Congress – Strategic Culture Foundation

As Congress looks on, President Trump rules by decree

A A — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:00:59 +0000

By Adam DICK

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Wars of choice, a plethora of changing tariffs and sanctions on countries across the world, and a historically high number of executive orders characterize the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. And all this has been accomplished by the executive branch with minimal pushback from the legislative branch.

Congress has over time ceded more and more power to the executive branch. Over the last year, this process has reached a level where the assertion that the legislature comprises a “coequal” branch of the United States government seems more a punch line of a joke than an expression of reality.

In a Tuesday Washington Post article, Liz Goodwin provides details of the withering of the exercise of congressional power in Trump’s second term. Commenting on the situation now in Congress, Goodwin wrote, “While lawmakers once jealously guarded their constitutionally endowed power over spending, trade and war — regularly checking the executive — Republicans in the 119th Congress have cast themselves as helpmeets to the president instead.”

A problem for Republicans in Congress who have chosen to just look on as the president does whatever he wishes is that the president has grown increasingly unpopular among voters. For a significant number of these Congress members, their status as Trump’s “helpmeets” may cause them to fail in their reelection efforts. Their departure, along with the decision of some of their Republican colleagues to forgo uphill reelection campaigns, could lead to increased assertion of congressional authority after a new Congress convenes in January.

Original article: ronpaulinstitute.org

Preemptive war, permanent emergency: The real cost of Trump’s Iran strike

A A — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:34:30 +0000

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“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”—Jeremiah 6:13–14

“This is insane. Regime change will result in a bloody civil war… Resist this!”—Charlie Kirk (2025)

The military-industrial complex and the American police state have joined forces.

War abroad and war at home are no longer separate enterprises. They have fused.

This did not happen overnight.

Every modern president has stretched the limits of war-making power. Some have shredded those limits altogether.

Each time that boundary is breached, the Constitution recedes a little further.

This is one of those moments.

In a complete about-face from his claims to being a peace president, Donald Trump has authorized yet another preemptive strike—this time against Iran—without a declaration of war from Congress, without meaningful public debate, and without constitutional clarity.

The gravity of that decision cannot be overstated.

While American troops were being ordered into harm’s way, Trump was hosting a $1 million-a-ticket fundraiser for himself at Mar-a-Lago, trotting out his signature dance moves between curtained war briefings.

That spectacle tells you everything you need to know.

That is how we arrived at Operation Epic Fury.

With its Orwellian proclamations of “peace through strength,” Operation Epic Fury is less strategy than spectacle—an egotistical, muscle-flexing distraction by the Trump administration and an overarching attempt to normalize the use of unilateral force by the executive branch without congressional input or authorization.

This was never about peace. It was always about power.

And the Constitution is clear about how this is supposed to work, even if the White House is not.

Article I, Section 8 grants Congress—not the president—the power to declare war. The president under Article II, Section 2 is designated as commander-in-chief with the power to command the military. He is not commander-of-everything.

Yet here we are.

The Trump administration is advancing a global policing doctrine that mirrors the domestic police state: strike first, ask questions later.

Since January 2025, Trump has carried out more than 600 military strikes on foreign targets that include Iran, Yemen, Nigeria and Venezuela, while threatening forceful military takeovers of Greenland, Colombia and Mexico.

Preemptive force has become policy.

Call it what it is: war.

Despite the word games over its war games—the administration insists its actions in Iran do not constitute a war—members of Trump’s Cabinet use the word “war” freely until congressional authorization is mentioned.

And when the administration is asked to explain themselves, the answer is not constitutional deference but open defiance.

Clearly, they have lost sight of who they answer to—and who funds their war chests: we the taxpayers.

Pete Hegseth—the self-righteous blowhard who brags about lethal weapons and has rebranded the Defense Department as the Department of War—dismissed public accountability outright, expressing in no uncertain terms that it’s none of our business: “Why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective. We fight to win. We fight to achieve the objectives the President of the United States has laid out and we will do so unapologetically.”

The Constitution is the “why.”

The American people have a right to debate war before it begins. We have a right to know how our tax dollars are spent. We have a right to insist our representatives authorize the use of force. We have a right to know why our sons and daughters are sent into harm’s way. We have a right to refuse to have our tax dollars used to kill other people’s daughters and sons.

As Rick Steves, the globetrotting travel writer, put it:

“As an American taxpayer, I believe that every US bomb that falls and every bullet that flies has my name on it. In the last year, our president (who won votes by promising to keep America out of wars and is now famously agitating for a Nobel Peace Prize) has dropped bombs on seven foreign countries—and each of those bombs has your name on it, too…including the one that just recklessly decapitated a nation of 90 million people in a war-torn corner of our world.”

He is right. War is not abstract—it is done with our money, and too often without our consent.

As Cato Institute’s Katherine Thompson explains, “War…costs American blood and treasure. The Founders placed the power to initiate it in Congress precisely to ensure those costs are confronted and debated before the country walks into battle.”

That safeguard is being ignored.

And the damage does not stop at constitutional injury, because war is not only a constitutional problem. It is an economic one.

War fuels defense contracts, reconstruction deals and intelligence budgets. It sustains a vast military-industrial apparatus whose profits depend on instability.

Nothing about Operation Epic Fury puts America first. It pushes us toward a fiscal cliff.

Within days, the costs were staggering: $300 million for three F-15E jets downed by “friendly” fire. $630 million to transport troops, ships and aircraft to the region in advance of the attacks. More than 50,000 troops deployed to the region. $13 million a day just for two aircraft carriers stationed nearby. $43.8 million for 1,250 Kamikaze drones. $2 million each for Tomahawk missiles. $12.8 million each for anti-ballistic missile interceptors.

Forbes estimates that Trump’s military strikes in Iran have already cost American taxpayers over $1 billion, “with a price tag that could approach $100 billion, depending on how long it can stretch on.” The total economic cost of the conflict “could trigger an economic loss for the U.S. of between $50 billion and $210 billion.”

And that is before accounting for the human cost.

Innocent civilians—over a hundred young girls between the ages of 7 and 12—have died because the U.S. and Israel reportedly launched a deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school in Iran using outdated maps.

American servicepeople are dying because of one man’s unilateral decision to play at war.

So much for “America First.”

Permanent war places empire first.

And as usual, “we the people” will be forced pay for another unpopular forever war—financially, constitutionally, and domestically—and for the presidential hubris and the greed of the military-industrial complex and Deep State undergirding it all.

Congress anticipated this danger.

The War Powers Act was meant to rein in presidents who bypass Congress. But laws are only as strong as the institutions willing to enforce them.

Without congressional authorization, without meaningful debate, without constitutional clarity, the executive branch claims the unilateral authority to wage war.

This is how dictatorships arise and republics erode.

It happens when a president is allowed to treat constitutional limits as inconveniences rather than restraints.

Trump routinely dismisses unfavorable polls, ignores the courts, sidesteps Congress, shows contempt for the will of the American people, and ignorance about the fact that he works for “we the people.” He behaves not as a public servant but as a potentate.

As John Jay warned in The Federalist No. 4:

“Absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”

If this were merely a constitutional dispute, it would be grave enough.

But it is not merely constitutional.

The consequences are immediate, political, and profoundly destabilizing.

Trump has a tendency to bulldoze through constitutional and legal restraints, creating a spectacle or a crisis, and then leaving others to clean up the fallout—whether it is a gutted ballroom, an eviscerated federal agency, a chaotic immigration crackdown, or now a widening war in the Middle East.

Long after the headlines move on, the wreckage remains.

And when the crisis involves war, the consequences are not merely bureaucratic or political — they are measured in lives and liberties.

War, in particular, has always been the most convenient tool of presidents facing troubles at home. When approval ratings slide, when economic policy falters, when scandal threatens to consume the headlines, foreign conflict has a way of shifting the narrative.

Trump’s Iran escalation—a deadly, costly, immoral, unpopular distraction from missteps of Trump’s own making—comes amid dismal polling, a faltering economy, escalating immigration crackdowns, eroding constitutional protections, and renewed scrutiny tied to the Epstein files.

Six out of ten Americans disapprove of Trump’s military action against Iran.

And while there is little to defend about Iran—it is a brutal regime—no nation has the right to declare itself judge, jury and executioner of another without lawful authority. To suggest otherwise is the language of strongmen.

Moreover, what happens abroad does not stay abroad.

The same government that claims unilateral authority to bomb foreign nations claims expanded authority to surveil, detain and silence domestically.

The military-industrial complex and the police state operate in tandem.

At home, we are being subjected to many of the same tactics and technologies deployed overseas. This is how America becomes a battlefield.

The pattern is not new. George W. Bush expanded warrantless surveillance. Obama normalized drone warfare. Presidents of both parties have stretched executive power.

Trump inherited the imperial presidency—and leaned into it. He boasts of his authority, derides the courts, dismisses Congress, and treats constitutional limits as inconveniences rather than guardrails.

He governs as though Article II were a royal charter.

Defense contractors may prosper in such a climate. The Constitution does not.

History teaches that war abroad produces blowback at home. Twenty-five years ago, 9/11 was itself blowback—the consequence of decades of military intervention and occupation in the Middle East.

Blowback justifies emergency powers. Emergency powers justify a police state. A police state justifies a permanent national security state.

The “war on terror” did not end terrorism. It institutionalized emergency. And permanent emergency makes constitutional government fragile.

James Madison warned that “the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

We have seen it unfold over the past quarter century: the militarization of police, battlefield tactics in American neighborhoods, expansive surveillance justified by counterterrorism. The same tactics and rationale deployed abroad eventually get used against the American people here at home.

War abroad justifies control at home. That is the pattern.

As legal scholar Aziz Huq, professor of law at the University of Chicago, warns, the same national-security powers used to justify bombing foreign nations can be turned inward—against domestic opponents and even against the electoral process itself.

That is the long game being played right now.

This unprovoked attack on Iran is turning the Middle East into a war zone, in turn laying the groundwork for Trump to act on the fantasies he has long entertained about cancelling the mid-term elections.

It is not far-fetched to imagine he might attempt it. He has repeatedly hinted about it and has already demonstrated how far he is willing to go to overturn an election.

On the very day bombs began falling on Tehran, Huq notes that the White House was reportedly considering a unilateral executive order asserting the power to control how and when Americans vote in the upcoming midterm elections—citing “national security” and alleged foreign meddling as justification.

As Huq explains, the presidency is especially weakly bound by law when “national security” is invoked. The absence of legal authority did not prevent the strikes on Iran—strikes that are unlawful under the Constitution, which assigns Congress alone the power to initiate war.

If national security can be invoked to bypass Congress abroad, it can be invoked to bypass constitutional limits at home.

In other words, if a president can launch a war without congressional authorization, he can claim similar emergency authority to restrict voting, suppress dissent, or silence opposition.

This is not republican governance. It is rule by force.

Even some of Trump’s former allies sense the instability. As Marjorie Taylor Greene bluntly put it, “I think it’s time for America to rip the Band-Aid off and we need to have a serious conversation about what the f— is happening in this country and who in the hell are these decisions being made for and who is making these decisions.”

America’s founders understood this danger. They structured the Constitution to prevent any one man from dragging the nation into war.

In making the case that decisions about war should never be left to one man, legal scholar David French quotes then-Congressman Abraham Lincoln at the close of the Mexican-American War in 1948: “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”

Concludes French: “Those words were true then, and they’re true now. No matter what he thinks, Trump is not a king. But by taking America to war all on his own, he is acting like one.”

If we are to preserve any semblance of constitutional government, Congress must reclaim its war powers. The War Powers Resolution must be enforced. Emergency powers must be narrowed, sunsetted and restrained. Surveillance must be reined in. Domestic military deployment must be limited to the most narrow, exceptional circumstances.

But structural reform alone will not save a republic that has grown comfortable with permanent war. Because once war abroad and war at home fully merge, the Constitution becomes little more than words on paper.

War is not peace. Preemptive war is not strength. And an imperial presidency—no matter how loudly it wraps itself in flags—is not constitutional government.

The Founders understood that the gravest threat to liberty would not come from foreign enemies alone, but from the concentration of power in the hands of one man who believed himself indispensable.

A president who can send bombs abroad without consent can silence opposition at home without hesitation.

A government that governs by the rule of emergency eventually ceases to govern by the rule of law.

And a nation that trades liberty for spectacle will wake up to find that it has neither.

History is a relentless teacher: military empires may rise on the back of war, but they fall just as quickly from being spread too thin. Already, days after the start of this debacle of a war on Iran, U.S. forces are being used to combat drug trafficking in Ecuador.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the question is no longer whether America can police the globe. The question is whether our Republic can survive the weight of the Empire it has become.

We are at the point where we must choose: the spectacle of permanent war, or the survival of the American experiment in freedom.

We cannot have both.

Original article: rutherford.org

Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ robs the poor and rewards the rich

A A — Mon, 26 May 2025 13:00:16 +0000

More Walls, A “Golden” Dome, More Weapons, Higher Deficits, Make this a Petty Ugly Bill

By Bill ASTORE

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The “Big Beautiful Bill” passed recently by the House is petty and ugly. A sham. A reverse Robin Hood. It cuts SNAP benefits (food stamps) to the poor. It cuts Medicaid. Because who needs food and medical care, amirite? Meanwhile, it cuts taxes for the richest Americans and funds various weapons follies (a foolish and wasteful missile shield known as “Golden Dome,” more nuclear weapons, yet more billions for the wall on America’s border with Mexico). And it adds significantly to the national debt.

Remember when Republicans were once known as fiscal conservatives? Remember calls for a balanced budget? Those days are long gone. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a fever dream, or a night terror if you prefer, of wanton and wasteful spending that rewards the already well-heeled and hurts the most vulnerable of Americans.

Trump, who is truly an expert at the craft of the con, concocts the most outrageous names to sell his BS. Thus a missile shield that may end up wasting $500 billion is a “golden dome.” Heck, the whole bill, which is contempuous toward the poor and punishing to workers organizing for higher wages, is sold as “big” and “beautiful.”

When Trump describes things as “golden” and “big” and “beautiful,” you should know to hold tightly to your wallets and purses, America, because you’re about to get scammed.

At his site, Stephen Semler has a superb chart that breaks down the petty ugly bill the House just passed. Here’s an excerpt. Read it and weep, America.

The bottom line: More money for the already affluent and for the Pentagon; less money and benefits for the poor. The rich get richer, the poor poorer, as America reinforces its turn to weapons, walls, police, domes, and warriors.

Original article: Bracing Views

Spending 5% of GDP on military now would be absolutely nuts

A A — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 17:00:38 +0000

The system cannot accommodate such growth, and even more, it’s not necessary to defend the country — unless Washington wants WWIII

By Marcus STANLEY

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As a brand new Congress and administration settles in, the groundwork is being laid for a historic increase in military spending that could lead to catastrophic implications for the federal budget.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), the new head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is calling for a $120 billion hike over the next two years, and other key Republicans are calling for an increase of up to $200 billion. This follows a rise of some $160 billion over the four years of the Biden Administration.

But the accounting of annual dollar figures amid the technicalities of the budget reconciliation process today is perhaps less important than the conceptual and practical sea change in the long term approach to military budgeting being planned. Sen. Wicker is advocating setting a new floor for military spending at 5% of the national economy – a scheme apparently endorsed by President Donald Trump at Davos yesterday when he called for “all NATO nations” (presumably including the United States) to spend at least 5% of GDP on defense.

The implications of spending at least 5% of the entire national economy on the military each year are striking. The first is the sheer dollar figures involved. In 2024, a 5% floor would have led to approximately $1.45 trillion in military spending as opposed to the actual level of $886 billion — a difference of over $550 billion or some 60%.

That level of spending won’t happen overnight. The scale of the increase implied by a 5% floor is such that it can’t be accommodated in one or even two to three years. The additional funds are so great that the entire U.S. military-industrial complex would need to be scaled up to absorb them. But the long-run budgetary implications of such an increase are extremely concerning.

In recent work for the Quincy Institute, Steve Kosiak, a former senior White House defense budget official, projects that by 2034 a 5% of GDP floor on military spending would lead to an almost 90% increase in real (inflation adjusted) spending as compared to the current path for Pentagon spending.

A sustained expansion in military spending of this size would have a tremendous impact on the ability of the government to pursue other national priorities. This is especially true since the Trump Administration also appears committed to a major tax cut (far larger than any new revenues brought in by potential tariffs).

As Kosiak’s work documents, the combination of a massive boost in Pentagon spending and tax breaks would require either major cuts in central entitlement programs like social security or health care, or a long-term explosion in the Federal debt to levels two to three times the highest levels ever previously recorded. While it’s become fashionable to claim that “deficits don’t matter,” expanding the Federal debt to such unprecedented levels carries significant risks to economic growth.

Besides the implications for spending and deficits, a commitment to spend at least 5% of national economic production on the military would change the essential nature of military budgeting. Instead of setting the budget by assessing actual concrete needs for national defense — a process that already leads to a significant degree of waste and abuse— a spending floor would require spending to mechanically increase as the size of the economy grows, regardless of documented military needs.

The effect would be like a “military tax” on the U.S. economy, requiring a nickel of each additional dollar of production to go to the Pentagon.

The policy would also have significant effects globally, as it would tend to hard-wire an arms race dynamic into the world economy. With the U.S. and close allies increasing military spending each year as their economies grew, U.S. rivals would also feel pressure to spend more in order to keep up. Global military expenditures, already at the highest levels ever recorded, would likely spiral upward. This in turn would feed the U.S. justification for continuing to increase military spending.

While rivals that are significantly poorer than we are, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea, would certainly feel stress to their economy in trying to keep up with our spending, a wealthier manufacturing power like China has a great deal of ability to boost military spending in response to a U.S. buildup. Estimates of Chinese military spending vary, but are generally at around 2% of GDP, leaving substantial room for growth.

At various times, when the economy was much smaller, the U.S. has certainly spent more than 5% of GDP on the military. But today, this would represent a much higher absolute level of military expenditure. More importantly, it is not necessary to actually defend the American public or secure vital national interests.

Sen. Wicker’s defense spending plan claims that the U.S. confronts “the most dangerous threat environment since WW2” due to facing an “axis of aggressors” that includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It claims that America needs to budget for fighting at least two active and protracted wars simultaneously, one to defeat China and another to defeat a second aggressor in another part of the world, while maintaining additional military forces in reserve to intimidate other potential aggressors.

Further, it insists that during such a conflict we must assume that America could not rely on effective military assistance from its alliance network.

Rather than assuming that it is necessary to prepare for this terrifying and extreme scenario of an isolated America fighting a two-front global war against multiple nuclear powers, we should ask whether it can be averted by less risky and expensive means than almost doubling our military budget over the next decade.

The decision to prepare for a “nuclear WW3” scenario would require major economic sacrifices for the entire American population. Unfortunately, it appears that many in Washington wish to take us in this direction.

Original article: Responsible Statecraft

First order of business of new Congress is to protect Israel

A A — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:00:29 +0000

What exactly is being inaugurated?

By Philip GIRALDI

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The big news over the past week has been the record breaking California fires, which have destroyed more than 9,000 homes. There have been the usual slick denials from the politicians over who was responsible for the promised but not executed clearing of brush in forested areas. I particularly enjoyed the comment by actor Mel Gibson, who lost his home, when discussing the disaster with podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan, a former Californian said, “They spent $24 billion last year on the homeless, and what did they spend on preventing these wildfires?” Rogan asked and answered: “Zip.” “Zip,” Gibson agreed. “And in 2019, [Governor Gavin] Newsom said, you know, that he would take care of the forest, maintain the forest and do all that kinda stuff. He didn’t do anything.” “On top of that, they cut the water off,” Rogan responded and Gibson then joked, “All our tax dollars probably went for Gavin’s hair gel.”

Also coming from the bad news file is the report that the fire has caused President Joe Biden to call off his trip to Rome, where he was supposed to have an Audience with Pope Francis on January 10^th. What Biden expects to accomplish in Washington to help mitigate the effects of the fire is not clear as he has sent all the available money in the Treasury to sustain the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Plus, Genocide Joe’s aides would have to explain to him that California is regarded as part of the United States. Many of us traditional Catholics who have been lobbying the Vatican would have preferred that Biden travel to Italy in hopes that the Pope just might be willing to reestablish some moral authority coming out of the Papacy by doing the right thing, which would be to excommunicate Biden for his active support of abortion, gay marriage and genocide of Christian Arabs being carried out by the Israelis in Palestine. It has always been assumed that the Pope would not under any circumstances excommunicate an American president, but it was clearly worth making the effort to demonstrate that there might actually be some accountability in the US government even if it has to come from a foreign source. Alas, that hope was perhaps delusional.

One anticipates that the truly big story will surface next week when someone will undoubtedly misbehave at the Inauguration in Washington. Even as the transfer of presidential authority from Joe Biden to Donald Trump is being prepared, there have been the usual mixed signals combined with questionable narratives coming out of the two political parties. Donald Trump has led the way with a flurry of foreign policy proposals that have boggled the mind as a response to the correct belief that the Biden Administration has bungled badly its responsibility to keep the US safe and to engage in a foreign policy that would benefit the American people.

That means that Trump’s call for a dramatic change of direction among the deeply entrenched political class in our country in order to avoid repeating the calamitous Afghanistan experience in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and over Taiwan is sound. But unfortunately, the MAGA remedy might well be as bad or even worse than the mess left behind by the Biden gaggle of policy makers, starting with the worst Secretary of State within living memory in the person of Israel’s latest lawyer Antony Blinken. Indeed, the utter failure of the past four years suggests looking ahead that the real danger that confronts Americans is that the often ignorant cabinet-level placeholders who proliferated under Biden appear to be largely duplicated under the incoming regime of President-elect Donald Trump. Given the culture that produces top-level political appointees, White House advisers are rarely selected for their experience or knowledge and instead are all too often acquired due to racial or ethnic profiling or as a reward for their personal loyalty to the head of state.

The irony is that Donald Trump has been correct in understanding that Americans are tired of war in places that they cannot find on a map. In fact, Trump might well have obtained his margin of victory over Biden through voters who were attracted by his verbal rejection of the “stupid wars” that have proliferated in the past twenty-five years. But now that he has won, Trump is unrestrained and his darker side has been unleashed. His nominees for cabinet posts are nearly all aggressively Zionist and pro-Israel while also combative regarding both Russia and China. Trump himself has muddied the waters in the past several weeks by calling for resuming control of the Panama Canal to counter claimed gouging on tolls and Chinese engagement in its operations, has threatened “hell to pay” on the Gazans if they do not release the Israeli hostages by inauguration day, has called for annexing Greenland to improve US security, has not rejected recent Biden troop increases in Syria, has called for renaming the Gulf of Mexico, has proposed that Canada become the 51^st state, and is reported to be discussing with the Israelis an attack on Iran. He and his spokesmen have also warned Russia that the US will provide more arms to Ukraine if Vladimir Putin does not agree to negotiations to end the Ukraine war “in one day” after Donald Trump is in office, though the president-to-be is now conceding that it might take longer. Trump has also repeatedly self-identified as the “most pro-Israel” candidate for public office, similar to the claims made by country club Catholic Joe Biden that he is a Zionist, as being close to Israel and American Jews currently serves as a sine qua non for those who are active in American politics.

The new GOP dominance of both the House and Senate means that the Congress will be on board to provide backup for the new Administration and it will also mean doubling down on the near total current submission to Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new Republican dominated 119^th Congress’s House of Representatives as one of its first official acts, one which has nothing to do with the United States, has just passed a bill by a 243 to 140 vote, with 45 Democrats joining the majority of Republicans. Representative Thomas Massie was the only member of the GOP caucus having sufficient integrity to refuse to vote in favor of the bill.

“The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” sanctions the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its attempt to serve arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the crime of genocide. Travel to the US by members of the court will be banned and their personal property will be subject to confiscation. Any court officials attempting to arrest or investigate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are covered by the Act. The bill is now likely to pass through the Senate before being signed by Trump. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, commented that “America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally.” Mast, a legless Israeli army veteran who sometimes wears his IDF uniform to Congressional sessions, accused the court of antisemitism. He added that “This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe… Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.” One assumes that there will be additional legislation to carry out the deportation of pro-Palestinian protesters, as Trump has several times promised, as well as further steps to criminalize all criticism of the Jewish state, making Israel yet again the big winner in the recent election.

Will the US invade Greenland, Mexico, Canada, Iran and Panama? Who knows? But for sure the incoming administration sounds a lot like Joe Biden’s wars on demand or possibly even worse, maybe including even a doubling down on the use of force majeure as a poorly conceived kneejerk response to policies that have manifestly and quite visibly failed for the past twenty years. Americans today are less secure, more troubled by internal dissent and poorer than they were in 2001. It is time for both parties to stop trying to save face by coming out with the same old shibboleths based on fear and threats that have been used by the political animals to keep a cowed public in line. Trump must understand that if genuine change does not come, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement will become a short footnote in a future history book, seen as little more than the first step in a great upheaval and revolutionary reordering that will surely follow when the American people realize that they have been had and rise-up just like in 1776 to regain their freedom.

Original article: The Unz Review

2025 New Year’s resolutions for DC

A A — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 11:24:17 +0000

By Ron PAUL

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When the end of another year rolls around it is not a bad idea to think about how we might improve ourselves and perhaps even improve the lives of others given the clean slate of a New Year. Many people resolve to exercise more, eat better, spend more time with their families. These are all worthy goals, but shouldn’t our elected officials and the bureaucrats who run DC be making some resolutions of their own? Here are a few suggestions.

First up is Congress. Next month the 119th US Congress will be sworn in, with Republican majorities in both Houses. With every opinion poll we see how the US public holds Congress in contempt. How about doing something about it? What about returning to the Constitution? That means no more 1,500 page omnibus spending bills which hide countless unconstitutional surveillance, censorship, and police state measures behind convoluted legislative language. Return to the normal legislative process and pass individual, clean appropriations bills with open rules that allow maximum participation from each Member or Senator.

Then spend the rest of the year renaming post offices, if you want. The American people will thank you for it.

Americans are rightly furious that President Biden has sent as much as $200 billion to fund Ukraine’s futile war with Russia, but where did Biden get that money? From Congress. The Founding Fathers gave Congress the ability to check the Executive branch’s foreign adventurism with the power of the purse. Every US foreign policy fiasco of the 21st century could have been prevented had Congress only had the courage to say “no” when the President and the military-industrial complex demanded money for a new overseas conflict.

Next, the Executive Branch. On January 20th we will begin the second Trump Administration. Trump appealed to war-weary American voters by promising no new wars and an end to the current conflicts we are involved in overseas. A good place to start would be an announcement on day one that US troops would be removed from Syria. We learned only last week that the Biden Administration had been lying to us about the number of troops in Syria, but the real question is why do we have troops there at all? Trump rightly said it is not our war, so why not just march home?

Likewise, Ukraine. As a parting “gift” to the American people, President Biden just announced another six billion to Ukraine. Most of that money – like the billions before – will end up in the hands of the US military-industrial complex, with a few billion stolen by the corrupt Ukraine government. Even the US mainstream media admits that Ukraine has lost the war. So why are we draining the US treasury and draining the population of Ukraine for a lost cause? President Trump: end the funding and end the war.

We should be cautiously optimistic that should Trump’s nominees to head the FBI and the Intelligence Community make it through the Senate we might finally be able to see the deep state lose its grip. That’s the best news possible. We need to rein in the CIA from overseas conflicts and end the FBI’s wars on our civil liberties at home.

Keeping just a few resolutions like these above will produce a more peaceful and prosperous New Year!

Original article: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity

End Congress’s Christmas tradition

A A — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:55:37 +0000

By Ron PAUL

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This week saw a new twist in what has become a D.C. Christmas tradition. I am not referring to the lighting of the White House Christmas tree but to passage of a “continuing resolution” (CR) funding the government and thus avoiding a Christmastime government shutdown.

It took the production of three separate CRs before one passed in the Senate after midnight Friday night and was then signed by President Joe Biden.

A reason an earlier CR failed to obtain congressional approval was that President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy called on Republicans to oppose it. There was also opposition to the inclusion of new spending, including 100 billion dollars in disaster relief and an extension of the farm bill along with billions of dollars more in aid for farmers. The farm provisions were added at the request of Republican representatives from rural areas. Many of these Republicans denounce welfare spending and crony capitalism, while fighting to increase subsidies for large agribusinesses and rich farmers. The CR that ultimately passed included the disaster relief and the farm provisions.

President Trump wanted the CR to raise or suspend the debt ceiling that was expected to be reached soon. It is understandable that President Trump would want to avoid a fight over the debt ceiling early in his second term. However, refusing to raise or suspend the debt ceiling would benefit President Trump’s efforts to reduce wasteful spending.

The debt ceiling was created during World War One to allow the Treasury to sell bonds without first obtaining congressional authorization. Contrary to the claims of the big spenders, failure to raise or suspend the debt ceiling would not force the government to default or cause the government to not “pay its bills.” Instead, it would force the government to do what ordinary people who find themselves over their heads in debt have to do: reduce other expenses in order to pay their bills. Saying a failure to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is irresponsible is like saying a credit card company is irresponsible for refusing to extend credit to a deadbeat.

Raising or suspending the debt ceiling helps enable the continued growth of the welfare-warfare state, but the real enabler of Congress’s spending is the Federal Reserve’s monetization of government debt. The Federal Reserve monetizes the federal debt via the purchase of Treasuries. Congress should pass legislation forbidding the Fed from purchasing Treasuries so the Fed can no longer enable Congress’s reckless spending.

The Constitution gives Congress two primary responsibilities: appropriating federal funds and declaring war. Congress long ago abdicated its authority to declare war. The practice of funding the government through CRs and omnibus spending bills drafted by a few members and rushed through Congress before most members have a chance to read them deprives most members of the ability to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to help determine how to best allocate taxpayer dollars. It also denies members an opportunity to offer amendments cutting spending. This is why everyone who supports constitutional government and who understands the dangers of increasing government debt should support ending Congress’s Christmas tradition.

Original article: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity

Congress revives Cold War tactics with new anti-communism school curriculum

A A — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 15:00:59 +0000

By Alan MACLEOD

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Congress has just passed a new bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the ideology of anti-communism. The “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” is now being read in the Senate, where it is all but certain to pass. The move comes amid growing public anger at the economic system and increased public support for socialism.

The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, in its own words, is designed to teach children that “certain political ideologies, including communism and totalitarianism…conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that are essential to the founding of the United States.”

Although sponsored by Republicans, it enjoys widespread support from Democrats and is focused on China, Venezuela, Cuba and other targets of U.S. empire. The wording of the bill has many worried that this will be a centerpiece of a new era of anti-communist hysteria, similar to previous McCarthyist periods.

The curriculum will be designed by the controversial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and will ensure all American high school students “understand the dangers of communism and similar political ideologies” and “learn that communism has led to the deaths of over 100,000,000 victims worldwide.” It will also develop a series titled “Portraits in Patriotism,” that will expose students to individuals who are “victims of the political ideologies” in question.

A Discredited Book

The 100 million figure originates with the notorious pseudoscience text, “The Black Book of Communism.” A collection of political essays, the book’s central claim is that 100 million people have perished as a result of the communist ideology. However, even many of its contributors and co-writers have distanced themselves from it, claiming that the lead author was “obsessed” with reaching the 100 million figure, to the point that he simply conjured millions of deaths from nowhere.

Its methodology was also universally panned, with many pointing out that the tens of millions of Soviet and Nazi losses during World War II were attributed to communist ideology. This means that both Adolf Hitler himself and many of his victims are counted towards the vastly overinflated figure. The book was condemned by Holocaust remembrance groups as whitewashing and even lionizing genocidal fascist groups as anti-communist heroes.

The principal organization promoting the 100 million figure today is the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has shown a similar level of both anti-communist devotion and methodological rigor. The group, set up by the U.S. government in 1993, added all worldwide COVID-19 deaths to the victims of communism list, arguing that the coronavirus was a communist disease because it originated in China. It is these people who will be designing the new curriculum that will be taught in social studies, government, history, and economics classes across the country.

China Hawks

One of the central goals of the bill is also to “ensure that high school students in the United States understand that 1,500,000,000 people still suffer under communism.” This is a clear reference to China, a rapidly developing country that, in just two generations, has gone from one of the poorest on Earth to a global superpower, challenging and even surpassing the United States on many quality-of-life indicators.

The bill goes on to detail how the school curriculum will “focus on ongoing human rights abuses by such regimes, such as the treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” by the Chinese “regime” and its “aggression” towards “pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,” and Taiwan, who it labels “a democratic friend of the United States.”

Furthermore, many of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s “Witness Project” case studies – likely the source for the “Portraits in Patriotism” series – are from China. This includes Rushan Abbas, the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a pressure group funded by CIA front organization, the National Endowment for Democracy. Abbas was also previously employed as a translator at the notorious Guantánamo Bay torture camp.

The U.S. is currently engaged in a quickly-escalating Cold War against China that includes channeling money and support to separatist movements, including those in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as MintPress News has reported. In September, the House of Representatives passed a bill that authorized $1.6 billion to be spent on anti-Chinese messaging worldwide.

Latin America: a Model and a Target

The other major target of the bill will likely be socialist or communist-led governments in Latin America. The act’s sponsor is Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican Congressperson representing Miami. A part of Florida’s famously conservative Cuban-American community, in 2023, she introduced the FORCE Act, which attempted to block any U.S. president from normalizing relations with Cuba unless its government is overthrown. She has repeatedly condemned President Biden for easing the (illegal) U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. And in July, she denounced what she described as the “socialist curse in Central America and the Caribbean,” singling out Cuban, Venezuela, Honduras, and Nicaragua as countries requiring regime change.

She is, however, an avid supporter of the far-right President of Argentina, Javier Milei, accepting his invitation to attend his inauguration. Argentina, she said, “is going to set the course and point of reference for the rest of Latin America as to the way that a country should be governed… Free market economy, small government, individual liberties, freedom, private sector, no corruption, that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Perhaps the only foreign country she praises more than Argentina is Israel, whose actions she has supported at every step, even going so far as to denounce what she called the “one-sided pressure for a ceasefire” in Gaza.

Salazar’s bill passed easily, 327-62, with limited opposition from Democrats or Republicans, who voted for and against it in roughly equal measures. Even many members of the Progressive Caucus voted in favor, proving that anti-communism is as popular on the left as it is on the right.

A New McCarthyism?

The imminent passing of the Crucial Communism Teaching Act harkens back to earlier anti-communist periods in American history, namely the Red Scare of the 1910s and the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s. During those times, organized labor movements were ruthlessly attacked, workers from all professions, including professors, government officials, and teachers, were fired en masse, and some of America’s brightest minds had their careers derailed due to their political leanings. This included singer Paul Robeson, actors like Charlie Chaplain and Marilyn Monroe, playwright Arthur Miller and scientist Albert Einstein.

The point of these operations was to break any opposition to the power of the state and big business and ensure the United States maintained its capitalist course. Today, however, fewer Americans than ever are happy with the current political and economic system. A recent Gallup study found that only 22% of the public are satisfied with how things are going, with a majority responding that they are “very dissatisfied.” Living standards have been stagnating or dropping for decades, and alternative economic systems are becoming more desirable. A 2019 poll from Axios found that 48% of adults under 35 prefer socialism to capitalism, including 57% of female respondents.

There are some signs that Washington is slowly moving towards a new McCarthyist era. President Trump, for example, has promised to carry out mass deportations of leftists once he becomes president, stating:

I will order my government to deny entry to all communists and all Marxists. Those who come to join our country must love our country. We don’t want them if they want to destroy our country… So we’re going to be keeping foreign Christian-hating communists, socialists, and Marxists out of America.”

“At the end of the day, either the communists destroy America, or we destroy the communists,” he explained. But he also stated that American citizens espousing anti-capitalist views would be purged. “My question is, what are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them,” he said.

That Trump would actually deport millions of American citizens en masse appears like too drastic a step right now, but it is clear that both Democrats and Republicans are serious in their anti-communist convictions. Therefore, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act will likely only be the start of this campaign.

Original article: mintpressnews

U.S. bill would reverse ATACMS Order

A A — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 14:29:20 +0000

A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, if it were law, would reduce the danger of nuclear war over Ukraine by stopping U.S. ATACMS attacks on Russia, reports Joe Lauria.

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A bill introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) would prohibit the U.S. from sending long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine to be fired into Russia.

As U.S. personnel and satellites are required to fire the missiles from Ukrainian territory, Moscow considers it a direct U.S. attack on Russia putting it in a state of war with the U.S. which could lead to nuclear conflict.

To remove the potential of nuclear war, the proposed legislation seeks to end ATACMS launches into Russia. The bill reads:

(a) Prohibition. —For the period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act and ending at the close of January 20, 2025, notwithstanding any other provision of law, during any period for which a state of conflict exists between Ukraine and the Russian Federation—

1) no Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) may be transferred to Ukraine; and

(2) U.S. Military Services or intelligence agencies may not provide support to Ukrainian units operating High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HMARS) platforms utilizing ATACMS munitions to strike outside of internationally recognized Ukrainian territorial borders—

(A) targeting intelligence support;

(B) mission planning support; and

(C) any other type of support.

Several members of Congress and their staff said they were taken off guard by President Joe Biden’s reversal of his previous decision not to allow the use of ATACMS to be fired into Russia from Ukraine.

The members and their staff made these remarks during meetings on Thursday on Capitol Hill with former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and activists of Code Pink, led by Medea Benjamin.

Biden Breaks With Realists

ATACMS missile firing in May 2006. (U.S. Army/Wikimedia Commons)

Biden had twice before sided with the Pentagon to avoid direct war with Russia. In March 2022 he overruled his Secretary of State Antony Blinken to scotch plans for a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine, which could have lead to direct conflict with Russia.

Biden opposed the no-fly zone, he said at the time, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”

Then in September Biden deferred to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would also lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.

Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

That was a clear warning that British and U.S. targets could be hit. Biden thus wisely backed off.

But after he was driven from the race and his party lost the White House last month, Biden suddenly switched gears allowing not only British, but also U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired into Russia. It’s not clear that the White House ever informed the Pentagon in advance.

Higgin’s bill was introduced as H.R. 10218 on Nov. 21, but none of the other House members that Ritter and Benjamin met with on Capitol Hill had heard of it. Nor was it reported in the mainstream media.

“We found that commonsense is actually alive and living here in the halls of Congress,” Ritter told Consortium News. “Members of Congress and their staffs understand the danger of nuclear war. We found that there was a bill already written … that sought to achieve what we were trying to get them to do.”

Benjamin said: “We are excited to push this bill, which we just found out about. … It will not pass, but the idea is to get momentum for it so that message is coming out there that there are members of Congress who want to see this reversed and that in the next Congress, they will introduce it again with a lot more momentum.”

“To stop a nuclear war comes down to one issue,” Ritter said:

“The United States has to stop attacking Russian soil with American-made ATACMS missiles. Even though we use a Ukrainian cutout, it’s American provided, American targets and American intelligence. It’s the Americans attacking Russia. From the Russian perspective, the United States is at war with Russia … which has triggered their nuclear doctrine.”

Original article: Consortium News

The U.S. Misadventure in Niger Is a Wake-Up Call

A A — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:33:33 +0000

Congress owes it to the country to retake its war powers from the executive.

By Rand PAUL

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Recently, after over two decades of an unnecessary U.S. military presence in Niger, the U.S. finally withdrew from the West African country. I, for one, never believed we should have been there in the first place and warned our presence was doing more harm than good. Congress never authorized sending troops to Niger. Last year, I was right to demand their withdrawal. Why waste our money and risk our troops’ lives for a hostile country?

In over a decade, civilian lives were lost, U.S. service members were killed, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent, and we have nothing to show for it. So, what exactly did we do in Niger? I repeat: Congress never voted to send troops there. Congress never authorized the use of military force there. Yet, on multiple occasions, U.S. forces in Niger had to engage with hostile groups and, sadly, American lives were lost.

Some may recall that, on October 4, 2017, four U.S. soldiers—Sergeant 1st Class Jeremiah Johnson, Staff Sergeant Bryan Black, Staff Sergeant Dustin Wright, and Sergeant La David Johnson—were ambushed and killed while on a mission near the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger.

This tragic incident was the largest loss of life for U.S. forces in Africa since the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia. At the time, the New York Times reported, in a piece called “An Endless War,” that two senior senators, a Republican and a Democrat, both of whom are still serving, knew little of the American military presence in Niger.

They were surprised because Congress had abdicated its constitutional war-making power to the executive branch. They were surprised because Congress is content to allow the President to sidestep the Constitution and unilaterally deploy U.S. forces anywhere in the world, at any time, for any reason, by citing a limitless interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF.

Passed in the days following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the 9/11 AUMF was narrowly tailored to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks. An ever-aggrandizing executive, however, deliberately misinterprets the AUMF as limitless, empowering the President to go to war everywhere, all the time, forever.

Using an AUMF written 23 years ago to justify war today is a perverse abuse of power, yet Congress stands idly by.

These military interventions the U.S. has carried out all across the Middle East and Africa have made us less safe and less prosperous. In many cases, including that of Niger and the surrounding region, our interventions have been counterproductive, destabilizing, and helped create the conditions for Islamic extremism to prosper.

Does anyone remember our intervention in Libya? I know many think this is ancient history, but in 2011, the Obama-led offensive helped destroy that country. The American-led coalition toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi, killed hundreds of civilians, fomented anarchy throughout the country, and opened the floodgates for widespread extremist terror to spread throughout the region. Gaddafi kept Libya’s tribal rivalries in check, but his U.S-sponsored overthrow exacerbated them. Many tribal members turned to Islamists for guns and training to defend themselves against rivals.

In fact, I forced a vote in the Senate in 2011 declaring that President Obama’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya violated the Constitution. Unfortunately, it failed 90-10, and here we are, 13 years later, and not much has changed. During that 2011 floor debate, I stated, “Though I’m new here in the Senate, I am appalled that the Senate has abdicated its responsibility.” Well, I’m now in my third term, and I’m still appalled that Congress refuses to acknowledge its constitutional role on the question of determining when and where the United States goes to war.

Libyans today are unambiguously worse off than before we intervened. In 2010, the UN Human Development Index ranked Libya 53rd in the world. This year, Libya is ranked 92nd. The UN Human Rights Office reports that the execution and torture of civilians in Libya is a regular occurrence. The UN has also identified the existence of “open slave markets” where migrants and refugees transiting Libya are bought and sold as slaves.

The disaster the Obama administration helped unleash in Libya has had lasting consequences for the region. Libyan arms, including heavy weaponry such as anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles, have been traced to criminals and terrorists across the region, including in Niger, Mali, Tunisia, Syria, Algeria, and Gaza.

It is rarely asked if our interminable military interventions create the terrorists we seek to destroy. That’s a question Congress needs to answer. In the 11 years U.S. troops were in Niger, Congress did not once debate the merits of the mission and never authorized the use of military force. As the U.S. was forced out of Niger, Russia was welcomed with open arms, solidifying that our efforts have almost been counterproductive.

After over a decade, lives lost, and hundreds of millions spent, the U.S. didn’t stop the spread of Islamic extremism, didn’t help build or spread democracy in other nations, and has now lost a top ally in the region. At what point will Congress learn that its inaction and reliance on the executive branch is not only a dereliction of its constitutional duty but also worsening global relations?

Last year, Niger’s democratically elected leader was ousted in a coup led by Nigerian military officers. With the potential of U.S. service members being caught in the crosshairs, I forced the Senate to vote on a War Powers Resolution. The resolution directed the President to remove all U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in Niger within 30 days of its enactment, something that should have been done as soon as the Biden administration formally declared that a military coup took place.

We owed it to those service members to debate their mission. Not only because it was a new conflict not contemplated by the 9/11 AUMF, but because, if we are asking our young men and women to remain in harm’s way and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice, Congress should fulfill its duty.

Committing America’s military to fight wars on behalf of the nation is the most consequential and humbling responsibility that Congress is entrusted with. If America’s interest in another country is of such vital importance that we ask our young men and women to fight and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice to defend it, we at least owe our service members a debate in Congress.

Original article: The American Conservative