Africa. And nowhere had — or has — more slavery. The overwhelming majority of this was and is indigenous. That’s quite apart from those slaves captured and sold — most often by other Africans — to the Americas.

This relationship also exists in the U.S. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states.

Note that that’s per capita income all the way into the 21st Century, not back in the 19th. Slavery casts a long shadow. What it doesn’t do is build wealth. Rather, it entrenches backwardness and poverty.

The end of serfdom unleashed widespread prosperity in Europe. The abolition of slavery in the North did the same. Unfortunately, that prosperity didn’t reach the South until Republicans beat the Democrats not just on the battlefield but at the ballot box. And that took a while.

But you needn’t look to the 19th Century when the 20th is available. Beyond Birmingham and Baton Rouge, Socialists made Russia, Eastern Europe, China and countless others giant slave camps, and with predictable results. By the end of the Cold War the Communist world was hopelessly behind its free Western peers by every measure except nuclear weapons.

Or to put that another way, Communists built the Berlin Wall to keep their people in. Donald Trump is having to build a wall to keep people out. The number of people around the world who would move to America given the chance is virtually limitless. Virtually none would move to China, much less Venezuela.

The Republicans Were Right

Lincoln and his followers didn’t just abolish slavery. They extended liberty, and in particular, entrepreneurship.

Even at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln doggedly advanced that vision. In 1862, he and a Republican Congress — who surely would have been outvoted had the Democrats not seceded — passed twin pillars of the next saeculum of American prosperity: the Homestead Act, and the Transcontinental Railroad Act (technically the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862).

These gave life to the dream of Jeffersonian Democracy: a nation of freeholders, carved out of largely empty land only recently made settleable (other than by nomads) by then-new technology, accessed and held together by the North’s decisive advantage, rail.

Each of those family farmers would own and operate a small business. None would be giant plantation owners as in the South, or absentee landlords as in Latin America and Europe. Each would have a stake in the American system.

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And it worked. As Turner shows, that vision populated the continent, fed growing industry, and helped make America globally dominant. Its bias toward individual liberty gave birth to the greatest industrial enterprises, technological innovations, and cultural assimilation in history. It made peoples from every corner of the Earth one, one in creed and one in interest.

It made an America torn by Civil War into that “shining city on a hill”, figuratively of course, providing an example of freedom that swept the world; but literally as well. At the outset of the war, only the very wealthy could afford indoor lighting (powered by expensive whale oil). Two decades later, every home had kerosene lamps, and electric lights were on their way. Little girls could learn their lessons after dark. Factories could run a second or even third shift. The arts could be made available to the masses.

There’s nothing like it in the whole history of humanity.

And yet not one jot nor tittle of it sprang from my benighted South.

There’s a reason.

Why Does All This Matter?

So why does all this matter today, 160 years after the first Juneteenth?

Well one reason is that this Democrat lie, that American wealth came from its slaves, is used to stoke race hatred as we speak. It’s an argument from envy — indeed, the entire Democrat Party operates as a systematic violation of the 10th Commandment — pretending that slavery built America when it actually enervated and destroyed the South, like a slow-working poison long imbibed. The belief that every white American today owes every black American some untold fortune is a powerful propellant for painful strife.

And the Democrats have always lived by a strategy of “divide and conquer”. Or as the dearly departed David Horowitz said: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

Second, the “slavery built America” lie ignores that socialism is just an extreme, if more subtle, form of slavery, at exactly the moment when Democrats openly call themselves Socialists and espouse programs that are straight out of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

But perhaps most important, this Big Lie obscures the real lessons of the Civil War: that the Republican program of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” not only freed the slaves, it unleashed an entire nation’s human potential. We live in the midst of the plenty that abolition created.

But that’s the point: abolition created that plenty, not the debilitating slavery that went before, or the demeaning segregation that came after, in the South.

So Juneteenth should not be a cause for protests, riots, or hate.

Juneteenth should be a celebration, of the defeat of the Southern Democrat slave empire, of the uplifting and uniting of all races, and of the glory that is our America.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 18, 2026

I appeared this afternoon on NTD Newsroom with Don Ma to discuss

• Why Iran will never be able to threaten global oil supplies again

• Why long-term oil prices are headed lower than pre-war levels

• What the U.S. achieved in the war

• Chances for a revolution and a free Iran

• Why the deal is effectively an Iranian surrender

It’s 15 minutes of in-depth analysis you won’t get anywhere else. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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NOTE: Everyone older than Millennials remembers expensive long distance, wired landlines, phone company monopolies, bad service, phone booths, even (ack!) party lines. It was better than smoke signals, but it was vastly inferior to the supercomputers we carry in our pockets today.

The problem is, you could have had today”, or at least the phone part of “today,” about four decades sooner, with all the convenience, cost reduction and related economic growth that would have come with it. The holdup was not technology: it was (surprise surprise) government.

What else do we not have because of Washington? — RDM

by Thomas W. Hazlett
June 18, 2026

The basic idea of the cellphone was introduced to the public in 1945 – not in Popular Mechanics or Science, but in the down-home Saturday Evening Post. Millions of citizens would soon be using "handie-talkies," declared J.K. Jett, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Licenses would have to be issued, but that process "won't be difficult." The revolutionary technology, Jett promised in the story, would be formulated within months.

But permission to deploy it would not. The government would not allocate spectrum to realize the engineers' vision of "cellular radio" until 1982, and licenses authorizing the service would not be fully distributed for another seven years. That's one heck of a bureaucratic delay.

The Cell in Cellular

Before there were cellphones, there was the mobile telephone service, or MTS. Launched in 1946, this technology required unwieldy and expensive equipment — the transceiver could fill the trunk of a sedan — and its networks faced tight capacity constraints. In the beginning, the largest MTS markets had no more than 44 channels. As late as 1976, Bell System's mobile network in New York could host just 545 subscribers. Even at sky-high prices, there were long waiting lists for subscriptions.

Cellular networks were an ingenious way to expand service dramatically. A given market would be split into cells with a base station in each. These stations, often located on towers to improve line-of-sight with mobile phone users, were able both to receive wireless signals and to transmit them. The base stations were themselves linked together, generally by wires, and connected to networks delivering plain old telephone service.

The advantages of this architecture were profound. Mobile radios could use less power, because they needed only to reach the nearest base station, not a mobile phone across town. Not only did this save battery life, but transmissions stayed local, leaving other cells quiet. A connection in one cell would be passed to an adjacent cell and then the next as the mobile user moved through space.

The added capacity came from reusing frequencies, cell to cell. And cells could be "split," yielding yet more capacity. In an MTS system, each conversation required a channel covering the entire market; only a few hundred conversations could happen at once. A cellular system could create thousands of small cells and support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous conversations.

Blocking Mobile Wireless

When AT&T wanted to start developing cellular in 1947, the FCC rejected the idea, believing that spectrum could be best used by other services that were not "in the nature of convenience or luxury." This view — that this would be a niche service for a tiny user base — persisted well into the 1980s.

"Land mobile," the generic category that covered cellular, was far down on the FCC's list of priorities. In 1949, it was assigned just 4.7 percent of the spectrum in the relevant range. Broadcast TV was allotted 59.2 percent, and government uses got one-quarter.

Television broadcasting had become the FCC's mission, and land mobile was a lark. Yet Americans could have enjoyed all the broadcasts they would watch in, say, 1960 and had cellular phone service too. Instead, TV was allocated far more bandwidth than it ever used, with enormous deserts of vacant television assignments — a vast wasteland, if you will — blocking mobile wireless for more than a generation.

How empty was this spectrum? Across America's 210 television markets, the 81 channels originally allocated to TV created some 17,010 slots for stations. From this, the FCC planned in 1952 to authorize 2,002 TV stations. By 1962, just 603 were broadcasting in the United States. Yet broadcasters vigorously defended the idle bandwidth.

When mobile telephone advocates tried to gain access to the lightly used ultra-high frequency (UHF) band, the broadcasters deluged the commission, arguing ferociously and relentlessly that mobile telephone service was an inefficient use of spectrum.

It may seem surprising that they were so determined to preserve those vacant frequencies. Given that commercial TV station licenses were severely limited — enough to support only three national networks — they might have seen the scores of unused channels as a threat. What if policy makers got serious about increasing competition? Shrinking the TV band by slicing off chunks for mobile phone services could have protected incumbent broadcasters from future television competitors. Why, then, did they oppose it?

The answer: The broadcasters believed they held sufficient veto power to prevent the prospect of competing stations. Meanwhile, they cherished the option value of unused spectrum. This thinking proved prescient: Years later, unoccupied TV frequencies would be awarded to the incumbent broadcasters, without payment, during the transition to digital television.

A Recipe for Delay

Meanwhile, MTS was being supplied by licensees called radio common carriers (RCCs). The government's policy was to license just two mobile operators per market, generally AT&T and a much smaller competitor.

The FCC also distributed "private land mobile" licenses to companies not in the communications business, for strictly internal wireless use. These allowed, for instance, an airline to coordinate baggage operations at an airport, a freight train to check its track assignments, or workers on an offshore oil rig to talk with company personnel at the home office.

In 1968, there were 62,000 common carrier phone subscribers, almost equally split between AT&T and, collectively, 500 tiny rivals. Private land mobile licenses were allotted far more bandwidth (about 90 percent of the spectrum set aside for land mobile) and deployed more phones. But compared with the 326 million U.S. cellular subscriptions that existed by 2012, both of these low-tech services were fleas on an elephant.

The RCCs intensely opposed cellular, rightly fearing that it would ravage their small-scale, barely profitable operations. They had a powerful ally in Motorola, then a pioneering wireless technology company.

Both the RCCs and the private land mobile operators were excellent Motorola customers, buying radios that cost thousands of dollars each. Motorola's major rival, AT&T, was excluded from selling land mobile radios by a 1956 antitrust settlement. Protecting its dominant market position meant protecting its customers from competition, so Motorola worked to deter the cellphone revolution.

As Early as 1973

AT&T's Bell Labs had conceived and developed cellular technology. But as passionate as its scientists were about mobile phones, the company enjoyed lucrative monopoly franchises in fixed-line telephony. AT&T convinced itself that mobile services would not add much to corporate sales, so it was much less aggressive in pushing for the new tech than it might have been. That allowed anti-cellular interests to have their way with regulators for many years: While AT&T formally requested a cellular allocation in 1958, the FCC did not respond until 1968.

In 1970, the agency finally agreed to deploy some spectrum for the new service. It proposed to make room by moving the television stations at channels 70 through 83 to lower assignments, and it cobbled together some other idle frequencies as well. But the issue was far from settled.

From 1970 until 1982, cellular technology would be caught in a vortex of legal chaos, battered by rulemakings and reconsiderations and court verdicts. A 1991 study published by the National Economic Research Associates concluded that, "had the FCC proceeded directly to licensing from its 1970 allocation decision, cellular licenses could have been granted as early as 1972 and systems could have been operational in 1973." But a lot of businesses had an interest in keeping the FCC bottled up.

It was a Motorola vice president, Marty Cooper, who placed the first cellular call with a mobile handset in 1973. It might as well have been a pocket-dial. Motorola's lawyers were placing calls of their own, lobbying FCC bureaucrats to keep cellular networks from being built.

Yet Motorola misjudged its own interests: It would become a leading beneficiary of the new marketplace. By 2006 it was the world's second-largest vendor of cellphones, selling more than 200 million units per year.

And in 2025, a longtime Motorola customer, Apple, sold 247 million iPhones, a literal supercomputer in your pocket, built around a cellular phone.

One has to ask: what other wonders do we lack because of the short-sightedness, favored interests, or outright envy of government?

— An earlier version of We Could Have Had Cell Phones 40 Years Earlier appeared at Reason and FEE.org.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
June 17, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• The burgeoning nuclear renaissance

• Nuclear power entrepreneurs

• Directed Energy Weapons (yes, lasers!) and the transformation of air and missile defense

• TRISO fuel: reactors that can’t release radiation and can’t melt down

• How Trump is dismantling the leftist regulations (like ALARA) that prevented all this from happening much sooner

• Increasing energy exports at home, powering an impoverished world abroad

It’s 10 minutes of in-depth analysis you won’t want to miss. Watch, like, and share!

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by Autumn Spredemann
June 17, 2026

The data are in: The United States is getting older and welcoming fewer babies. This decades-long phenomenon is creating a demographic squeeze that some anticipate will affect nearly every aspect of the nation’s economy and infrastructure over the next couple of decades.

“I see a total reshuffling of our economy and society, brought about by historic demographic turnover,” according to regenerative medicine specialist Dr. David Ghozland.

In a report for the American Enterprise Institute, economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde called falling U.S. fertility rates “the true economic challenge of [the] time.”

The number of adults aged 65 and older is forecast to hit 82 million by 2050 and will make up 23 percent of the population, according to the Population Reference Bureau. That is a 42 percent increase from 58 million people aged 65 and older in 2022.

Meanwhile, the general fertility rate — the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age — has dropped to record lows. The North American rate plummeted from 3.1 in 1950 to 1.6 in 2023, according to a McKinsey Global Institute analysis published in January.

Ghozland said he believes that this population inversion will force structural changes at the budget and care level, potentially leading to what he called a “cruel choice” in the next 10 years.

“We will experience a regulated destruction of safety nets such as Medicare,” he said, calling the rapidly aging population the “primary political and economic competition of [the] era.”

Health Care Upheaval

Ghozland said he is already seeing a dramatic change in the health care industry.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 16, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Cary Dunst to discuss the Chinese threat to Taiwan.

We discuss:

• China’s fast-growing submarine fleet and the threat to Taiwan

• How Trump’s Taiwan arms deal reduces the risk of an invasion

• Chinese subversion of the Taiwanese political system

• Reports of Chinese training of Russian troops, and the limits of the two countries’ “alliance”

It’s seven minutes you won’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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If you or your organization are facing a sex abuse or sexual harassment claim, or if you are yourself the victim, my friends at Chalmers Adams can help. Click here.

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by Richard A. Viguerie
June 16, 2026

I have written about this issue before, but with the midterms approaching, I thought it bears repeating. It’s so very, very important.

STOP saying liberal. STOP saying woke. STOP saying progressive, Socialist, or Marxist.

Those words don’t appear on any ballot. Not anywhere, unless you live in Vermont and Bernie Sanders is running.

The word that appears on election ballots is DEMOCRAT.

We need to be perfectly clear. Those who are causing most all of America’s serious problems are DEMOCRATS.

The vast majority of our political crises and problems are caused by people who either identify as Democrats or vote Democrat.

Once something is branded — whether positive or negative — it sticks. Like Super Glue, that label is hard to shake. Whenever you speak, write, or post, identify our political opponents as DEMOCRATS.

That’s why we must BRAND the Democrat Party as anti-God, anti-America, violent, and the party of Big Government, elite socialists and Marxists: because they are. If we do not define them, they will define themselves, deceitfully.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination brought those stakes into painful focus.

Charlie dedicated his life to building a new generation of young conservative leaders, mobilizing millions of young conservatives to engage in civilized, peaceful discussions and debates. His loss is a call to action for us to brand the Democrat Party’s policies so clearly and permanently that voters will never again be misled by their rhetoric.

Your every conversation, email, blog, podcast, newsletter, fundraising letter, website, and media appearance is a chance to BRAND the Democrats as the cause of most of America’s problems.

Right now, the Democrat Party is confused, weak, and angry. That gives us conservatives a rare, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to push it toward the ash heap of history.

But don’t be fooled and assume the Democrats will stay this way heading into the 2026 midterms, 2028 presidential election, or far beyond. History shows they usually find a way to bounce back, unless we effectively and quickly BRAND them as so toxic that voters will never again trust them.

Charlie’s murder was not an isolated incident. It is part of a dangerous and continuing pattern of political violence driven by the international Left. But this is nothing new.

From the French Revolution’s guillotine mobs to the Bolshevik Revolution to today’s Antifa rioters, the Left has always used violence and intimidation to silence opponents and seize power. It’s in their DNA and a continuation of a centuries-old pattern.

• After George Floyd’s death, Democrat-led protests caused over $2 billion in damage and 25 deaths. Contrast that with Charlie Kirk’s murder. There were no riots or deaths; only hundreds of prayer vigils, including a peaceful, faith-based memorial service attended by 100,000 and watched by 100,000,000. The only “damage” came from opponents defacing makeshift memorials in his honor.

• Conservative speakers on college campuses face harassment and are often cancelled, under the excuse of “inadequate security,” with student groups forced to pay thousands in security fees just to host them.

• President Trump has survived three assassination attempts, one of which nearly killed him, left a rallygoer dead, and injured several others.

• A Bernie Sanders supporter from Belleville, Illinois attempted to kill as many Republican members of Congress as he could while they were practicing on a baseball field for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. The Republican House Minority Leader, Steve Scalise, was seriously wounded and 24 Republican Congressional members were only saved from being murdered by an alert security guard.

• Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was targeted by a transexual man in 2022, who admitted he intended to assassinate three conservative Supreme Court Justices to “alter the constitutional order” so that three Democrat justices could be appointed in their place.

• In August 2012, an LGBTQ+ volunteer attempted to kill more than 20 employees at Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters but was stopped by a security guard who was critically wounded.

• Throughout the first half of 2025, hundreds of Teslas nationwide were destroyed or defaced in a wave of firebombing, arson, and vandalism during anti-Elon Musk, anti-DOGE protests intended to intimidate both Musk and those who might support him.

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It’s not just violent acts either. Time and again, Democrats’ own words have fueled this hostility:

• Senator Chuck Schumer threatened Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, saying, “you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price” if they restricted abortion rights.

• Congresswoman Maxine Waters urged supporters to harass Trump Cabinet officials, telling them to make sure those officials were “not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

• Illinois Governor JB Pritzker compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany, warning that it took the Nazis just 53 days to “dismantle a constitutional republic.”

• Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, just days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, called President Trump a “wannabe Hitler.”

• Former President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris labeled Trump a “fascist.”

• Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib claimed that the MAGA movement was “a violent, fascist insurrection.”

None of these are random “Woke” people, “Progressives”, or “Socialists”. They are leading Democrats. Their supporters are too. We need to say so.

When Democrats demonize conservatives as Nazis or fascists, they give license to extremists who take those words literally. Convince people someone is “the next Hitler,” and violence no longer seems extreme: it feels necessary and justified.

The connection is clear: nearly every crisis Americans face today stems directly from Democrat policies. If we move quickly and effectively while people are paying close attention to the news, we can show that the problems worrying or angering them, the very problems Trump is working to fix, are the result of those Democrat policies, including:

• Open borders intentionally letting in millions of unvetted illegal aliens, many with criminal backgrounds.

• A crushing national debt to be paid by our children and grandchildren.

• Over 100,000 drug deaths a year from Chinese-produced fentanyl smuggled through Mexico.

• Men invading women’s sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms.

• DEI being forced on our military, colleges, and corporations.

• CRT indoctrinating schoolchildren that America is a racist nation, that white people are inherently and irredeemably racist, and that all others are literally incapable of racism, regardless of what they believe or do.

• Grade school kids exposed to drag queens, pornography, and obscene books.

• A war on God, religion, and religious liberty.

• A war on law enforcement, leaving us with fewer cops on the streets.

• Inner cities that resemble war zones leading to the death of tens of thousands of Americans, mostly under 30, instead of safe communities for families.

• Federal agencies like the FBI, IRS, CIA, DOJ, and Military weaponized against conservatives.

• Soft-on-crime prosecutors letting criminals walk free.

• Etc., etc.

If we BRAND Democrat politicians and the Democrat Party as the cause of most of America’s problems, we’ll be in good shape in future elections, whether for the White House, Congress, state house, state legislature, school boards, or city hall.

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For decades, Democrats successfully BRANDED Republicans as the party of the rich, Wall Street, and “trickle-down” economics. They smeared Republicans as heartless, ready to take away Social Security, Medicare, even going so far as to unplug Grandpa’s oxygen machine and put Grandma out in the cold.

All lies, but effective lies. Democrats won many elections with these lies.

Imagine the impact on next year’s midterm elections if by telling the truth, through consistent BRANDING of the Democrats, we help millions of people become modern-day Paul Revere Riders, spreading the truth to 25-50 of their family, friends, and neighbors that most of our national problems are caused by Democrats.

Add to that the reach of tens of thousands of other conservative leaders doing the same, and then tens of millions of low-information voters will head to the polls with one thought stuck in their minds:

DEMOCRATS ARE ANTI-GOD, ANTI-AMERICA, VIOLENT, BIG GOVERNMENT, ELITE SOCIALISTS/MARXISTS.

Because they are.

No matter the platform you use, your message should be the same: DEMOCRATS ARE THE PROBLEM.

If that happens, conservatives will win a landslide in 2026 — increasing their majorities in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, adding governors, state officials, state legislators, and city and county leaders across America.

Democrats are not just our political opponents. They have launched a SPIRITUAL CIVIL WAR against traditional, Judeo-Christian values, just as they once launched a literal Civil War to keep their slaves and destroy America. They want to replace our Constitutional Republic with a one-party socialist/Marxist state, and ultimately a one-world government run by elites.

This is what they call “Our Democracy”?

Charlie showed how powerful BRANDING can be when one leader gives millions of young people the tools to speak the truth boldly. His example should inspire us to keep pressing forward, louder and stronger.

Of course, not every Democrat politician has called for violence. But every politician who has smeared conservatives as fascists or Nazis carries the Democrat label.

(By the way, Nazi is an abbreviation for National Socialist German Workers Party, and the Nazis were also known as fascists. Nazis and fascists are people of the Left, not the Right.)

The party’s leadership is increasingly aligned with and composed of radicals, and it is their destructive policies, rhetoric, and agenda dragging America toward ruin. That is why we must brand the Democrat Party, not just individuals or ideologies, as the source of our nation’s problems.

Every political word you speak, every political message you send, BRAND the Democrat Party. From the podcast to the pulpit, blog to the backyard, BRAND the Democrats, because the identification on the ballot is always DEMOCRAT.

— For more outstanding marketing and messaging insight from the legendary Richard Viguerie, sign up for his Monthly Marketing Memo at Conservative HQ.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 15, 2026

I appeared last night on NTD Evening News with Chris Beers, immediately after the announcement of the U.S.-Iran peace deal.

We discuss:

• Why the deal is effectively an Iranian surrender

• Will the peace hold, and what remains to be ironed out?

• How quickly will gas prices come down?

• Trump at the G7: U.S.-French-Japanese alignment on China, plus the too-late “support” of Mark Carney’s Canada and other European “allies”

It’s 10 minutes that quickly explain the latest developments and where we go from here. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

Nothing matters more than educating the next generation with the values we cherish. The Herzog Foundation is making that possible. Learn more here.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 13, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Kevin Hogan to discuss the latest in the Iran war.

We discuss:

• Will there be a peace deal?

• The public back-and-forth: why do the U.S. and Iran keep saying different things about the terms?

• How Trump’s Kharg Island threat moved the needle

• Consequences of the blockade bankrupting the regime

• Will Iran be free?

• How the U.S. is driving wedges between Russia, China, and Iran

It’s 12 minutes that quickly explain the latest developments and where we go from here. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

Nothing matters more than educating the next generation with the values we cherish. The Herzog Foundation is making that possible. Learn more here.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 13, 2026

The key to stopping a war with China — an actual World War III — is demonstrating to the CCP that it cannot succeed. On Wednesday, Taiwan moved a long way toward showing it can kill a Chinese invasion force.

For the first time, Taiwan fired its new American HIMARS rockets from the side of the island China would have to invade: the western coast, near the Dajia River estuary in Taichung, along the shore most likely to face a Chinese amphibious assault. Taiwan used advanced weapons to simulate killing the landing force in the water, on the beaches, and before it can build mass ashore.

Donald Trump is arming Taiwan for exactly that fight.

His December arms package, the largest-ever U.S.-Taiwan defense sale, gives Taiwan 82 additional HIMARS launchers, 420 ATACMS, more than 1,200 GMLRS rocket pods, and the fire-control architecture needed to turn mobile launchers into a lethal anti-invasion network. It also transferred 60 M109A7 self-propelled howitzers, ammunition carriers, precision-guidance kits, and 155mm shells. The deal advances Taiwan’s capabilities by more than 30 or 40 years.

If you want to kill China’s landing craft in the water and then mop up whatever makes it to the beach, this is how. There are no offensive weapons involved, no room for Beijing to claim it’s anything except what it is. It’s designed for one mission: hit the transports, hit the landing craft, and keep moving before China can kill the defenders.

It’s a massive upgrade to Taiwan’s “Porcupine Defense.” It’s also the centerpiece of Trump’s containment strategy: close the map around China, leaving no good options for an offensive war and thus no viable choice other than peace and (fairer) trade. In Morton Blackwell’s words, “make the steal more expensive than it’s worth.”

The howitzers are old school. But HIMARS is an entire mobile launch architecture. It can fire short-range rockets, longer-range ATACMS, plus the new Precision Strike Missiles — PrSMs, or “prisms” — that reach farther, fit two per pod where ATACMS fits one, and are already evolving into ship-killers.

It matters. Taiwan is the keystone of the First Island Chain. Lose it, and China breaks into the wider Pacific, threatens Japan and the Philippines, and turns America’s forward defense line into a rescue mission. And it’s worse than that. The CCP desperately covets Taiwan: any war would be prompted by Beijing’s desire to capture that exact piece of real estate. Taiwan is not some random island. The odds of a major war with China that isn’t centered on an invasion of Taiwan are vanishingly small. (Well, unless you’re Russia.)

The PrSMs are of particular note. The missile is virtually purpose-built to defeat a Chinese invasion fleet: fired from HIMARS or MLRS, harder to find than fixed launchers, able to put two missiles in a pod where ATACMS fits one, and capable of forcing China to hunt mobile batteries that can be gone thirty seconds after they fire.

PrSMs have already gone to war in Iran. In March, U.S. Central Command confirmed that PrSMs had been used in Operation Epic Fury, their first operational deployment. CENTCOM described it as giving American forces an “unrivaled deep strike capability”. The new system is now combat-proven.

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Ballistic missiles bring something cruise missiles and drones do not: speed, terminal violence, and the ability to hit time-sensitive targets before the enemy can move, hide, or rebuild the kill chain. That matters against Iranian air defenses, missile launchers, and hardened facilities. It matters even more in the Taiwan Strait, where the opening hours of a Chinese invasion could determine whether Beijing succeeds or suffers the fate of its 13th-century invasions of Japan.

A Chinese assault would depend on mass. Ships, landing craft, and follow-on logistics all have to be concentrated, sequenced, moved, and sustained. There is no Star Trek transporter: China actually has to cross water. That means an enormous army vulnerable at sea. If enough of it drowns in the strait, the rest will die on the beach.

That’s exactly what PrSM threatens.

The baseline PrSM already reaches roughly 500 kilometers. Increment 2 — the Land-Based Anti-Ship Missile version — adds a multimode seeker. Future increments are expected to stretch range and broaden payload options still further. The Army is turning a land-based missile into a ship-killer, and it is doing it on launchers Taiwan, Australia, and other allies already field.

That changes the role of the Army in the Pacific. A truck hidden on an island can now threaten ships at sea. A mobile launcher near a river mouth can help decide whether a Chinese landing force survives the beach. A battery that fires and disappears forces China to waste scarce intelligence and strike assets chasing ghosts.

Ask the Russians how that’s working out.

The Chinese know this. Their own exercises have already singled out HIMARS as a priority target, precisely because mobile launchers threaten their amphibious operations, logistics routes, rocket forces, and coastal targets. And that’s exactly the point, not to fight but to make a fight too risky. The purpose of deterrence is to make Beijing’s imagined conquest look closer to certain suicide.

Ukraine has already taught the world that long-range precision strikes change the map. They erase sanctuary. Once distant refineries, depots, pumping stations, bridges, and ports can be hit, the enemy’s rear becomes indistinguishable from the front. Russia built a war machine on the assumption of protected distance. Trump began tearing that shield away by combining deeper Ukrainian strike capacity with economic war against Russia’s oil lifeline. The geometry changed: Russia can no longer bomb from sanctuary and fund its war from protected infrastructure.

PrSM is the next step in that progression. The relationship between what you can hit and what the enemy can afford to lose is the geometry of war. In Ukraine, that geometry is collapsing around Russia. In the Taiwan Strait, PrSM helps collapse it around China before the first Chinese ship leaves port.

The Army’s FY2027 request would purchase 1,134 PrSMs, up sharply from 108, for roughly $1.9 billion. That’s a beginning, not an end. Last year, Australia fired PrSMs from HIMARS years ahead of schedule. Canberra is now expanding its HIMARS force into a second long-range fires regiment, building a sovereign missile manufacturing industry, and working with the United States on PrSM cooperation that could pave the way for domestic production. Poland and Ukraine are next with Patriot PAC-3, and perhaps the new ERAMs as well.

That is exactly what Trump wants America’s allies to become: not dependents, but force multipliers, partners who can hold their own until and unless the real crisis comes, at which point the U.S. can apply decisive force. The point is not American retreat. It’s to make American power both more flexible and more decisive precisely because our allies are stronger.

In normal times, Europe should be able to defend Europe. Israel and the Gulf should be able to handle their own region. Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and the rest of the Indo-Pacific coalition should be able to turn their geography into hard military reality. Enemies should be forced to count the cost of attacking them, not just the cost of attacking us.

It’s a radically different model from the neoconservatives’ “imperial overstretch.” It’s also far more potent.

This is not containment by press release, but by outcomes. HIMARS and howitzers put the strait and beaches under threat. ATACMS and PrSMs put China’s coastal staging areas, ports, air defenses, and command nodes at risk. The more of these systems Taiwan fields, the less China has an invasion plan and the more it has a casualty estimate.

Xi Jinping may still gamble. Dictators sometimes do stupid things, especially when surrounded by terrified yesmen and fake numbers. But Trump’s strategy is to make sure Xi has to count the cost: landing craft burning in the Strait, armies drowning, transports sinking before they unload, beachheads turned into kill zones, and mobile launchers and artillery still alive after the first Chinese strike package has already been spent.

That’s the point of Trump’s Taiwan arms package. That’s the point of PrSM. Not to threaten China. To raise the price of China threatening us. Add to that the growing Japanese, Australian, South Korean, and Philippine militaries, the growing U.S. presence in those countries, and the American chokehold on the waterways China depends on for energy, food, and the trade that pays for it.

American planners remain convinced that China means to invade in 2027. Trump says they won’t so long as he’s President, and he may well be right. But to solve the problem in the long run, the CCP needs to know that if it orders a crossing, its invasion force may not survive the water.

This week, armed with Trump’s new weapons, Taiwan rehearsed exactly that.

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by Rod D. Martin and Charles Payne
June 12, 2026

I appeared on Fox Business’s “Making Money with Charles Payne” to discuss the generational opportunity of the SpaceX IPO and the civilizational transformation to come, PLUS China’s quiet kowtow to Trump, and the President’s endgame in Iran.

Here’s what it all means, rapid-fire in just five minutes!

Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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by Rod D. Martin
June 11, 2026

Fourteen years ago, almost to the week, Facebook stumbled out of the gate.

It debuted at $38. It briefly touched $45. Then it fell, and the press behaved exactly as the press always behaves when an extraordinary company fails to provide ordinary investors with an instant casino payout.

They called it overvalued. They mocked Mark Zuckerberg (and Peter Thiel). They said Facebook would never monetize. They treated the IPO as a failure because the people who actually built the company did not leave half their money on the table for CNBC’s favored traders.

I called Facebook a Strong Buy. If you listened, you made a LOT of money.

Not because I knew the bottom. I didn’t. I said at the time it might get worse before it got better. It did. I said the noise might continue for months. It did.

But none of that mattered, because the market was asking the wrong question.

The question was not whether Facebook would trade down from its IPO price. The question was whether Facebook already dominated the social graph, and whether that dominance would eventually monetize at a scale the critics refused to imagine.

It did. Spectacularly. Of course.

Now SpaceX is about to go public, and a lot of the same people are making the same type of mistake. Except this time the mistake is bigger. Much, much bigger.

Facebook organized the social graph. SpaceX is organizing the economic graph, of a new terrestrial economy, a new geopolitical reality, and of a multiplanetary human future.

SpaceX is the company that moves mass from Earth into orbit at unmatched scale and about 5 percent of the cost, that is building Starship to make that movement radically cheaper, that connects the planet through Starlink, that is creating AI infrastructure even its competitors need (and pay for), with orbital data centers, lunar industry, Martian cities, and, on the horizon, new technologies and new markets that barely exist today.

That is exactly why Martin Capital is rating it a Strong Buy, at any price that presents itself. Whatever that number is, and whatever volatility it may undergo, there is no price available in the vaguely near future that isn’t a generational bargain.

SpaceX Is a Generational Opportunity

SpaceX is expected to go public on the NASDAQ under the ticker SPCX at $135 per share, raising around $75 billion at roughly a $1.75 trillion valuation. That makes it, by far, the largest IPO in history. It also makes the usual crowd faint.

If you are trying to flip shares on Friday afternoon, and many will, volatility will matter. If the market decides it’s priced to perfection, as Facebook was, it will leave little money on the table in the near term for the kind of lottery win many are looking for. I’m not predicting that. I’m just warning you it could happen.

But if you’re looking to own the most important company of the twenty-first century, short-term volatility matters a great deal less.

The market is going to spend the next few days asking whether SpaceX is worth $1.75 trillion today. That’s the wrong question. The right question is whether any other company on Earth is remotely positioned to own the transportation layer between this planet and the rest of an inhabited, productive, militarily contested Solar System.

SpaceX no longer merely sells rocket launches. Launch is becoming its production line. The old business model was carrying someone else’s payload to orbit for a fee. It still does that: in 2025 it launched at least 85 percent (or more) of the total payload mass to orbit for the entire world.

But SpaceX’s new business model is much bigger: using its own rockets to put its own products into orbit — Starlink first, orbital data centers next, manufacturing, mining, and whole cities after that. The rockets enable a far bigger expansion of human civilization, just as wooden ships and railroads once enabled the creation of America.

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Ordinary launch-company multiples miss the point entirely.

SpaceX dominates launch. Starlink dominates satellite broadband. Starship, once fully operational, changes the payload economics of orbit, the Moon, Mars, point-to-point terrestrial transport, even military logistics. And Elon intends to build hundreds if not thousands per year. Thousands of Starships mean ubiquitous, cheap, regular travel between continents in less than an hour. They’ll also enable the deployment of whole armies around the world in that same short time.

The company’s AI infrastructure adds another layer. Its future is not one market but an interlocking sequence of markets that become possible because first it collapsed launch costs.

That is what the skeptics cannot value. They see only today’s revenue and tomorrow’s capex, not the radical expansion of human civilization that is finally upon us, much less the geopolitical (indeed, astropolitical) stakes.

How would you measure that? How would you have measured it in 1492?

Mass, Energy, Process, Value

A useful way to think about the space economy is through four words: mass, energy, process, and value.

To do anything in space, you need mass. You need to put physical stuff where there is almost no physical stuff. Rockets are the answer. Fully reusable rockets are the revolution. Over time, the real breakthrough they enable will be getting more of that mass from space itself — from lunar resources, asteroid mining, mass drivers, and other systems that make Earth the starting point and the consumer market, not the permanent supply depot.

To move mass you need energy. In space, that’s nearly limitless. Solar power, completely unobstructed by weather or night, is limited only by the collection systems deployed. There are still meaningful engineering problems — storage, thermal management, radiation, assembly, repair, transmission — but the basic strategic fact is obvious: the Solar System is powered by the Sun. And Elon’s “other” company Tesla is at the cutting edge of that too.

To coordinate all this you need process: communications, AI, robotics, autonomy, manufacturing, and data centers for a start.

Mass plus energy plus process creates value. Not national vanity projects or pure-cost exploration. An entirely new and vastly larger economy.

SpaceX already owns more of the mass layer than anyone else. Starlink owns the communications layer. Starship gives SpaceX the chance to dominate orbital logistics. AI infrastructure and orbital data centers point toward the next layer.

Those data centers also solve an enormous problem on Earth. AI is exploding, but it’s running into a wall of energy, cooling, land, water, permitting, grid interconnection, and local opposition. Everyone wants AI. The power plants, transmission lines, water use, heat, and industrial footprint are turning out to be another matter: America is suddenly in the grips of NIMBY, in part CCP-funded. Space eliminates the problem — and turns it into a staggeringly lucrative opportunity for the one company that can launch, power, connect, and maintain the infrastructure at a price and scale with which no one can compete.

Today, Starlink funds Starship. Starship lowers the cost of Starlink and increases its profits. Fully reusable Starship enables orbital data centers. Orbital data centers create enormous demand for launch, power, communications, and maintenance. Lunar infrastructure supplies mass and materials. In-space manufacturing creates more valuable things in space. Mars settlement becomes just the inevitable next step in a rapidly expanding economy.

That is what Wall Street is trying to value with a price-to-sales ratio.

Good luck.

The 1492 Premium

There is also a geopolitical premium here, and it’s not small.

The Moon, Mars, cislunar space, Lagrange points, orbital data centers, lunar fuel, and in-space manufacturing will not remain abstractions for long. They will be financed, built, occupied, governed, and defended by someone.

In the process, either we will define the human future, or China will. If you want a better future than censorship, genocide, and social credit scores, the CCP must not be allowed to seize the vast domain opening before us.

China has already shown us how it behaves when given an opening. In the South China Sea, it has staked out uninhabited atolls, poured concrete, militarized them, and then used them to claim sovereignty over international waters. Space will be no different.

The lunar South Pole matters because its abundant water ice is not just water, as life-and-death important as that is. It’s oxygen and hydrogen: fuel. The Moon is the first gas station between Earth and Mars. Whoever can deliver the most equipment there, fastest and cheapest, gets to shape and control all that follows.

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That is yet another way in which the valuation argument escapes every ordinary spreadsheet. Analysts are trying to price rockets. They should be trying to price the ships to the New World, and the value of the modern equivalents of Spanish forts and cities from the Canary Islands to Cuba.

Imagine being able to invest in 1492, not just in the ships, but in the ports, trade routes, colonies, mines, farms, cities, and the entire opening of a hemisphere.

That is the magnitude of the question. The terrestrial applications would be more transformative than the entire aerospace industry till now. The offworld opportunity dwarfs our planet.

Tesla Is the Missing Multiplier

But SpaceX by itself is not the whole story. Tesla is the missing multiplier.

The lazy analyst still thinks of Tesla as an electric car company. But Tesla is batteries, motors, power electronics, manufacturing, autonomy, real-world AI, sensors, energy storage, solar power, charging infrastructure, and robots. Especially robots.

Every one of those things matters more off Earth than on Earth.

The Moon and Mars don’t need “cars” in the Detroit sense. But they do need an ever-increasing number of pressurized rovers, autonomous haulers, mobile power platforms, mining vehicles, robotic construction equipment, distributed batteries, solar fields, factories, repair systems, and machines that can work in a hostile environment both before and after humans arrive.

That is Tesla.

Starship can move civilization. Tesla can build out that civilization once it gets there.

Indeed, Tesla’s defining product may be Optimus. On Earth, Optimus will transform manufacturing, elder care, logistics, construction, agriculture, warehouses, and domestic labor. In space, though, Optimus massively multiplies the off-world workforce, collapsing the time needed for large-scale human expansion.

We rate Tesla as a Strong Buy too. There will be a billion humanoid robots sold in the next ten years, and a very high percentage will be Optimus variants.

The question is, would Tesla be even more valuable as part of SpaceX?

Yes, it would. A combined Tesla-SpaceX-xAI structure would be vastly more cost-efficient and create far more shareholder value. It would also be a lot more to Elon’s liking.

Today, the broader Musk ecosystem has enormous internal logic but separate corporate wrappers. That creates friction. Any movement of capital, technology, data, talent, chips, vehicles, batteries, compute, satellite access, robotics, or brand value between the companies can be treated as a related-party transaction, a governance scandal, or a class action lawsuit.

A merger changes all of that. It turns intercompany conflict into efficient internal capital allocation.

That is not a small thing. It is the thing.

Berkshire Hathaway became one of the greatest companies in history by allowing Warren Buffett to allocate capital across unrelated businesses. Insurance cash flow could buy railroads. Railroads could support energy. Energy could support manufacturing. The whole became far more valuable than the sum of the parts because the capital allocator was better than the market.

Is Elon Musk as smart as Warren Buffett? You tell me.

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A combined company would not merely own pieces of the future. It would own the stack: launch, satellites, autonomy, robotics, batteries, solar, AI, communications, vehicles, orbital infrastructure, and eventually the infrastructure of off-world mining, manufacturing, and settlement. That’s not a conglomerate: it’s the operating system for the next era.

It would also give Elon one cap table — unified control — and perhaps even more important, one equity currency.

That matters. The best of the best don’t just work for a salary. The world’s foremost engineers, roboticists, AI researchers, manufacturing leaders, chip designers, launch operators, mission planners, battery experts, and tunneling specialists work for equity: a piece of the fast-growing pie. Again, a unified whole would be worth a lot more than the sum of the parts.

Elon builds what others hold conferences about. He needs a megaphone? He buys one. He needs AI? He builds his own. He needs launch? He reinvents it. He needs energy, robots, vehicles, and manufacturing? He creates those too.

Who doesn’t want to own a piece of that? And who doesn’t want that mind boggling complexity simplied into a unified structure that’s easier to run, more efficient in its operations, and provides multiple revenue streams instead of counting on just one?

In lesser hands, such mergers could and frequently have gone horribly awry. But Elon’s are not lesser hands. The merger is a force multiplier.

It’s also highly likely. Just ask these guys:

“I think Elon will consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table.” — Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist.

“That’s in his heart. He wants to make this one big company.” — Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk biographer.

“Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla in some way.” — Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities.

“Good idea.” — Elon Musk, responding to a proposal for an “X” holding company above Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

Buying the SpaceX IPO is likely to give you a stake in the entire, far more efficient ecosystem. And that will only increase the value of your investment.

It’s Not FOMO: It’s Just Smart

That doesn’t mean SpaceX won’t trade down. It might. It doesn’t mean Tesla shareholders should accept a bad exchange ratio. They shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean regulators can’t obstruct, China can’t compete, or Elon himself won’t create occasional volatility. All of that’s the price of admission.

But SpaceX will not be valued correctly by treating it like Boeing, Lockheed, AT&T, or any other “normal” company. Even at a $1.75 trillion valuation, SpaceX is a bargain. There is no price at which you can buy it that ten years from now won’t seem cheap.

The critics will say otherwise. So be it. They said Facebook was a disaster. They said Tesla would fail. They said reusable rockets would never work. They said Starlink was impossible. At some point, the people who are always wrong about any longer-term future than the next quarter should stop being treated as experts on it.

Traders will trade the chart. Analysts will argue about multiples. Bankers will count fees. Reporters will hunt for governance scandals. Regulators will circle. Competitors will complain.

Let them.

Elon is not merely launching an IPO.

He is assembling the company that builds the next century or more.

And that future belongs to those who own it before everyone else figures that out.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
June 10, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• Are we winning in Iran?

• Is Donald Trump concerned about the midterms?

• What is the President’s endgame?

• “It’s the economy, stupid!” And the economy is kicking into gear.

It’s 10 minutes of deep analysis you won’t want to miss. Watch, like, and share!

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by Matt Field
June 10, 2026

The German ambassador to Egypt works out of a house that used to belong to a Jewish family. So does the Swiss ambassador. So does the American one. The homes were confiscated in 1956, when the Egyptian government declared, in a proclamation read aloud from the minarets of Cairo and Alexandria, that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state.

The families were given one suitcase. They signed documents “donating” everything else to the government. Then they left. The houses are still there; the families are not.

This is where the argument about Israel begins — not in Europe, but here.

There is a story told about Israel with remarkable confidence in universities, at the United Nations, in the opinion sections of newspapers that should know better. The story goes like this: European Jews, traumatized by European persecution, arrived in a land populated by indigenous Arabs and established, by force, a settler state. European guilt. European migration. European power. Colonialism wearing a Star of David.

The story requires you to ignore the majority of Israelis.

Mizrahi Jews (those whose ancestry traces to Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, and Lebanon) constitute the largest demographic bloc in Israel’s Jewish population, as many as 61 percent depending on how intermarriage and self-identification are counted. No serious demographer disputes the basic fact.

They are not European, but descendants of communities that lived in the Middle East and North Africa for over 2,000 years before the word “Europe” carried any political meaning. Many trace their origins to the Babylonian exile of 586 BC. Their families were in Iraq before Rome was a city. They were in Sana’a and Cairo and Tripoli while the ancestors of today’s loudest “anti-Zionists” were still pagans in northern forests.

By every definition that the language of indigenous rights claims to honor, they are indigenous people of the Middle East.

The colonial thesis does not complicate this fact; it requires its erasure.

These communities did not arrive in Iraq and Yemen and Egypt from Europe or from nowhere. They arrived from Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), carried there by the conquests and expulsions that defined the ancient world.

The Babylonian exile of 586 BC brought Jews to Mesopotamia when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the First Temple and deported the population of Judea. Later waves followed the Assyrian conquest, the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and the subsequent dispersions that scattered Jewish communities across the region.

The Jews of Baghdad, of Sana’a, of Cairo, of Tripoli were not immigrants to the Middle East from somewhere else; they were the exiled children of the Land of Israel, living in the lands to which conquest had driven them, maintaining their language, their texts, and their memory of home across 2,000 years. When they came to Israel in the 20th century, they were not arriving as colonizers; they were returning.

To understand what was lost, you have to know what existed.

The Jews of Iraq were among the oldest continuous Jewish communities on earth. Their roots in Babylonia stretch to the destruction of the First Temple. They did not merely survive in Iraq; they built there. The Talmud, the central text of Jewish law and life that has governed Jewish practice for 15 centuries, was composed in Babylon, in the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, on the soil of what is now modern Iraq.

By the early 20th century, Jews made up roughly a third of Baghdad’s population. They were merchants, musicians, government officials, doctors, and bankers. They spoke Judeo-Arabic and prayed in Hebrew and had done both, without interruption, for two and a half millennia.

The Jews of Yemen maintained a liturgical tradition so ancient and so isolated from the rest of the Jewish world that scholars of Hebrew phonetics study it today to understand how the language was originally pronounced. They had been in the Arabian Peninsula since before the rise of Islam. Their piyyutim, their sacred poetry, carried melodies that the rest of the Jewish world had forgotten.

The Jews of Morocco and Algeria predated the Arab conquest of North Africa. The Persian Jewish community traced its origins to the era of Cyrus the Great, who is named in the book of Isaiah as the instrument of Jewish liberation. The Jews of Egypt and the Jews of Syria were ancient. These were not transplanted peoples, but rooted ones with sacred texts, living languages, and unbroken communal memory reaching back to the earliest chapters of Jewish history.

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In 1948, there were 135,000 Jews in Iraq, 265,000 in Morocco, 140,000 in Algeria, 105,000 in Tunisia, 100,000 in Egypt, 60,000 in Yemen, 38,000 in Libya, and 30,000 in Syria. Today, there are fewer than 10 Jews in Iraq, fewer than 10 in Yemen, and fewer than 10 in Libya. The end of each community had its own texture, but the pattern was the same everywhere.

In Baghdad, the unraveling began on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot1 in June 1941. Nazi influence had reached Iraq through the German ambassador Fritz Grobba, who funded antisemitic newspapers, bankrolled a youth movement modeled on the Hitler Youth, and cultivated a pro-Axis officer class. When a short-lived pro-Nazi government collapsed and British forces moved toward the city, mobs took to the streets.

Over two days, roughly 180 Jews were killed, hundreds were wounded and raped, and 1,500 homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. The pogrom is called the Farhud, an Arabic term often translated as “violent dispossession” or “pogrom.” It is not taught in schools.

A decade later, Iraq criminalized Zionism, seized Jewish property, stripped Jews of their citizenship, and arranged the conditions under which 120,000 Jews boarded planes to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, leaving behind the land where the Talmud was written.

In Egypt, President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government waited until the Suez Crisis of 1956. Then the proclamation went out from the mosques: Zionists, enemies of the state, one suitcase, sign the form, leave. Between 1948 and the late 1960s, more than 80 percent of Egypt’s Jews fled, most to Israel, some to France and the Americas, all to a life rebuilt from nothing.

In Yemen, anti-Jewish riots erupted in late November 1947, triggered by protests against the United Nations Partition Plan. Over three days, more than 80 Jews were killed, over 100 Jewish-owned businesses looted, synagogues burned. In 1949 and 1950, in an operation the Israeli government called On Wings of Eagles, nearly 49,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel. Many had walked for days through the desert to reach the airstrip. They arrived carrying almost nothing. They brought their Torah scrolls.

In Libya, the Jews had been present for over 2,000 years, their roots in the region traceable to before the destruction of the Second Temple. In 1945, Arab nationalist riots killed more than 140 of them and destroyed hundreds of their homes. Another pogrom followed in 1948 — more dead, more homes burned. When Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi came to power in 1969, he confiscated all remaining Jewish property by law. By 1970, the government declared Libya Judenrein (German meaning “free of Jews”) — 2,000 years of Jewish presence, ended by decree.

The same pattern completed itself across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran — sometimes through mob violence, sometimes through bureaucratic suffocation. Property laws required Muslim business partners, passports were withheld, citizenship was stripped, and bank accounts were frozen.

The Jewish communities of the Arab world were liquidated across three decades through a combination of persecution, pauperization, and periodic slaughter, until more than 99 percent were gone. The land confiscated from those who fled amounts to 40,000 square miles, five times the size of Israel in 1948. The property losses, documented across 22 archives and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, are valued at $263 billion in current terms.

There is no UN agency for these refugees, no annual day of mourning recognized by the UN General Assembly, no special rapporteur, no international fund, no permanent refugee population maintained across generations as a political instrument.

The word Nakba — meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic and referring to the 1948 displacement of Palestinians during the First Arab-Israeli war — is not applied to them, though by every measurable standard, what happened to nearly one million Jews across the Arab world was a larger, more total, and more deliberately engineered displacement than the Palestinian exodus to which that word is exclusively applied.

The silence is not an oversight. Oversights get corrected when you point them out. This is where the argument has to be named precisely.

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The people who advance the colonial thesis about the modern State of Israel are not, in general, ignorant of Mizrahi Jews. They are educated people. They read. They know that Israel is not a monoculture. The problem is not that they lack information; the problem is that the information does not serve the argument, so the information is not used.

The colonial framing is load-bearing. Remove it and the entire ideological structure collapses. Acknowledge that the majority of Israelis descend from communities expelled from Arab lands, and you must also acknowledge that Arab states conducted ethnic cleansing against their Jewish populations. Acknowledge that, and you cannot sustain the clean binary of indigenous Arabs against colonial Europeans. Acknowledge that, and the people demanding the dismantling of Israel as an act of decolonization are demanding that the refugees of Arab ethnic cleansing surrender the one place that took them in.

The Mizrahi Jews do not complicate this argument; they end it — so they are disappeared, not through a conspiracy, but through a habit of selective attention so consistent and so convenient that it functions as policy. They are the people the argument needs not to exist. And for the most part, in the discourse that shapes how much of the world talks about Israel, they don’t.

The erasure is not ignorance; it is maintenance.

Israel is a country whose majority population descended from Jews expelled from the Arab world. Those Jews came from communities that predated Islam, that built the Talmud on Babylonian soil, that maintained ancient Hebrew liturgy in Yemeni mountains, that had been part of the fabric of Cairo and Baghdad and Tripoli for longer than most modern nations have existed. They were dispossessed by Arab nationalism, stripped of citizenship and property, forced onto planes and into transit camps and into a new country that was the only country that would have them. They are not colonizers of the Middle East; they are its expelled children, returned.

And those Arab states bear direct responsibility for the demographic reality they then spent decades condemning. Nearly 900,000 Jews left Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria, driven by persecution, pogrom, and state-sponsored dispossession. Some left under direct expulsion order. Others left because staying had been made impossible. The distinction matters less than the result: They are gone, their property was taken, and not one Arab state has ever offered to keep them, protect them, or compensate them for what was taken.

Some 650,000 went to Israel, because Israel was the only country that would receive them without conditions. The rest went to France and the Americas. They expelled the Jews, closed every door behind them, and then condemned where those Jews ended up. The population that the colonial thesis calls a European imposition was built, in its majority, by refugees the Arab world itself created. The indictment and its cause are the same people.

The conflict has competing claims; they deserve honest accounting; and that accounting cannot begin until all the people are on the table.

The people who built the colonial thesis around Israel knew, or should have known, all of this. They constructed the argument anyway. They invoked “indigenous rights” while erasing the most indigenous Jews on earth. They demanded “historical accountability” while granting total immunity to the Arab states that liquidated their Jewish populations and kept the stolen property. They called Israel a “European project” while ignoring the Yemeni Jews who walked through the desert carrying Torah scrolls to reach a plane to Israel.

You cannot make that argument in good faith. You can only make it by deciding, in advance, that certain people do not count.

The Mizrahi Jews count. They were there when the argument was being built against them. They were there when the world decided not to notice. They are there now, the majority of the people in the Jewish state, the expelled children of the Arab world, home. No thesis survives that — only the decision to keep pretending it doesn’t exist.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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by Stephen McBride
June 9, 2026

A single uranium pellet the size of a gummy bear contains as much energy as 140 barrels of oil. It’s the cleanest, safest energy source known to man.

No one who knows what they’re talking about disputes this.

So why don’t we have nuclear-powered everything?

In short: We buried a miracle in paperwork. Since the 1970s building a new reactor has effectively been illegal in America. It required $30 billion and 15+ years in regulatory hell.

I bring good news. In my many travels, I’ve met the world’s best nuclear entrepreneurs (yes, that’s actually a real thing now). I’ve now known many of these guys for a while and have become friends with them. This was the first time they’ve ever said the following to me (and they all agreed):

“Regulation is finally becoming a solved problem.”

One founder said his microreactor (a small nuclear reactor, or “SMR”) could be up and running next year.

So let’s talk about the “problems” remaining with nuclear. What do we do with the waste? And how do we get fuel? We’ll meet the entrepreneurs coming to the rescue on both.

First, let’s quickly look at the big regulatory changes.

In 1974, a bureaucratic monster called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was born. Guess how many new reactor designs it greenlit between 1974 and 2025?

Zero!

Only two reactors have started commercial operation on the NRC’s watch, compared to 133 before it.

We’re finally righting this wrong. Last year, President Trump signed four executive orders to turbocharge nuclear. These orders trigger five big changes:

Change 1: They set a goal of quadrupling the size of America’s nuclear fleet by 2050.

Change 2. They sped up the development of “advanced nuclear” (read: small modular reactors, or “SMRs”) through pilot programs and streamlined environmental reviews. They ordered the NRC to license new reactors within 18 months.

Change 3. They ordered the Department of Energy (DoE) to approve at least three reactors by mid-2026. Basically, Trump wants three SMRs up and running for America’s 250th birthday.

Change 4. They designated nuclear plants that power AI facilities as “defense-critical infrastructure.” Building nuclear-powered data centers on military bases is a genius loophole. It potentially allows projects to avoid lengthy NRC reviews.

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Change 5. This is the most important change in my view: They direct the NRC to reconsider its “As Low as Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA) regulation. You receive more radiation from eating a single banana than you would from living next to a nuclear power plant for a year. Yet under the ALARA rule, even that isn’t safe enough!

This “zero banana rule” has effectively made it illegal to build nuclear plants in America. I think the President should have ordered the NRC to eliminate the rule altogether. But this is progress. An updated rule is expected later this year. And in the meantime, the DoE has eliminated ALARA from its own directives.

Nuclear entrepreneurs have been waiting their whole lives for this moment.

As Matt Loszak, founder of Aalo Atomics said, “We just have to wait for the executive orders to be implemented and we’re off to the races.”

In Detroit, Valar Atomics founder Isaiah Taylor said…

One of the most important engineering challenges is fuel.

Getting fuel was top of mind for many of the entrepreneurs I met. Even if they were ready to power up their microreactors tomorrow, many wouldn’t be able to. They lack the fuel.

How is that possible? Because as with rare earth elements, America regulated its domestic nuclear fuel industry to death, handing control of the supply chain to Russia and China. A similar thing happened with drones.

Getting uranium from the ground to a reactor has four basic steps:

• Mining. Companies like Cameco (Canada) dig up uranium in places like Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. Over 85% of the world’s uranium comes from these 6 countries. The raw ore is then processed into a powder called yellowcake.

• Conversion. Yellowcake is milled and converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) so it can be turned into gas for enrichment. Orano (France) and Rosatom (Russia) control over 50% of the market.

• Enrichment. The nuclear “gas” is enriched by spinning it in centrifuges. Three companies, Urenco (European consortium), Orano, and Rosatom dominate the enrichment market.

• Fuel fabrication. Companies like Westinghouse (US) and Framatome (France) press and bake the enriched uranium powder into hard ceramic pellets.

America has plenty of uranium in the ground. But thanks to overregulation, it has minimal capacity to process it.

As of 2023, 99% of the fuel used in U.S. reactors was imported – much of it from Russia. That has become a bit…inconvenient.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 8, 2026

I appeared on NTD Good Morning with Cary Dunst to discuss the latest in the Iran war.

We discuss:

• The ceasefire violations and the differing aims of Israel and Iran

• What’s actually happening in Lebanon

• Where the peace talks stand, and Trump’s endgame

• How Iran hopes to game the U.S. midterms

• Winners and losers: Iran, Russia, China, and Texas

It’s nine minutes that quickly explain the latest developments and where we go from here. Watch the interview, and pass it along!

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NOTE: My friend Fred Fleitz is a former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff, a former CIA analyst, and a former senior staffer with the House Intelligence Committee. He knows this topic better than most.

Which bring me to the point. Fred’s prescription for ODNI, combined with his credentials, make him a perfect candidate to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. And if you’ve been following his occasional essays here, you know that he’s enthusiastically supportive of Tulsi’s work to expose and imprison the Russiagate coup plotters.

Fred would finish the job Tulsi started to truly reform the Intelligence Community. And there’s no greater reform than eliminating the ODNI itself, a Deep State bastion and boondoggle from the start. As Sam Faddis constantly reminds us, the IC is bloated, ineffective, politicized, and almost entirely devoid of the operational muscle it needs to do the job. Fred would get us there (and if we can’t have Fred, can we please have Sam?). — RDM

The Next DNI Must Finish Tulsi Gabbard’s Work and Eliminate the ODNI

by Fred Fleitz
June 8, 2026

Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation as Director of National Intelligence, effective June 30, marks the end of a short but consequential tenure. Appointed in early 2025, she inherited an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that had ballooned since its post-9/11 creation into a bureaucratic behemoth of roughly 1,800–2,000 personnel, widely derided for politicizing intelligence and meddling in domestic politics.

Gabbard made real progress downsizing and depoliticizing the ODNI. But President Trump’s next DNI must finish the job and finally eliminate this huge redundant intelligence bureaucracy to give our country the lean and effective intelligence agencies we need to address the new and dire security threats facing our nation.

Gabbard’s “ODNI 2.0” initiative, launched in August 2025, delivered the most aggressive cuts since the founding of the ODNI. She slashed staff by more than 40 percent — to just 1,300 employees — closed or downsized duplicative centers such as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, revoked security clearances for officials who had weaponized intelligence against Americans, and projected more than $700 million in annual savings. These steps attacked the mission creep, “DNI taxes” on other agencies, and empire-building that had turned the ODNI into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy rather than the small coordinating staff the 9/11 Commission originally envisioned.

Those reforms were long overdue. For two decades, the ODNI has replicated analysis already done by the CIA and other agencies, mobbed congressional hearings with unnecessary staffers, and imposed politically correct fads — from climate change to DEI quotas — on the entire Intelligence Community. Gabbard began draining this swamp. But the office itself remains the problem.

The proof that the DNI is unnecessary is staring us in the face. In President Trump’s second term, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has served effectively as the president’s principal intelligence adviser. He has delivered unvarnished, actionable intelligence directly to the president without the ODNI’s layers of bureaucracy, groupthink, or politicized gatekeepers. Ratcliffe has shown that the CIA director can once again function as the president’s senior intelligence official — coordinating the Intelligence Community when necessary — without any need for a bloated 1,300-person (or even 650-person) ODNI staff.

This is exactly the model I have advocated for years: eliminate the DNI position and its bloated office, return core functions to the CIA, and let U.S. intelligence agencies do their jobs.

In an August 2025 American Greatness article, I praised Senator Tom Cotton’s Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act as a strong step in the right direction. This legislation would cap the ODNI staff at 650, transfer duplicative centers to the CIA and FBI, and refocus the National Intelligence Council on coordination rather than redundant analysis.

Nevertheless, Cotton’s bold plan still falls short of the full elimination required. A smaller ODNI is still an ODNI — still prone to the same bureaucratic inertia and political capture that have plagued it since 2004.

Gabbard scored important successes as DNI: she proved dramatic downsizing of U.S. intelligence agencies is possible through executive action, restored public trust by confronting politicization, and refocused resources on genuine threats.

But her too-short tenure still has agenda items left undone: above all, the ODNI itself survived. Key specialized functions were cut without fully reallocating them to other intelligence agencies, and momentum stalled once the most obvious bloat was removed. These partial reforms left the deeply flawed ODNI structure intact and probably will lead to future mission creep the moment a less reform-minded DNI takes over.

President Trump gave his Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, a bold mandate: shut down the wasteful and politicized Department of Education. He should give his nominee to be the next DNI a similar mandate: finish what Gabbard started and abolish the ODNI entirely. Restore the CIA director as the head of America’s Intelligence Community and return the position to the title it held for nearly sixty years: Director of Central Intelligence.

Use executive authority to transfer remaining personnel and functions back to the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Send the thousands of detailees from other agencies home. Sell the costly Liberty Crossing headquarters in high-priced Tysons Corner, Virginia. Move the president’s Daily Brief and strategic analysis where they belong — under the CIA director.

Congress should then codify these changes by repealing the relevant sections of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and passing legislation that makes permanent the lean, coordinated Intelligence Community we actually need.

As I argued in January 2025, it is time to make American intelligence great again. Our nation urgently needs nimble, modernized intelligence agencies to confront today’s grave and growing threats: China’s aggressive espionage and military buildup, Russia’s hybrid warfare, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist proxies, and the rapidly advancing dangers of AI, cyberwarfare, and drone technology. We can no longer afford bloated intelligence bureaucracies that care more about domestic politics and internal empire-building than America’s national security.

Tulsi Gabbard disrupted the U.S. Intelligence Community status quo. President Trump should direct his next DNI to complete this mission. Eliminating the ODNI is not radical; it is common sense. It is the only way to deliver the lean, effective, and depoliticized Intelligence Community to protect our nation in an increasingly dangerous world.

— Fred Fleitz is a former CIA analyst and staff member with the House Intelligence Committee. In 2018, he served as the National Security Council Chief of Staff and as a Deputy Special Assistant to President Trump. This article appeared at American Greatness.

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NOTE: For this anniversary of the Battle of Midway, I am republishing this brilliant re-examination of the global consequences of the Japanese victory that, statistically speaking, should have happened. No matter how great a victory you believe Midway to be, the truth is greater still. But for this singularly improbable American triumph, the Allies likely would have lost the entire war. — RDM

by George Friedman
June 7, 2017

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Midway. The books and movies about this battle have been legion. They focus on the long odds facing the Americans, the luck and breathtaking courage, and the brilliance of American codebreakers that led to victory. They assert that the American victory sealed Japan’s fate in World War II.

But they rarely consider in detail the consequences if America had lost the battle, which it might easily have done. The Japanese were also extraordinarily courageous. Had they been luckier, and had they changed the Japanese code well before the battle as they should have, Midway could have ended in the destruction of three American carriers, with the Japanese navy intact.

On this anniversary, I want to consider the war had the battle gone Japan’s way.

The Pacific

The immediate consequence of a defeat at Midway would, of course, have been in the Pacific. The Japanese plan appears to have been to follow Midway with an assault on strategic islands in the South Pacific. They would have faced light forces on the islands and no naval threat. They would have taken islands, built airfields and constructed overlapping areas of air power that would have prevented merchant shipping from entering. The flow of U.S. troops and materiel to Australia would have slowed to a trickle or dried up altogether.

This would have meant that the U.S. could not have taken Guadalcanal and New Guinea until much later. It also would have given Japan much more time to consolidate a line, for example, from Samoa to Midway to the Aleutians, which was also part of Japan’s Midway strategy.

The United States, lacking a sufficient carrier force, would not have been able to launch a Pacific offensive until mid-1943, and that offensive would have had to be focused on the South Pacific rather than the Gilberts, Marianas and Marshalls. The cost in time, men and materiel of bringing Japan into range of American bombers would have been substantial. Submarines would have had to launch from Pearl Harbor rather than Midway, which is 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) longer, and much of the time would have been spent on submarine operations to interdict supplies instead of attacking Japanese warships. Japan would have had time and materiel to increase its strength.

The Americans’ problem in the Pacific would have been securing Hawaii as a forward base and maintaining the line of supply from the West Coast. The Japanese were unlikely to invade Hawaii, given that all operations there would take place within the range of U.S. air power. But the Japanese could have used submarines based in Midway to interdict supplies from the West Coast. If Hawaii ceased to be an effective base, then the Japanese would dominate the Western Pacific. They would have had options to strike the West Coast, and certainly to take Dutch Harbor in Alaska or even Anchorage. They already held the islands of Attu and Kiska. The Americans would have had to answer.

In 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was at its peak, and that summer and fall, an extraordinarily high 10 percent of all Allied shipping in the Atlantic was being sunk. It is at this point that the United States would have had to decide whether to risk the isolation of Hawaii or reduce the number of destroyers based in the Atlantic. It couldn’t do both – U.S. production of naval vessels wouldn’t really be able to surge until mid-1943.

The shipping of supplies to Britain was meant to support Britain and the Soviet Union, an excellent long-term strategy for pursuing American interests. But this was a political problem. The immediate threat to the American homeland would likely trump long-term strategy.

Given the stakes in the Pacific, the odds against U-boats in the Atlantic and the delay in increased production of naval vessels, the U.S. would have had little choice but to transfer destroyers to the Pacific. But that wouldn’t be enough. It would also greatly increase land-based aircraft on the West Coast. The aircraft production program was beginning to gain steam in 1942, but most of that at the time was being assigned to the Royal Air Force, the U.S. Air Force buildup in Britain or the Soviet Union. That would have changed.

An Unthinkable Treaty

We must consider the impact of all this on Allied powers. Australia would have depended on its own resources. The Japanese were unlikely to invade, but the Australians couldn’t be sure of that. For things to change, the U.S. would have to launch a new Navy, fight its way through the South Pacific and then launch operations northward to push the Japanese away from Australia. To that point, neither the British nor the Americans appeared very effective allies. At the very best, the U.S. was a year away from offensive operations, and opening the line of supply to Australia might not happen until 1944, if ever.

Immediately upon the U.S. defeat at Midway, Australia would have had to demand that the last Australian forces in North Africa return home while the Suez Canal was still open. The battle of El Alamein was being fought from summer 1942 until the British victory in October. A British defeat would have enabled the Germans to take the Suez Canal and likely control the Mediterranean.

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Australian troops had been critical to this victory, and though the Australians had withdrawn many troops after Pearl Harbor, the 7th Division remained. The 7th Division proved to be the critical force in the final, victorious phase of El Alamein. Had the Australians withdrawn the 7th in summer 1942, which they would have had Midway been an American defeat, it is altogether possible that the British still would have won at El Alamein, but it would have been substantially less likely than with the Australians there.

But the homeland would have to take precedent. The Australians wanted to be certain that Australia was not occupied by the Japanese, but they had no military way to prevent it and no reliable allies. Their national strategy was hoping the Japanese had other plans. The Japanese had no real interest in Australia except for making sure it didn’t become a base for the Americans. The Japanese also wanted Australia’s raw materials. A peace agreement was possible. Australia, isolated and with no options, would have done what was unthinkable before Midway: signed a friendship pact with Japan guaranteeing neutrality, with a mutually beneficial trade agreement included.

Soviet Vulnerability

At about the same time of Midway, the Germans launched an offensive in the south that would evolve into the Battle of Stalingrad. The offensive surprised the Soviets, who were expecting the assault to come on Moscow. The Soviets had also underestimated Germany’s strength. At the same time, the Soviets would have seen the American defeat at the Battle of Midway and understood that it would mean a decrease in lend-lease, if not its complete disruption. The British, who also depended on lend-lease, would be in no position to replace it, and Soviet industrial production was not yet capable of providing for a powerful defense at Stalingrad by itself.

And the Soviets had a second problem. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the Soviets had feared, and the Japanese had considered, an alternative strike into Siberia. Russia’s maritime region had oil, and Japan needed oil. The Japanese attacked south toward the Dutch holdings instead, but the interest in Siberia was still there. With a victory at Midway, the Japanese could have halted operations in the Pacific and focused on building defenses on Pacific islands that would bog down the American counterattack in mid-1943 in island-to-island fighting, with a vast Japanese fleet to challenge the landing party.

But Siberia was open. Right after Pearl Harbor, the Soviets shifted to Moscow the force that had been protecting Siberia from Japan. It was this force under Gen. Georgy Zhukov that stopped the Germans. A Japanese victory at Midway would have reopened the possibility of a Japanese invasion. But the Soviets would not have been able to send Zhukov back. Until the defeat of the German southern thrust, which would happen in early 1943, everything had to go there.

The Soviet Union faced two problems. One was that it didn’t know that it could win at Stalingrad with the absence of lend-lease shipments. The other was that critical Soviet lands were at serious risk. If the Soviets couldn’t contain the Germans’ southern thrust, the best they could do was retain a rump state in the north. If they won but Japan attacked Siberia, they would still have lost the east, and the Japanese would control the Western Pacific, China and Siberia.

In 1943 and 1944, there were discussions between Germany and the Soviets on a peace agreement that never worked out. I don’t know that either side took these talks seriously. The Germans certainly wouldn’t have considered talks had Japan won at Midway, forcing the U.S. to shift its grand strategy away from the Atlantic, putting lend-lease in jeopardy and exposing the eastern Soviet Union to Japanese attack. I think without the assistance of the Americans in 1942, the Soviets would have lost the war. In our alternate history, the Americans probably would have thought the Soviets were going to lose anyway, but history proved them wrong.

Freak Outcomes

It is true that in the years after Midway, American productivity would grow to be enormous, but the enemy doesn’t wait for production to rise. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto’s intention was to destroy the U.S. naval force in the Pacific and to create an impregnable belt of islands to block American advances. That was the purpose of Midway, and had it worked, I think there would have been a different outcome in the global war. This is because the United States was the industrial foundation of the Allies, but in 1942, that production had not really gotten underway. A defeat at Midway would have forced a reallocation of industrial production and warships. This would have left key allies, Australia and the Soviet Union, in an impossible position.

The U.S. would have had towering production by 1943 or 1944. But the Soviets would not be there anymore. Nor, I suspect, would Australia. Britain would have made it so long as it won at El Alamein without Australia’s help. The problem was that massive production without Allied forces and forward bases would have left the U.S. fighting alone. And given the distances and multiple enemies, that wasn’t possible.

This all raises a serious question for me. My work is in finding the order and predictability in history. There was nothing predictable at Midway. The Japanese should have won even with the U.S. breaking their code. The numbers were so lopsided in their favor that their defeat was a freak. And that freak created the world we live in. The Japanese were as brave and as smart, their weapons as good if not better, and they had far greater numbers. They should have won, and the things I have described should have happened, and the history of the world should have been quite different.

-- Midway: The Battle That Almost Lost the War originally appeared at Geopolitical Futures.

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by Rod D. Martin and Frank Gaffney
June 5, 2026

My latest interview on Securing America with Frank Gaffney. Sign up NOW for Frank’s Rumble channel and don’t miss a single episode!

In this episode:

• Personal memories of Tiananmen Square from my college Chinese class

• The very different approaches to dissent of Gorbachev vs. Beijing

• Should America have reacted more forcefully?

• How Bill Clinton sold America to the CCP

• How China is deindustrializing Europe

• Why the Chinese economy, like Russia’s in the 1980s, is far weaker than it looks

• Is Scott Bessent trying to break the yuan?

• Trump’s Reaganesque strategy to contain and collapse the CCP

It’s 20 minutes of deep analysis you can’t get anywhere else. Watch, like, and share!

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by Roger Stone
June 5, 2026

For much of the twentieth century, Latin America served as one of the principal battlegrounds in the global struggle between communism and free market democracy. The Soviet Union and its allies invested enormous resources into cultivating revolutionary movements, socialist parties, and Marxist insurgencies throughout the Western Hemisphere. From Cuba to Nicaragua and beyond, the Left promised a future built upon economic equality, state control, and collectivist ideology.

For a time, many believed those movements represented the inevitable direction of history. Political leaders, academics, journalists, and activists throughout the region embraced socialist theories and revolutionary rhetoric. The collapse of the Soviet Union slowed that momentum, but it did not eliminate it. In the decades that followed, a new generation of left wing governments emerged across Latin America under what became known as the “Pink Tide”.

Today, a remarkable political transformation is underway. Across the region, voters are increasingly turning away from socialist and progressive governments in favor of conservative, nationalist, and free market alternatives. The shift reflects growing frustration with crime, corruption, inflation, economic stagnation, and governments that have failed to deliver on decades of promises.

Nowhere has this political reversal been more dramatic than in Argentina. Long regarded as one of the most economically troubled nations in South America despite its vast natural wealth and human capital, Argentina endured years of soaring inflation, fiscal instability, and declining public confidence. Faced with mounting economic hardship, voters elected Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian and fierce critic of government expansion.

Milei’s election represented far more than a routine change in political leadership. It reflected a broader rejection of the policies that many Argentines believe contributed to their nation’s prolonged economic decline. His promises of deregulation, reduced government spending, and economic liberalization resonated with voters who had grown weary of inflation and diminishing living standards.

A similar political struggle is now unfolding in Colombia, one of the most important nations in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia is currently governed by President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first left wing president, who is constitutionally prohibited from seeking another term. His administration pursued an ambitious progressive agenda focused on wealth redistribution, environmental reforms, negotiations with armed groups, and expanded government programs. While Petro retained a loyal base of support, his presidency also became increasingly controversial amid concerns about public security, economic performance, healthcare reform, and rising political polarization.

The Colombian presidential election has become a referendum on the future direction of the country. The candidate representing continuity with Petro’s movement is Senator Iván Cepeda, a longtime left wing activist and close ally of the current administration. Cepeda has pledged to continue many of Petro’s policies, including expanded social programs, greater government involvement in the economy, land redistribution initiatives, and a continuation of negotiations with armed groups.

Opposing him is Abelardo de la Espriella, a conservative lawyer and political outsider who has surged from relative obscurity to become the leading candidate in the race. De la Espriella has campaigned on restoring public order, strengthening law enforcement, confronting criminal organizations, rebuilding relations with the United States, and reversing many of the policies associated with the Petro administration. His rise has drawn comparisons to both Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

The results of the first round of voting sent shockwaves through Colombian politics. De la Espriella finished first with approximately 43.7% of the vote, while Cepeda finished second with roughly 40.9%. The outcome forced a runoff election and demonstrated that a substantial portion of Colombian voters are prepared to move in a more conservative direction. Several center right political figures have already lined up behind De la Espriella, further strengthening his position heading into the decisive final vote.

The Colombian election is significant because it illustrates the broader debate occurring throughout Latin America. On one side stand political movements advocating greater state involvement in economic and social life. On the other stand candidates emphasizing public security, economic growth, free enterprise, and national sovereignty. The contest is no longer confined to academic discussions or ideological debates. It is being decided at the ballot box by voters increasingly focused on practical outcomes.

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Elsewhere throughout the region, similar patterns are emerging. In Ecuador, concerns over organized crime, cartel violence, and public security have become dominant political issues. Citizens increasingly demand stronger law enforcement and more effective government action against criminal organizations that have expanded their influence in recent years.

In Chile, enthusiasm for sweeping progressive reforms has diminished as voters express growing concern about economic performance and national stability. In Brazil, conservative and nationalist movements continue to command significant support despite intense political polarization and sustained opposition from many established institutions.

The changing political landscape reflects more than dissatisfaction with individual leaders. It represents a broader reassessment of the ideological assumptions that have influenced Latin American politics for generations. Many citizens have concluded that expansive government programs and centralized economic policies have failed to produce the prosperity and opportunity they were promised.

Venezuela stands as perhaps the most powerful example of this reality. Once among the wealthiest countries in the region, Venezuela became synonymous with economic collapse, hyperinflation, political repression, and mass emigration. Millions of Venezuelans fled their homeland in search of safety and opportunity. The consequences of that national decline have been visible across the continent, shaping public opinion far beyond Venezuela’s borders.

For many Latin American voters, these developments are not abstract political theories. They are lived experiences. Families have witnessed rising prices erode their savings. Business owners have struggled under burdensome regulations. Communities have endured growing insecurity. Citizens have become increasingly skeptical of politicians who promise transformative change while delivering disappointing results.

As a consequence, political movements that emphasize economic freedom, public safety, national sovereignty, and governmental accountability are gaining momentum throughout the hemisphere. While each country’s circumstances are unique, the broader pattern is difficult to ignore. The significance of this trend extends beyond Latin America. The issues driving political change throughout the region mirror many of the concerns that dominate political debates in the United States. Inflation, crime, immigration, government spending, and public trust in institutions remain central issues for voters throughout the Americas.

The outcome of Colombia’s runoff election will provide one of the clearest indications yet of where the region is headed. A victory by Cepeda would preserve the momentum of the Latin American Left and provide a successor to Petro’s political project. A victory by De la Espriella would represent one of the most significant conservative victories in South America in recent years and would add Colombia to the growing list of nations reassessing the promises of progressive governance.

The political realignment now unfolding across Latin America demonstrates that voters ultimately judge governments by outcomes rather than intentions. Grand ideological visions often lose their appeal when they fail to improve daily life. Citizens want secure communities, economic opportunity, stable currencies, and governments capable of performing their most basic responsibilities effectively.

The great political story emerging from Latin America is therefore not merely a series of election results. It is a profound reassessment of ideas that have shaped the region for decades. After years of disappointment with policies that promised prosperity but often delivered instability, many voters are embracing a different path. The consequences of that choice may shape the future of the Western Hemisphere for years to come.

— Roger Stone is a veteran of ten national presidential campaigns who served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents: Nixon, Reagan, and Trump. He is a speaker, pundit, and New York Times bestselling Author featured in the Netflix documentary ‘Get Me Roger Stone.’ This analysis first appeared at his Substack, StoneColdTruth.com.

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